zenpundit.com

Blogfriends who ran with the “Aggravating Questions” theme on their own blogs:

Sean “Green Lightsabre” Meade

John “I’m not actually the Founding Father“ Jay

Brad The Potbanger

Much appreciated, kind sirs. I owe you a round.

Please see the introductory post here:

An excerpt from Michael van der Galien’s post at  PoliGazette:

“US Nuclear Policy”

“Although the question seems difficult, I am sure, to me, it’s actually a very easy one: the US should improve its nuclear arsenal, other major powers should be allowed to keep their nuclear weapons, but the international community has to make sure that countries that don’t have nuclear weapons at this point in time, won’t develop them in the future either. Especially enemies of the West should be prevented, against all cost, from developing them.

….All too often people pretend that nuclear weapons are horrible per sé. This is not true. Nuclear weapons are horrible and pose a threat to the world when they’re in the wrong hands. When the US, however, has nuclear weapons, they’re not only not posing a threat to the world, they’re actually bringing stability and safety to it.”

Read the rest here.

Cheryl Rofer, one of the trio of bloggers at the respected diplo oriented blog Whirledview and a field expert on nuclear arms issues, has called for a “Blog-Tank” discussion of American nuclear policy, or more to the point, the current difficulty the Bush administration is having updating nuclear policy to match the strategic environment of 2007.  In fairness to the bureaucrats and semi-official wonks, at no time has nuclear policy seemed less clear except when the Truman administration initially wrestled with what to do with America’s brief atomic monopoly. Today we sit poised upon the brink of the other end of the proliferation spectrum and, as in 1945, crafting nuclear policy means identifying our assumptions about the world and making strategic choices against an uncertain future.

Rofer was kind enough to invite me to participate as well as Cernig, guiding spirit of the feisty and fast-paced Liberal-Left blog, The NewsHoggers. Everyone though, is welcome and I will be linking to those who participate in the discussion.

Like Cernig, I’ll let Cheryl lay out the ground rules and background material, many excellent links, by presenting her post in full:

 “The Bloggers Develop Nuclear Weapons Policy“

by CKR

The other day, Cernig reminded me of something I’ve let drop. Back in August, Cernig, ZenPundit and I were having a conversation on nuclear policy and were agreeing on quite a few points. This seemed to me to be a hopeful sign, since we inhabit different points on the political spectrum.

It was also a hopeful sign because others seem to be having so much trouble with nuclear policy. United States nuclear policy is stuck in the Cold War. For the decade of the nineties, we wanted to be cautious that Russia wouldn’t fall back into a Soviet foreign policy. It hasn’t, so it’s time to think about a nuclear policy for a world in which the big nuclear problem is proliferation, not a single enormous nuclear arsenal on the other side of the world.

Among those having a hard time are the Departments of State, Defense and Energy. Back in July, after Congress told the administration that it wanted to see a nuclear policy before it would consider funding the Reliable Replacement Warhead, those three departments quickly got out a statement saying that they would indeed work up a nuclear policy. Jeffrey Lewis now reports a rumor that Secretary of Defense Gates is holding up the full white paper because it is so amateurishly done. Sorry, Jeffrey, I can’t confirm your rumor, but it tends to support my suspicion that such a thing will be very difficult indeed for those agencies.

The presidential candidates are mostly trying not to think about it. Some of the Republicans haven’t even bothered to address the issue, and the Democrats are not too far from continuing the sameold Cold War stuff.

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 Bloggers^TM 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:
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization

I apologize, sort of, for doing this over the holiday season. We’re starting just before the solstice and should finish up around Orthodox Christmas. I hope everyone will find some time to contribute. After all, this is the time of year to think about peace on earth”

Thank you Cheryl for being the prime mover on this important topic. I look forward to the discussion.

A few things I’ve been wondering….

Would Global Warming attract nearly the same level of interest among environmentalist activists and Hollywood celebrities if the most effective proposed policy solutions had a free market bent ?

If you were to run a country going to war would you rather be in charge of Iran or the United States? Iran or Israel ? China or Taiwan?

If independents and third party wannabes are correct that the country really needs an effective and competitive major third party, why are they historically unable to propose any set of original programmatic ideas that the Republicans and Democrats cannot steal ?

If the EU has genuinely changed the twenty century-long warlike character  of Europeans to apathetic, bureaucratic, declinists why does the idea of Germany with nuclear weapons still give everyone pause ?

Or for that matter, who’s up for the Japanese Prime Minister announcing a successful test of a hydrogen bomb ? If you’re not but you are also ok on a nuclear Iran, can you give an intellectually credible explanation as to the difference?

What government entitlement programs that you personally benefit from should people be prepared to live without ?

To what degree is opposition to the death penalty rooted in opposition to the concepts of individual accountability and punishment ? To what degree is gun-control a repudiation of the right to self-defense ?

If you are pro-Life, why should a woman who happens to be pregnant have to take into account your personal religious beliefs before her baby is born but not afterward when making life-altering medical decisions on behalf of her minor child?

If the rich should pay more taxes, who counts as “rich” ? Why is your arbitrary figure plucked out of the air better than mine or anybody else’s ?

How many laws regulating the legal profession are ever proposed ? How many are passed ?

If the U.S government has friendly but non-committal diplomatic relations (minimal or no conflict) with another state, does that constitute “support” for the regime or ” non-intervention” ?

If multiculturalists are correct that that the non-Western cultures are of greater moral stature than the oppressive West, then why did none of the non-Western cultures ever practice multiculturalism ?

Top Billing! Sic Semper Tyrannis – “Habakkuk on the neocons’ use of intelligence”

Habbakuk is a British journalist. I don’t always agree with how he interprets intel history in terms of context (his depiction here of the famous “Team B” incident is heavily spun) however Habbakuk’s command of the subject is very impressive and he can can always be read profitably.

Kent’s Imperative – “Arguments in intelligence history”

KI on Habbakuk. I agree with their take as the piece summarizing the in-house foodfights among Cold War era Soviet specialists – attitudes that largely remain intact today even when scholars have been forced to yield ground on specifics due releases from Soviet and American archives.

Pundita – “Iran has nukes, Iran doesn’t have nukes. Well, which is it, General Baluyevsky?”

Pundita summarizes the serpentine shifts of the Russian MoD under Putin on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. I haven’t commented on the NIE much because the  nine page declassified key assessments represents less than 10 % of the NIE itself. Years of watching historians arrive at starkly different interpretations of identical primary sources makes me chary of accepting or rejecting reasoning I cannot cross-check myself.

1 Raindrop – “Dhandho Infosec”

Gunnar’s post deals with attempts to manage Risk and Uncertainty in terms of information security – however, we can extrapolate here.

Kings of War -“the trojan horse of culture”

An offer of caveats on quickie anthropologization of warfare.

The Strategist – “Prince of Downfalls”

On Tacitus….the Roman historian, not the guy who used to blog under that name.

The NewsHoggers -“Government blocks public info on search engines ”

This is a huge problem and it’s partly deliberate, partly due to IT cluelessness and misdirected in-house priorities

The Jamestown Foundation -“WILL KREMLIN USE 1990S PRIVATIZATIONS TO STRENGTHEN ITS GRIP ON BUSINESS?”

Politically, yes.

Scientific American -“What ‘Psychopath’ means: It is not quite what you think”

“Some investigators have even speculated that “successful psychopaths”-those who attain prominent positions in society-may be overrepresented in certain occupations, such as politics, business and entertainment.” 

Figures.

That’s it!