When it comes to security policy, it seems everyone wants to be a “realist” these days. If that term has any meaning, though, President Obama's nuclear weapons and missile defense policies certainly would not qualify.
Take, for example, Mr. Obama's announced intention to rid the planet of nuclear weapons. The truth is, no matter how many world leaders, elder statesmen and others champion that goal, it won't happen. The associated technology is too widely available, the strategic value of nuclear weapons is too great and the possibilities of concealment in closed societies are too immutable for all nations to forgo the temptation to retain covert arsenals.
There is only one country on Earth that Team Obama can absolutely, positively denuclearize: ours.
This is how Mr. Obama's defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, described our nuclear posture before last fall's election:
“Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead.” By contrast, he noted, “China and Russia have embarked on an ambitious path to design and field new weapons.” Even “the United Kingdom and France have programs to maintain their deterrent capabilities.”
In fact, every other actual nuclear power and wannabe is building up as we are going out of the business... [snip]
American security policy needs to be rooted in realism, all right, but that should be in the sense of what might be called “conservative realism” - in accordance with which the United States needs to equip itself and behave in light of the way the world really is, not on the basis of some fantasy about how it might be if only we disarmed.
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