That’s Great About Nuclear Weapons, But What About…

President Obama’s announcement last week to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is worth a raised eyebrow. It’s easy diplomacy, but any discussion of weapons control or reduction is an opportunity to see what the U.S. should be doing beyond superficial cuts to its overwhelming nuclear arsenal. We’d like to celebrate any reduction in nuclear arms, however at the end of the day, U.S. nuclear capability maintains the ability to effectively destroy much of the globe. While we no longer operate under mutual assured destruction, the global moral standard, as well as our own as Americans, precludes the use of nuclear weapons. Of course the U.S. continues to build bigger, “better” bunker buster bombs with larger payloads. These bombs don’t make nuclear weapons irrelevant, they just illustrate how the U.S. is pursuing different technologies to kill those deemed enemies. Although the U.S. should seek ways to prevent proliferation, and involve international structures for when Iran eventually has a nuclear weapon (the genie has been out of the bottle since 1945, eventually all those who want them might have them), the talk and use of nuclear weapons does not command the attention or affect lives the way it did in previous decades.

If President Obama really wanted to pursue a peace oriented policy, there are two more meaningful actions he can pursue on weapons reduction besides the nuclear option. President Obama can look at our use of conventional weapons and sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the Mine Ban Treaty if he wanted to do something that was useful and meaningful in protecting the lives of civilians. Although the U.S. government maintains that cluster bombs are an essential part of the U.S. arsenal, cluster bombs along with land mines continue to claim civilian lives years after conflicts have ended. President Obama’s stance on nuclear weapons is admirable, but if he wants to meaningfully affect the way wars are fought and how civilians are affected, he can go several steps further.