Israel Matzav

An unbelievably stupid policy

John Hinderaker demolishes President Obama's new nuclear policy. His jumping off point is Obama's assertion that the US will never use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state, even if they attack the US with chemical or biological weapons. That is indeed an unbelievably stupid thing to say.

On its face, that is unbelievably stupid. A country attacks us with biological weapons, and we stay our hand because they are "in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty"? That is too dumb even for Barack Obama. The administration hedged its commitment with qualifications suggesting that if there actually were a successful biological or chemical attack, it would rethink its position. The Times puts its finger on what is wrong with the administration's announcement:

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war.

That's exactly right. The cardinal rule, when it comes to nuclear weapons, is keep 'em guessing. We want our enemies to believe that we may well be crazy enough to vaporize them, given sufficient provocation; one just can't tell. There is a reason why that ambiguity has been the American government's policy for more than 50 years. Obama cheerfully tosses overboard the strategic consensus of two generations.

Or pretends to, anyway. Does anyone doubt that the administration would use nukes in a heartbeat if it considered such measures necessary? I don't. The problem is that when the time comes to actually use nuclear weapons, it is too late. The danger here is not that the Obama administration has really gone pacifist. On the contrary, the significance of today's announcement appears to be entirely symbolic--just one more chance to preen. The problem is that our enemies understand symbolism and maybe take it too seriously. To them, today's announcement is another sign that our government has gone soft, and one more inducement to undertake aggressive action against the United States.

I'm going to disagree with John's last paragraph. I really do believe that Obama will not use nuclear weapons to retaliate against a chemical or biological attack. In fact, I'm not sure he'll even use conventional weapons. After all, it won't bring the people who were killed back to life.

The non-compliance with the NPT was clearly (or maybe not so clearly in Obama's case) aimed at North Korea and Iran. But consider two other possibilities. First, that Iran supplies nuclear weapons (or a dirty bomb) to Hezbullah, which attacks the United States. Second, Syria (which is no longer a nuclear state in violation of the NPT - hopefully - thanks to Israel) attacks the US with chemical or biological weapons. Can anyone really see Obama using nuclear weapons against Iran or Syria or both in response to one of those two scenarios? I can't.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:49 AM