Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Nuclear Disarmament Would Make U.S. Undisputed Arms Champ

By Russ Wellen



The Interpreter, the blog for Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy, is hosting a debate on whether or not nuclear deterrence is still relevant (assuming it ever was). In his contribution, George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace made an extraordinary statement.

US interest in nuclear disarmament stems from the perception that a world without nuclear weapons would give it a greater advantage against others that might threaten it or its allies.�The others -- particularly China, Russia and North Korea -- recognize this! They see the Obama agenda as a means of strengthening the US advantage.�Hence they (and Pakistan) are likely to impede nuclear disarmament.�How does this weaken extended nuclear deterrence?
By "stems from," Perkovich seems to be saying that the elimination of nuclear weapons allows the indisputable supremacy of U.S. conventional weapons to assume pride of place in global security. Without the great equalizer of nuclear weapons, the United States, with all its might, would no longer be liable to ransom by an "irrational actor" -- from a North Korean dictator to a terrorist group -- possessing only one or two nuclear weapons while the United States still retains thousands.



Let's be charitable and assume that by "stems from," Perkovich doesn't rule out other motivations the United States might have for seeking the abolition of nuclear weapons -- like exponentially reducing the number of people it might lose in an attack. (Sorry, just don't have the time to comb through his writings to confirm that). But, considering his position in the mainstream arms control world, Perkovich's cynicism is eye-opening.



Yet, when it comes to nuclear disarmament, there are even more cynical depths to which one can sink. As is apparent to those who read him, this author believes that what passes for disarmament -- for example, New START -- is actually a smokescreen behind which the U.S. nuclear weapons program is retrenching for the long haul.



I believe that the eyes of China, Russia, North Korea, and especially Iran are also open to U.S. intentions. They're troubled by more than the notion that the United States seeks to abolish nuclear weapons because it makes states with nominal nuclear arsenals (if any can be referred to as such) theoretically equal to the larger, more "rational" nuclear-weapon states. Even more disturbing to them is the sight of a United States that talks a good game about disarmament but plans to spend $180 billion over the next decade on its nuclear industrial complex.



First posted at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

1 comment:

  1. Here's the theoretical problem, for me, with the notion of nuclear deterrence. We will supposedly retaliate against any nuclear attacker, with a nuclear attack. They will supposedly refrain from nuclear attack knowing the cost of a counterattack is too high.
    In other words, we must believe our adversary is reasonable, and bases its actions on a clear-headed cost-benefit analysis. They must believe that we are mad bastards, who are more than willing to incinerate millions of innocent people, possibly causing a nuclear winter that will kill ourselves along with our enemies, and that we will do all this for spite.
    One or both of those beliefs is false.

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