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Rachel Maddow: A nuclear weapons strategy that’s stuck in the past
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rachel-maddow-a-nuclear-weapons-strategy-stuck-in-the-past/2014/02/28/906737f6-9ffa-11e3-b8d8-94577ff66b28_story.html
A nuclear weapons strategy that’s stuck in the past
By Rachel Maddow, Published: February 28
<snip>
How is it, though, that we’re cutting all those things yet keeping the full complement of 1970s-era nuclear missiles in silos in Wyoming, North Dakota and Montana?
Like the drunk general said, those intercontinental missiles are an operationally deployed nuclear force. They’re not in silos for storage; they are ready to fly. But do we really believe the general’s drunken boast that those hair-trigger missiles are saving the world from war every day? Even if there is a scenario in which a threat to the United States is best handled by us firing off hundreds of nuclear weapons, B-2 bombers and Trident submarines could handily launch such weapons at any attacker on the planet who is kind enough to provide us with a return address. As Vladimir Putin considers his options in Crimea, do we really think he feels his decisions are constrained by our nuclear weapons .?.?. but not the ones on U.S. military planes or submarines, only the ones underground in Montana?
<snip>
Although no one has had to prevent an accidental missile launch by parking an armored vehicle on top of the silo doors since the 1980s (true story), we’re just not doing a great job handling the responsibility of those Minuteman 3s. And we’re not so much failing as succumbing to inevitability: In the absence of any realistic mission in which those missiles would be used, maintaining morale and 100 percent error-free rigor over decades is an almost existentially impossible challenge.
The real failure here is political: Civilian decision-makers need to make the call about the overall U.S. security strategy and the prioritization of military spending. At a time of cuts and reorganization, when hard decisions must be made about what to save and what to let go, continuing to throw billions of dollars down those silos is a failure of accountability and a failure to be realistic about what kind of wars we might conceivably fight in the future.
Initial reporting on the Pentagon’s proposed cuts described the goal of “a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.” After years of Iraq and Afghanistan, we don’t want protracted foreign occupations anymore, so we’re planning for a military future without them. Unless someone wants or expects an exchange of hundreds of nuclear-tipped land-based intercontinental missiles with Russia in our future, it is nonsense for us to keep planning for that, decade after decade, at such high cost and with so much risk.
A nuclear weapons strategy that’s stuck in the past
By Rachel Maddow, Published: February 28
<snip>
How is it, though, that we’re cutting all those things yet keeping the full complement of 1970s-era nuclear missiles in silos in Wyoming, North Dakota and Montana?
Like the drunk general said, those intercontinental missiles are an operationally deployed nuclear force. They’re not in silos for storage; they are ready to fly. But do we really believe the general’s drunken boast that those hair-trigger missiles are saving the world from war every day? Even if there is a scenario in which a threat to the United States is best handled by us firing off hundreds of nuclear weapons, B-2 bombers and Trident submarines could handily launch such weapons at any attacker on the planet who is kind enough to provide us with a return address. As Vladimir Putin considers his options in Crimea, do we really think he feels his decisions are constrained by our nuclear weapons .?.?. but not the ones on U.S. military planes or submarines, only the ones underground in Montana?
<snip>
Although no one has had to prevent an accidental missile launch by parking an armored vehicle on top of the silo doors since the 1980s (true story), we’re just not doing a great job handling the responsibility of those Minuteman 3s. And we’re not so much failing as succumbing to inevitability: In the absence of any realistic mission in which those missiles would be used, maintaining morale and 100 percent error-free rigor over decades is an almost existentially impossible challenge.
The real failure here is political: Civilian decision-makers need to make the call about the overall U.S. security strategy and the prioritization of military spending. At a time of cuts and reorganization, when hard decisions must be made about what to save and what to let go, continuing to throw billions of dollars down those silos is a failure of accountability and a failure to be realistic about what kind of wars we might conceivably fight in the future.
Initial reporting on the Pentagon’s proposed cuts described the goal of “a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.” After years of Iraq and Afghanistan, we don’t want protracted foreign occupations anymore, so we’re planning for a military future without them. Unless someone wants or expects an exchange of hundreds of nuclear-tipped land-based intercontinental missiles with Russia in our future, it is nonsense for us to keep planning for that, decade after decade, at such high cost and with so much risk.
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