What a load...

Time Magazine ran an article recently decrying the fact that the US still maintains a stockpile of nuclear warheads in Europe under our treaty obligations with NATO. You can follow the link and read it for yourself, but the jist is that the US is in violation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Accords because the NATO treaty allows the US to "give" any one (or more) of the more than 350 B61 warheads to a fellow NATO member-state in times of conflict. These warheads are kept at bases throughout Europe, and not all of them are American bases (but I know that the weapons are kept, maintained and managed by American personnel... because I know at least two of the soldiers and airmen that have done the job), and this seems to make the author of the article think that the Italians, Danes, Spaniards, or Icelanders can simply pick up and use one of the weapons at their ease.

What a load of crap...

Why haven't states like Italy or Denmark pursued a nuclear program of their own? Because they didn't need to. They could let the US, British (and French, to a lesser degree) do all the "heavy work" during the Cold War and sit back and know that the "nuclear umbrella" was spread over their heads just as nicely as if they HAD built their own weapons.

The article seems to indirectly scoff at the notion that nuclear deterrents are needed in a post-Soviet world, but I am of the opinion that the strategy of MAD (mutually assured destruction) in the event of a pre-emptive strike by the Soviets was enough to keep them in check until such time as the communist system itself failed utterly from within. We do NOT have that luxury with states like Iran, North Korea, a Taliban-controlled Pakistan, or any one of a baker's dozen Islamic terror groups that might acquire a nuclear device on the black market... for no other reason than the simple fact that they do not fear destruction themselves. The "jihadist" mentality is every bit as dangerous and underestimated as the "kamakazi" mentality was within the Japanese Empire before 1945... they do not fear dying for their cause, nor do they fear allowing their families, communities and even their entire countries to die as well. It would only further their cause (in their own minds).

Interestingly enough, the B61 is the sort of warhead that you can "dial in" the amount of destruction you want to deliver. It seems that, given a very small list of designs, the several hundred warheads still in Europe can deliver anywhere from .3 KT (about one quarter of a Hiroshima bomb) to as much as 340 KT (about 280x greater than the Hiroshima bomb), all with just a few adjustments on the bomb itself. It is specifically designed to be delivered by an aircraft, but can also be sent on a cruise missile. It can airburst, groundburst, ground-penetrate (up to 6 meters into the ground, for those tough, dug-in positions), or actually be delivered to fall gently to the ground and lay there to be detonated at a later time.

I can't help but think that this is EXACTLY the kind of versatility that our modern era demands. We (hopefully) will never need a weapons that can vaporize an entire city... but we very well could need a weapon that could vaporize a couple hundred acres when literally MINUTES count and we don't have time to wait for airborne troops to drop, take and control the same area of land/mountain/forest/desert.

If the problem with the article's author is stemming from foreign access to these same weapons, I have this question to ask: Why should we expect Danish, German, Italian or Spanish troops to fight and possibly die alongside of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, but NOT trust them with weapons we control? No one is suggesting that these warheads would be allowed to be used WITHOUT our permission... so why assume that is what is going to happen? If it is accepted US policy (and it is) that these weapons are an integral part of our national security and defense, why wouldn't they also be part of our mutual security and defense agreements with our fellow NATO allies?

Like I said... a load of crap.