Since the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world has escaped nuclear catastrophe only because leaders on all sides understood that nuclear weapons must never be used. Today, there are nine countries with nuclear weapons and more than 15,000 warheads combined. President Obama pledged to work for a nuclear weapons free world, a goal shared by many strategic thinkers as well as Pope Francis.
Yet the Pentagon has been testing a precision nuclear warhead that can be delivered by cruise missile.
Former Defense Secretary William J. Perry has warned that the cruise missile might sway a future president to contemplate “limited nuclear war.” Worse yet, because the missile comes in nuclear and non-nuclear varieties, a foe under attack might assume the worst and overreact, initiating nuclear war.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has decided to deploy heavy U.S. weapons in Eastern Europe. To do so would break a crucial pledge the United States made at the end of the Cold War that we would not expand NATO and would not place our weapons near the Russian border. Putting such weapons in nations such as Hungary – whose right wing government has fascist overtones – is morally debatable and strategically dangerous. Russia is sure to react asymmetrically, perhaps moving closer to nuclear launch-on-warning.
In the 21st century, which faces climate chaos and social and political turmoil, we must modernize our thinking, not our nuclear weapons.
Sources
https://www.globalzero.org/get-the-facts/FAQs#sthash.mIHjyUut.dpuf
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/opinion/breaking-the-taboo-on-the-use-of-nuclear-arms.html
