I find it hard to get excited about the Nuclear Posture Review released today by the Obama administration, in part because the relationship between “declaratory” nuclear policy and actual nuclear policy has always been tenuous at best. During the Cold War, the U.S. always reserved the right of first use of nuclear weapons, meaning that it if the Red Army rolled into Europe, we would supposedly nuke Moscow. What would have happened in an actual World War III is hard to know, but there is good reason to doubt that any U.S. president would have been the first to order nuclear escalation, whether the Russian hordes were crossing the Fulda Gap or not.
Likewise, today, for all the speculation going on about whether the U.S. will extend its nuclear umbrella to Iran’s neighbors in case the Islamic Republic acquires nuclear weapons, there is good cause to doubt whether the U.S. (especially under the leadership of Nobel Laureate Barack Obama!) would really be prepared to incinerate Tehran in the event of Iranian aggression against Saudi Arabia or even Israel.
Thus, I don’t attach much significance to the Obama administration’s narrowing the categories under which the U.S. would supposedly use nuclear weapons. As the Washington Post account notes:
Under the new policy, the administration will foreswear the use of the deadly weapons against nonnuclear countries, officials said, in contrast to previous administrations, which indicated they might use nuclear arms against nonnuclear states in retaliation for a biological or chemical attack.
But Obama included a major caveat: The countries must be in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations under international treaties. That loophole would mean Iran would remain on the potential target list.
I suppose the administration gets credit for resisting liberal pressure to foreswear any first use of nukes, but, to my mind, any such policy, whether it remains on the books or not, is not terribly credible. It’s fine to keep a small nugget of deterrence alive by not formally burying it, but it’s hard to imagine the U.S. ever using nukes unless it had first been attacked with WMD – meaning nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The Obama review says that countries that employ only biological or chemical weapons won’t be nuked unless they’re out of compliance with nuclear nonproliferation treaties. Actually, the administration is leaving even more wiggle room than that. According to the New York Times:
White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.
In short, the Obama policy isn’t that big of a change from the policy it inherited. It is, as the Washington Post has it, a “middle course.”
To my mind, the real test of our nonproliferation policy isn’t how we claim we will respond to hypothetical scenarios but rather what we do about actual current dangers. In regard to Iran – the world’s No. 1 proliferation threat – the auguries aren’t propitious, with the Financial Times reporting that a new round of sanctions won’t be on the UN Security Council agenda in April. Thus, Obama’s threats to hit Iran with tough sanctions if his entreaties to talk were rejected are increasingly being exposed as hollow. That kind of wishy-washiness is something that Iran and other rogue regimes understand. By comparison, the theoretical language contained in the Nuclear Posture Review seems more like, well, academic posturing.
There are some principled people on the left who will raise their eyebrows over this, just as with FISA. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for too much criticism of Obama from either his base or the MSM (to the extent there’s a difference). These people are very, very, very sick of George W. Bush (with reason in my opinion, though their prescription for the future is wrong). They will swallow anything to take back power, and rather than get upset about Obama’s shift on this they will hail it as a “shrewd move to the center.” (When McCain does the same thing, it’s a flip-flop in their book.)
Or, is he an intellectually feeble schmuck who can’t keep straight what he says from one day to the next, and isn’t even smart enough to know what he doesn’t know? A guy who has gotten by on affirmative action his whole life until know, including the Dem primary, and actually believes he’s done something to deserve where he is?
I vote for that one.
They trust him because he’s lying to us, not them. They know what he’ll try to do if he’s elected.
Oh, and Pedro is right. Obama is anything but “brilliant.” Nothing he has ever said or done backs up that view. Quite the contrary. Try not to think of him as a Black man, and you wont have any problem discerning how stupid he is.
Why should the left be any less comfortable with a candidate who carefully fudges his degree of fealty to left-wing pieties, than the right is with a candidate who openly disdains right-wing pieties?
People deeply involved in politics tend to forget that it’s fundamentally tribal, not ideological. Obama is of the left, and McCain of the right, because of who they are and who they represent, not because of their political positions of the moment. Indeed, “left” and “right” themselves are coalitions of constituencies, not coherent ideologies, and their positions on particular issues over time are neither more coherent than Obama’s nor more ideological than McCain’s.
It is beginning to look more as I predicted — the Democratic Convention may be an awkward affair indeed. I suspect several superdelegates are thinking they showed their hand too soon and cannot now backtrack without paying a heavy price.
Hussein, as it turns out, is not a flip-flopper: he is an outright liar. Claimed he would filibuster FISA and then voted FOR it. Claimed he would be out in 16 months and now it’s conditions based. Thought the DC gun control ordinance acceptable, until the Supremes decided against it. Wants to pump out federal money through churches even as he favors gay marriage.
However, repubs now need to use more humor and sarcasm as a weapon because it appears Hussein may be particularly vulnerable to it. Take the “surge” for instance. Many had their doubts but the enemy was wiley. Troops passed through on clean up and the enemy just filtered back in behind once the troops were gone. The solution was obviously to increase the number of troops and occupy the area, literally denying landspace. And it worked! There are now less needles in the park and fewer homeless campsites.
You thought I was talking about Iraq but I was talking about Golden Gate park in San francisco, where extreme liberal Mayor Newsom conducted a “surge” exactly along the lines described. (Basic military strategy.)
Obama is not “of the Left.” He is a LIBERAL, and the LEFT and liberals actually parted ideological company long ago without realizing or acknowledging it. If you want a foreshadowing of Hussein as Prez, take a look at mayor Dellums, of Oakland… LOL
This is an Obama straddle: he can claim he’s sticking to the firm 16-month withdrawal timetable he pledged to uphold (but it includes leaving a residual force of a size and for a duration to be conditions-based). So, in actuality, it would be no different than the conditions-based withdrawal recommended by reasonable people like Petraeus and McCain, because a withdrawal of about 80,000 troops by May 2010 might well be appropriate for the conditions on the ground (since the surge Obama opposed is working), and the residual force could be the 60,000 or so troops left. Even though the 16-month figure apparently comes from what some military advisors told him was the minimum time it would take to withdraw the total number of combat troops that are in Iraq (although that apparently didn’t take into account moving equipment out as well), since he used the same 16-month timetable for his 2007 retreat proposal, I’m sure he figures he can just call whatever number of troops he withdraws within 16 months the promised withdrawal and he can call whatever number of troops remain the residual force. After all, the words are what count.
“One wonders if anyone on the Left will have the temerity to ask: why should we trust this guy?”
They’ll stick with him even without trust, they have nowhere else to go.
Also, the prospect of a deadlock-proof Democratic majority
is attractive to them.
” Or (adopting my view) is he a canny post-modernist whose words have no fixed meaning but show the brilliance of his mind? Or maybe it’s all consistent in the Great Mind”
Post-modernist or just plain lawyer talk? MSM has done little to note that he and his wife are lawyers. Do we need another lawyer family to head the executive branch??
“accepting the advice of General Petraeus?”
we aren’t a military dictatorship. what petreaus thinks is one part of the equation and not even a major one. he works for the president who works for the american people