By John Mecklin, January 2, 2019
In this interview with editor-in-chief John Mecklin, nuclear arms control and nonproliferation expert Jon Wolfsthal provides his wide-ranging views on the current nuclear situation, how the new Congress might deal with US plans for a $1 trillion-plus modernization of its nuclear arsenal, and ways the inordinate cost of that modernization program might be reduced.
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My comment disappeared from the Bulletin’s reply board, I’m sending it again:
The kind of purportedly rational and prudent “sufficient deterrence” argument J. Wolfsthal presents is doomed to strategic and geopolitical failure as it absolves the sins of the politically-expedient Obama administration and belittle the humanity-saving achievements of Gorbachev (the historical messiah of the anti-nuclear movement).
President Obama indeed “made clear that as long as there were nuclear weapons, America's arsenal would have to be safe, secure, and effective” and from there went on to manipulate Medvedev on his promise to practically do away with the anti-missile systems in eastern Europe and then continued to approve the trillion plus “modernization” program (in order to reduce Republicans’ resistance to the (now surviving only by the precarious prudence of Tehran) Iran nuclear deal. A fake-abolitionist.
And in Reykjavik President Reagan was not motivated by “public pressure” to support Gorbachev’s nuclear arms (preferably total) reduction vision but by the recognition that Gorbachev is right about the clear and present existential necessity to reverse the arms race and START immediately on the way of minimizing and controlling the global nuclear forces. The Universalist “relevant utopia”.