What About The (Other) Meltdown-In-The-Making?
We're talking about the real "meltdown" here, you know - the one directly/actually related to all things "nukular".
Proliferation, anyone?
Proliferation, anyone?
Preventing the Other Meltdown
by James Carroll
The word "meltdown" came naturally to the lips last week, referring to the collapse of financial markets. But what about a real meltdown? The word came into popular usage to describe the melting of fuel rods in a nuclear reactor, a result of out-of-control overheating, leading to a dangerous release of radiation. But before that, meltdown defined not the accident of a power plant but the purpose of a nuclear bomb - the liquefaction through intense heat of metal, glass, and everything else caught in an atomic blast. Meltdown is the point.
Last week's financial metaphor was also last week's all but ignored real problem, as America was encouraged to take a large step in the direction of the ultimate meltdown of nuclear war. Over the signatures of Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman, the government released the statement "National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century." In brief, the two officials argue that the time has come for the development of a new nuclear weapon, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead. Because "nuclear weapons remain an essential and enduring element" of American military strategy, the aging arsenal of several thousand deployed nukes (and many more "stored") must be replaced.
Gates and Bodman grant that an eventual reduction of the nuclear force, as well as ongoing nonproliferation efforts, remain desirable goals, and that the RRW will help achieve both, but what they propose runs absolutely in the other direction.
Obviously, the Bush administration will not succeed in getting a new nuclear weapon approved by Congress. What Gates and Bodman are doing here, at the behest of the diehard nuclear establishment, is putting an item at the very top of the next president's agenda.
For 20 years, the United States has been ambivalent about its nuclear arsenal. That indecision was enshrined in the Clinton administration's policy of "lead and hedge," the idea that America would lead the post-Cold War world in ongoing reductions of nuclear weapons, aiming at the ultimate abolition called for by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even while maintaining a sizable nuclear force, both deployed and stored, as a hedge against the re-emergence of some Cold War-style threat. The policy was a deadly contradiction: The hedge made US leadership on meaningful reduction impossible.
(Keep reading ...)
by James Carroll
The word "meltdown" came naturally to the lips last week, referring to the collapse of financial markets. But what about a real meltdown? The word came into popular usage to describe the melting of fuel rods in a nuclear reactor, a result of out-of-control overheating, leading to a dangerous release of radiation. But before that, meltdown defined not the accident of a power plant but the purpose of a nuclear bomb - the liquefaction through intense heat of metal, glass, and everything else caught in an atomic blast. Meltdown is the point.
Last week's financial metaphor was also last week's all but ignored real problem, as America was encouraged to take a large step in the direction of the ultimate meltdown of nuclear war. Over the signatures of Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman, the government released the statement "National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century." In brief, the two officials argue that the time has come for the development of a new nuclear weapon, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead. Because "nuclear weapons remain an essential and enduring element" of American military strategy, the aging arsenal of several thousand deployed nukes (and many more "stored") must be replaced.
Gates and Bodman grant that an eventual reduction of the nuclear force, as well as ongoing nonproliferation efforts, remain desirable goals, and that the RRW will help achieve both, but what they propose runs absolutely in the other direction.
Obviously, the Bush administration will not succeed in getting a new nuclear weapon approved by Congress. What Gates and Bodman are doing here, at the behest of the diehard nuclear establishment, is putting an item at the very top of the next president's agenda.
For 20 years, the United States has been ambivalent about its nuclear arsenal. That indecision was enshrined in the Clinton administration's policy of "lead and hedge," the idea that America would lead the post-Cold War world in ongoing reductions of nuclear weapons, aiming at the ultimate abolition called for by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even while maintaining a sizable nuclear force, both deployed and stored, as a hedge against the re-emergence of some Cold War-style threat. The policy was a deadly contradiction: The hedge made US leadership on meaningful reduction impossible.
(Keep reading ...)
It would be terrific if the genuine, existential threats - nuclear proliferation, global warming, resource depletion, species extinction, (air, water and soil) pollution, overpopulation, deforestation and desertification, freshwater (surface and groundwater) exhaustion could quickly resurface from behind the blinding cloud of greed-driven fiscal self-indulgence but I'm not optimistic. The focus on nuclear proliferation illustrates a fatal flaw in man's thinking that truly imperils future generations. ALL of these threats must be solved in conjunction with every other one. If you leave one, certainly two of them unresolved, all your efforts on the others will be effectively nullified. This is a basket of immediate and growing threats that cannot be resolved by treaties but requires the establishment of a new matrix of guiding principles and philosophies within which answers will be found on an item by item basis.
ReplyDeleteWe, as a community of nations, have to change our thinking. I'm not sure we have much chance of achieving that.
MoS:
ReplyDelete"The focus on nuclear proliferation illustrates a fatal flaw in man's thinking that truly imperils future generations. ALL of these threats must be solved in conjunction with every other one. If you leave one, certainly two of them unresolved, all your efforts on the others will be effectively nullified. This is a basket of immediate and growing threats that cannot be resolved by treaties but requires the establishment of a new matrix of guiding principles and philosophies within which answers will be found on an item by item basis."
Absolutely - hence, we need more *competence*, as opposed to incompetence ("managing-by-crisis", perceived or actual).
"We, as a community of nations, have to change our thinking. I'm not sure we have much chance of achieving that."
The cynic in me agrees. However, the remaining naive in me is still holding out for hope ...