Politics: Business as Usual

Politicians have always specialized in empty promises. One of the most recent noteworthy remarks was given by Obama in reference to his proposed nuclear policy for the United States:

We will make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy.

While I suppose that it is perfectly possible that the US could eliminate its arsenal of nuclear weapons, I hardly think that Russia and China would be interested in following suit. If you have any doubts, check out the following links: here and here. The Russians certainly aren't up for this sort of policy. The Department of Defense's figures for China's nuclear stockpile can be found here. China's only stated policies that I could find are that they won't shoot first and that they won't use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not possess nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, nuclear weapons will remain a necessary weapon until either we have some more powerful weapon to replace them, or the major countries have sufficient anti-missile systems to make the use of nuclear ICBMs impractical. It would be nice if all countries followed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but in practice we can only control our own behavior. Countries that do not like us can always give nuclear technology to warmongering countries. So, nice try, Obama. That is a nice campaign promise to make, but nuclear weapons are here to stay, at least for awhile.