Amidst
wars, revolutions, and repressions, amidst acts and fears of terror, and other
terrible expressions of a surge of human misery around the world, out of Washington,
DC, comes a ray of blinding light: President Obama’s breathtakingly daring
proposal of a dramatic reduction of the nuclear weapons--- by a whole
one-third!--- in the arsenals of the United States and Russia…
First,
the good news. Yes, I have been saying it for over two decades, and I am saying
it again today. Russia’s demise as the
other superpower has been grossly exaggerated. And here now is an adequate
reminder of this fact. President Obama has made his sweeping arms control
proposal not to the Chinese, allegedly the
other superpower, not to the
Hindustani nations, not to the nuclear-empowered members of the European Union,
not to the North Koreans, and not even to the friendly Israelis. He has made it
to the Russians, in the old tradition of superpower arms control pas de deux.
Let the nuclear demons of war be reduced by a third to under a thousand on each
side! And the earth shook, only nobody has taken this event for an earthquake, because
the world is too busy shaking with earthquakes of far greater relevance to
humanity, earthquakes not related to superpower might, but to superpower
impotence…
So,
let us reduce American and Russian nuclear stockpiles, and not just by one
third, but by a half. Will that make a difference? Will that have any effect at
all on the real-life wars, revolutions, repressions, terrorism, and fears of
terrorism anywhere around the world? Indeed, none of the world’s ongoing
horrific problems have anything to do with nuclear weapons. On the contrary, we
may well argue that the possession of these weapons has actually reduced the
threat of global war, and may have already prevented quite a few deadly
conflicts from happening.
The
truth of the matter is that this latest plastic olive branch of “virtual” peace
out of Washington is an exercise in unbelievable hypocrisy. Over the last three
decades, most American “peace initiatives” have been, frankly, misbegotten. Nobody in their right mind
would suggest that the Taliban-Al Qaeda alternative to erstwhile Soviet
influence in Afghanistan brought America anything good, or that Iraq without
Saddam Hussein and Libya without Qaddafi are better off today than before the
United States had spent the first $billion, liberating them. Nobody in their
right mind and propaganda-free would ever suggest that Syria under the secular
regime of Assad is a worse evil to the Syrians, the Israelis, and the West,
than any feasible alternative that America and the West have to offer.
As
for the actual arms control proposal to the Russians, it is an unworkable sham that
does not even score any points in the game of perceptions. Without any special
deference to the Russians, accepting it would be insanity on their part. During
the last two decades, the United States has adopted an unmistakably aggressive
anti-Russian stance, seeing Russia’s nuclear weapons as perhaps the only
obstacle to America’s domination of the world. The dramatic expansion of NATO,
breaking all promises to the Russians, and the preoccupation with ABM in
Europe, utterly undermining the core deterrent principle of MAD, plus all other
developments in the area of strategic conventional weaponry on the part of the
United States, have made the reliance on a substantial nuclear arsenal (far in
excess of the suggested reduction limits) a cornerstone of Russia’s defensive
posture, and any self-respecting American military expert must admit this plain
fact of life…
It
is clear by now that the latest American arms control proposal does not hold
water, even without us mentioning the glaring omission of all other members of
the nuclear club in this “bilateral” arrangement. In the hallowed US-Soviet
arms control past, the nuclear arsenals of the British and the French, both
being NATO members, were always factored in the bilateral picture... But let us
not dwell on this once important subject, as today it is a different, more important set of parameters of the proposed
deal that makes all such "small" details superficial and inconsequential.
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