Peter Scoblic points out that the Non-Proliferation Treaty is 40 years old today and argues that it’s more vital today than ever before. I agree.

Martin Sherwin at the nuclear panel puts forward the provocative idea that Israel ought to call for the creation of a conference on “First Steps to a Nuclear-Free Middle East.” The problems here are obvious, but I do think this points to an important point. Obviously, a nuclear Israel plus verifiably non-nuclear neighbors, is ideal from Israel’s point of view. But a nuclear balance of terror where Israel has nukes, but so do Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey with programs under way in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria doesn’t sound very good for Israel. They could probably count on deterrence to see them through there, but it would be a risky situation.

Alternatively, a world in which Iran and other Middle Eastern states are verifiably disarmed and Israel is disarmed as well would be pretty safe for Israel. They might or might not be threatened by katyushas and stuff, but we’ve seen that Israeli society and the Israeli economy can withstand that. And at the end of the day I do think we’re either going to shift to a region (and at a slower pace, toward a world) where nobody has nuclear weapons or else to one where everyone of consequence has them.

One paradox of these kind of events is that normally the panels you’re most interested in attending mostly feature experts telling you things you already know — these, after all, are the issues you’re interested in. But at a panel on nuclear proliferation, Bruce Blair from the World Security Institute told me that far more nuclear weapons than I’d realized — about 2,500 — are still on hair-trigger status in the United States and Russia. That means these weapons could be launched within minutes with no advance preparation on the part of the White House or the Kremlin.

It’s a remote possibility, of course, that those weapons would be launched on accident or in some fit of madness from Bush or Medvedev. But considering the extent of the downside risk, and the lack of big-time US-Russian tensions this seems crazy. Surely we could dial this back such that in case a crisis developed we could consider shifting the weapons onto this kind of status.

An interesting contention from Wilentz is that Reagan got it right in a big way on the so-called “Euromissile” controversy (the subject of the memorable “99 Luftballoons”). Wilentz says not only that the predictions of the naysayers proved wrong (which is clearly true) but that this was no sideshow. Rather, it “was a very important showdown in the history of the Cold War” and “may have played a role in Gorbachev’s emergence in 1985.” I’d be interested in learning more about the evidence here. It’s plausible enough that a failure of the Soviet hardliners in 1983 could have played an important role in Gorbachev’s rise, but then again it might not be true. You’d really need to be a Soviet specialist to understand its role fully.

Either way, as Wilentz says the key move came later, when Gorbachev did come to power and Reagan broke with the bulk of the conservative movement to decide to cooperate in good faith with the Soviet reformers. Wilentz attributes this to the fact that Gorbachev had more experience with the left going back to the 1930s and 40s and thus was more sensitive than a typical conservative to changes within the Soviet leadership.

Andre Bacevich has a brilliant op-ed in the Boston Globe. I’ll quote two paragraphs:

Bush’s harshest critics, left liberals as well as traditional conservatives, have repeatedly called attention to this record. That criticism has yet to garner mainstream political traction. Throughout the long primary season, even as various contenders in both parties argued endlessly about Iraq, they seemed oblivious to the more fundamental questions raised by the Bush years: whether global war makes sense as an antidote to terror, whether preventive war works, whether the costs of “global leadership” are sustainable, and whether events in Asia rather than the Middle East just might determine the course of the 21st century.

This is absolutely right. At the moment, we’re constructing our political spectrum almost entirely along questions like “what do you think of the surge” which, though important don’t really speak to the big theoretical questions in play. You might think that a 16 month timeline for withdrawal is too hasty, but also be fundamentally opposed to preventive war and I’d say that’d be better than having the reverse positions. But we’re not really talking about this stuff. More Bacevich:

The burden of identifying and confronting the Bush legacy necessarily falls on Obama. Although for tactical reasons McCain will distance himself from the president’s record, he largely subscribes to the principles informing Bush’s post-9/11 policies. McCain’s determination to stay the course in Iraq expresses his commitment not simply to the ongoing conflict there, but to the ideas that gave rise to that war in the first place. While McCain may differ with the president on certain particulars, his election will affirm the main thrust of Bush’s approach to national security.

The challenge facing Obama is clear: he must go beyond merely pointing out the folly of the Iraq war; he must demonstrate that Iraq represents the truest manifestation of an approach to national security that is fundamentally flawed, thereby helping Americans discern the correct lessons of that misbegotten conflict.

Exactly. This is a major theme of Heads in the Sand and I thought all throughout the primary season that Obama was the Democrat most likely to be able to do what’s necessary. Thus far he hasn’t really, for reasons that are a little bit his fault and to a large extent just the fault of the broader politico-media complex for being frighteningly indifferent to the big-picture questions.

But there are the issues we need to be talking about. There are light-years of difference between the proposition that “circumstances might arise in which we need to deploy military forces to pursue a counterterrorism objective” and “9/11 means we should define our role in the world as a highly militarized quest for coercive world domination.” But thus far both the unpopular Bush and the somewhat popular McCain have managed to elide the difference.

ClaudeB asks: “If Dubya decides to go in Iran before Jan. 20, 2009, is there anyone in Washington who can stop him, since even the Joint Chiefs have trouble restraining him?”

I get asked this question now and again, and as best I can tell it’s not a very difficult question — if Bush orders air strikes against Iranian targets, nobody can stop him. A plain reading of the text of the US Constitution would seem to suggest that it would be unconstitutional for the military to follow any such order absent a declaration of war or some other form of congressional authorization. But the settled precedent, ratified by key Democratic Party leaders as recently as the bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo crisis, is that no such authorization is necessary. I’m not happy with this situation and think it’s crazy that we as a country have moved away from the constitutional procedure, but the cat’s been out of the bag for a while now and if Bush wants to bomb Iran Bush will bomb Iran.