Charlie Rose

salgadoce  08/18/2010 05:35 PM Report

Just watching Bender recount his meeting with politicians and power brokers with such giddiness and delight, I can't help but question his motivations for pursuing such a 'sexy' cause as nuclear non-proliferation.

Is he really invested in the issue, or does he just want to rub shoulders with those who wield such destructive power? I think he's in it for the glory.

As to the New START Treaty? Please. It's penny-pinching cost-containment at its finest. It's meant to reduce wasteful, pointless, and redundant Pentagon spending; that's why the US has already implemented reductions without the treaty even being ratified. It's not meant specifically to control warhead counts; it's meant specifically to control warhead costs.

But, hey, if you can win some easy political points and paint the treaty as a victory for the 'free world' and please the non-proliferation sycophants out there - why not?

REMant  08/09/2010 02:15 PM Report

We've been having this discussion for several decades now, and with respect to naval and other forces for most of the last century, but it has come to nothing, and the best we can hope for is a balance of power and a consciousness of the consequences of their use, altho the latter is not really as important as the former, and, indeed, probably dependent on it, for it is hard to convince a bully without standing up to him. Defense is necessary, tho wars are not. I would think it better if everyone had weapons than just a few. If Japan had had a way to retaliate we would not have dropped the atomic bombs instead of accepting their surrender offer. Tho they were conceived by Byrne and Truman as a counter to the Soviets, the fact remains we developed them because we had to, but we used them, because we could. I might add this was not the attitude of either MacArthur or Eisenhower.

The greater danger exists when power internally is out of kilter as in the early years of the Yeltsin regime, and I think we are a lot better off today in that respect. I doubt Stalin, for all his ruthlessness, and most likely because of it, would have attacked Germany, whose regime, on the other hand, had made war almost a necessity. Nevertheless, in simple scale the so-called rogue regimes today pose a lot less risk and "terrorists" even less, dirty bombs notwithstanding, and I am not sure why many ppl do not understand that. Perhaps they have just transferred their paranoia to other targets.

The question has its parallel in the intricate debate over mercantilism. Free traders believed that men would behave according to their interest, that indeed it was designed that way by God, so that we would realize our dependence on each other, while the mercantilists adopted the notion that men being inherently selfish, commerce required generosity, charity, benevolence, etc., which they mistook for virtue. In the 19th c this faction decided the economic problem was the existence of gold, and so they tried to eliminate the temptation in the same way ppl have wanted to ban guns, bombs, and wars. They ended up ironically stimulating hoarding and stopping production, engendering useless activity and general poverty. Gold, however, kept us honest, and banning the weapons of war will likewise undoubtedly only serve to increase conflict.