The peace movement in the early 80’s developed a powerful metaphor. They described the arms race and nuclear standoff between the U.S. and Soviet Union as two cantankerous old men waist deep in a pool of gasoline, shouting and distrustful because one had eight matches and the other only had six. The arms reduction agreement announced last week is great news for our children and grandchildren if it moves us further from the brink of nuclear exchange by discarding some of those matches. We can’t let honest debate about this vital policy get derailed by partisan bickering.
I watched with disgust as the national health care debate was derailed by irrational extremist rhetoric. There is a debate we should have had about managing unlimited demand for a limited resource – but it would have played into the "death panel" hysteria and was taboo. Maybe I should be embarrassed that the silliness and obstructionism didn’t prompt me to take to the streets, but I didn’t think my voice offered much of value to that shrill debate.
Obstructionism about Nuclear Arms Reduction is a different matter.
Over the weekend I read an article about the nuclear weapons reduction agreement reached last week between the U.S. and Russia.
In addition to outlining the agreement, the article went on to say,
"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., expressed concern in a March 15 letter to Obama that the treaty would constrain strategic U.S. missile defenses.
‘It is highly unlikely that the Senate would ratify a treaty that includes such linkage,’ they wrote."
Context
I served in the military during the cold war 1977-79. Like many veterans of the time, I expected I was more likely to witness the end of the world than the end of the century.
When I watched the Berlin Wall come down on television, I cried. It was the first time since their birth that I believed my children might live to become adults. When I saw the remnants of the wall in Berlin a few years ago, I cried again... trying to explain to my traveling companions the significance of that graffiti covered concrete.
In the first tense minutes after Iraq launched SCUDs into Israel during the first Gulf war, I held my breath waiting to see if it was a chemical or biological attack. If it had been, I expected a nuclear response that would mean Armageddon had been merely postponed, not avoided in my life time.
Not stupid, ignorant
It is easy to imagine my children, and a majority of the citizenry under age 35 not having much informational or emotional context for discussion of arms control. I’m not suggesting they are stupid; it is just easy to think of arms control as wonky stuff that occurs in a surreal context that doesn’t affect your day-to-day life. This is unfortunate. Declaring the subject "wonky" gives the wonks WAY to much power over our destinies.
One Trident missile represents destructive power several times greater than all allied ordinance dropped in the European theater in World War II. They aren’t designed to level cities - they are designed to destroy nations. The details are classified (so quibbling in the comments below about whether this is off by an order of magnitude is pointless) but publicly available information suggests:
• There are about 14 ICBM delivery-capable Trident Submarines in the US fleet.
• Each submarine carries about 24 missiles.
• Each missile can deliver 8 warheads of about 100-kiloton power.
• A kiloton is a measure of force equal to a thousand tons of TNT.
14 x 24 x 8 x 100,000 tons = sufficient firepower to wreck large portions of the planet. If my math is correct, one warhead would destroy New York City.
Do the math yourself.
If I’m in the ballpark, our fleet has the capability to completely obliterate over 2,500 New Yorks.
When I was a kid, Dr. Strangelove was not slapstick, it was the darkest of political satires. My children thought it was cute and camp, but I don’t think they "got it".
Arms Reduction is a matter of survival
Which brings me to my point. Arms reduction isn’t just a desirable goal, it is essential for the well being of our children and grand children. I can’t yet imagine a world with zero nuclear weapons... but fewer deployed weapons hanging over our heads is good thing. Imagine a world where we can only destroy 100 of the world’s major cities in 15 minutes... what a much more pleasant place to live.
Who doesn’t want fewer nukes? Apart from lunatic hawks, contractors that make and maintain nuclear weapons, third world dictators who have observed the difference in our behavior toward Iraq (not nuclear armed) and North Korea (may be nuclear armed), and people seeking to accelerate their religion’s version of the Rapture – few people would seem to benefit from more nuclear weapons in the world.
Why am I raving? The emperor has no clothes
The article over the weekend suggested that Republican leadership in the Senate might be positioning to stall arms reduction treaty ratification out of concerns that it will "constrain strategic U.S. missile defenses". This means either they are worried about the strategic implications of putting down a few of our matches, or they are hesitant to negotiate the elimination of anti-missile defense systems.
The development history of anti-missile defenses is expensive and failure prone. Trying to hit a bullet with a bullet is a hard physics and engineering problem. This is compounded by the fact that your opponent is trying to build a missile that can’t be knocked down. Much like building computer virus protection, the missile/anti-missile technology race has the people building the defense system mostly constrained to responding to the latest development from their opponents, and always at least one step behind. It is also an irrelevant problem.
The most likely delivery mechanism for a nuclear weapon attack against an American city will be a truck or boat rather than a super-sonic flying machine that flirts with low earth orbit. Building a crude nuclear weapon is much simpler than developing and fielding ballistic missile delivery systems. Beyond the technical difficulties, it would be suicidal and stupid to nuke a U.S. city and leave a vapor trail that points back to the point of origin. We don’t need missile defense systems, we need to reduce the number of people intent on destroying cities.
Call to action.
There is a whole generation on this planet that is largely unfamiliar with the arguments in favor of reducing the nuclear stockpiles. I’m not talking about the compassionate, "Give peace a chance" arguments. I’m referring to the science and engineering facts that most people can’t begin to comprehend: several world leaders have access to weapons with enough destructive power to make the Earth uninhabitable by human life.
The fear and distrust that got us standing in this pool of gasoline are for historians and sociologists to explain. Finding a way to slowly drain the pool and put down some of the matches is the imperative of our time. It cannot be subjected to the fear mongering we have recently witnessed from our so-called "representatives". This needs to be bigger than responding to fear or courting contributions from defense contractors. Talk to people about arms reduction. Stop short of completely eliminating nukes... that is a different and more difficult discussion. We need to convince the majority that reduction in nuclear weapons is in everyone's best interests.
Postlude
Hat tip to Page van der Linden for her background on the new treaty Sunday.