Now That Was What a Liberal Speech About Nuclear Disarmament Sounds Like
Monday, April 06, 2009 at 8:53 am
Just one quick point about President Obama’s speech yesterday in Prague on a U.S.-led global agenda for nuclear disarmament. Did you ever think you would hear the president of the United States say this:
There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it not by splitting apart but by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.
You wouldn’t have thought a 180-proof-liberalism speech would have embraced theater missile defense as a way of getting Russia to help the United States pressure Iran; and as a way of accelerating U.S.-Russian cooperation; and as a way of getting the Iranians to verifiably abandon all but peaceful nuclear energy, which the Obama administration committed itself to helping.
You might have expected a 180-proof-liberalism speech to have embraced John Bolton’s Proliferation Security Initiative (which, in fairness, liberal arms control experts have always embraced) in order to subsume it within a broader international framework. But still! This sounds like progressivism that invites conservatives to get on board. Especially all those conservatives who praise Ronald Reagan as a nuclear abolitionist.
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3 Comments
Comment posted April 7, 2009 @ 9:28 am
Until the world finds ways of providing for the future sustainability for our children or mankind in general, there will always be wars and nuclear weapons. In this respect we are just presently trying to fix the holes and where the major problems that zero oil/gas supplies and natural resources to support life will bring, are not being addressed. For in the next 10-years we shall see supplies and resources disrupted like never before and which will be the initial precipice before the main acute problems become fully apparent to all people. Indeed several natural elements in the earth’s crust are now also reaching extinction within the next few years, these are facts not fiction. So inevitably there will be future wars that will be resource based. Indeed the National Intelligence Council in Washington (the US's most influential security institute and thereby the world) for the first time ever in late 2008 said that nuclear weapons would most probably be used to defend borders and resources.
What our politicians should be doing therefore like Obama, is addressing how we can continue with these acute shortages of basic resources when they fully kick in without the system falling into total anarchy. The picture is a bleak one I am afraid to say as I too have a 5-year old grandson and where even the security of food growth and supplies is governed total by oil through fertilizers et al. Indeed, it is estimated by leading energy experts that it only takes a decline in oil supplies of little more than 10-15% maximum to bring the whole of the world economy eventually to a grinding halt. In this respect it is the supply chain that is totally disrupted and where if one element within fails, the whole fails. A little known again fact but perfectly true. For without oil we suffer immeasurably in all ways and where world leaders have just got to get their minds behind alternatives fast. In this respect in 20-years time there simply will not be enough time to solve this overriding problem for humankind. The big question is, why aren’t our politicians seeing this gigantic problem for what it really is and where inevitably great disorder will ensue in all countries if they do not? Indeed most industrialised countries now are totally reliant upon imports of food, just like the UK which only manages to produce 58% of its total food needs presently. The West certainly will have eventually in the medium future, a very hard awakening to say the very least.
These and other reasons are why nuclear weapons will eventually be used and down to the complacency of politicians who presently have the time to do something about this huge and emerging global problem. Tomorrow as they say, will be too late. Unfortunately that is perfectly true now !
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland
Comment posted April 7, 2009 @ 4:28 pm
Until the world finds ways of providing for the future sustainability for our children or mankind in general, there will always be wars and nuclear weapons. In this respect we are just presently trying to fix the holes and where the major problems that zero oil/gas supplies and natural resources to support life will bring, are not being addressed. For in the next 10-years we shall see supplies and resources disrupted like never before and which will be the initial precipice before the main acute problems become fully apparent to all people. Indeed several natural elements in the earth’s crust are now also reaching extinction within the next few years, these are facts not fiction. So inevitably there will be future wars that will be resource based. Indeed the National Intelligence Council in Washington (the US's most influential security institute and thereby the world) for the first time ever in late 2008 said that nuclear weapons would most probably be used to defend borders and resources.
What our politicians should be doing therefore like Obama, is addressing how we can continue with these acute shortages of basic resources when they fully kick in without the system falling into total anarchy. The picture is a bleak one I am afraid to say as I too have a 5-year old grandson and where even the security of food growth and supplies is governed total by oil through fertilizers et al. Indeed, it is estimated by leading energy experts that it only takes a decline in oil supplies of little more than 10-15% maximum to bring the whole of the world economy eventually to a grinding halt. In this respect it is the supply chain that is totally disrupted and where if one element within fails, the whole fails. A little known again fact but perfectly true. For without oil we suffer immeasurably in all ways and where world leaders have just got to get their minds behind alternatives fast. In this respect in 20-years time there simply will not be enough time to solve this overriding problem for humankind. The big question is, why aren’t our politicians seeing this gigantic problem for what it really is and where inevitably great disorder will ensue in all countries if they do not? Indeed most industrialised countries now are totally reliant upon imports of food, just like the UK which only manages to produce 58% of its total food needs presently. The West certainly will have eventually in the medium future, a very hard awakening to say the very least.
These and other reasons are why nuclear weapons will eventually be used and down to the complacency of politicians who presently have the time to do something about this huge and emerging global problem. Tomorrow as they say, will be too late. Unfortunately that is perfectly true now !
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland
Comment posted September 6, 2011 @ 11:10 am
ItÂ’s hard to find knowledgeable people on this topic, but you sound like you know what youÂ’re talking about! Thanks
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