Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Obama Is Hurting Nonproliferation R. James Woolsey, International Herald Tribune

Obama Is Hurting Nonproliferation

R. James Woolsey, International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON — There are three ways in which I believe recent decisions by the Obama administration are, unintentionally, actually fostering the proliferation of nuclear weapons rather than constraining them.

When judging the various policies President Obama has put forth in recent weeks to move toward zero nuclear weapons, we should bear in mind the old dictum of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. — to really understand the law, “look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict.”

First, the president and others have proposed to enhance nonproliferation by sequestering nuclear material into one international depository. The idea is that those who need enriched uranium for peaceful means can obtain it from...
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1 comment:

  1. Woolsey is right that you can't realistically seal it off from bomb development. But in pushing nuclear power around the world Obama is just doing what every president since Eisenhower has done. And in trying to restrain the military side has also been a long term US goal, the biggest reduction coming under George I (for which he should get a lot more credit than he does). Woolsey's notion that we need nuclear weapons to respond to bio threats or chemical weapons is ridiculous. Altogether Woolsey seems to be reaching to blame Obama, as if he were making some radical changes in civilian and military nuclear policy. The problem with Obama is that he has been too much tied to conventional thinking, witness his support of the US-India deal.

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