Gorilla's Blog

President Obama’s working on a new nuclear policy: one that eliminates thousands of nuclear weapons without declaring that the US would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a potential conflict.

In itself, getting rid of these useless weapons is a positive step, as is curtailing investments in more nukes. These are a direct reversal from the Bush Administration’s policy and make efforts at nuclear non-proliferation slightly more credible.

It’s difficult to understand what threats the US currently faces that would require the use of nuclear weapons: terrorists are at best a fifth-rate conventional threat, while countries like Iran and North Korea have not yet demonstrated that they have either the capability to do much damage or wish to engage in national suicide to fulfill their need for recognition.

But it’s also difficult to understand why we continue the proliferation of conventional weapons to fight non-existent wars, nor make much effort to convince Israel, India, Pakistan and other nuclear nations to get serious about joining us one day in a non-nuclear world.

There’s too much atmospherics and too little substance in nuclear policy, so rethinking that doesn’t substantively change the approach to proliferation is a waste of time.

Gorilla says: “We don’t want to look soft, but we do want to look the other way!”