[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
Another example of BHO’s weakness, intentionally depriving us of another diplomatic tool to contain Russia’s adventures:
“John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that “Russian provocateurs” had infiltrated eastern Ukraine in order to foment “an illegal and illegitimate effort to destabilize a sovereign state and create a contrived crisis.” Also on Tuesday, the Pentagon announced steep cuts to U.S. nuclear forces, four years ahead of schedule, in accordance with the 2010 New Start treaty with Russia.”
Atomic diplomacy? Are you serious? What is this, 1945-1952? Anyone who is passably familiar with the offense-defense balance and strategic nuclear weapons understands that they are inherently defensive in nature and serve as the ultimate deterrent, not as tools of “diplomacy”. If I put a gun to your head and tell you I will pull the trigger unless you cooperate, am I being diplomatic?
Even International Relations Realists; scholars and practitioners who believe in a Hobbesian world where power manifested as material capabilities is the ultima ratio in world politics; would find your argument to be naive to an alarming degree. You’re obviously wholly ignorant of the non-proliferation regime, are an ideological fundamentalist, or the most likely possibility, both. The United States is legally and morally obligated to reduce it’s nuclear arsenal. It has been since 1968.
Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) states that the nuclear weapons States those who had detonated a nuclear device before the treaty entered into effect; US, USSR, UK, France, and China are “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
The direct violation of article VI (i.e, vertical proliferation, one of the P5 increasing the quantity of their nuclear arsenal) would constitute a material breach of the NPT, which would give the non-nuclear weapons States (NNWS) a legal and moral basis to disregard their article II obligations.
Article II states that the NNWS are “not to receive the transfer . . . whatsoever of nuclear weapons . . . or of control over [them].” Additionally, the NNWS are required
“not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons” nor “to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.”
Obviously a cascade of horizontal proliferation (NNWS joining the nuclear club) is a scenario the United States would like to avoid, and the Obama administration’s decision to recommit to the non-proliferation regime was a sage one.
http://www.un.org/en/conf/npt/2005/npttreaty.html
