The Nuclear Dilemma...

The American nuclear arsenal is reaching a turning point. Cold War era bombs are beginning to age and become outdated. As technology advances, these bombs are qucikly becoming obsolete, and are certainly not applicable toa post-9/11, post-cold war environment. The questions is, do we update our nuclear arsenal with new nuclear bombs or do we simply allow these bombs to expire and begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons cache? The Bush Administration has decided that we should modernize our nuclear arsenal through a program called Reliable Replacement Warheads (RRW), but a report released Tuesday by a panel of nuclear weapons experts displays a great deal of skepticism to the Bush plan.

Nuclear policy is always a touchy subject for the United States. As teh first to develop the bomb and the only to ever actually use it in a time of war, we hold a unique position in the international community - one that many see as hypocritical. The real issue here is not whether or not we need to modernize our nuclear arsenal - thats simply not a question worth debating. The fact is that our warheads are aging, they were designed specifically for an era of warfare that was targeted at Russia, and are relatively useless as a deterrent in the modern era of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. The fact is that strategic weapons designed for state based warfare are not useful in the modern battlefield. Our military is revolutionizing its structure - and it is becoming more flexible in how it responds to crisis situations. Our nuclear arsenal currently does not reflect that flexibility. So the question is not do we need to modernize - because at some point we do.

The real question is whether or not we need to do it right now? If it will save us money in the long term? And, more importantly, if we can use this opportunity to reduce the size of our arsenal to legal disarmament requirement as established by the United Nations. In the past, the United States has been criticized as being a hypocrit - working to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons while continuing to test, develop, and build a large stockpile of the very same weapons. States like India and Pakistan, now a part of the nuclear club, refused to sign onto international nonproliferation treaties - like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) - because they discriminated against non-nuclear states, preserving the nuclear authority of those privileged states who had alreaddy developed the technology. Our unwillingness to disarm continually undermines our stance abroad as we criticize countries like Iran and North korea for developing nuclear weapons.

The chance to modernize our arsenal certainly presents us with a chance to change this image abroad. While it is a costly endeavor - a multibillion dollar project that will take at least a decade. I believe that pursuing RRW's is a way for the United States to change its position on nuclear weapons use. As a member of the NPT it is time we start honoring our commitments to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenal. Many fear the the RRW program will spark an international arms race, but if it is prefaced with a statement of disarmament I believe we could avoid this unlikely scenario. The common misconception is that disarming means completely eliminating the nations nuclear detterent. This simply is not the case. Disarmament as defined by the UN is reducing your arsenal to a minimal deterrent level - 270 nuclear warheads. The makeup of those warheads - be it in silos, subs, or bombers - is up to the country to choose. The number still provides a credible deterrent, and enough firepower to destroy the world several times over. Yet, a country gains credibility in the disarmament regime and international community.

The United States' decision to modernize its aresenal, if prefaced by a call for and action towards disarmament, would certainly be respected in the international community. By reducing our arsenal we are taking steps to strengthen the NPT regime, and by modernizing it we are ensuring that it still functions as a credible deterrent in the post-cold war era.