While a global, bipartisan consensus is building for a nuclear weapons free world, the newly re-appointed U.S. Secretary of Defense is saying that the United States should hang on to our nuclear arsenal for the foreseeable future – and while we are at it, we better field a new nuclear weapon. Those of us advocating for concrete steps toward abolition of nuclear weapons have our work cut out for us.
Didn't Gates get the memo?
Back in October, at a major address at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, SecDef Robert Gates insisted “we must always hedge against the dangerous and unpredictable world. That is still true today and maybe even more so. Rising and resurgent powers, rogue nations pursuing nuclear weapons, proliferation of international terrorism, all demand that we preserve this hedge.”
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“Try as we might and hope as we will, the power of nuclear weapons and their strategic impact is a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle, at least for a very long time. While we have long-term goal of abolishing nuclear weapons once and for all, given the world in which we live, we have to be realistic about that proposition.”
Gates went on to champion funding for a new American nuclear weapon, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which Congress has repeatedly rejected. Gates reiterated this position again on December 1 in a speech at Minot Air Force Base.