Pres Obama will disarm the U.S. nuke weapons.

[Tim01]

Well, actually, no he won't. It does look like he is going to continue saying he wants the rest of the world disarmed though.
North Korea called his bluff, now he is making all these speeches about how he wants the world to be nuke weapons free.
He had no speeches about the nukes until North Korea called his bluff. All this talk is embarrassing and I wish he would stop it. This is just like the school bully who talks big until somebody stands up to him then he backs down, and says he didn't. It looks the same to the rest of the world,too. WEAK!

I would like to see a world free of nukes. Have the balls to lead. "We will disarm first. We will lead by example." Not happening. Lots of fucking talk. Embarrassing.

I actually think disarming is unrealistic,and a bad idea. But if he wants to lead, by god I will follow him. We can accept the risk. I won't hold my breath. Just more talk.
He is not leading.

[jaxx]

1. I guess that all depends on who you are following.

[tekisui]

2. He is leading. He and Russia are going to start reducing

the nukes we have. It is a step.

[Tim01]

4. We did this before.

We will "reduce" the nukes to the point we get the old stuff out of inventory we don't trust it anyway. And to the point we can destroy the world only 5 times over instead of 6 times over.

Seriously, this nonsense gets old. It just looks silly.

[Statistical]

8. Really?

We spent tens of billions to maintain nuclear weapons and the cores never get old (we at least not in our lifetime).

As part of START II we scrapped the peacekeeper the NEWEST, most advanced, and most lethal killing machine the world has ever seen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-118A_Peacekeeper

If you think tomorrow Obama will sign a bill and we will dismantle all our nuclear weapons when then you are a fool and have false expectations.

He could however work to reduce arsenal size further. 15,000 to 2,000 warheads is a substantial reduction and no it was just "old stuff". Russia can't afford the massive cost of a super-sized arsenal either. We both benefit from reducing the size of the arsenal.

Other countries like China will be encouraged to not enlarge their arsenal since it cost lots of $$$$ and US & Russia are shrinking ours.

[Tim01]

13. Since you brought insults into this, when I didn't..

if you think I believe Obama will agree to get rid of our nukes you are a fool. That should be no surprise as I said so.


I don't believe for a second Obama will disarm our nukes. And I certainly don't think it is a good idea if the rest of the world won't join in.

But he keeps saying he wants to see a nuke weapons free world. He knows it isn't happening, he will not be disarming us.
I wish he would stop saying it when he doesn't mean it, and everybody knows he doesn't mean it.

[Statistical]

14. Baby steps

We will never see a nuke free world in our lifetime but maybe Obama can continue down that road of reduction and containment.

Your thought process seems to be very black and white.

It is possible to make progress without having a nuke free world tomorrow.
To conduct talks and treaties reducing number of weapons is not useless.

[Statistical]

3. He is moving in the right direction.

Following same path as Reagan, Bush Sr & Clinton did.

At one time the US had nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons. Now we have "only" 2000 or so.

The backbone of our nuclear defense is 1000 warheads on Ohio class subs (14).
Land based silos contain another 500.
Bombers armed w/ cruise missiles & gravity bombs make up another 500.

I don't think we should "go first" but I do think we can work w/ Russia and other nuclear nations to bring those levels even lower.

Something like START or SORT.

We could drop to about 500 sub based warheads.
A token 100 land based silos warheads.
A handful of "special purpose" cruise missile & gravity bombs (maybe 100).

This would cut our enduring stockpile by 2/3 and still provide a reasonable deterrent.

[Tim01]

6. All it will take is one tactical nuke

being used to stop an advancing military force, just a little one. Game on!

I think you know that.

They use one to wreck our aircraft carriers, so we retaliate on their soil....so they get REALLY pissed.........
Sure. They only have 10 and we only have 20 would be plenty to bring an end of the world as we know it.

[TheWraith]

9. 30 nukes is not that many.

That's not enough to end the world--it would end maybe two big cities.

[Statistical]

10. Nukes aren't that powerful.

Stop watching hollywood junk and do your own research.

30 nukes, even couple hundred nukes wouldn't end the world.

Most of US nukes are 300-400kt. Granted that is extremely powerful but they aren't world enders.

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html

Kinda morbid but you can see damage effects of a nuclear weapon. default is 100kt. Remember most US weapons are 300-400kt. Chinese mostly use a few larger weapons 1MT (1000kt).

As you can see although compared to conventional weapons the blast is large it is not large compared to the size and scope of our country.

Soviet estimate in middle of Cold war (10,000+ warheads) was that a full package would result in 60-70 million deaths within 5 years. Granted that is huge but it isn't 10% of the planet. That also was 10,000 warheads and the Soviet arsenal has been substantially reduced since then.

Lastly keeping say 10 bombs to stop armies is kinda useless. You can never use them. US drops 10 bombs on enemy army and enemy army now has no deterent to not launch EVERYTHING at US civilian population. You don't use a nuclear weapon to stop any Army. You use the THREAT of nuclear weapons to prevent the war from starting.

[L0oniX]

5. Yea right. We will get rid of our nukes ...and then you will see this....

[Deja Q]

12. A pink pig being tapped by a steel ball and getting thrown around the valley and kicked by the lake?

Cute pic, but if the pig is supposed to be flying...

[TheWraith]

7. I don't think nuclear disarmament is realistic, nor is it really a priority.

Yes, it's good to reduce nuclear stockpiles for a dozen reasons. But total elimination is never going to happen, not least because nobody will go first.

Besides which, the existence of (limited) nuclear arsenals does encourage restraint on the part of the major powers. If we positively eliminated all nuclear weapons there might be, for instance, a much greater risk of a conventional shooting war between Russia and China over central Asia's oil reserves. Or between India and Pakistan. Or China and India. Or the US and North Korea. And on...

Nukes have the one positive effect of making people scared to have big wars.

[Democracyinkind]

11. Wow. I get the realistic part, but given the fact

... that the United States, not Russia nor China nor Pakistan is the biggest provider of nuclear proliferation, be that in Uranium, Know-How or materials, it consider it a priority.

If we didn't have those useless myriads of nuclear war infrastructure, maybe the stuff wouldn't have been stolen so blatantly.
I agree that total disarmament is impossible for rational-strategic reasons, but wanting to further develop any type of this kind of weapon aside from the intercontinental-deterrent version is absolutely insane. We couldn't even keep our Data, Uranium etc. from the big ICBM-nuke programs secret, it proliferated into all for winds... is it really reasonable to develop small scale nuclear devices that would be proliferated in the same manner?
Then we're talking Peacemaker, and I don't believe we have an existing equivalent to the role of George Clooney that would prevent that shit blowing in our faces.

In the long run the maintenance of these programs is going to be very harmful, no matter if they'll be used or not. I'd rather we'd not have them.

[TheWraith]

15. Actually we're not really the biggest provider of proliferation.

Pakistan has us outclassed by an order of magnitude, and even then it's not like they're solely responsible. A country with good scientists can figure it out.

[Democracyinkind]

16. Yeah because A.Q. Khan has CIA all over it, it's not a sound argument.

.. If you count the amount of stolen information, we are the greatest proliferator of the world. Even your "Pakistanis" stole in the US, if you followed the story.