Obama Would Rid the World of Nukes (Page 1 of 2)

Just outside the gates to the Y-12 bomb plant in Oak Ridge is the New Hope Center on Scarboro Road. Show up there Feb. 26, and you could help extend the half-life of the world.

From 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. and then from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., federal officials will listen to voices commenting on plans for Oak Ridge during the next phase of America's ongoing nuclear weapons program. The government will hear from most anyone who signs up to talk about "The Complex Transformation Draft Environmental Impact Statement" regarding changes to the weapons complex in Oak Ridge.

The government is selling the new complex as a way of tidying up and reducing the nation's nuclear footprint. But don't be misled. They're less than clear about how this new scheme will fit into the Complex 2030 proposal first floated a couple years back. Maybe you knew it as Bombplex 2030. Both titles were misleading because, while plans called for dismantling some old warheads, they also called for assembly line production of new nuclear components as early as 2012, with some assembly occurring at Oak Ridge. The program envisioned a return to Cold War levels of nuclear components production and called for "the flexibility" to build 200 or more new bombs per year by 2030, according to testimony made April 5, 2006, by Thomas P. D'Agostino, then-deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. He was speaking before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.

Again, it's unclear just what Oak Ridge's role would be in such an accelerated program, should funding materialize. Much could depend on who the next president is. Sen. John McCain is courting the far right just now and so his rhetoric about weapons is generally less than inspiring. Still, he's bucked the conservative establishment before. It's something I'll come back to.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama has proposed a long-term goal of a nuclear-arms-free world. Sen. Hillary Clinton has suggested Obama's attitudes are naive. And yet, in one of the most under-reported stories of 2007, four Cold Warriors who flexed American might last century went on record just more than a year ago to support international diplomacy that works toward a nuclear-free world: the Obama position.

In an op-ed letter to the Wall Street Journal Jan. 4, 2007, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn and William Perry wrote this:

“Unless urgent new actions are taken, the U.S. soon will be compelled to enter a new nuclear era that will be more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically even more costly than was Cold War deterrence. It is far from certain that we can successfully replicate the old Soviet-American ‘mutually assured destruction’ with an increasing number of potential nuclear enemies worldwide without dramatically increasing the risk that nuclear weapons will be used. New nuclear states do not have the benefit of years of step-by-step safeguards put in effect during the Cold War to prevent nuclear accidents, misjudgments or unauthorized launches. The United States and the former Soviet Union learned from mistakes that were less than fatal. Both countries were diligent to ensure no nuclear weapon was used during the Cold War by design or by accident. Will new nuclear nations and the world be as fortunate in the next 50 years as we were during the Cold War?”

It's the kind of issue that is a deal-maker or -breaker for those with the imagination to envision a future in which the world is not put at risk by human folly. Obama envisions a world without nuclear weapons, based on a speech made last April to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (for you Googlers, it's available at http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fpccga/).

Obama suggests new nukes would be prohibited and old nuclear stockpiles would be secured and dealt down. Clinton? She famously reserves the option to bomb “enemies” who wish to obtain nukes and fund “friends” who would go nuclear. Yes, one could say she's endorsed the Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn and Perry proposal, but her endorsement, explored in an Oct. 15, 2007, article, available at