Hillary Clinton on nuclear weapons
Citizens for Global Solutions: When I am President, the United States will once again be a leader in reducing the roles and risks of nuclear weapons, and preventing them from falling into the wrong hands. I support the goal of every president from Truman to Clinton of ending nuclear weapons, and I support the effort that Sam Nunn, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz are leading to restore American leadership in this area.
I have opposed the Bush Administration’s plans for the Reliable Replacement Warhead and I have also voted consistently to block funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, “bunker buster,” warhead. The Bush administration has dangerously put the cart before the horse, planning to rush ahead with new nuclear weapons without any considered assessment of what we need these weapons for or what the impact of building them would be on our effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. As President I will seek bipartisan support for a comprehensive nuclear weapons policy that takes into account the need to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent and the critical importance of restoring American leadership on nonproliferation.
As President, I will seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 2009, the tenth year of its initial rejection by the Senate. I will seek to negotiate an accord that substantially and verifiably reduces the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. I will also work to implement near-term steps Secretaries Schultz, Kissinger, Perry and Senator Nunn, including: increasing nuclear warning time, and reducing the danger of accidental or unauthorized launch.
In the Senate, I have introduced the Nuclear Terrorism Prevention Act to accelerate and reinvigorate U.S. efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism. My legislation would increase funding for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative to convert research reactors around the world from highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium and to remove the highly enriched uranium from such facilities. Establishing an international fuel bank that guaranteed secure access to nuclear fuel at reasonable prices would help limit the number of countries that pose proliferation risks.
Comments
This is pretty thin gruel, as are the statements from Edwards and Obama, the others effectively being nonexistent.
The reference to the Nunn et al. initiative is misleading. That group is proposing following the lead of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev toward nuclear abolition. "[B]ipartisan support for a comprehensive nuclear weapons policy that takes into account the need to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent and the critical importance of restoring American leadership on nonproliferation" is not the same thing; it could mean almost anything.
Ratification of the CTBT, reducing the roles of nuclear weapons, increasing nuclear warning time and reducing the danger of accidental or unauthorized launch, and converting research reactors are all good things, but barely a beginning at what needs to be done.
There is no mention of negotiations with the Russians and other nuclear weapon states. Surely this is an essential part of achieving even these minimal goals?
And establishing an international nuclear fuel bank is a good idea, but it must be truly international, not just a US initiative with the word "international" slapped on it.
Posted by: CKR | January 3, 2008 5:28 PM
What I'd like to hear any politician comment on at the moment is: how does all this rhetoric stand in the face of Sibel Edmonds' whistleblowing on an alleged Turkish/Pakistani intelligence services infiltration of the United States nuclear industry in order to transfer American nuclear technology to Pakistan, reported U.S. government collusion at high levels of office complete with black market payments, and the whole affair eventually reaching the attention of the FBI, who was directed to whitewash it?
Sigh.
Nuclear technology seems to be available to anyone with the right friends and the cash. Treason, high crimes and misdemeanors seem to have become the order of the day...
Posted by: PatriotsFan | February 4, 2008 9:15 PM
The "swords into plowshares" approach is simply all that will work.
Failing the conversion of absolutely all nuclear arms worldwide to peaceful means (power plants, etc), the only three possibilities are the maintaining of weaponry, the use of weaponry, or the destruction of weaponry.
It would seem that, publicly, Mrs. Clinton is primarily in favor of maintaining weaponry, "[B]ipartisan support for a comprehensive nuclear weapons policy that takes into account the need to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent..."
Note also that the 'B' in "Bipartisan" is added (sic), which implies that the entire statement lacks the sort of cautious, careful attention to detail that would be expected of any candidate with any initiative whatsoever regarding nuclear weaponry, with exception to its use.
Thus, we have two possibilities toward what to expect from Mrs. Clinton: She will either maintain the same policies and actions in place thus far regarding nuclear weaponry, or she will use the arsenal.
The question we must ask ourselves is this: Could we expect anything else from any candidate, ever, who has not attained an expertise of the weapons, their effects, the policies regarding them (public and classified), as well as how they work as a means of comprehending the processes' requirements for realistic conversion?
Mrs. Clinton is merely another politician in this regard. It would be wise to reflect upon the role played by politicians in the history of nuclear weaponry thus far.
Posted by: Jeremy P. Harford | May 30, 2008 5:27 PM