Re: “Nuke plan will weaken defense,” April 8 editorial.
Your editorial board meeting in preparation of this editorial must have been an interesting one. You give all the political arguments as to why a new doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons makes eminent diplomatic sense and then come out against it.
Even if we wished to reserve the option of bombing the Russians, Chinese, and a few other countries off the map of civilization, everyone who knows anything about nuclear weapons knows we have a lot more of them than we need and that, if attacked, we will use them. This more intelligent approach to nuclear deterrence would not have been announced without the full support of the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
It is difficult to imagine a country that intends to attack us with weapons of mass destruction, period, but even more difficult to imagine such a country not expecting a full and complete retaliatory attack in return. The facts of modern life dictate that if weapons of mass destruction are used against us, it will be carried out by some stateless nation, or so-called non-state actor, such as a terrorist group. Al-Qaeda does not fear nuclear weapons for the simple reason that they are, as we discovered on 9/11, no deterrent to terrorism.
As to the separate issue of new generations of nuclear warheads, which you confusingly co-mingle with the new posture review, the administration has announced significant increases in funding for our nuclear laboratories in part to improve our ability to design new warheads, when and if required, using very advanced computer technologies.
All presidents over the past half- century have known, as the current one does, that reduction of unnecessary stockpiles of unusable nuclear weapons, now especially in the age of potential nuclear terrorism, makes us stronger, not weaker and that taking a responsible and mature step back from Cold War, hair-trigger nuclear warfare is crucial for U.S. world leadership.
Gary Hart is a former U.S. senator from Colorado. He lives in Kittredge.
