Reduced Nuclear Warheads

In tonights on-line edition of The Washington Post we hear that the President of the United States and the President of Russia have agreed to reduce nuclear warheads dramatically.  Per the newspaper article

"The joint understanding commits the United States and Russia to reduce their strategic warheads to a range of 1,500 - 1,675, and their strategic delivery vehicles to a range of 500 - 1,100," the fact sheet said.  "These numbers reflect a new level of reductions of strategic offensive arms and delivery vehicles that will be lower than those in any existing arms control agreements," the White House said.

Once the cheering stops, the question needs to be asked, how low is too low.

Put another way, what do we need to maintain mutual deterrence with Russia and China and still have enough warheads left over to deal with a rogue state?

As a point of reference, we needed two nuclear devices to push Japan to the point of surrender, after we had pummelled them severely and cut them off from all raw materials, including fuel and food.  Would a nuclear armed North Korea, attacking south with nuclear weapons in use be stopped by two nuclear weapons?

This is goolish to think about, but when moving toward a nuclear free world it is something to think about.  Put another way, how much punishment are some of these governments prepared to take to achieve their aims?

I hope we never find out.

Regards  —  Cliff

PS:  Over the weekend there was a little dustup over the White House saying that it didn't really need the Senate to ratify a nuclear arms agreement.  The White House later backed off to say that the President could "honor" such an agreement while waiting for Senate approval of the treaty.  The fact is, approval of treaties is not the job of the President.  It is the responsibility of Ted Kennedy and John F Kerry and 98 of their closest friends.