Monday, December 19, 2016

Trump Should Change U.S. Policy On Nuclear Weapons

America's nuclear weapons capability is gravely debilitated — so much so as to create an existential risk for our nation. In 1992, when the Cold War ended, our leaders closed down virtually all nuclear weapons activities for almost two decades. What followed was worse. For the past eight years Obama has had us marching to the rear in furtherance of his impossible "world without nuclear weapons" dream. In one paragraph here's how we stand:
Credible deterrence no longer exists in our foreign policy. Our nonproliferation policies are so ill-conceived that we have just triggered a global cascade of nuclear proliferation. We have no coherent nuclear weapons strategy. Our current stockpile is composed of weapons well past the end of their design life; and their condition ranges somewhere between deteriorated and unknown. Worse, they are irrelevant to most of today's principal threats.
Our deplorable no-test policy defies reason. Our prohibition of design and production of new nukes has brought the technical expertise of our scientists, engineers, designers, production teams, and testing experts into serious question. They haven't been allowed to even think about new weapons, and exploratory work has ceased to exist. Our near-total restriction on nuclear weapons research has opened wide our vulnerabilities to technological surprise.
Key nuclear facilities are antiquated or nonexistent. Their agreed-to modernization funding has been slashed. Funding for our next-generation nuclear delivery systems has been delayed so many times we face an impossible replacement situation. We have taken virtually no action in response to the grave electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat. Our missile defense program has been reduced, limited, delayed, and changed annually.
Meanwhile, the nuclear weapons threats to America are mushrooming in diversity, numbers, and technology.
Russia has followed exactly the opposite course from the U.S. ...
Read the rest of this IBD Commentary HERE.

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