Assistant Secretary Gottemoeller Discusses START, CTBT, and FMCT

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Friday, August 13, 2010:

Exploring the Many Facets of Deterrence - Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller at the U.S. Strategic Command 2010 Deterrence Symposium [link]

• We believe it is in the U.S. interest to ratify and bring the New START Treaty into force as soon as possible.
• As General Chilton has testified: “our nation will be safer and more secure with this treaty than without it.” Seven former commanders of the former Strategic Air Command and U.S. Strategic Command have endorsed ratification of the Treaty.
• two other major goals of the Obama Administration are bringing into force the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty – CTBT – and negotiating a verifiable Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty – FMCT:
• As pointed out in the Administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review Report, ratification of the CTBT is central to leading other nuclear weapons states toward a world of diminished reliance on nuclear weapons.
• If the international community is serious about drawing down nuclear weapons, we must constrain the ability to build up. Bringing a verifiable FMCT into force is essential, both as a step in this process and, more broadly, to establish the conditions necessary for the achievement of a world free of nuclear weapons.

It's a No-Brainer: Ratify the Arms Control Treaty - Anne Penketh in The Hill's Congress Blog [link]

• In the last few weeks, watching the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on New START unfold, I have sometimes felt like shouting out “Senators, get a world view,” because in the minutiae of 18 public hearings, the bigger picture has been lost.
• It is clear to any sentient observer that no matter what arguments on substance are put forth by the treaty’s supporters, who include the present and past members of the defense and policy establishment, the Republican minority will continue to move the goal posts.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rightly says, that U.S. national security is at risk because there will be no verification of Russia’s long-range nuclear arsenal until the treaty is ratified.
• As former defense secretary William Perry warned in an early Senate hearing: “If we fail to ratify this treaty, the United States will forfeit any right to provide any leadership in this field throughout the world.”

What Would An Attack On Iran Really Achieve? - Matt Duss in The Wonk Room [link]

• Jeffrey Goldberg [has an article in The Atlantic] in which he reports that, having “interviewed roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers about a military strike, as well as many American and Arab officials,” “a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July.”
• In the article, Goldberg lists the likely consequences that would follow an Israeli strike, writing that such an attack "stand[s] a good chance of changing the Middle East forever.”
• The article represents a new stage in an ongoing attempt to pressure President Obama into a more belligerent posture toward Iran, with the stated reasoning (no alternative view is entertained by Goldberg) that only by threatening war can Obama convince the Iranians that he’s “serious” about stopping their nuclear program and chill the Israelis out.
• This approach clearly failed during the Bush administration — belligerence only seems to have convinced the Iranians that they needed to accelerate their program.
• It’s also important to understand that, if Obama does succumb to this pressure and escalates his anti-Iranian rhetoric, the very same people who are now insisting that it’s the only way to avoid war with Iran will later insist that the preservation of American credibility requires going to war with Iran.

Only Tiny Far Right Fringe Oppose START - Max Bergmann in The Wonk Room [link]

• The Heritage Foundation has been arguing for a while that a lot of “experts” oppose the New START treaty. They noted that “one of the most egregious arguments peddled by New START proponents is that no reasonable arms control expert is opposed to New START."
• But the bench of “experts” opposing the treaty is extraordinarily short. Ben Loehrke at the Prague Project put together a fantastic chart that shows over 70 former military and national security officials support New START, while only 6 (as listed by Heritage) oppose it.
• Frankly, the almost total lack of expert opposition to the treaty is one of the reasons why the GOP leadership in the Senate is not opposing the treaty on its merits. 
• As Walter Pincus noted in the Washington Post, Republicans supported the arms control treaty negotiated under Bush and showed little concern for things they now claimed to be concerned about. [This] shows that the arguments of true outright treaty opponents are so weak even the leadership of the Senate GOP won’t make them. 

Happy Friday the 13th

Radioactive Boars On The Loose In Germany - NPR [link]

• Rather, this is about radioactive wild pigs in Germany. These wild boars eat mushrooms contaminated by the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of a quarter century ago.
• Quite a few of them are indeed radioactive, mostly in southern Germany. That was sort of the major fallout zone of the Chernobyl disaster, and so as a result, there's quite a bit of radioactivity still in the ground.
• There's more and more boars, which accounts for an absolute increase in numbers of radioactive boars, but those who live in the forest particularly are eating mushrooms and truffles. And as the radiation sort of sinks into the earth, the roots of truffles and mushrooms tend to collect them more.
• Generally, radioactivity builds up over time in people. And if you're eating boar every meal that has never been checked for radioactivity, it could be a problem over time.
• Note: For some Friday comedic relief, check out the Onion's take: "Radioactive Boars Roaming Germany"