Antinuclear

When it comes to Nuclear Disarmament, Obama’s hands pretty much tied

Obama’s dream of a nuke-free world will encounter the stiffest resistance at home—from the people who make and safeguard nuclear weapons.

Why Obama Can’t End Nukes, The Doomsday Dilemma This Spring, Barack Obama will push toward his goal of a nuclear-free world. But the stiffest resistance may be at home.By John Barry and Evan Thomas | NEWSWEEK Apr 3, 2010 “…..Ever since the dawn of the atomic age at Hiroshima in August 1945, American presidents have been trying to figure out how to climb off the nuclear treadmill……..
accomplishing this goal—or even taking some meaningful steps toward it—makes health-care reform look easy. As president, Obama the idealist has had to become Obama the realist: working for a nuclear-free world tomorrow, but at the same time, and at great cost, keeping up America’s nuclear forces today………..
Nuclear policy will be front and center for Obama this spring, but in a way that may reveal more about limits than possibilities. On April 8, the president will sign an arms-control treaty with Russia that will set limits on numbers of warheads and launchers, lower than any previously agreed. Progress, to be sure. But it’s not entirely clear that a polarized Congress will find the two-thirds majority to ratify the treaty…………For their part the Russians are still smarting from perceived humiliations at the end of the Cold War and are increasingly dependent on nuclear weapons as their conventional forces wither. They seem unlikely to go much further in cutting their arsenal………………
Obama’s dream of a nuke-free world will encounter the stiffest resistance at home—from the people who make and safeguard nuclear weapons. America’s nuclear systems are aging, raising questions about the reliability of bombs, planes, and missiles. The U.S. Senate never ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and though the White House has talked hopefully of getting a vote on the CTBT sometime in a first Obama term congressional staff experts are skeptical.

“The CTBT is going nowhere,” says a staffer who declined to be named. “The Republicans are not going to go for it.” The GOP rationale: the United States needs to at least preserve the option of testing the reliability of old weapons or developing new ones………….
Obama is still faced with the age-old question of targeting America’s strategic weapons. Will American missiles be aimed at Moscow or Beijing—or Tehran? No, cities are off-limits. But even if the targets are military forces, millions would still die. Obama is still pondering the dilemma; the matter is said by administration officials to be under secret review.

April 5, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1 | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons