Home

Record of Changing Attitudes Toward Nuclear Weapons

Comment by Larry Ross, March 26, 2007

This article is a good record of the evolution of attitudes toward nuclear weapons since 1945. However, for some reason the author has missed important US developments.

1. That the President now has the legal right to wage pre-emptive nuclear war against a nation, when the President suspects it might make WMD and attack the US in the future.
2. That the US may introduce nuclear weapons into a conventional conflict against both nuclear and non-nuclear nations.
3. There is no doubt that the Bush Administration is trying to make nuclear weapons use more acceptable to the public, and one of the normal tools in the military tool box to use in various types of situation.
4. "All options are on the table" in the event of a clash with Iran . That and numerous articles indicate that the US has given itself
   permission to use nuclear weapons against Iran .

Alan Bock must have known all this about the new 'nuclear to use permissiveness' of the Bush Administration.

There has been a nuclear transformation - only to be used as a last resort in response to an attack on the US - to - nuclear weapons to be used when desired in pursuit of military objectives.

Where was Alan Bock when this was unfolding before his eyes?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nuclear Transformations

by Alan Bock, March 24, 2007

Earlier this week another of the Bush administration hawks fairly quietly left the State Department, apparently upset at the deal the administration struck with North Korea. Robert Joseph occupied a "special perch" in the administration, according to David Sanger in the New York Times. And now – like Paul Wolfowitz (the architect pushed upstairs to the World Bank – shades of Vietnam), Stephen Cambone, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, and Donald Rumsfeld – he is gone.

Joseph is credited with being the architect of the administration's strategy for nuclear counter-proliferation, devising the plan to take the U.S. out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, working feverishly behind the scenes to get Libya to give up its nuclear weapons program, and creating (as Sanger put it) "a loose consortium of nations, now numbering more than 80, committed to intercepting illicit weapons at sea, in the air or on land."

Joseph reportedly told colleagues he simply couldn't abide the agreement with North Korea that, in his view, does not require the Hermit Kingdom to give up the weapons it has already produced. "The approach I would have endorsed was to continue to put pressure on the regime," he told Sanger. Like other hawks and neocons he perceives the administration as having lost its moorings, partly because it is so focused on Iraq that it doesn't seem to have the concentration needed to remake key parts of the rest of the world, as it proclaimed was its mission in Dubya's first term.

He may be right, or at least partially right. But that might not be such a bad thing.

Continue.....