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(27,509 posts)
Wed Jun 5, 2013, 12:10 PM Jun 2013

Susan Rice on Nuclear Weapons

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-cirincione/susan-rice-on-nuclear-wea_b_3390019.html

Susan Rice on Nuclear Weapons
by Joe Cirincione
Posted: 06/05/2013 10:44 am

Susan Rice does not speak very often on nuclear policy, but behind the scenes she played a major role in shaping Barack Obama's nuclear weapons positions in the 2008 campaign.

Her appointment completes the assembly of a team of Cabinet members, including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry, dedicated to reinvigorating President Obama's nuclear policy efforts and finally giving the nation a posture suited to the demands of this century and no longer shackled to the obsolete policies of the past.

Rice was the head of the national security team for the President's successful 2008 campaign. I was part of the nuclear policy group that reported to her. She, with the help of a number of experts who later joined her in key positions in the administration, including Greg Craig and Ivo Daalder, shaped a tough, visionary nuclear policy for the 21st Century. It was enshrined in the 2008 Democratic Party Platform and advocated, among other positions:

A World without Nuclear Weapons

America will seek a world with no nuclear weapons and take concrete actions to move in this direction. We face growing threats of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons or the means to make them with more countries seeking nuclear weapons, unsecured nuclear materials in many countries, and of the potential spread of nuclear technologies. As George Shultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn have warned, current measures are not adequate to address these dangers. We will maintain a strong and reliable deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist, but America will be safer in a world that is reducing reliance on nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminates all of them. We will make the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide a central element of U.S. nuclear weapons policy.


End Cold War Nuclear Postures

To enhance our security and help meet our commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, we will seek deep, verifiable reductions in United States and Russian nuclear weapons and work with other nuclear powers to reduce global stockpiles dramatically. We will work with Russia to take as many weapons as possible off Cold War, quick-launch status, and extend key provisions of the START Treaty, including their essential monitoring and verification requirements. We will not develop new nuclear weapons, and will work to create a bipartisan consensus to support ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which will strengthen the NPT and aid international monitoring of nuclear activities.


<snip>

Now, she will return to Washington with a broader portfolio and will merge with a national security team completely in sync with the policy positions she championed earlier. Her appointment sets the stage perfectly for a major new presidential policy initiative.

All we need is for the lead actor to make his entrance.
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