I was reviewing my academic bio recently, and discovered that the very first article I ever published was called "Security, Sin, and Nuclear Weapons." The year was 1987. Twenty-three years later, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, security, sin and nuclear weapons remain concerns that are as relevant as ever.
The issue on the table is a nuclear arms reduction and verification treaty between the United States and Russia. The treaty, called New START, would reduce Russian and American deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 and delivery vehicles to 700 each. This would be a 33 percent reduction in the existing arsenals, which is worth achieving and celebrating even as we know that countless cities and millions of precious human beings could be destroyed by the use of even part of the remaining arsenals. Still, these reductions would be a great step on the way to a safer world, as would the re-establishment of bilateral, intrusive verification measures for both sides, also part of the treaty.
This treaty has been signed, sealed and delivered by Russia and the U.S. and now sits on the floor of the United States Senate, which must muster 67 votes to approve it. The treaty has been the subject of more than 209 committee hearings, and was recommended for approval by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a bipartisan 14-4 vote in September. It is supported by, well, just about everyone who matters in the foreign policy establishment. It has unanimous support from the current uniformed military leadership, and bipartisan support from former lawmakers and top security officials from the last seven presidential administrations, including old hawks like Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and Sam Nunn.
So what's the problem? The treaty is being held up by a small number of Republican senators, led by Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who purport to be concerned that it does not adequately provide for the modernization of our nuclear weapons complex. Others express concern that the treaty will curtail our missile defense options or that its verification procedures are inadequate. President Obama has offered tens of billions in spending increases for these (disastrous, evil, unusable) weapons to meet the objections offered on that score, but so far there is no budging. It is hard not to conclude that the primary motivation for opposing the treaty is to hurt the president or oppose the Administration's foreign policy in general.
Nuclear weapons present one of the gravest threats to the human future that has ever existed. Here is the combination of human creativity and human fear incarnate. We build these weapons to secure our future but also know, as if in a nightmare we try our hardest to forget, that one miscalculation or one acquisition of nuclear weapons by a committed terrorist could unleash annihilation on millions. It is hard to think of a more profound symbol of human sinfulness.
Nuclear treaties like New START represent an agonizingly slow human crawl-back from the ledge of our own destruction. In the tiniest baby steps we learn to live over time with somewhat fewer of these devices, which if ever used will destroy us and our children. We have come a long way from the hottest days of the coldest war, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union each aimed 25,000 weapons at each other and scanned the skies and computer screens for possible preemptive strikes, red buttons at the ready. That was absurd, and where we are is still absurd, but this treaty would at least move us one step down the absurdity ladder.
As a Christian, I believe in a God of life and peace. I believe in a God who nudges us but does not compel us toward choices that are in our own best interests. I also believe that human beings have the capacity and certainly the responsibility to make wise choices when it comes to matters as grave as nuclear weapons. I do not believe in a God who overrides our choices. If we want to step back from the brink of self-destruction, God will help us do so, but if we choose the other path, God will start over with the amoeba. Which shall it be for us?
For the sake of God and humanity and the human future, the Senate must ratify this treaty.
Follow Dr. David P. Gushee on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dpgushee
The New START Treaty and Protocol | The White House
New START - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START)
New START Treaty Hanging in Senate Limbo | United States | Epoch Times
New START treaty: The era of magical thinking | The Economist
YouTube - Weekly Address: New START Treaty "Fundamental" to Security
war in 1983, when there was a false alarm in Russia about a nuclear attack by the US.
It was due a lieutenant general, in charge of the Russian warning system, who had doubts
about this alarm and thus likely saved the world from the mutually assured destruction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Our deterrent capability must be weighed against the threats we face now, not those we overcame in the last century. The question now should be not what we need to dominate Russia, but what we need to overawe all other potential aggressors around the Globe.
If it did, then russia would surely retaliate proportionally on israel.
...and this, my friends is the yellow bellied neocon displaying a mating dance. Unfortunately it is completely unaware that there are no females (or males) of the same species in the area, but that doesn't stop it from strutting and posing for females or displaying threatening plumage for potential male rivals.
Conservation status: Highly endangered. But in this case, we think letting nature and evolution run their courses might not be such a bad idea after all.
Excellent post!
Unless you have verifiable evidence that both assumptions are true, that's called stereotyping.
And if you "hear nothing," can it be because you get all your information from a media that doesn't cover "the religious community" unless it is something controversial, colorful and dramatic -- usually from the Religious Right?
Perhaps you need to expand your awareness of "the religious community," and look into what its various groups thinks on various issues. There are web sites of many religious groups. Don't wait to be told what someone else decides is worth broadcasting.
As a sociological throwback to earlier and darker times.
May I suggest a book that I am reading, it is really answering some questions for me. "Crazy About God" by Frankie Schaffer. It is a biography of sort but it explains how the Conservitive Christians some how became Republicans. It is actually very enlightning. It is an interesting read.
Many Republicans actually "pray" for another 9/11 attack so they can blame the president. If America suffered another attack and thousands were killed, people on the far right like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin etc. would be in heaven.
Limbaugh has even openly stated he wants the President of the United States to fail ( to protect America ).
Their hatred for the president exceeds their love for America.
Don't remember if Limbaugh specified he wanted President Obama to fail on protecting the country -- doubt even Limbaugh would have been that stoopit -- but he did want a massive FAILURE on the part of this Democratic president to succeed in anything.
So I assume Limbaugh would be quite pleased if something happened to look like President Obama failed to protect the country, as well -- whether than means fail to protect from economic recovery, terrorist attack or whatever.
believng in a god of peace flies in the face of human history.
Believing in a anthropomorphic imaginary being flies in the face of rationality.
A higher power does not control our own self destruction.
We as a species do.
You know nothing of Christianity.
Yep, human history proves that extremely well.
Politicians in general but Republicans particularly seem to place what is good for this country fifth behind
1. keeping their congressional seat
2. maintaining as much power for the GOP as possible
3. the rich
4. their religious hypocrisy
On July 16, 1945, the nuclear age began, when the first nuclear bomb was exploded by the American federal government at the Trinity Test Site, in New Mexico. Plutonium and other toxic and radioactive chemicals were dispersed for hundreds of miles and some areas are still contaminated.
In the moment that followed the atomic inferno, Oppenheimer recalled this sentence from the Bhagvad Gita: "Now I have become death, the destroyer of the worlds."
When Oppenheimer was asked for his thoughts regarding Sen. Robert Kennedy's efforts to urge President Lyndon Johnson to initiate talks to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, he responded: "It's 20 years too late. It should have been done the day after Trinity."
Today’s UN-Holy "Trinity" is a triune of radiological horrors: nuclear bombs, nuclear reactors, and conventional Uranium Weapons (such as Depleted Uranium or DU) that are used in military testing, training, and military combat...
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1893&Itemid=239
Nuclear reactors save lives- they replace coal and all its pollutants as baseload power, and they manufacture medical isotopes needed to treat cancer, sterilize food and equipment, and perform many other life-saving functions.
Depleted uranium shells are little different from lead shells, and they're certainly not a radiohazard.
I agree with you otherwise--however, someday we'll run out of nuclear fuel and civilization will end anyway. It's got to end sometime. Sad.