Our Secretary of State announced today:
“Beginning today, the United States will make public the number of nuclear weapons in our stockpile and the number of weapons we have dismantled since 1991… So for those who doubt that the United States will do its part on disarmament, this is our record, these are our commitments and they send a clear unmistakable signal.”
There is considered opinion that our public proclamations of US Nuclear policy in order to clear up “ambiguity” has already jeopardized our second strike capabilities, and the “new” START initiatives have loopholes the Russians can drive a Topol launcher through.
We are making a strategic blunder of monumental proportions to think that “transparency” and “good faith” in revealing US nuclear secrets is going to make the US safer or the world more stable. Strategic deterrence has worked for six decades and then some. To trade it all in for a pipe dream of cooperation from nations themselves intent on possessing a nuclear deterrent (read: Pakistan, India) or an offensive capability of obvious bad intentions (Iran, North Korea) is a foolhardy and short-sighted act which will guarantee a lessening of US strategic capabilities. Not what we need in a multi-polar world with nuclear weapons in the hands of those whose ideology mandates our destruction. Not quite the “unmistakable signal” we intended.
There are wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. When the sheepdogs act like the sheep, the wolves are bound to win.
