Bloggers On Nuclear Weapons Policy
And the Very Special People who do foreign policy for a living at the think tanks and universities haven’t said much. These are the folks who the blogosphere found, a few months back, aren’t necessarily any more insightful or intelligent than bloggers. Because they do foreign policy for a living, their views can be swayed by what sells their product. All too often, that is war. They also tend to get very specialized, and most have little science background, which they may think is necessary to discuss nuclear policy. It helps, but the issues are more political than technical. Occasionally the technical clamps limits on the possible.
So I’d like to pick up that thread again, because The BloggersTM seem to be willing to try to figure it out. I propose what we might call a blog-tank approach. Here’s how I suggest we do it:
Each blogger writes a post on what the US’s nuclear policy should be on her/his own blog. Then please notify me by e-mail or a comment on this post. I have e-mailed some folks I would like to have participate, but everyone is welcome to join. Invite your blogfriends. I would like to have participants who represent a range of political opinion.
Commenters are encouraged to contribute as well, both here and on other participating blogs.
On Friday, 12/28, I will summarize the arguments, emphasizing novel ideas and points of agreement and disagreement.
Bloggers will then write another round of posts, trying to move to consensus positions.
I will then summarize again on Friday, 1/4. At that point, I think we’re going to be close to agreement on most of the big points.
I’ve linked above to some of my posts and here, here, here, here, and here are several more.
A range of political opinion is represented by four gentlemen who wrote an op-ed on US nuclear weapons policy in the January 4 Wall Street Journal. The Foreign Secretary of the UK built on those ideas, and the UK is actually doing something about them. Recently, two Americans have responded to the gang of four’s op-ed, although they seem to agree as much as they disagree. And here’s my review of a report from another group of dissenters.
Recently, Joe Cirincione, William Langewiesche, Richard Rhodes and Jonathan Schell (excerpt) have published books on the subject that are useful background for policy. They are exceptions to the Very Special People rule.
The two big treaties:
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