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Obama's Nuclear-Weapons Conference Fatally Flawed Before It Began
William Pfaff
The meeting on nuclear security convoked by
The underlying incitement to nuclear proliferation is the permanent veto exercised over
The specific inspiration for weapons proliferation (or for countries to achieve "last-stage" status, which is to say a complete technological capacity to produce nuclear weapons, able to be activated if needed) is deterrence.
The most important force at work among vulnerable third-world states is the desire to have a nuclear deterrent against invasion or attack by
This threat is put about because
At the very least, candidates for proliferation wish to create uncertainty about possession of a nuclear deterrent, even if it consists of a single weapon. (This is one interpretation of the situation of
As for the threat that President Obama described in calling this meeting, that terrorists would obtain nuclear weapons, this seems to me extremely unlikely, if only because no government possessing these weapons would imagine giving such power to terrorists, or allowing weapons to be stolen. The world would hold them, not the terrorists, responsible for what followed, and they would themselves become the victim of retaliation.
A different problem, complicated by the U.S. itself, might have found a solution at this meeting. Mr. Obama met separately with the leaders of
During this same period,
Now American ally
It is not only dangerous but grotesque that
It is not only an unreasonable and quite unnecessary conflict, which steadily has generated wars and hatred, focusing upon the status of
Solving the
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United States - Obama's Nuclear-Weapons Conference Fatally Flawed Before It Began
(c) 2010 William Pfaff