Wellstone on Defense, Again- Part

Wellstone on Defense, Again- Part IV - On the Minnesota Politics mailing list, a correspondent recently cited a remark by Paul Wellsone on the website for the Council for a Liveable World. This utopian-leftist organization has endorsed Minnesota's ultra-liberal senator. They particularly cited his stance on Missile Defense:

"The most important question we must ask ourselves is whether a missile shield will make us more or less secure. I think it is likely to make us
less secure by encouraging Russia to retain more nuclear weapons than it had planned, including ICBM's on hair-trigger alert, thereby increasing the risk of accidental war. Deployment of a missile shield will also spur China to build up its limited nuclear strategic arsenal, which in turn would fuel the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan. These and other potential consequences of building NMD will make the U.S. less, not more secure."

Let's go into "left wing shibboleth" hunting mode:

• "More Secure is really Less Secure" - In the world of the paleo-liberal, the only real security is diplomacy. Never mind that diplomacy has failed to prevent or arrest every major war in history, or that history shows us that diplomacy must be backed up by strength to be effective. Leaving the US open to nuclear blackmail is not "security". More on this below.
  
• "Hair Trigger Alert" - A fair point - except that Russian missiles were never on "hair trigger alert". They were mostly liquid-fueled - they needed to be topped up before launch! (every US missile is solid-fueled). And to save on wear and tear, their gyrostabilizers were not kept running constantly. Those of American land-based missiles were kept "spun up" 24/7 - because they figured if, God forbid, they ever needed to be launched, it would have to be done in the 15-30 minute window between detection and impact of Soviet missiles. As a result, the US Air FOrce spent zillions of dollars replacing worn-out missile gyros - because, to launch immediately, they needed to be running constantly. The Soviets built missiles that could notnot be launched at "hair-trigger" speeds - because they knew they wouldn't need to. Because they knew we wouldn't launch a first strike. (And, to be fair, because they had dozens of missiles on submarines at sea).
  
• Watch those Pesky Indians - Yes, by all means lets regulate our national policy to no discomfit tinhorn dictators, theocrats and the parliaments of generally-unfriendly countries - who are themselves illegal rogue nuclear powers! Yes, indeed - if leaving our cities and people open to being vaporized doesn't make those idiots comfortable, what will?
  

Wellstone espouses the doctrine of the seventies - Mutually Assured Destruction. As long as everyone can blow everyone up, everyone's safe. Right?

Wrong.

I grew up among the missile silos of North Dakota. Half of them are gone, now, and good riddance to them. MAD was only a sane response to nuclear weapons as long as you were dealing with relatively rational opponents - and the Soviets were, in the context of their society, eminently rational. When your opponents are not rational, Mutually Assured Destruction is a lousy bet.

As is Paul Wellstone, if you have a nation to protect.

Posted by Mitch at July 28, 2002 11:13 AM