National Security and START Matter to Iowans

“As former chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell recently said about nuclear weapons, “They
serve no useful purpose.”

Should Iowans care that Russian President Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama reached agreement in the New START treaty last week on reduction of the number of nuclear weapons in their respective arsenals? Does it matter that verification regimes have been strengthened and the national security is enhanced? Would improved relations with Russia make life tangibly better for Iowans? Would signing the treaty bring the parties into alignment to apply international pressure on rogue nuclear states like Iran and North Korea? The answer to these questions is yes, but a person would not know it. Yes, the START Treaty is relevant to Iowans.

The extent to which the threat of nuclear weapons has been eclipsed by the commonplace was highlighted by President Obama during his trip to Iowa City on March 25. The President referred to the “nuclear football,” (a black briefcase, the contents of which is to be used by the President of the United States of America to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room), as “a big satchel with all kinds of important stuff in there.” He used it as a rhetorical device to refer to the military officer who was carrying it that day to invoke his Iowa connection. To manage our sanity, a person does not need to constantly be thinking about nuclear annihilation. To use the nuclear football as a rhetorical device demonstrates how much the concern for the nuclear threat has faded in the popular imagination.

For me, serving in the cold war military brought the nuclear threat as close to reality as it gets. I was stationed as an Army officer in Mainz, Germany as part of the 8th Infantry Division. Our mission was to defend the Fulda Gap, which was the place Soviet Divisions were expected to invade Western Europe. We had tactical nuclear weapons in the theater and we were trained in what to do should one be detonated on the battlefield. We pulled guard duty on nuclear weapons depots and helped move nuclear warheads from place to place around the country. The officers who would prepare the weapons for detonation were specially trained and had a special security clearance.

It does not take much to envision how things could escalate. First one side would explode a tactical nuclear weapon. The other side retaliates. If the nuclear attacks would continue, it is easy to see how it could escalate into a full thermonuclear engagement. With mutually assured destruction, the engagement could end life as we know it on earth. Nuclear war was as real as getting into our cars and driving to the office. We all took it very seriously as we lived through it. After that experience, it became clear to many soldiers that there is no need for nuclear weapons on the modern battlefield. As former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell recently said about nuclear weapons, “They serve no useful purpose.”

So what stake do Iowans have in the START treaty? To the extent that we care about our national security, the number of nuclear weapons in the world matters. Russia and the United States have the largest number and the existence of nuclear weapons in our respective arsenals causes risk more than security. It is important that these states work to reduce their inventories. If we consider the endgame of a thermonuclear engagement, it seems unlikely that either party would launch an attack in a post Cold War era. The risk is in rogue states and terrorists who seek nuclear weapons. As long as nuclear weapons exist, there is a chance bad folks will obtain one and detonate it in a terrorist act.

In April we expect President Obama to release his nuclear posture review, a document prepared by the Pentagon that outlines the administration’s view of the role of nuclear weapons in our national security. There are Iowans that say the administration is not moving quickly enough to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. They say START does not reduce nuclear weapons enough. I submit that signing START is just one step towards nuclear disarmament.

As President Medvedev and President Obama meet in Prague on April 8 to sign the START treaty, the world will be watching them take the next step towards a world without nuclear weapons. It is a journey that has been slow, but deliberate and merits our support because national security matters to Iowans.

~Paul
Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County and weekend
editor of Blog for Iowa. He is also a member of Iowa Physicians for
Social Responsibility and Veterans for Peace. E-mail Paul
Deaton