As expected, President Obama touched on one of his favorite subjects in his lengthy address to the United Nations General Assembly today: nuclear disarmament. He claimed that:
As we pursue the world’s most dangerous extremists, we’re also denying them the world’s most dangerous weapons, and pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, 47 nations embraced a work-plan to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. We have joined with Russia to sign the most comprehensive arms control treaty in decades. We have reduced the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy. And here, at the United Nations, we came together to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Like most of the rest of the President’s speech, this portion of it checks the expected boxes: a world without nuclear weapons (which will not happen, and which would endanger the security of the U.S. and its allies if it did); the security of nuclear materials (clearly an important goal, but one that cannot be achieved without cooperation from bad actors like Iran and North Korea); the New START Treaty (which among its other flaws limits U.S. missile defense options); a new national security strategy (which fails to make a clear commitment to defend the U.S. and its allies); and the NPT (where the U.S. has shot itself in the foot by assenting to the theory that, if non-proliferation fails, the U.S. must respond by disarming further).
The underlying assumption of the President’s statement is that the General Assembly in particular, and the United Nations in general, plays a central role in arms control and disarmament. This is not true. The Security Council has an important, but qualified and limited, role to play in pursuit of international peace and security.
But the United Nations as a whole, as Heritage Foundation analyst Baker Spring points out, is profoundly handicapped by its assumption of moral equivalence between democracies and dictatorships, by its refusal to fully acknowledge the inherent right of self-defense, by its insistence on negotiating unverifiable and unenforceable treaties, and by its desire to supplant the authority of sovereign nation states with that of U.N. bureaucrats and unaccountable NGOs.
If the President wants to move towards reducing the undoubted dangers that nuclear weapons pose to the security of the U.S. and its allies, the place to start is not the United States, or Britain or France or Israel—it is with understanding where, and why, nonproliferation has worked in the past.
We know of at least 15 nations that have abandoned nuclear programs. Of these, four—Japan, Germany, Libya, and Iraq—were terminated by the American armed forces, or the implicit threat that they would be used. Of the remaining 11, all except Sweden and Algeria ended their programs when they democratized in the 1980s, or when they achieved independence from the USSR in the 1990s. As the accompanying chart shows, the fall of the USSR was nonproliferation’s greatest victory.
By contrast, the nuclear programs of most concern today are in utterly tyrannical North Korea, in theocratic Iran, in Iran’s satellite Syria (where an Israeli attack destroyed a secret facility in 2007), and in Pakistan, which has an on-again, off-again commitment to democracy. If the President wants to advance the cause of nonproliferation, as he should seek to do, he will not do it at the U.N., which is institutionally indifferent to democracy.
Rather, the President will have to do it the way his predecessors, and in particular Ronald Reagan, did it: by sustaining the strength of the American armed forces to deter attacks and respond to them, and by promoting democracy in the world’s undemocratic regimes. That will be a lot harder than negotiating one-sided treaties with Russia, or making speeches at the U.N., but it is the only approach that recognizes that the problem is not nuclear weapons—it is the undemocratic states that have them. And that is why it is the only approach that has worked in the past.
Thank you for getting at the real truth!
God Bless you & God Bless America!
Here's a song-poem I wrote for the Cause
Thanks!
Fred
We The People I need a Job
words & music by:
Fred R. Rutledge, Jr.
I need a Job__ Don't need no Bureaucrat__ to tell me who I am__
I need a Job__ Don't need a Racist Congress__ to Dictate what color I am__
I need a Job__ Not a Hollow Promise__ That only last till after Elections__
I need a Job__ like the way it was__ when we were Proud Americans!__
I need a Job__ Not Government restrictions__ so my boss has to Fire me__
I need a Job__ Not Ten thousand New Laws__ That'll keep me from being free__
I need a Job__ Not Higher Taxes__ to make me turn off my Electricity__
I need a Job__ Not a Communist Fascist__ to take My Country away from Me! __
We the People__ are the one's Supposed to be in Control__
Government works for us!__ We're not here to pay their bankroll__
We the People__ Aren't Slave__ for the Statist Regime __
We the People__ Have the Power! __ We're gonna take our Freedom Back!__
We're gonna take It on back__ Yea we're gonna take It on back!__
Yea, We'll Take Back__ our Country __ Again!__
What do you think __ When they buy up the Banks __ They won't get all of your money too?
What do you think __ When they take all the Land __ They won't seize your property too?
What do you think __ Crooks Payin' Washington __ Don't pay for propaganda too?
What will it take __ to Realize__ the State-Run Press ain't tellin' the truth?
I need a Job __ Not a free hand-out __ like a Government Bum on the street __
I need a Job __ to take care of my Family __ So my Kids get somethin' to eat __
I need a Job __ to get back my Pride __ And Stand Straight up like a Man __
I need a Job __ To get back my Freedom __ Not be a Slave to their Communist Plan! __
We the People__ are the one's__ Supposed to be in Control__
Government works for us!__ We're not here to pay their bankroll__
We the People__ Aren't Slave__ for the Statist Regime __
We the People__ Have the Power! __ We're gonna take our Freedom Back!__
We're gonna take It on back__ Yea we're gonna take It on back!__
Yea, We'll Take Back__ our Country __ Again!__
Now I pledge Allegiance __ to the Good Old U.S. of A. __!
I don't Pledge Allegiance __ to what some Hollywood-fool Actor Say! __
I teach My Kids __ Truth, Honor, God & the American Way __
Don't need no Atheist Teacher __ Tellin' my kids that They Can't Pray! __
They're gonna Try __ to take our Retirement __ And Ration all our Health Care __
Kill Granny for 'Social Justice' __ They'll Say we don't need to be Scared__
Mayo, Stalin, & Hitler__ Did just about the same thing __
America Better Fight Back Hard!__ Let our Liberty-Freedom-Bell Ring! __
We the People__ are the one's__ Supposed to be in Control__
Government works for us!__ We're not here to pay their bankroll__
We the People__ Aren't Slave__ for the Statist Regime __
We the People__ Have the Power! __ We're gonna take our Freedom Back!__
We're gonna take It on back__ Yea we're gonna take It on back!__
Yea, We'll Take Back__ our Country __ Again!__
We the People__ are the one's__ Supposed to be in Control__
Government works for us!__ We're not here to pay their bankroll__
We the People__ Aren't Slave__ for the Statist Regime __
We the People__ Have the Power! __ We're gonna take our Freedom Back!__
We're gonna take It on back__ Yea we're gonna take It on back!__
Yea, We'll Take Back__ our Country __ Again!__
Yea, We'll Take Back__ Our Country __ Again! __
Yea, We're gonna Take__ Back __ America___ Again!! __
I'm pretty sure Obama's Staff read Heritage Foundry and plan ways to do exactly the opposite of what the American People want, and what is just and right. What Obama needs to do is raise his hand when they pull his string. Look! These Progressives never seem to do what American needs and wants, so I get sick of hearing advice to him with the pretense Obama works in the National Interest. "Oh! If only Obama opened his eyes suddenly!" Their eyes are open. The fact they are doing everything they can simulteneously to undermine their own Country means they know exactly what they are doing.
I cannot let go of the fact these DINOs and RINOs stole Election! No real Mandate means what they are doing is all illegal. I can't pretend Obama is somehow decent underneith.
"Where the U.S. has shot itself in the foot by assenting to the theory that, if non-proliferation fails, the U.S. must respond by disarming further."
I am not sure I understand from what grounds you assert this statement. What measures by the US towards non-proliferation indicates that upon failure of those efforts the US will need to disarm further?
thanks for sharing…great post