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Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 17, 2009 / 23 Shevat 5769

Peace through weakness?

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Fresh from reworking the domestic economic order via the "stimulus" bill in favor of vastly expanded U.S. government influence and power, President Barack Obama proposes a set of changes with respect to American security policies and programs that will have the opposite effect. If equally successful, he stands to transform the "world's only superpower" into a nuclear impotent, with possibly catastrophic consequences.


Such a transformation would be the more extraordinary for it coming against the backdrop of others' buildups of their nuclear arsenals. Every other declared nuclear weapon state is modernizing its stockpile and the most dangerous wannabees - North Korea and Iran - are building up their offensive missile capabilities and acquiring as quickly as possible the arms to go atop them.


The American people are largely clueless about this state of affairs. Doubtless, they would be horrified by the affront to common sense and hard experience entailed, especially under these circumstances, by the sort of U.S. disarmament Mr. Obama has underway.


In fairness, this president inherited what amounts to a 17-year-long unilateral U.S. nuclear freeze. Since 1992, there has been no underground nuclear testing in the United States and no modernization of the arsenal. We have allowed a steady decline in investment in the science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program that promised to assure the safety, effectiveness and reliability of our nuclear weapons in the absence of below-ground tests.


Meeting that rigorous standard has been made more all the more challenging by the concomitant exodus of the skilled workforce and the increasing obsolescence and unsustainability of the industrial complex it mans. Not surprisingly, the nuclear laboratory directors' certifications about the status of our weapons are increasingly qualified by warnings of uncertainties about how long the present situation can be sustained.


What is more, since the Cold War's end, the United States has reduced by roughly three-quarters the numbers of nuclear weapons it deployed at that time. Today, we have fewer than the 2,200 fielded nuclear arms we are permitted to have under the U.S.-Russian Treaty of Moscow signed by Presidents Bush and Putin in 2002.


Now, President Obama wants to cut that number down to roughly 500 deployed weapons. His Office of Management and Budget contemplates no modernization of these forces and no upgrading of the capability to produce or refurbish them. The Obama administration seeks the swift ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty - which was rejected by a majority of the Senate in 1997 and which would permanently preclude in the future tests that may be essential to the maintenance of our deterrent.


As part of a concerted effort at rapprochement with the Kremlin, Mr. Obama is not only signaling a willingness to scrap the missile defense deployment previously agreed upon by NATO and the basing countries, Poland and the Czech Republic. He not only is hinting at acquiescence to Russian domination of its "near-abroad" (including Georgia and Ukraine). His representatives indicate that they wants an arms control deal that effects these draconian cuts while extending and applying terms of the outdated START II Treaty.


Combining START counting rules and the proposed Obama force reductions would have the practical effect of attributing weapons to various platforms in a way that would effectively preclude the maintenance of the "Triad" of strategic forces that has served us so well, for so long. One and possibly two of the "legs" of this deterrent posture would have to be dismantled.


In addition, the Obama administration apparently believes that the remaining strategic weapons - presumably on submarines - would have to be taken off what it wrongly claims is "hair-trigger" alert status. As with bans on nuclear testing and at least some of the proposed Obama nuclear reductions initiatives, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to verify the compliance of secretive governments with such "de-alerting" arrangements. Only ours would be rendered incapable of prompt use should the need arise.


The cumulative effect of these actions would be to render the U.S. nuclear arsenal, to quote President Reagan, "impotent and obsolete." That was, of course, not something he ever contemplated having the United States do unilaterally. In fact, even though our 40th president is increasingly invoked by the anti-nuclear crowd (whose latest campaign is called "Global Zero" and seeks the hopelessly unrealistic goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons) because of his avowed antipathy towards such arms, arguably no one did more than he to build up America's deterrent. Indeed, were it not for the capabilities Mr. Reagan put in place in the 1980s as part of his refurbishing of our nuclear Triad, we might well have been substantially disarmed already.


The tragic irony is that the Obama administration's goal of global denuclearization is likely to be made more remote, not less, as America's deterrent becomes ever less certain. Our adversaries stand to benefit geostrategically from building up their nuclear arsenals as ours vanishes. Long-time allies will surely feel constrained to acquire their own nuclear forces if our "umbrella" ceases to assure them protection. In short, more proliferation, not less, is in prospect.


In these ways, Barack Obama risks standing the time-tested Reagan philosophy of "peace through strength" on its head in favor of a posture shown to be a formula for war - sometimes on a global, cataclysmic scale: the failed pursuit of peace through U.S. weakness.


Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

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