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Updating our nuclear intelligence


July 09, 2013

President Obama recently called on Russia to join the U.S. in negotiating a mutual reduction in nuclear arms. This humane gesture is one that likely will not survive the harsh political light in either country, but it raises several fundamental questions, including: Why have we waited so long for such a proposal? Why are we stopping there? And why doesn’t the U.S. make the reduction on its own?

Reducing the nuclear stockpile to 1,000 warheads leaves the U.S. with “an arsenal … sufficient to destroy every major population center on the planet outside of our borders,” writes Lawrence Krauss in the July 7 issue of the New York Times. Such proposals ring hallow to other nations who want “to be in the game,” he adds.

“If we wish to convince countries like Iran that the development of nuclear weapons is not in their best interest, we need to demonstrate that maintaining or enhancing our own arsenal is not in our interest,” Krauss states in the article, "Letting go of our nukes."

It is time to modernize our thinking on nuclear weapons, says Krauss, an ASU theoretical physicist and co-chair of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

“Much of our thinking about nuclear weapons is a hangover from a different era,” he states. “One can applaud Mr. Obama for raising the possibility of reducing our arsenal, but to address the global threat of nuclear weapons we need to accept that much about war, peace and global security changed after Hiroshima, and changed again in the last few decades with the end of the cold war. It is high time our thinking changed as well.”

Article source: New York Times

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