nuclear-news

Book “Command and Control” examines danger of the nuclear arsenal

Our Nuclear Dilemma, Mehroz Baig  HUFFINGTON POST 01/15/2014 “It’s hard to imagine fallible human beings creating machines that are infallible,” Eric Schlosser said in reference to nuclear weapons. Schlosser is an investigative journalist and author of Fast Food Nation and, most recently, Command and Control, which examines nuclear risk. “Nuclear weapons are highly complicated machines and like all machines, they can go wrong,” he added.

Schlosser’s book documents some of the mishaps that have taken place in our history of owning and expanding our nuclear arsenal. However, as Schlosser admits and Walter Russell Mead in a review of his book in The New York Times points out, there hasn’t been a nation that has yet to face the consequences of an accidental nuclear disaster.

Schlosser warned that the likelihood of an accident happening increases every day that there isn’t an accident. “I think we were lucky [that we haven’t had an accident], and there’s no guarantee that that luck will last,” he said.

Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It’s Too Late, joined Schlosser at the Commonwealth Club for a discussion recently on nuclear safety. He noted another argument for reducing our nuclear arsenal: the sheer cost of maintaining and updating nuclear weapons. A report by the Ploughshares Fund estimates that the United States will spend anywhere between $620 and $661 billion dollars on nuclear weapons in the next 10 years……..

the argument that Schlosser, Cirincione, and Benedict make is that the thousands of nuclear weapons we currently possess are an unnecessary source of danger, not only physically but also economically. Cirincione noted that in order to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent, the United States only needs about 500 of them, not the estimated 7,700 we currently have. “Several hundred seems to be what many military and national security experts think will serve our deterrence needs,” he said during his discussion at the Commonwealth Club.

Mead agrees, noting in his review, “[Schlosser’s] core recommendation that the United States explore the possibilities of operating a minimal deterrent, the smallest number of nuclear weapons needed to prevent adversaries from contemplating a nuclear attack on us, may be the most hopeful direction in which we can look.” The United States is slowly moving in that direction, having signed the New START treaty with Russia, which aims to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both nations. The treaty’s duration is 10 years and reduces the number of weapons to 1,550. And though the president is working toward further reducing our nuclear arsenal along with that of Russia’s, we’ll have to wait to see how long it takes, and hope that the luck that’s kept a nuclear accident from happening up until now comes along for the ride. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mehroz-baig/our-nuclear-dilemma_b_4591980.html

January 16, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized