I took a bit of a drubbing around the web for my post about President Barack Obama’s Prague speech yesterday. Matt Stone pointed out that our NPT commitment to “methodically disarm” (his words) is the flip side of the deterrence coin, while John Boonstra suggested that “bad timing” is a weak reason to foreswear the goal of no nukes, because “it will never be a good time to pursue nuclear disarmament.” I don’t disagree with either.
In fact, having gone through Obama’s speech again, I find myself in agreement with all of the actual policy initiatives he identifies, ably summarized here by Rory Medcalf.
And for the record, I’m not among the “some” Obama refers to who argue that “the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked –that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and morepeople possess the ultimate tools of destruction.”
I am among the “some” who “question whether we can act on such a broad agenda . . .doubt whether true international cooperation is possible, giveninevitable differences among nations . . . hear talkof a world without nuclear weapons and doubt whether it’s worth settinga goal that seems impossible to achieve.”
In other words, I think the idealistic rhetoric might have overshadowed the very sensible policy formulation. But I’m open to being persuaded.
Meanwhile, MDC over at Foreign Policy Watch has a good rundown on the related CEIP International Nonproliferation Conference that’s worth a read.