They say strategy led by DoD policy wonks could lead to dangerous nuclear escalation.
I feel a bit more hopeful now after reading that not all of the military top brass are hellbent on world war? KV
The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), to be released Friday, will include a call for the deployment of low-yield, “more usable” nuclear warheads, a move widely anticipated when a draft of the document was leaked to the Huffington Post on January 11. So while the recommendations won’t necessarily be a surprise, what is less public is the bitter battle during its drafting that pitted senior Army and Navy warriors against nuclear wonks inside the Defense Department. That fight—over the exorbitant costs associated with the NPR, and charges that it could make nuclear war more likely—are bound to continue through implementation.
“It’s one thing to write a policy,” a senior Pentagon civilian privy to the NPR fight told The American Conservative, “and it’s another thing to have it implemented. What the NPR is recommending will break the bank, and a lot of people around here are worried that making nuclear weapons more usable isn’t what we should be doing. The conventional military guys have dug in their heels, they’re dead-set against it. This battle isn’t over.”
Or, perhaps, whether the NPR’s recommendations will actually be implemented will come down to politics—and Donald Trump. “Listen,” a senior nuclear thinker and NPR critic told The American Conservative, “the story you won’t hear is how this really came about. And here’s how it happened. One day, Sean Hannity got on television and talked about how we need more nuclear weapons and Donald Trump heard this and went over to the Pentagon and presto, we got Keith Payne and his crew. That’s the truth, and that’s what got us to where we are.”
The last word in this debate comes from Huessy, who pushes back hard against the “Sean Hannity nuclear program” claim. “Accusing Trump of running around the world threatening the use of nuclear weapons is simply not true, and it’s unconscionable to say so,” he told The American Conservative in a wide ranging interview. “This NPR is in line with what three previous presidents have done. Upgrading and modernizing wasn’t Trump’s idea, it was Obama’s.
More here -
No comments:
Post a Comment