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Ho hum, McNamara blames U.S.

Posted by Richard on May 6, 2005

Charles at LGF seems to be astonished by Robert McNamara’s new Foreign Policy article arguing that the only way to avoid nuclear catastrophe is for the US to disarm:

India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Russia still has thousands of them. North Korea probably has at least one or two. Iran is rushing to join the nuclear club, and recent discoveries in Arab countries like Libya and Egypt make it clear that the Arab Middle East wants in too.

But at Foreign Policy, Robert S. McNamara expresses the view of the inverted-reality-based community, saying it’s the United States that can’t be trusted, and the only way we can be safe is to begin disarming immediately: Apocalypse Soon. (Hat tip: hrw.)

Dutifully, I clicked through to the Foreign Policy article. I read the intro:

Robert McNamara is worried. He knows how close we’ve come. His counsel helped the Kennedy administration avert nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, he believes the United States must no longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. To do so is immoral, illegal, and dreadfully dangerous.

The article itself began thusly:

It is time—well past time, in my view—for the United States to cease its Cold War-style reliance on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. At the risk of appearing simplistic and provocative, I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high. Far from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has signaled that it is committed to keeping the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a mainstay of its military power…

I noted that the article went on for five pages and decided it was surely not worth it. Returning to LGF, I saw that Charles was taken aback by McNamara’s line of thinking:

Is McNamara actually suggesting that if the US were only to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, we’d have nothing to fear from a nuclear Al Qaeda? That Osama bin Laden is a big fan of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? That Egypt and Syria would give up their nuclear aspirations if we played nice?

Well, sure. And to anyone familiar with McNamara, it should come as no surprise.

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