Posts Tagged ‘arms control’

Obama and the “no-nukes” movement

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

The New York Times has discovered, conveniently too late for the election, a college essay by Barack Obama which may explain some of his beliefs that are otherwise inexplicable.

Realist or dreamer, Mr. Obama has an interest in global denuclearization that arises from what can best be described as a lost chapter of his life. Though he has written two memoirs, he has volunteered few details about his two years at Columbia.

“People assume he’s a novice,” said Michael L. Baron, who taught Mr. Obama in a Columbia seminar on international politics and American policy around the time he wrote the Sundial article. “He’s been thinking about these issues for a long time. It’s not like one of his advisers said, ‘Why don’t you throw this out?’ ”

In a paper for Dr. Baron, Mr. Obama analyzed how a president might go about negotiating nuclear arms reductions with the Russians — exactly what he is seeking to do this week.

The Cold War is over but Obama seems to be stuck in his youthful enthusiasm for a nuclear freeze. I don’t believe for a moment that he has any intention of stopping Iran in their quest for the bomb but he is determined to reduce our own nuclear capability.

Maybe this is behind his otherwise mysterious unwillingness to consider nuclear power, a source of electricity free from the alleged greenhouses gas production.