Nuclear Dreams

Barrack Obama, helping to divert attention from healthcare reform problems, announced reductions in nuclear stockpiles with Russian President Medvedev. The assumption is this helps the US lead from the front in reducing global stockpiles (by any measure the US and Russia account for the majority of nuclear warheads extant) and the timing dovetails with the aggressive actions taken in North Korea. However according to GlobalSecurity.org there are 14 nations possessing nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile weaponry (China, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Syria, Taiwan, United States). Nuclear weaponry is not the sole weaponry nations develop. The ability of nuclear powers to avoid attacks from other nations (the nuclear deterrent) makes nukes a popular choice. If there was a more powerful weapon it would immediately become the weapon of choice for third world nations seeking to avoid invasions - and our own nation.

The only effective means to prevent nuclear proliferation is to develop weaponry more dangerous than nukes. Anything short of that does not address the motivations of nations to pursue weapons. Quite a paradox.

Russia and the United States draw down stockpiles to levels in excess of continents and sufficient to deter attacks from any nation on Earth, as part of cost effective maintenance plans already budgeted, yet posture as a manner of political goodwill. Long live rhetoric.