Obama's Nuclear 'Realism' Just May Kill Us All

There is a terrific article here at Family Security Matters that talks about the "progressive realism" that President Barack Obama has signed onto in which he seems to believe that if the United States takes an aggressive de-militarization stance...the rest of the world will just follow along. Yeah, right. One of the aspects of this article that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up is how far behind the U.S. is right now in defense, when you compare America to others in the world - and the most frightening aspect is just how deeply Obama wishes to further cut these defenses of ours. Here's some of the excerpts:

Take, for example, Mr. Obama's announced intention to rid the planet of nuclear weapons. The truth is that, no matter how many world leaders, elder statesmen and other advocates champion this goal, it is not going to happen. The associated technology is too widely available, the strategic value of nuclear weapons too great and the possibilities of concealment in closed societies too immutable for all nations actually to forego the temptation to retain covert arsenals.

There is only one country on earth that Team Obama can absolutely, positively denuclearize: Ours. To be sure, the President professes his realism by recognizing that, even as he declares a goal of no nukes, he emphasizes it is unlikely to be achieved any time soon. Still, the cumulative effect of his nuclear agenda would be to advance inexorably the denuclearization of the United States.

This is how Mr. Obama's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, described our nuclear posture before last Fall's election: "Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead." By contrast, he noted, "China and Russia have embarked on an ambitious path to design and field new weapons." Even "the United Kingdom and France have programs to maintain their deterrent capabilities." In fact, every other actual nuclear power and wannabe is building up as we are going out of the business.

Ironically, these acts of U.S. self-restraint in the interest of setting an "example" for the rest of the world are quintessential progressive realism - a practice that reflexively believes America must stop doing things in its self-defense that, in light of world conditions and hard experience, are perfectly sensible, all in the hope that the rest of the world will behave in ways that history suggests are not in the cards.

That last paragraph says it all for me. It talks about what I deem the failed approach to the world that Obama clings to - he simply believes that all of the world's problems begin and end with the United States. Barack Obama thinks that since the U.S. has nuclear weapons, the rest of the world has nuclear weapons so if we were to completely rid ourselves of these nukes, the world will immediately follow suit and bingo - the world will be nuke free! Isn't that brilliant? In other words, if every police officer in Los Angeles were to remove their guns and walk the streets unarmed, the gang bangers on the street would certainly line up at weapons drop off sites and turn in their guns, right?

Here's another aspect of Obama's philosophy that bugs the shit out of me. He is quick to degrade the policies of George W. Bush of trying to spread democracy, by what he would call "bullying" the rest of the world. But what Obama so subtley does is exactly the same thing but from a different angle. The world will begin to tire of Obama's vision for the world because what he talks about is HIS vision - and any country that doesn't see that his vision is the true vision, then obviously they are impaired. Let's make no bones about it - this leader, Barack Obama, has a socialistic global view and believe me, in his mind, it's HIS way, or the highway. So when Obama destroys all of America's nuclear weapons, the rest of the world better damn well follow suit or he will....oh wait.....he just eliminated our trump card....ohoh....ummm...ahhhh....well, we're screwed now, aren't we?

Obama's Unreal Nuclear Agenda

When it comes to security policy, it seems everyone wants to be a "realist" these days. If that term has any meaning at all, though, Barack Obama's nuclear weapons and missile defense policies certainly would not qualify.

To the contrary, these examples of what some call "progressive realism" constitute a near-parody of the ideologically driven disarmament agenda of the radical left. If the implications were not so serious, the discrepancy between Mr. Obama's plans and real world conditions would be hilarious.

Take, for example, Mr. Obama's announced intention to rid the planet of nuclear weapons. The truth is that, no matter how many world leaders, elder statesmen and other advocates champion this goal, it is not going to happen. The associated technology is too widely available, the strategic value of nuclear weapons too great and the possibilities of concealment in closed societies too immutable for all nations actually to forego the temptation to retain covert arsenals.

There is only one country on earth that Team Obama can absolutely, positively denuclearize: Ours. To be sure, the President professes his realism by recognizing that, even as he declares a goal of no nukes, he emphasizes it is unlikely to be achieved any time soon. Still, the cumulative effect of his nuclear agenda would be to advance inexorably the denuclearization of the United States.

In addition, Mr. Obama insists that the United States must become a party to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – an accord a majority of the U.S. Senate rejected 10 years ago on the grounds that it was unverifiale and inconsistent with the nation's need to maintain a safe, reliable and therefore credible nuclear deterrent. The effect of such a reversal would be permanently to preclude underground tests of the American arsenal, condemning it to assured obsolescence and evaporating credibility.

Far from reducing the global proliferation of nuclear weaponry, the decline of confidence in America's deterrent is likely to exacerbate that trend. As the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States put it in an interim report last December: "Our non-proliferation strategy will continue to depend upon U.S. extended deterrence strategy as one of its pillars. Our military
capabilities, both nuclear and conventional, underwrite U.S. security guarantees to our allies, without which many of them would feel enormous pressures to create their own nuclear arsenals....The U.S. deterrent must be both visible and credible, not only to our possible adversaries, but to our allies as well." (Emphasis in the original.)