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Imbalance of nuclear states maintaining arsenals, while condemning Iran

Obama and Nukes, talking the Talk, Awaiting the Walk

Thursday 24 September 2009

by: David Krieger  | Miller-McCune

Of course it’s appropriate and accurate, I think, to welcome the kind of rhetorical leadership that President Obama has so far exhibited, particularly in his Prague speech of April 5. One has to hope that this is more than a rhetorical posture, but represents, as he said in the speech it did, a serious commitment to take concrete steps toward the objective of a world free from nuclear weapons. But one has to look at two other factors here that make me, at any rate, somewhat less optimistic about the real tangible results.

The first is the continuing confrontation with Iran as a potential nuclear weapon state on the unspoken assumption that we still will be living in a world where some countries are allowed to have those weapons and others are forbidden. It would be a very different confrontation, from my perspective, if it was coupled with a call for a Middle East free from nuclear weapons altogether or a dual call to Israel and Iran that would take account of the existence of a nuclear weapon state in the region already. But as far as I can tell there is no disposition to do that.

A second concern, it seems to me, is the degree to which the bureaucratic roots of the nuclear weapons establishment are still very deep in the governmental structure and very dedicated, as near as I can tell, to pursuing a path that has some of President Obama’s rhetoric, but really aims at managing and stabilizing the nuclear weapons arsenals of the world and, particularly, the U.S. arsenal. This would, in that sense, maintain this geopolitical structure of a world where some have the weapons and supposedly the great danger comes from the countries that don’t have the weapons. I find that an untenable and basically unacceptable conception of world order in relation to this challenge posed by the continued existence of nuclear weaponry.

t r u t h o u t | Obama and Nukes: Talking the Talk, Awaiting the Walk

September 26, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, 2 WORLD, politics international | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear weapons