Scoblic v. Krauthammer Posted by David Shorr

Peter Scoblic offers an excellent retort in The New Republic to Charles Krauthammer's recent hyperventilation over missile defense. Scoblic points out the folly of pursuing technology for its own sake and reminds us of the precarious balance of terror associated with nuclear weapons. These are not totems of military or technical prowess, they are enormously, uniquely destructive instruments of catastrophe. The utmost priority of any policy, therefore, is to keep them from being used. And as Scoblic rightly emphasizes, it's all about deterrence and everyone being confident that their own ability to retaliate for an attack will discourage the other guy. Any attempt to gain an advantage could give an adversary an itchy trigger finger -- not good. Since the New York Times recently traced President Obama's attitudes back to college days in the early 1980s, let me add a generational note. For many of us who came of age in the nuclear freeze movement, this issue of undermining deterrence and upsetting the balance of terror was the main worry.

Comments

[Peace]

Charles Krauthammer has an outdated view about deterrence and why the Cold War ended. Krauthammer believes in the myth that Reagan's Star Wars program ended the Cold War, but this viewpoint has been thoughly discredited by various historians. While Scoblic realizes that the Cold War ended due to talks with the Soviet Union and the signing of the INF treaty which greatly eased any Soviet fears that the West was out to gain nuclear superiority.

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Hi,
I think it will not right to call Scoblic a conservative, especially since he just wrote a book blaming conservatives for everything that's gone wrong in US foreign policy for the last half century....