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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (76160)	2/20/2003 11:29:09 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Clinton basically did little in the nuclear arena, I think, so stuff pretty much went on autopilot. (I'm sure there are significant details and events that this gross overgeneralization misses, but I might still stand by it even on reflection.) There was some progress on some arms control treaties, and some reductions in our forces I believe, but these were wholly predictable in light of the generally relaxed 90s environment so don't really count much. So at the end of the Clinton years you basically had the paradox of the US maintaining a large nuclear arsenal, but one that it never really intended to use. The Bushies came in distrusting arms control in general and actually caring more about nukes than their predecessors, so they have begun to think seriously about what, if anything, these things might be used for. The result is both a search for more creative and flexible options, but ones that are still (IMHO) wildly unrealistic in the sense that they continue to envision potential use. Thus you have some in the administration pushing for the development of new tactical nukes, as was in the papers today. I find it very hard to imagine any situation in which we would actually use nuclear weapons, quite frankly--as do the vast majority of policymakers. So what happens is that you have normal diplomatic and military planning--even for a major war against a major, possibly WMD-armed bad guy--going on without much reference to the nuclear angle, and yet also a bunch of nuclear strategists and labs and some military personnel proceeding on a parallel path as if their ruminations really mattered. This used to be a sort of black comedy back in the Cold War days, when there was a real risk of "blowing it all to hell" (as Charlton Heston put it). Now it strikes me as more a sort of bureaucratic stodginess. It's funny that this shoud come up now, actually, because I was just talking about this with somebody this afternoon, searching my brain for good people who still think seriously about this stuff (nuclear strategy) in order to recommend them to a guy putting together a think-tank study group on the subject. Not exactly a growth area professinally--although by all rights it should be, for the reasons I stated before... If you're interested in the Bushies' thinking, here are two things to look at. The first is their recent official nuclear strategy document; the second is an influential think-tank report a number of them signed just before they took office. The third piece is a recent discussion of the issue from a knowledgeable academic liberal. whitehouse.gov nipp.org foreignaffairs.org tb@boomboomboom.com