Nuclear Arms Cuts, Supported By 56% of Americans, Would Make the World Safer

Lasrick writes "Kingston Reif of the Nukes of Hazard blog writes about nuclear arms reductions are back in the news, thanks to President Obama's State of the Union address and now also a Gallup poll that shows 56% of Americans support U.S.-Russian reductions. From the Article: 'A recent report by the Center for Public Integrity revealed that senior Obama administration officials believe the United States can reduce its arsenal of deployed strategic warheads to between 1,000 and 1,100 without harming national security. Those numbers would put the total below levels called for by New START...' Congressional Republicans of course are against those cuts; Reif lays out why the cuts would make the U.S. and the world safer." Do we even need a thousand nuclear warheads?

Comments

US/Russia? but no China?

[JDAustin]

Why are talks between us and Russia while China is rapidly increasing their nuclear stockpile?

Project Orion rebooted

[0111 1110]

Do we even need a thousand nuclear warheads?

If we ever want to travel to Alpha Centauri we do. How about putting those nukes toward the construction of an interstellar pulsed nuclear space drive?

Re:SDI's?

[Obfuscant]

"In space" doesn't mean "hard vacuum." The low mass (so they can carry enough of them) combined with the large surface area (to mimic a large object) will make them decelerate rapidly enough that they won't confuse anyone for very long. Then remember that the real ICBM has been tracked from very close to the surface, so if one missile suddenly turns into 99 missiles slowing down very quickly and 1 that keeps the same trajectory, you can be pretty confident you know which one is real and which is chaff. Then you'll see one missile descending into the atmosphere and 99 that aren't, the jig will be up.

So when can Iran threaten the U.S. over NPT?

[Uberbah]

We've surrounded Iran with dozens of military bases, crashed their economy and currency with sanctions, illegally threatened them with military force, and committed multiple acts of war on a country over the....nuclear weapons program both the CIA and Israelis admit they don't have.

So when does Iran get to threaten the United States for being in "material breach" of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires disarmament for countries already in possession of nuclear weapons?

Re:Get rid of some

[TapeCutter]

The problem with the MAD doctrine is the same as the problem with the second amendment, they both assume humans will act rationally when given the power of life or death over others.