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Mintz on National Security/Foreign Policy
Balls of plutonium little bigger than softballs, or comparably tiny dirty bombs — which pack radioactive materials around regular explosive devices — could cause staggering death and destruction.
Why have we spent about $90 billion, and plan to spend tens of billions more, on an unproved national missile defense to protect us from an unproved threat, while spending only $1 billion to defend us from a very real and extremely immediate threat: terrorists acquiring balls of plutonium or dirty bombs that they could bring into the United States in suitcases or in the millions of cargo containers arriving at our seaports every year?
The United States and Russia continue to point at each other about 4,000 nuclear missiles that are fueled, armed, targeted, and ready to fire minutes after receiving a couple of computer signals. An unauthorized action or a false warning could send them aloft, threatening the planet. And Russia's early-warning and command system, experts emphasize, has steadily deteriorated, heightening risks of an unintended false alarm. Terrorists know these things.
Should we and the Russians — supposed friends — continue to keep on hair-trigger alert nuclear missiles with a combined destructive power several tens of thousands of time greater than that of the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima? What's to stop terrorists from tricking early-warning systems to set off a false alarm and response and thus take us to — or ove — the brink of nuclear war? What's to stop terrorists from causing an unauthorized launch by hacking into missile-launch circuits or into the communications network used to command strategic missiles?
The United States and Russia have 96 percent of the world's 30,000 nuclear weapons. Our friends and allies have most of the remaining 4 percent. Pakistan's and India's together account for well under one percent. China's one percent includes 20 long-range missiles that could hit the United States, as against more than 6,000 U.S. nuclear weapons that could hit China. North Korea possibly has a couple of weapons but no missiles or planes capable of dropping them on U.S. targets. Iran and the other so-called proliferant states do not yet possess a single nuclear bomb. Yet 99 percent of our nuclear weapons' budget, planning, targeting, and operational activities still revolves around the scenario of a war with Russia.
If we'd take Russia off our enemy list, what justification would remain for spending tens of billions of dollars a year to operate and upgrade our 10,650 nuclear bombs? Wouldn't a small fraction of that number cover all plausible nuclear threats to us, and our allies and interests overseas? Why are we planning to build a new factory to produce hundreds of plutonium triggers annually? Thinking about resuming nuclear testing to ensure the reliability of aging bombs? About developing new bunker busters, each with one-third the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima?
Blocking access to weapons of mass destruction was the prime U.S. rationale for the Iraq war. But huge numbers of WMDs are insecure around the world. Thousands are in Russia, where officials confirmed at least two episodes in 2001 of terrorist reconnaissance of storage sites for nuclear warheads. In 22 countries nuclear reactors have enough highly enriched uranium to make at least one bomb.
How would you cope with this challenge to world stability?
Has the war in Iraq created terrorists and increased the risk of terrorist acts against the United States?
Has the war in Iraq diverted attention and resources from al Quaeda?
Are we in a quagmire in Iraq?
How would you overcome the extraordinary low-level of approval, support and esteem that the United States has today around the world?
The 9-11 commission's final report warns that Osama bin Laden's ultimate goal of is not merely to change the governments of the United States and other countries. He and his fellow revolutionaries want to wipe out the U.S. and other nation-states and envision a modern version of the Prophet Mohammed as ruler of an Muslim world composed of 1.2 billion people in 53 countries Bin Laden, the report says, "offers his 'Caliphate' as an imagined alternative to today's uncertainty."
Do you see a danger of a clash of civilizations with the world of Islam? If you do, how would you defuse it?
Your ambassador-at-large for war-crimes issues said in April that "[b]eing a witness to genocide is not an option. Saving lives is a moral obligation of all nations and all individuals . . . we should always choose to act rather than hope that with time reason will prevail." In Sudan's Darfur region, what Secretary of State Powell calls "genocide" has taken 50,000 lives and left at least 1.2 million people homeless. Six thousand to 10,000 people are dying from violence and disease every month.
Should we have intervened early on to stop this genocide? Should we intervene now? Does our nonintervention signal that we won't intervene in future genocides?
In combating terrorism, what target goal would you set for yourself to achieve in a four-year term as president?
When Americans cast their vote for President, in the judgment of many nations, they alone will be simultaneously voting for even a higher office: Leader of the Western World.
In that exalted capacity, what would you personally champion as your greatest priority?
In 2002, a World Health Organization commission estimated that if rich countries invested about $25 billion annually in disease-prevention and treatment in poor countries, they could prevent around 8 million deaths a year. The U.S. share would be about $8 billion, or roughly four times what we're investing now.
Should the United States invest the $8 billion while urging other countries to invest the remaining $17 billion?
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