Barack Obama's new offensive against nuclear weapons

[Mr Crowley]

Barack Obama yesterday announced a radical drive aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons, as the focus of his European visit switched from financial to geopolitical security.

"In Prague, I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons," Obama said yesterday after arriving in continental Europe for the first time as president. "The spread of nuclear weapons or the theft of nuclear material could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet," he warned, adding that suspected rogue nuclear states, such as North Korea or Iran, may only be persuaded to abandon their quests if the big nuclear powers set an example.

"We can't reduce the threat of a nuclear weapon going off unless those that possess the most nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia, take serious steps to reduce our stockpiles," Obama said. "So we want to pursue that vigorously in the years ahead."

At Obama's first meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, in London on Wednesday, both agreed on fast-track negotiations to slash their nuclear stockpiles by about a third from the end of this year. Robert Gibbs, Obama's spokesman, said the president believed "loose nukes", stolen nuclear materials or the acquisition by terrorists of weapons-grade fissile material, were among the gravest risks to the US.

Gibbs signalled the agreement to revive arms control talks with the Kremlin this week was the start of a broader anti-nuclear drive being launched by the White House. "You'll hear the president outline some important goals at reducing the amount of potential material," Gibbs said of tomorrow's speech.

He also said Obama would use the speech to urge the US Senate to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty proscribing nuclear bomb trials, a treaty already endorsed by the other main nuclear powers, Russia, Britain, and France. The US has about 10,000 of the world's estimated 24,000 nuclear weapons, and Russia 13,000. Obama has three major aims: ensuring the security of existing nuclear weapons; reducing and eventually eliminating all nuclear weapons; and preventing the spread of nuclear material to new countries.

Joseph Cirincione, a leading US nuclear arms analyst, said: "I have been waiting for this speech for a long time. This could be a turning point in US nuclear policy. It changes everything."

Barack Obama's new offensive against nuclear weapons | World news | The Guardian
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This is in contrast to the Bush regime who invested in new nuclear research with a view to building 'mini-nukes'.
Can Obama's words really be taken at face value; would the American establishment really allow him to dismantle their entire nuclear arsenal? Global nuclear disarmament is a noble aspiration and should be one held by all decent people but I really doubt American sincerity in this regard.
This is more likely to be aimed towards increasing the pressure on Iran and legitimising any future move towards expropriating their oil resources.
The recent film 'W' gives great insight into American foreign policy. If Obama is truly sincere he will likely be assassinated. More likely he is attempting to put a better face on the same agenda.

[seabhcan]

Perhaps a million people are directly or indirectly employed in the nuclear arms industry in the US. Not a great time to sack them.

[Almanac]

An offensive against nuclear energy and nuclear weapons began to emerge and gather momentum in the seventies, the former as a result of the Club of Rome's global management policy of "limits to growth" and later "zero growth", while the latter global drive towards disarmament, fully backed by war-monger Henry Kissinger, was to ensure that no country would be capable of resisting an international "peace-keeping" force. Naturally, there was not universal agreement about such a policy though in fact supposed nuclear enthusiasts such as Reagan actually weakened their own country's defence capacities.

Nuclear energy of course was a real threat to the oil cartel's hegemony. Oilman Anderson channelled millions of dollars into his Atlantic Richfield foundation to fight the development of nuclear energy. The group Friends of the Earth started with a 200,000 dollar grant from Anderson. The French director of Friends was the Paris partner of the Rockefeller law firm Coudert Brothers. One important coup for Friends was stopping nuclear development in Germany through the funding of protracted court cases. Anderson's chief propagandist vehicle was the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies whose board of trustees were all from the oil and banking industries: Lehman Brothers, Exxon, Mobil Oil, Gulf Oil. The Aspen Institute was behind the international Stockholm 1972 conference on the environment which was chaired by Petro-Canada Oilman Maurice Strong. A book immediately appeared Friends of the Earth. UN funds were utilised to push an anti-industrialisation and, in particular, anti-nuclear agenda.

Anderson had invested tens of millions in projects aimed at developing oil fields in Alaska and elsewhere. Nuclear energy posed the biggest threat to the oil hegemony in the seventies and attempts to develop it were successfully opposed all over the world. A Japanese-Australian uranium development technology project collapsed due to Friends! at the behest of the British.

Of course some were unluckier. When Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan, refused to back out of an agreement with France to develop nuclear energy, Kissinger warned him that he would "be made an example of." A short while later Bhutto was overthrown by a CIA-induced coup. Awaiting execution in prison he wrote his defence naming Kissinger and repeating his threat. He wrote that because he asserted Pakistani sovereignty, "I received the death sentence."

All the above in relation to the motivation for the anti-nuclear energy campaign is documented in 'A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics' by P William Engdahl. Of course there's plenty of others who have highlighted the same story of corruption on a titanic scale.

[CookieMonster]

Perhaps a million people are directly or indirectly employed in the nuclear arms industry in the US. Not a great time to sack them.

Don't worry, it's Obama saying it. There will be 2 million employed in the industry by this time next year.