"Our nuclear weaponry here in the U.S. is used as a deterrent. And that's a safe, stable way to use nuclear weaponry." Those were the words of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in the vice-presidential debate on October 2.
Safe. Stable. Those are not words that I would use to characterize "our nuclear weaponry." However, since John McCain embraces the Bush Doctrine of "preemptive" use of nukes—and since Palin could be a heartbeat away from the button—let's shine a flashlight into that dark corner.
Thankfully, a new book, Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable by Jonathan Stevenson (Viking), provides a functioning set of D-sized batteries. Stevenson makes the compelling case that dumb luck is not the only reason we haven't blown the planet to smithereens since Hiroshima in 1945.
Stevenson is no deer-in-the-headlights amateur who can see Russia from an island. He is a professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Providence, author of books on Northern Ireland and Mogadishu, and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Sober and smart, in other words.
The following is part of an exchange I had with Stevenson this week. The full exchange will be on my blog at the Hartford Advocate website.
Advocate: Has the so-called War on Terror destroyed our confidence and vision as a nation? Has it revealed us to the world as a wholly unprepared superpower?
Jonathan Stevenson: The short answer is yes, though I would put it somewhat differently. The Bush administration's determination to militarize counterterrorism, principally by means of a remarkably ill-judged war of choice and a dismissive approach to intelligence and other "reality-based" policy tools, has caused the U.S. to under-utilize its considerable diplomatic and economic capabilities in favor of imposing its will coercively. [The administration] has discovered that even the United States—which is still indisputably the most powerful country in the world—cannot do what it wants in every case&
You use the term "unfortunate dualism" to describe the Bush administration's post-9/11 foreign policy. What do you mean by that?
I mention "unfortunate dualism" as a quality of early Cold War thinking that foreshadowed the Bush team's insistence on apprehending the world in black-and-white, good-and-evil, Manichean terms, as exemplified by the post-9/11 rallying cry: "You are either with us or against us." That kind of thinking worked during the Cold War because it was a reasonable reflection of the realities of security encompassed by the nuclear stalemate between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now that vision doesn't fit the world.
Is the saber-rattling rhetoric by McCain just political posturing?
I think Senator McCain is a prime example of someone who cannot get past sheer indignation over the United States' failure thus far to vanquish a militarily inferior foe in Iraq, and, as a result of that and toxic memories of our strategic defeat in Vietnam, has built a flawed policy around unrealistic expectations. His position, simply put, is that the U.S. and its partners can best tamp down jihadist terrorism and rogue-state adventurism by engineering a stable Iraq allied with the U.S. and thus demonstrating its strength, competence, and resolve—no matter how long it takes.
To my mind, the rather obvious flaws in that thinking are, first, that it is not at all clear that U.S. military operations can pacify Iraq, and, second, even if they eventually can, as long as the American military is deployed in force and drawing blood in the Muslim world, it inspires Islamic radicals to mobilize against the U.S. and distracts Washington from dealing effectively with other pressing strategic challenges.
Is one man, be it a Bush, McCain, Clinton or Obama, really in control of the nuke arsenal all by himself? Are there points at which even the president (or, in the case of Cheney, a vice president) can be checked, so that we don't end up with a Dr. Strangelove situation?
I believe there are a number of procedural hoops that the commander-in-chief must jump through before activating launch codes. Moreover, thinking now about the Dr. Strangelove situation, I suspect the nuclear taboo is sufficiently strong that if an unbalanced leader did want to initiate a nuclear exchange, he would be questioned, challenged, and stopped by others—military as well as civilian—in the chain of command."
