“A Bush doctrine on nuclear arms” (Editorial, Jan. 7) is a good start, but the Bush vision, and your endorsement of it, still represents a policy of gradualism. After nearly four decades of arduous negotiations, there are still 30,000 nuclear weapons on the planet. Something more is needed.
I would question your flat assertion that “the elimination of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is unrealistic.”
You add: “Deterrence has kept a reliable, if fearsome, peace for some 50 years,” an assertion widely believed but impossible to prove.
Our religious leaders have told us, ever since Hiroshima, that the further use of nuclear weapons would be utterly immoral and unthinkable. Yet the possession of such nightmarish weapons, together with the underlying doctrine of deterrence, implies the willingness to use them.
Let the nation that first used nuclear weapons be the first to disown them.
