Response to 'Anti-Nuclear Nuclearism'

(Editor's Note: This piece is part of a strategic dialogue on U.S. nuclear policy and is a response to Anti-Nuclear Nuclearism')

Credit is due to BondGraham and Parrish for coining the term "anti-nuclear nuclearism." It promises to be a useful tool for culling out those who believe nonproliferation is a ruse.

The recently issued Report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, World at Risk, which was mandated by the 9/11 Commission, is a case in point. It cries out to be branded anti-nuclear nuclearistic since, out of 160 pages, only one passage addresses U.S. nonproliferation initiatives: "[W]e believe that the next administration should engage with Russia…to negotiate additional reductions in both countries' strategic stockpiles."

On the other hand, with regards to the two "Four Horsemen" Wall Street Journal op-eds, it's unfair to sweep up Sam Nunn in the anti-nuclear nuclearistic net. Between the Nunn-Lugar Act and his work with the Nuclear Threat Initiative securing and reducing nuclear material stockpiles to advocating a fissile material cutoff, his contributions have been invaluable. Nor should we forget his crusade to remove all nuclear weapons — U.S. as well as Russian — from hair-trigger alert.

George P. Shultz, meanwhile, has become more hawkish with the passing years. (He was dubbed the father of the Bush Doctrine by the Wall Street Journal). But it behooves us to remember his reaction at Reykjavik when Mikhail Gorbachev said of nuclear weapons, "We can eliminate them." Shultz's reply: "Let's do it!"