A Nuclear-Free Tomorrow

This week, as nuclear proliferation takes a front seat for a moment in global politics, I can't escape the notion we're at a precipice of sorts. Obama's abandonment of the missile shield in Eastern Europe, though newsworthy, represents a very predictable turn of course. Both the Polish and the Czechs will overcome the loss — installations were to be built in both nations, and both saw hosting the system as insurance that they would never again be victims of a Russian invasion. The more salient issue, and the one on which the president must weigh breaking with his Cabinet, hinges on the issue of redesigning American warheads.

Robert Gates made clear in a piece written in Foreign Affairs before taking Obama's offer to return to the Pentagon, and in a speech delivered a few weeks later, his desire to see the United States renew its arsenal, not in an effort to extend capacity, but rather to ensure that a system designed in the '70s and '80s remains reliable and safe. The sentiment is mirrored by broader Defense department attitudes and postures.

Cuts in U.S. capability would spur further proliferation, current Pentagon strategic thinking contends, as nations such as Japan would move to secure themselves, fearful that the U.S. nuclear umbrella might no longer keep them shielded. The Guardian has reported that a delegation of U.K. members of Parliament were stunned to be told Britain, too, would lose faith in the transatlantic alliance should the U.S. reduce its stockpile.

Across the pond, though, Brits don't seem to have gotten the memo regarding the DOD's assessment. The Labour Party is quickly moving away from plans to pour 20 billion pounds into redeveloping its Trident system. Two thirds of voters disagree with the spending, and 25 percent of respondents argue that nuclear weapons should be given up altogether.

The problem with Gates' vision, and his department's attachment to Cold War relics, is twofold: First, the world is certain to cry "hypocrites!" as we simultaneously advocate reductions in weapon counts while redeveloping our own capacity; and, second, the more threatened the globe feels, the less likely it is to relax its iron grasp on rusting warheads.

The most terrifying feature of the nuclear world remains, now two decades after the Cold War defrosted, the Russian arsenal.

In 2004, with President Putin at sea to watch naval games unfold, two missiles intended to fire from a nuclear sub instead stuck in their silo tubes. The next day, another ship's attempted launch resulted in an explosion immediately after liftoff. In 1995, another sub came close to meltdown when an electricity company cutoff power to a naval base, which had been unable to pay its bills, bringing the cooling system close to failure. In 1998, a sailor lost control, killing eight of his fellow submariners and threatening to blow up the ship before the vessel was stormed by commandos and the man was killed.

These anecdotes, of course, reflect a fraction of the Russian nuclear program, though evidence leads the observer to believe that the problems are endemic. Yet, it's worth mentioning that in August, it was reported that the Russian fleet had two attack subs patrolling the American eastern seaboard for the first time in over a decade.

We've reached a point where denuclearizing the world quickly affords more safety than redesigning warheads or installing a missile shield, regardless of where it's based.

But, perhaps the biggest reason Obama must seize this issue now, and reject the Defense Department's thinking, is a generational divide. We, the children of a globalized and often-stateless world, haven't been afforded the proper trepidation of nuclear annihilation. To us, the threat of nuclear war — not nuclear terrorism, that is, but nuclear war — is as remote as the fear of deadly plague. Unlike the baby boom, whose parents saw firsthand the devastation wrought by atomic weapons and whose grade-school curriculum included diving under desks and warning sirens, we've somehow grown up devout patrons of deterrence. A rare few of us, it's worth noting, believe a nuclear-free world is even possible.

We're compelled to believe that the world is stabilized by nuclear weapons, and that most nations, in the end, will refuse to give them up. So, there's a clock on the nuclear question, or a pair of them, really: There's one showing the time before Russian weapons fall into such disarray that catastrophe strikes or they're acquired by less peaceable forces, and there's another that shows the time left before those who believe nuclear zero is possible relinquish power. We're not sure how much time is on them, but we can be sure there's not as much as we'd like on either.

Brian Till, one of the nation's youngest syndicated columnists, is a research fellow for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington. He can be contacted at till@newamerica.net. To find out more about the author and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.