Nuclear Enfeeblement

Just in case there was any doubt that Red Barry was going to leave any plank of the hard-left wish list unlavished with slobberingly loving affection, yes, he's going after America's nuclear weapons stockpile:

If he has his way, President Barack Obama will dramatically change the nuclear weapons policy of the U.S. – leaving behind Cold War doctrine and looking to a model of a minimal nuclear arsenal -- just ominous enough to do the job of deterrence.

Obama may be mired in the economic stimulus debate, but the clock is also relentlessly ticking on some volatile policy decisions regarding the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal – the stuff of that deterrence. Foreign nations, friend and foe, are poised to discover Obama’s nuclear agenda, while some critics within the U.S. are fearful that the new president will go too far, too fast.

Well, now, that's not too alarming a lede, is it?  Be patient; the hair-raising 'graphs are coming.

It’s not just the calendar that is putting the pressure on Obama. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov in February called on the U.S. to deliver a “constructive response” to open negotiations on START II, which he said should include a ban on deployment of strategic offensive arms outside national territories.

“This will allow us to arrive in the foreseeable future at an arrangement which will mark a new substantial step forward along the road to missile and nuclear disarmament,” said Ivanov at the recent 45th Munich Security Conference, according to a report by Xinhua. [emphasis added] 

That's easy for Ivanov to say, seeing as how his country hasn't HAD an extraterritorial empire for the past seventeen years, whereas the United States has never had more global security responsibilities than it does now.  Caving to this demand would reduce America's strategic options considerably.  But it fits right in with False Messiah's "diplomacy now, diplomacy forever!" mindset, as I'm sure Ivanov and his boss Czar Vlad are counting on.

Case in point:

Meanwhile, overall U.S.-Russian relations have gone south because of the previous administration’s election to abandon the bi-lateral strategic nuclear arms control framework with Moscow.

In 2002, the administration pulled out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to develop a strategic missile defense system. George W. Bush then proposed the deployment of a controversial anti-missile site in Poland.

According to the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, however, an on-the-ball Obama is already reaching out to repair relations with Russia.

Which included meddling in foreign policy before he'd even taken office by sending famous RINO and detentist Henry Kissinger to suck up to Czar Vlad by offering a deal whereby the U.S. would disembowel its nuclear strength down to a paltry thousand warheads, and the Russians would be "encouraged" to follow suit.  Does this sound like a president that is going to drive a hard bargain in START II?  Or stand his ground against Putin's demands that we withdraw anti-ICBM defenses from Eastern Europe?

But it gets even worse:

During the campaign, Obama pledged: “As president, I will set a new direction in nuclear weapons policy and show the world that America believes in its existing commitment under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to work to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.”

This includes, naturally, a promise not to build any new U.S. nukes.  But there comes a problem with that arrangement:

Experts estimate that all the nuclear-weapon states together possess about 27,000 intact nuclear warheads, of which 97% are in U.S. and Russian stockpiles, according to an analysis in Truthout.

About 12,500 of these warheads are considered operational, with the balance in reserve or retired and awaiting dismantlement. The Pentagon has custody of nearly 10,000 stockpiled warheads, of which 5,735 are considered active or operational. Russia, in one estimate, has 16,000 intact warheads, of which about 5,830 are considered operational....

President Barack Obama’s pledge of no new nukes for the U.S. is wholly impractical say experts who have examined not only the issue of maintaining the hardware of nuclear deterrence, but the human factor of keeping competent trained managers at the nation’s nuclear switch....

So far, White House staffers will say only that President Obama and his Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, have not yet had an opportunity to fully debate the particulars, but on the record Gates has consistently argued that building a new generation of more reliable nuclear warheads would give the U.S. the wherewithal to downsize its overall nuclear arsenal.

Gates’ logic: If you have confidence that only 50% of your aged nuke stockpile will detonate at full capacity, you many need to stock twice as many – and that looks bad if you are the nation ostensibly leading the way to the bright shining day when terms such as “deterrence” and “assured mutual destruction” have passed from the lexicon....

Frank Gaffney of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy points to the work of that think tank’s “New Deterrent Working Group,” which is charged to provide input to the nation’s Strategic Posture Commission....

“We must adopt anew a national commitment to design, test and produce, on a continuing basis, new nuclear weapons. These activities are ‘performance arts.’ Expertise can be maintained only by engaging in them. Simply put, the extreme complexity and hazards of the work are such that there is no substitute for competent, integrated management. Such management, in turn, requires continuing, hands-on experience.”

Bottom line to the group’s argument: the U.S. can’t even maintain a shaky status quo by simply nursing along its dusty degrading inventory of nukes. Yet this is exactly what Obama seems to favor. [emphasis added] 

Almost as diabolical as his using sodomization of the U.S. armed forces to encourage its own self-gutting, isn't it?  Rather than just unilaterally disarm and reap the whirlwind of fear, protest, and outrage such a reckless move in time of war would ignite, King Hussein will hide behind "diplomacy" and entropy to allow the American nuclear deterrent to fall apart without replacing it with new, deadlier warheads that could enable him to fulfill his arms reduction promises without compromising U.S. national security, and nuclear weapons know-how and expertise to atrophy so that even if he voluntarily leaves office at some point, his successors will be unable to belatedly follow Frank Gaffney's advice.

That's the Little President, gentlebeings; he's dangerously wrong about everything, but he's brilliant at entrenching his wrongheadedness in missile-silo-like concrete.

I've always believed that the United States would not have survived a second Jimmy Carter term intact as a free, independent, and unravaged nation.  Guess that's going to be put to the test, huh?