Poor Mr. Serwer. He has reached the point that all living in Washington risk reaching -- an absolute in ability to distinguish between motion and movement, and between skill and artifice.

The world I live in is the one all Americans live in; that is, one where our recent presidents in both parties have failed utterly to defend America. Obama has little to do with the issue, except that like he, like his three predecessors, is unwilling to do the hard things needed to protect the country and works only for re-election. The nuclear conference was a hoax, and to even dream that Obama is in the same league as the other presidents whose ultimate aim was no nukes suggests a pressing need for anti-hallucinatory medication. Poor Pollyanna Obama is just fresh red meat for Medvedev and Putin to munch on at their leisure. Anyway, too much nuclear stuff has been loose for too long. A nuclear device is on it's way to C0NUS from somewhere, and the one, slim chance to stop it is to control our borders and Obama, like his predecessors, will not do that, and so -- BOOM.

What else? Well, Obama is content to lose wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- as was Bush -- but he hates the military as good 60’s child must. As a result, our soldiers and Marines will die in Afghanistan until at least the midterm elections so he and his party can look like they give a hoot about winning. If Obama and his party lose the Congress, then our kids will stay in Afghanistan and die to see if he can figure away to exploit their pointless sacrifice to win in 2012.

He has made our war with Islam worse by kissing Mubarak’s butt and issuing his grandstanding promises at Cairo which he has no intention -- or, given his subservience to Netanyahu, no capability -- of keeping. He continues to wage war against the U.S. Intelligence Community in the name of his own "moral compass, which simultaneously guides him to surround himself with socialists, America-haters, and "experts" who in everyday America would accurately be regarded as political and/or social lepers. Like his predecessors, he spends us into the poor house, sells our debt to our enemies, and talks as if American power and will is respected in the world as it was under Reagan, never recognizing that most of the world sees the U.S. Federal government for what it is -- a corrupt, elitist, avaricious, delusionary, tapped out, and used up old Madam whose wondrous and compelling allure is apparent only to her own mind.

This then is the world I live in, and my children and grandchildren -- and yours -- are very likely to live in worse.

Paul's question as to the possible budgetary consequences of shifts in American strategic doctrine turns on the conjectured fungibility of nuclear and conventional arms - for compellance, for defense, for deterrence. Reference to history should be helpful in clarifying the issue.

Atomic weapons advent was marked by their use in a compellant mode to end the Pacific war. Since then they never have been employed. And since Eisenhower rejected Curtis LeMay's recommendation that they be used to relieve the French at Dienbenphu, no senior policy -maker has ever considered the possibility of doing so. As to use in defense, tactical nuclear weapons were a central feature of NATO doctrine for decades - as noted in an earlier contribution. That's the long and short of it as to nuclear arms' warfighting capability.

The conclusion is that their sole practical value is as deterrence. They are unique in that respect. There is a nuclear totem whose prospective violation scares the hell out of people. The historical record supports that judgment. No leader who had the power to unleash nuclear weapons has seen them as anything other than doomsday weapons. That is the truth regardless of whatever declaratory doctrines have been promulgated. Brezhnev was so anxious during a simulation exercise that his hand shook at the moment he was supposed to 'push the button" - and he asked four times for assurance that it was a mock exercise.

A reasonable inference is that the fungibility of nuclear and conventional arms is zero - in an operational sense. Since we have no intention of selecting the zero option, nuclear weapons' singular deterrence function will remain intact. Since they are useless for anything else, doctrinal shifts or inventory reductions cannot - and need not - be compensated for by expansion of conventional capabilities.

I presume that mr. Obama knows this. I suppose that the military chiefs know this. Still, no opportunity is ever overlooked for increasing our already bloated defense budget.

I get that Michael Scheuer doesn't like Obama, but in what universe is he living that he can write that the President is "so far over his head in international affairs, and so thoroughly indoctrinated as a Pacifist, that some of our enemies might well have a growing sense that they could kick us hard." Is it a universe in which American drones are daily taking out targets in Pakistan? A universe in which the same President announces a big new deployment to Afghanistan on his way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize? A universe in which the President agrees with the likewise pacifist-indoctrinated Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Ronald Reagan on the need to set as a long-term goal the zero option for nuclear weapons? A universe in which the President demonstrates his mastery of nuclear security issues in front of four dozen or so of his counterparts and gets them to prioritize a major (if not THE major) US national security concern?

It must indeed be an alternate universe, since it is one in which, according to Scheuer, American nuclear weapons are to be kept up to date for use against terrorist groups. How, pray tell, will we know where to find them? What kind of collateral damage will that bring? What will the deterrent effect be? And somehow according to Scheuer modernizing those weapons will compensate for a (presumed) lack of will to use them?

The fact is the Nuclear Security Summit was not big deal, it was just a step forward in protecting these United States from the threat of nuclear material or weapons falling into the wrong hands. More important will be the followup with specific measures to secure nuclear materials, but more of those specific measures will happen because of the high-level attention this week's meeting mobilized. I live in this universe, where a step forward in the right direction is to be welcomed.

Thanks to all contributors. The 47-nation summit of world leaders wrapped up in Washington yesterday with a pledge to lock down weapons-usable nuclear materials by 2014 to keep the materials out of the hands of terrorists. President Obama met with Chinese President Hu Jintao, but even as global concerns mount over Iran’s nuclear program it remains unclear whether China, which has a veto in the UN Security Council, will back a package of tough sanctions against Iran.

I’d welcome comments on whether the summit was a big success or no big deal. I’d also welcome comments on an important point made by Christopher Preble in his post. He says that a shift away from nuclear weapons for defense in the direction of conventional military assets can be expected to jack up the defense budget— “a costly proposition at a time when U.S. military spending is already at a post-World War II high.” This is a neglected theme in the commentary in the media and elsewhere on Obama’s nuclear posture review. How about it: Are we actually looking at more spending on defense if Obama’s plan is put into place? Significantly more?

QUESTION: Why would President Obama think a "nuclear free world" is possible?

ANSWER: Because -- like Woodrow Wilson -- he has been trained to see the world he wants, not the one that's on offer.

The nuclear cat is long out of the bag. Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama have treated nuclear proliferation and fully securing the FSU's WMD arsenal as part-time, little interest, all-talk activity since the Berlin Wall fell. North Korea and Pakistan have become nuclear powers since the Bolsheviks went belly up; Iran is on the brink; and who knows how many weapons the war-mongering Israelis have added to their unaccounted-for WMD arsenal. The world also seems pretty much rife with loose enriched uranium, nuclear waste, CBW stuff, and -- perhaps -- a loose nuke or two.

As a result, this is preeminently an era where we ought to be maintaining and improving the quality of our WMD arsenal. This is especially the case because our enemies -- nation-state and non-nation-state -- have seen us repeatedly prove that U.S. conventional military forces cannot beat any enemy, anywhere in the world, at anytime -- at least since 1945. This point will be underscored again when we complete our losing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And now we have a president who is so far over his head in international affairs, and so thoroughly indoctrinated as a Pacifist, that some of our enemies might well have a growing sense that they could kick us hard and experience no more than a dramatic performance from the smug, superior, and self-righteous Obama consisting of standing up, speaking in outrage, urging patience until we identify the perpetrator, and then doing nothing.

Conventional or unconventional military power is a deterrent only if your enemy believes you have the will to use one, the other, or both to whatever extent is necessary to destroy him. Because our will to do so is now very, very suspect, it is essential that we keep our WMD arsenal plentiful and fully modernized -- and hope no one is confident enough to call Obama's bluff.

Unfortunately, many of today’s Republican leaders have very short memories. In criticizing Obama’s strategic arms agreement with Russia or his Nuclear Posture Review, they seem unaware that Republican presidents including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all signed arms control agreements with the Soviet Union (or Russia) that eliminated or limited U.S. nuclear weapons. Or that in 1957 Republican Dwight Eisenhower ruled out waging nuclear war against non-nuclear states, and in 1986 Ronald Reagan agreed to eliminate the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal even though the Soviets had a massive advantage in conventional arms.

The real weakness of Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review is that it does not go far enough to fulfill his campaign promise or his speech in Prague. In fact his NPR is not significantly different from that of President Bush. Under pressure from the Pentagon, Obama refused to endorse the idea that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is deterrence, instead saying only that the fundamental purpose of these weapons is to deter attacks.

Moreover, in saying in the NPR that the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, or build new nuclear weapons, or test again, he left enough loopholes to allow the U.S. to change its mind if it judges that circumstances change. For example, by saying that the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of the biological weapons threat, Obama allows for the possibility that the United States could use nuclear weapons even against a state in good standing with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPR also permits the president to allow new nuclear components to be deployed in older warheads, or resume underground testing if that is necessary for safety.

Obviously the reason that Obama backed off on what he proposed at Prague or in the campaign is that he needs at least 8 Republican votes to get START ratified. Hopefully, after the vote, he can continue to move forward in this area, maybe even following the advice of three Air Force strategists who argued in a recent article in the Joint Force Quarterly that U.S. security can rest easily on a force of about 300 nuclear weapons, and eventually emulate such Republican icons as Eisenhower and Reagan.

The nuclear issues that are the subject of this week’s conclave are numerous and complex. Assessing each is complicated since the gathering is more of a photo-op cum political happening than it is a serious diplomatic conference. Such is the now recognizable style of Mr. Obama on all matters. The questions in play are nonetheless consequential so let’s temporarily set aside the implications of style to examine substance.

A. Nuclear Disarmament & The Zero Option

This is the easiest question to handle. We never will achieve a nuclear free world. Getting very close to zero is highly dangerous for obvious reasons; and modest reductions in the arsenals of the United States and Russia are strategically meaningless. Yes, it is a talking point in the proliferation context since with have a legal obligation under the NPT to lower the number of warheads in the arsenals of n-weapons states. No would-be weapons state, though, cares a fig about those numbers in making the momentous decision whether or not to go nuclear.

B. Ensuring the security of nuclear stockpiles and of highly radioactive material is, of course, of the utmost importance. In this sphere, the ideas on the table fall into three categories: the vapid; the technical; and the absurd. In the first is some kind of convention containing anodyne language declaring all parties readiness to worry about the problem and vowing earnestly to worry. In the second, there could be of some small utility to agreements on the exchange of practical information on how to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to, or activation of weapons or weapons grade material. The specifics, probably, are better worked out in bilateral or wider ad hoc cooperative projects – as the US has been doing for 50 years.

The third category refers to the headline story about terrorists and nuclear weapons. Obama made this the leitmotif of the conference in his public remarks yesterday to the effect that terrorism is the most important nuclear threat we face. That is simply untrue. An accurate statement designed to educate rather than to play on emotions would say that the seizure of nuclear materials by ‘al-Qaeda’ would create a vitally dangerous situation BUT it is not an urgent concern because the likelihood of such an eventuality coming to pass is close to zero. The old al-Qaeda is a weak, fragmented grouping able to do little more than survive physically. This is the outfit that, over the past 8 + years, has been capable of organizing nothing of great consequence. The London and Madrid bombing were essentially local operations; the Christmas bomber incident rank amateurism. Trying to blow a plane out of the sky once every several years is not a laughing matter; but to cite it to stoke fears of nuclear terrorism is rank scare-mongering with no evidential basis. Right out of the Bush-Cheney playbook. An outfit that cannot manage to get its hands on fire-retardant underwear will not be able to build or steal a nuclear warhead.

The ‘terror’ theme tells us that the Washington Conference aims for maximum publicity – not maximum effectiveness - in dealing with real problems. By associating everything nuclear with the emotive imagery of terrorism, the White House is seeking to squeeze as much political benefit from the occasion as possible. It burnishes Obama’s image as a bold leader setting ambitious goals with a strong moral tinge. The Nobel Obama. The hope is that that the intangible effects will somehow be as asset at home and abroad. Yet, a bit of sober thinking leads to the conclusion that the latter aspiration is unrealizable. The American media will fall for it hook-line-and sinker. Our sycophants elsewhere will join in the accolades. But will there be a change of thinking or action in Moscow? In Beijing? In Tehran? In Islamabad? In New Delhi? In Pyongyang? Engaging those governments returns us to the realm of the real and the serious.

C. As to the new Nuclear Posture Review, there is truly little that is new. It simply restates past doctrine with an historical update. The question of “no first use” or not is a Cold War issue. The United States’ strategy for countering the Red Army’s enormous advantage in conventional arms was to deploy thousands of tactical nuclear weapons. If NATO forces were breaking before the onslaught, we theoretically could use small nukes against battlefield and rear echelon targets to stem the tide. Moreover, our capability for doing was intended to deter the Soviets from launching a conventional war in the belief that we would not put our cities at risk to prevent them from occupying Western Europe. Whether any of this reasoning existed anywhere other than in war game rooms is an open question. Today it is all irrelevant.

That leaves the question of whether Washington has an interest in keeping open the option of making first use of nuclear weapons against Iran or North Korea (what is meant by states not in compliance with their NPT obligations). It is not at all obvious that these doctrinal nuances have any practical meaning. Preemptive nuclear strikes are highly risky since one never knows with certainty that they will disarm an enemy and prevent them from responding in other highly disagreeable ways. Think of 20,000 North Korean artillery pieces firing in Seoul. Think of Iran’s several opportunities to wreak havoc in the Gulf. That is one.

Can an America deter Iran from using biological weapons? Here specific scenarios are crucial. An unprovoked, aggressive use is one theoretical possibility. Frankly, though, I cannot imagine such a situation unless we revert to ‘mad mullah’ fantasies. That’s two. Reaction to an American and/or Israeli massive airstrike is another scenario. This is more realistic in terms of motivation. Israel can protect itself via deterrence as it did Iraq during Gulf War I (see public remarks by Vice-President Aziz). There is no Iranian threat to American territory - for technical reasons. To American bases? Technically speaking, yes. Would the Iranian leaders’ judgment on this be affected by abstruse doctrines promulgated in Washington? Probably not. They would decide whether or not to use unconventional weapons in the awareness that Washington’s response was impossible to predict.

These last are matters of consequence. We can only hope that they will be addressed with the sobriety they require once the cameras have stopped rolling and the spin machine quiets down.

It was inevitable that Republicans would knock President Obama for being soft on national security, and it is likely to be an issue in this year’s mid-term elections, and in the 2012 campaign. This has been the standard mantra from the GOP playbook for over a generation, and the party’s leaders show no sign of backing away from it. But the Democrats shouldn’t be too worried. They easily turned aside such criticisms in 2006 and 2008 by pointing out that policies promoted by a Republican president, and supported by a Republican Congress -- especially the ruinous Iraq war -- had significantly undermined U.S. security.

With respect to nuclear weapons, the president and his allies have more than enough ammunition to refute the charges that reductions in the size of the U.S. arsenal make the U.S. more vulnerable to attack. Leaders in Washington and Moscow figured out long ago that a stable, secure and credible deterrent need not include many thousands of nuclear warheads. A Republican president, Richard Nixon, initiated the very first round of reductions in the early 1970s, and another Republican, George H.W. Bush, made even deeper cuts at the end of the Cold War. George W. Bush tacked on additional reductions under the Moscow Treaty signed with Vladimir Putin. The modest cuts envisioned by New START and implied in the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) are consistent with this bipartisan trend.

But what of President Obama’s goal of a world free of nuclear weapons? He concedes that this is unlikely to occur in his lifetime, and that is almost surely the case. He is not the first U.S. leader to pledge to reduce the importance of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policy; this is a commitment the United States made under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. What will take the place of nuclear weapons if they were to be abolished? We can glean the answer from the NPR. The United States first shifted to nuclear weapons in the 1950s because they presented a far more cost effective deterrent than conventional military assets. Not surprisingly, the NPR envisions that conventional weapons -- namely a forward U.S. troop presence and ballistic missile defenses -- will take on greater importance as nuclear weapons recede.

This is a costly proposition at a time when U.S. military spending is already at a post-World War II high. The Obama administration does not dwell on the costs, I suspect, because many Americans are not enamored with extending an indefinite and costly security umbrella over other countries who can -- and should be encouraged to -- defend themselves. In short, President Obama’s determination to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons will accelerate this costly trend unless he is also willing to revisit the purpose of U.S. military power and our global posture.

President Obama is on the right track with his multiple efforts to reduce nuclear dangers. I only wish that it were a faster track and reflected a greater sense of urgency. His policies take account of some important current realities: The Cold War has ended (20 years ago); the greatest threat confronting the US and the world is no longer all-out nuclear war, but nuclear proliferation and nuclear-armed terrorists; and the United States has obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to engage in “good faith” negotiations to achieve total nuclear disarmament.

The Obama administration made a smart move by ruling out using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states that are in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It could have gone further, though. While the administration surely sees its posture as a useful threat for states not in compliance, this is a two-edged sword. Such threats also send a message to the rest of the world that the US still finds nuclear weapons useful and is willing to threaten their use. This continued reliance on nuclear weapons reinforces the current double standards of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots,” which in the long run will not hold. Some states may be encouraged, as was North Korea, to pursue nuclear weapons capabilities in the belief that they can deter a nuclear attack by a more powerful adversary.

The nuclear weapons reductions in the New START agreement are modest and leave more than enough capability on each side to destroy civilization, but they are a step forward and they do extend the important verification provisions of the first START agreement. They should be seen as a platform from which to continue the downward movement in nuclear arms to zero. Ultimately, zero is the only safe, secure and stable number of nuclear weapons in the world.

The US has enormous conventional force capability. While this allows us to reduce our reliance upon nuclear weapons, it also creates problems with the Russians in achieving further nuclear reductions. Russia has repeatedly expressed concerns with our missile defense deployments, our unwillingness to curtail space weaponization, and our Prompt Global Strike program that would entail putting conventional warheads on ICBMs. To get to substantially lower levels of nuclear arms and finally to zero, we are going to have to meet the concerns of the Russians and other countries that we are not simply making the world safe for US conventional weapons superiority.

Realists such as former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger support the new nuclear posture of the Obama administration. Critics such as Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain are playing nuclear politics with loaded barrels, pursuing outdated nuclear policies that are MAD in all senses, not only policies of Mutual Assured Destruction but policies based upon Mutual Assured Delusions. We cannot continue to base our security on nuclear weapons without running the risk of massive and catastrophic disaster.

I would urge President Obama to move rapidly in building on the progress he has made to this point. There is no scenario that would justify US use of nuclear weapons again. Nuclear deterrence is unstable and dangerous. Deterrence is a theory and it cannot be proven to be effective under all conditions in the future. It came close to failing on various occasions during the Cold War. Deterrence relies upon rationality, and it remains a dangerous assumption that all leaders will act rationally at all times. Deterrence is subject to human fallibility, and human fallibility and nuclear weapons are a flammable mixture.

A stronger indication that President Obama is indeed committed to seeking “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” would be a policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons, coupled with taking the weapons off hair-trigger alert and continuing to work with the Russians and soon other nuclear weapon states on major reductions in arsenals. We should be pursuing a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. US leadership for this will be essential.

As a thirty-year veteran of Washington politics, I have become a jaded sort. My wife thinks of me as a balding version of Oscar the Grouch; though my McLean “garbage can” is on substantially higher taxed land than Sesame Street.

So when I think of the upcoming Nuclear Conference/Summit this week, my mind turned in several grouchy personal directions. First, how in the world am I going to get to my appointments downtown? Second, how busy are all the good restaurants going to be? And third, and this is really important, is this good for the Willard Hotel, the Hay-Adams and the Four Seasons. I suspect the answer is yes, very yes.

As for the substance of the summit, I wonder what old Cold Warriors like Reagan and the recently deceased Anatoly Dobrynin would make of it. In a way, it was a dream goal of reducing nuclear weapons to zero. At Reykjavik in October 1986, Reagan certainly made a very hard effort to rope the Russians into doing something. Gorbachev stunned by the proposal and in no political position to accept it, pushed it off. Eventually, everyone agreed to get rid of a class of weapons and it has been off to the reduction races ever since.

All that being said, there are a couple of troublesome items that are coloring this “throw back” conference. First, just when the White House staff got the President to stop bowing to foreign leaders; he now declares a no nuke use against countries that don’t have them. A lovely set of Marquis of Queensbury rules in a civilized world. Sadly, while we play chess games on this issue, others such as Iran will be laughing. International relations are not chess. They are poker. And you never let go of your hole card. In other words, never take an option off the table. It makes you look weak. And Tehran and Pyongyang eat this kind of behavior for breakfast.

As for the goal of overall reduction and control of weapons, well the Russians and we still have ninety percent of them. So that seems like a nice idea – especially since the Russians have been a bit sloppy about maintenance and how they are stored. And, if we think the Russians are going to horse trade us on this for stiff Iran sanctions, we are about to be strongly disappointed. Moscow will do what it can to keep an Islamic neighbor marginally neutral. They have enough internal problems with radical Muslims.

Like Senators Kyl and McCain, I too am worried about keeping the money up for maintaining our forces. Reduction often means Washington is reluctant to spend the money to update and upgrade weapons. These weapons represent our biggest military response. They must be the best and at all times be ready.

Treaties like this also remind me of the London Conference in 1935-36 to reduce battleships. Everyone started reducing forces, but in the end, they also armed and rearmed in different, but in equally deadly ways. For instance, where are we on other WMD’s like biological and chemical – the poor man’s nukes? And, while far less lethal, what’s going in cyberspace where we are clearly getting our clock cleaned in this new increasingly militarized frontier.

In the final analysis, this is a feel good event. I don’t see how in the world it makes a bit of difference to the people who are the most worrisome – Iran, North Korea and every Al Qaeda franchisee on the planet. It will offer little beyond the good citizens of the world saying they will continue to be good citizens. The bad boys could care less.