What a Year It Might Be

Even as the new president and administration struggle to restructure and transform the American economy in 2009, consider this possibility: 2009 could be the year when the two former Cold warriors, America and Russia, decide to make dramatic reductions in nuclear weapons and convene an international conference of all nuclear nations to agree to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

By December 2009, the START I treaty will terminate unless renewed. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty must be reviewed by 2010. And a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been in abeyance for years. These are all relics of the Cold War which, thank God, ended 18 years ago, but there are the framework for more dramatic action.

A year ago four prominent Americans proposed elimination of all nuclear weapons. An international organization has been formed to support this ideal. Both involve conservative figures who, during the Cold War, were not known as leading arms reduction advocates. Clearly, a serious groundswell is forming to collectively embrace a goal few of us ever thought possible -- elimination of the most dangerous instruments of war ever devised by man.

Improvement in the US-Russian relationship is imperative in our own interest. We have many more areas of common interests than we have differences. Climate change, energy security, combating terrorism, pandemic protections, and stopping proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are among these common interests. At the center, however, is the issue of reversing the Cold War competition in nuclear weapons and leading other nations to do likewise.

Some will say "it's the economy, stupid," and thus suggest that nothing else can be done until we recover. But that suggests the United States and its new president can only do one thing at a time. This is flawed thinking. Even while building a new 21st century economy, the Obama administration must look for bold initiatives such as Nuclear Zero that demonstrate we live in a new world and new century featuring entirely new realities and the United States intends to play a new and creative leadership role in it.

This would make 2009 one of the happiest new years of all time.

Comments

[CVignone]

and let us not forget Humor; which we are going to need as we work with new leadership and
each other to fix our Country in 2009.
Is Lionsgate going to produce "Farwell Gorgeous" the hilarious flipside comedy to their
disappointing bio of George Bush,"W"?
Word circulating around movietown is that "Farewell Gorgeous" is so funny a comedy about
George Bush that Lionsgate was afraid to produce it, after they went along with Oliver Stone and produced "W" hoping for the best....Well "W" was a resounding box office flop.
If "Farwell Gorgeous" is produced and turns out to be a domestic and foreign box officer sleeper what a gift for all, especially Lionsgate for 2009, to kickoff the new year with a comedy which
will probably have the world in much needed uproarious laughter.
CVignone

[andycan]

After the Bush disaster touching every aspect of American life, painstaking reconstruction must take place.
As Senator Hart astutely points out, repairing needless damage done to the relationship with nuclear Russia is urgent.
But reestablishing human rights by restoring and reenacting the American constitution is in my view the most pressing necessity, the most urgent task at hand.
Habeas corpus, the privacy of communications, the elimination of secret prisons, the constitutional banning of torture, reinstating illegally fired judges, revising all laws that were abusively distorted by presidential "signing statements", annulling all anti-environmental laws and regulations, having the federal army operate outside the US territory only, reducing the scope of private armies deceptively called "contractors" - if not outright banning them - and many other steps are absolutely called for to make the United States a state of laws, rather than a would-be banana republic.
The whole legal and congressional establishment must work on this urgent task, overriding in my view than all other emergencies -and there are many. Human rights, freedom and democracy should
be the cornerstone of American life. Will the new president and America have the courage to face the evidence?

[oldbrit]

"Human rights, freedom and democracy should be the cornerstone of American life. Will the new president and America have the courage to face the evidence?"

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama answered that question the wrong way when he asked Rick Warren to give the invocation as his inauguration.

[Antifascist-08]

I have a feeling you are going to realize you are wrong about this, someday. It is one thing to talk about being inclusive and welcoming debate and another to live it. As a Democrat, I know a lot of us want to get back at the right wing nuts who have gotten us in this mess, but how do you get anything accomplished if you spend all your time fighting? We have the upper hand now, but the only real change comes when we can quit yelling at each other take a higher path.

Obama has been a mystery to a lot of people because he isn't the normal politician, yet he beat the odds and has raised the level of discourse and hope for all of us. Give turning the other cheek a chance. Let your anger and fear go now that we will have a new atmosphere of kindness.

It takes faith AND courage to make a difference. Its going to take a strong, experienced group of politicians to help Obama make the cultural leap that is before us. He knows that. He has also made it clear that he will make the final decisions.

Lets not play into the wing nuts hands by lowering the level of faith and moral and ethical actions to their level. Rick Warren has had to reassess his positions and actually defend himself without Obama firing a shot. Who comes out on top with that? We all do.

[Netizen]

Unfortunately; it does not appear that Mr. Obama is you hope "bold." I worked very hard to help get him elected as the best of the field (which is a pitiful comment on the state of our democracy), but it seems to me he deals in platitudes, not action. Further, he has assembled a team of hawks. He betrayed his base in appointing Clinton whose militarism we gave are hard-earned money to defeat. All indications are that he will lead us into quagmire in Afghanistan, and many lives will be lost unnecessarily.

As he seems content not to ruffle feathers and coast on charisma and the hopes of others, I hold out little optimism that he will tackle thorny nukes problems in a creative and assertive way.

[oldbrit]

Quite right. You cannot be a leader and you cannot have integrity or character when your primary concern is to be popular with as many people as possible.

[guajiro]

I think Obama is confusing being both black and white with being both Democrat and Republican. Hence his appointments. I too gave very hard-earned money to see pro-war Hillary defeated, only to see him appoint her Secretary of State. I'll work just as hard to see him defeated if there is no progress on the progressive agenda by summer 09.

[oldbrit]

Gary:

The fundamental issue that keeps this stuff going is denying equal human and civil rights for all. Instead we indulge our prejudices - which are used by the rich and powerful to divide humanity and wreck whatever damage they believe is required to satisfy their own greed by depriving the less powerful the resources required for a basic and decent life.

They do this by playing on our gluttony, greed, and envy to convince us that equal human rights, civil rights, freedom and justice are in short supply and that anything someone else has is something they have taken away from us.

The rich and powerful created the current economic catastrophe to scoop up an even bigger share of the world's wealth for themselves.

If we expect to fix the problems, we must simultaneously work for equal human rights, civil rights, freedom and justice for all -- which is a birthright and a fundamental aspiration of each and every person on this planet.

As long as we deny this birthright, those denied will continue to fight for their rights and our own greed, gluttony, and envy will be exploited at the expense of peace, prosperity, and the survival of the human race.

For example, Some claim gays shouldn't have their birthright or should stop being selfish by demanding their rights while the economy and the environment are in a shambles and we are at war.

This denial of rights to some guarantees the rich and powerful will continue to

[bronceye]

I think that it was Condeleeza who asked "Who could have imagined that Russia had nukes?"

[edva]

"Beware the military-industrial complex". You know it's bad when you get that warning from a person with Eisenhower's credentials. War and weaponization are huge business, with a seemingly endless supply of victims. And an insatiable desire for more and more money. Always more money.

So, the solution to the madness must include we the public forcing our "leaders" to stop taking us into war, and to stop giving weapons dealers a blank check. We need to remove the incentives.

Can that be done? As I said, we will have to force our "leaders" to do it. But, it's either that, or perish.

[shamanbart]

I agree -- cutting the defense budget from $ 500 billion to something like $ 250 billion would be a start. Creating a multnational treaty to outlaw the export of a variety of weapons systems to MidEast, African and Asian countries would be a good next step.

Invest the money saved by decreased weapons manufacturing to instead fund wind turbine, solar panel, computer, battery systems and geothermal equipment manufacturing.

[guajiro]

In other words, do what Bill Clinton did in the 90's; reduced the size of the military by two-thirds, invested heavily in America's education, farming, infrastructure, etc. Trouble is the same blubbering idjets that voted for Bush, EVEN AFTER the economy was hot, are still around.

[retrocozayshin]

On the surface this seems like a no-brainer great idea. But what might happen if a country manages to keep their program in secret and build up an arsenal? That would make them an unchecked threat to the entire world that could bring the globe to it's knees. Also, wars would get pretty huge once again à la WW2 without the nuclear deterrent. I'm more concerned about the former though. I just don't see how we can eliminate the actual knowledge from existence. Someone else will build one, and they could and most likely would be insane. As was the US when it created the bomb.

[wallyone]

I am totally in support of the elimination of nuclear weapons. Reagan might have done it had it not been for Richard Perle lurking during the Iceland summit with Gorbachev. We do not need these weapons to accomplish any of our military objectives. We dominate the world without them.

We once had a crazy notion that we needed the10,000 warheads we had on hand. Now we have around 6,000. I think having 3 or 4 would be just as effective, and help the world move towards zero.

[bayside]

What the year might be. A sane president that listens to both sides (hear that Hillary) and finds out what is really going on..Obama has a rare moment as he is respected as a fair man right now..Lets see if he deserves that position..Listening has been sore lacking in our govt,

[Norge]

Total illimination of nuclear weapons is in the long term earths' only option. Though there are perhaps those who would prefere to have nuclear weapons and newtron weapons for population control. Wars of the 20th century had the effects of a form of population control and eliminated more than 120million human beings and countless other life forms from bacteria,plants and vertabra animals to reptiles.

Thousands of species are going extinct daily and earth is in the 6th great extinction period so it would be wise of humans to do all within their power to eliminate the greatest of threats other than climate changes which are wars and all its' side effects and consequences.

Rolf Krogsæther

[wdw505]

"extinct daily?" so what is scheduled for today?

[Norge]

wdw505

http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/ will help you perhaps have a deeper realization of how fragil and precarious existance on earth has become. Use your time to read it and it may just save your life.

[teasley]

Thousands daily? nice call Darwin. By all means lets just scrap our nuclear weapons. We can trust North Korea, Iran etc. to not persue nuclear arms. Just think, we can all live in peace and harmony. "Peace in our time"

[neoprimordial]

There is no regression from knowledge. It's a probable impossibility to ensure that no country has any nuclear weapons at all, and what do you do about a condition where the country has the components and the know-how to put together a weapon in a week, a month, or a year, but currently that country has no nuclear weapons assembled? How do you ensure that all the countries in the world are adhering to Nuclear Zero without intolerable breaches in their security and sovereignty, and how do you do it with a country that is actively working against such intrusions? How do you do it with countries like North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq? If a country has the know-how and materials to build just one nuclear weapon, it can never go back to being virgin, short of being utterly annihilated.

In my opinion we have to find a way of co-existing with this knowledge of nuclear power because it's very likely not going away any time in the near future, and it's virtually guaranteed to become ever more widespread. We as the human race need to have détente with it until we're good enough as human beings to rise above the notion of using it as a weapon. The idea of Nuclear Zero is something for the future, when the human race has learned to trust itself. I see this as a clear impracticality if not an impossibility now.

[nomoredead]

I'm sure with our intelligence agencies if we discovered a rogue nation like North Korea, Iran or Israel breaking the treaty we could surgically remove the site with a drone or fighter jet.

[shamanbart]

Perhaps the only way to make nuclear weapons disappear is to make them obsolete by creating a nearly perfect defense system to counter any delivered nuclear weapon. That's kind of a tall order, but if nuclear weapons are not deliverable, they lose their value.

Until that day comes, nations would need to agree to dismantle a large majority of their nukes and agree to onsite inspections by a UN-sanctioned agency -- the U.S. included. That would be more do-able, though still quite a reach.

[ClearLight49]

Yah, we tried that. It was called SDI. Technology STILL isn't there.

[haramagoti]

The single most important issue facing the earth's inhabitants beyond global warming.

[Pyrum]

Wake up! Every single environmental issue, from GMOs to the spread of depleted uranium in the middle east to the jungles of plastics sitting in the ocean, are all far more pressing than global warming. The human caused global warming theory is a myth that gets a lot of mainstream press attention because it's designed to promote restrictions on civil liberties and a single world government.

I'm all in favor of nuclear disarmament, but it doesn't compare to global warming, or a whole lot of other stuff we hear about in the mainstream media, either.

[toosinbeymen]

I wish I believed it was possible but such an action would be contrairy to 10,000 years of human behavior. Is there one previous case were we have destroyed a weapon technology? I doubt it but would love to be proven wrong.

[TJCole]

Every indication from Gates and now also Putin is that they want to buy and develop, and are buying new Nuclear Warheads...

The peoples of Russia and America should unite to stop this waste and dangerous insanity...!

[Edzero]

TJCole

You are right on.

If the ordinary people of the world do not
learn to talk to each other and short circuit the macho,
ego-maniacs who sit in bubbles atop their governments,
the madness will continue.

The people of the planet have been dumbed down to
the point of feeling, they have no say in what goes on
in their name.

Unless and until that changes, it will be same oh,
same oh.

[TJCole]

Thanks, perhaps a website for Russians and Americans to communicate to each other and help create a movement to stop further nuclear proliferation within our nations which already have huge arsenals would be a beginning...

Both or economies are hurting and wasting billions on more nuclear weapons when we have 10,000 strategic warheads and they have around 5,500 many with higher yield or mega-tonage than ours even, is pure insanity and any reasonable educated Russian or American should realize this..then we take to the streets on the same dates to help stop this insanity..!

[guajiro]

Peace be with you Mr. Hart. The technology to make the nuclear weapon has become easier to acquire and build now that the Internet facilitates the knowledge of how to do it. The winner of the status quo? The terrorists. It is to their advantage that nothing be done about stopping information on how to acquire and build nukes. Within the next 5 yrs, at least one, and more likely several, terrorist organizations will acquire nukes. We can kiss Tel Aviv, Washington DC, and New York goodbye right away. Those in power in the West and who control the world's finances, will lose power overnight. To avoid this fiasco to the wealthy, it is necessary to eliminate ALL information regarding nukes on the web and elsewhere, so it is essential that all nuke capable countries agree. Unfortunately Gary, the wealthy will NEVER give away their power.