2010 January Bulletin

Op Ed: Fund the surge, trim the defense bill’s fat
By Lawrence J. Korb and Laura Conley | Boston Globe | January 6, 2010

...In his West Point speech, Obama argued that we must “maintain balance among national priorities,’’ and that we can’t ignore the price of these wars, because America’s economic and technological vigor underpins our ability to play a more secure world role. Increasing defense spending on items that do not maintain this balance or help us play a more secure role in the world will not move us in that direction. Obama should just say no to the Pentagon, particularly since the country has a $12 trillion national debt that is equivalent to 53 percent of its gross domestic product.

I'm afraid that the past 10 years will be seen as a time when the United States badly lost its way by using our military power carelessly, misunderstanding the real challenges to our long-term security and pursuing domestic policies that constrained our options for the future while needlessly threatening our prosperity.

$57,077.60. That’s what we’re paying per minute. Keep that in mind -- just for a minute or so.

If men have largely built the world’s nuclear arsenals, a small corps of women is working to dismantle them...

The so-called Nuclear Posture Review, led by the Pentagon... is shaping up to be a major showdown for Obama this year. It is taking on some of the most sacred cows of the nuclear program. For the first time, influential voices, including a former top nuclear commander and senior Obama advisers, are proposing that one leg of the nuclear arms “triad’’ - a $30 billion-a-year enterprise made up of land-, air-, and sea-based weapons - be eliminated.

Another historic change under consideration is adopting a “no-first-use’’ policy, a public declaration stating the United States would not use nuclear weapons first, a step long advocated by arms control advocates who believe it would reduce the incentive for other nations to develop nuclear weapons.

If Russia and the United States can send the world a clear signal that they are serious about nuclear disarmament by getting a new pact to shrink their Cold War stockpiles, the NPT may get a new lease on life when its 189 signatories gather to discuss ways of closing what some see as dangerous loopholes.

President Obama had hoped to announce a deal with Russia this week to extend the 1991 nuclear arms treaty known as Start and make some modest additional cuts in both sides’ arsenals. On Friday, negotiators were still stuck on how to verify the agreement, and American officials are now saying it won’t be done at least until January.

Today’s idea: Why should we expect a world without nuclear weapons to be safer than one with them? It’s time to think through the “hair-trigger” scenarios that nuclear abolition could bring about, says a Nobel-winning academic.

Those of us who were in Iraq for the surge of 2007 and who have fought in Afghanistan can pretty much predict how the war in the latter nation will unfold.