Nuclear Reasoning

"We are seeing a difficult time sustaining cutting-edge morale at a time when the overall signals coming from the top are that the nuclear deterrence force is no longer a priority. How do we recruit front-line talent into a field when senior civilian and military leadership never talks about the mission? Young professionals look up for signals. They are seeing the right words, but there isn't energy behind them."
John Hamre, former deputy secretary of defence; president and CEO Center for Strategic and International Studies

AP Photo/U.S. Air Force, John Parie A Malmstrom Air Force Base missile maintenance team removes the upper section of an ICBM at a Montana missile site. The hundreds of nuclear missiles that have stood war-ready for decades in underground silos along remote stretches of America, silent and unseen, packed with almost unimaginable destructive power, are a force in distress, if not in decline.

"It's a real problem to keep those young men and women interested in going on alert three or four times a month for 24 hours at a time when it's hard to explain to them who the enemy is. It doesn't have the allure that it did during the height of the Cold War when you felt like you were doing something."
Eugene Habiger, retired air force 4-star general, head of Strategic Command, 1996 to 1998

"The relative importance of the ICBM leg of the triad has diminished in recent years, and its utility for meeting future security challenges is up for debate."
Evan Braden Montgomery, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

The world has moved on from the era of the Cold War when mutual assured destruction was the recognized strategy for avoidance of a mass catastrophic failure of humankind to solve its problems without resorting to the last-ditch response of wholesale destruction of lives. Now, nuclear weapons are in the more cautious (we hope) hands of a handful of 'responsible' nations, and teetering on the brink of entering the arsenals of unstable states.

The advanced states think of relinquishing their nuclear arsenals, of minimizing their content by destroying a good number of them, and retaining those numbers felt to represent a still-considerable threat to those who might think of reprising war conditions, while those whose authorities are so bereft of minds capable of grasping the horror of using atomic weapons to score points, demolishing countless lives, are eager to attain them for prestige and containment considerations.

The two most powerful countries not of the Western persuasions of liberal democracy are currently on a bent of demonstrating their entitled potential as world leaders. Russia, by veiled threats toward many of the countries in the Eastern bloc it had once dominated, and which have attempted to move ever closer to the West is feeling its oats. Threatening to place longer-range missiles on its western border.

And China, ever geographic-possessive-inclined, inclusive of other countries' traditional landscapes has issued a warning that it will brook no interference in its interfaces with its neighbours with which it struggles to bring into line a consensus that what China desires to acquire for its expanding needs, it should not have to struggle too hard to attain. Its unilateral declaration of a new air defence zone in the East China Sea, ample warning of its serious intent.

Negotiations, by all means, far preferable to conflict -- an outdated concept of right and wrong battling it out for might to reflect right. And if conquest can be attained bypassing might and strife, and power equated with the persuasion of bully-tactics, then what need of all those outdated nuclear missiles? The Obama administration, led by a man who prefers to lead a movement to destroy all nuclear weapons, is on the verge of decommissioning many of its underground war-ready nuclear missiles stored in silos.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles need is dwindling, and so should the ICBMs themselves, goes the argument. Besides which, the maintenance of those silos along the remote stretches of America packed with destructive power potential have outlived their purpose. No nation in its right mind possessed of nuclear missiles would ever dare use them, in full knowledge of the horrors they are capable of unleashing.

And just recently in the United States ICBM launch officers were disciplined for their violation of security rules. Three ICBM groups have failed a safety and security inspection. The U.S. faces the reality of having either to decommission these unwieldy, sinister and dangerous doorstops to the lunatic entry into the geography of an enemy's intention to wipe out American dominance and security, or to step up its commitment to safe nuclear operations.

Discussions relating to security in the face of terrorism, of cyberthreats, must also be inclusive of the spread of nuclear technologies to ferociously unstable and sometimes quite deranged-seeming countries like the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea and Pakistan. Where they might be persuaded in sharing their technologies and the fruit of said, with terrorist groups aiding them to achieve their aims of domination.

So, does the U.S. take its primary responsibility as the lead on nuclear might and its potential seriously enough? The commander of the ICBM force, Maj.-Gen. Michael Carey, led an American delegation on a three day trip to Russia months ago, drinking heavily, partying with local women, insulting his Russian hosts, complaining about his superiors, and speaking of the low state of morale within the ICBM force back home, in public settings. He was subsequently fired from his post.

But the U.S. seems less appreciative currently of its nuclear weapons stockpiles, looking forward to the time when it may decide on their gradual elimination. President Barack Obama envisions a nuclear weapons-free world. It is a world he lives in, free of concerns that rogue nations, in possession of those dread weapons may at some time convenient to their plans, decide to use them.

Possibly, first on those nations made vulnerable by their rejection of possessing them.