At best, this is a prescription for unilateral U.S. restraint. It is more accurate to say, however, that ? given the corrosive effect of obsolescence on the safety, reliability and credibility of our aging nuclear arsenal ? it amounts to unilateral disarmament. As such, it is of a piece with the Kerry voting record in the Senate. For twenty years, the Senator has embraced a succession of hare-brained initiatives including the ?nuclear freeze,? cuts in American nuclear programs and their delivery systems and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Fortunately, his positions have been consistently rejected by a majority of his colleagues. (Not surprisingly, Sen. Kerry rated a ?zero? in the Center for Security Policy?s just-released National Security Scorecard.)
By contrast, the Bush Administration has formulated a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that envisions maintaining the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear stockpile by retiring older weapons and modernization, restoring the critically important nuclear industrial base and introducing anti-missile and other defenses against nuclear attack. Ronald Reagan called this approach ?Peace through Strength.? It may not be a sufficient condition to today?s nuclear threats, but it is certainly a necessary one.
o Rewarding proliferators? Senator Kerry insists that he wants to negotiate directly with North Korea in the hope of persuading it to give up its nuclear arms. This despite the fact that his advisors and others in the Clinton Administration conclusively established the futility of this exercise in previous bilateral deals struck with Pyongyang. Such deals left the latter with the capability to build the handful of nuclear weapons it now is believed to have deployed ? and perhaps others it says are on offer to those with the cash to buy them.
Worse yet, Sen. Kerry and his running mate are willing to reprise this dismal experience with another nuclear wannabe, Iran. They profess a willingness to give Iran what North Korea got on its own, weapons-useable nuclear fuel. Messrs. Kerry and Edwards say they want to ?test? whether the mullahs are being truthful about wanting nothing more than nuclear energy ? as if the falsity of this claim is still in any doubt. Should the mullahs, like Kim Jong-il, actually want weapons, we are told the Democratic ticket would lead the world in imposing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime.
President Bush has already established that Iran?s friends (notably, Russia, China and the Europeans) are more inclined to enable Iranian nuclear ambitions than punish them. The Kerry-Edwards plan would only serve to facilitate the former. Mr. Bush understands the folly of going that route. He is giving the UN a chance to resolve this danger but recognizes that regime change is likely to prove once again the only way to prevent it from metastasizing.
o Securing Russia?s ?Loose Nukes?? Sen. Kerry claims he will do better than President Bush at getting the former Soviet Union?s nuclear and other WMD under control, apparently by throwing more U.S. money at the problem. Unfortunately, the Russian government seems not nearly as worried about the proliferation threat posed by such weapons ? even in the face of its own terrorist menace. Otherwise, Russia?s new oil windfall would surely be applied to securing its arsenal. The Bush realists recognize that, as long as this is the case, Sen. Kerry?s posturing about an accelerated solution to this problem is more loose talk than real relief from Russia?s loose nukes.
Wishful thinking about curbing proliferation through unverifiable treaties, fraudulent negotiations and sweetheart deals with despots has done much to bring us to the point where, today, proliferation is such a foremost concern. Do we really want ? or can we really afford ? as Sen. Kerry is wont to say, ?More of the same??