A standard conservative argument made against efforts to cut the US nuclear arsenal is that doing so would sell out our allies who would be placed in danger and would lose confidence in the United States. This argument, however, is a relic of the Cold War and is reflective of outdated nuclear thinking. Our allies today, despite these claims, are strong supporters of reducing nuclear stockpiles and of Obama’s global zero vision more broadly.

This month five European foreign ministers from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, and Luxembourg called on NATO to take steps to remove US tactical nuclear weapons from European soil. The US has between 150 and 225 nuclear gravity bombs – which are essentially old-school dumb bombs – that are simply dropped on their targets. These nuclear weapons are relics from the Cold War when the NATO alliance feared they would need to use nuclear weapons to stop advancing Soviet forces on the battlefield.

Fortunately those days are long gone, but the irrelevance of these weapons has led to new security dangers. This year there was a shocking security breach at a base in Belgium where some of these weapons are stored. Peace activists were able to jump a chain link fence and walk up to a storage depot that held US tactical nuclear weapons. They also video taped the whole thing. Watch it:

As nuclear weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis put it, “holy crap.” The fact that a large group of people was able to just walk up to nuclear weapons storage facilities and basically had to seek out security personnel is incredibly unnerving.

Last week a delegation of European political leaders came to Washington to echo the calls for the removal of tactical nuclear weapons. These leaders included Des Browne, the former UK defense minister, Jan Kavan the former Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic, and former Prime Minister of Norway Kjell-Magne Bondevik. Browne told Julian Borger of the Guardian that, “senior European politicians are moving to the view that we can reduce the salience of these weapons and still retain our security.” This also is not just a Western European effort. Eastern European leaders like Kavan and former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski are supportive, as well as the Turkish government. NATO is currently developing a new strategic concept and as Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association argued, NATO “should seize the opportunity to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons by declaring that NATO nuclear sharing no longer is necessary for alliance defense.”

These European efforts also come on the heels of bold calls from two of our key allies in the Pacific – Japan and Australia – for nuclear disarmament. Prime Ministers of both Australia and Japan jointly released a report from the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament that laid out a bold and comprehensive plan to slash nuclear weapons.

Despite these growing international calls, conservatives continue to insist that nuclear arms reductions cannot be made because of “our allies.” They are living in denial. Our allies know that the possession of nuclear weapons makes the world less safe and that America’s conventional military might is a fully sufficient deterrent against potential adversaries.

Tom Friedman’s guarded optimism about Iraq — he’s apparently decided that the people of Iraq no longer need to “suck on this” — is a strong sign that the ongoing effort by Bush administration flacks to present Iraq’s elections as a vindication for the war is succeeding among a key target demographic: American pundits who advocated the war.

Unfortunately, the Arab world, the main intended audience of the Iraq intervention, appears not to be responding as favorably. A New York Times analysis of Arab media’s reaction to Sunday’s elections concludes that they were “not seen as a step toward democracy,” with “few analysts and commentators in the Middle East declaring the elections a success and Iraq on the road to stability”:

“Iraq is a failure and a big mess,” said Hussein al-Shobokshy, a columnist for the Saudi Arabian owned pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat. “Iraq is a scary model right now,” he added. “It is so divided, vulgarly so.” [...]

But after seven years of occupation, with so many killed, maimed and displaced, and with so many scandals, like Abu Ghraib, this is a very cynical audience. If the United States had hoped that the sight of millions of average Iraqis streaming out to vote might have begun to edge regional public opinion about American involvement in Iraq to at least a more neutral place, it is likely to be disappointed.

“It could be seen in the West as very symbolic, as nice, as something that proves it was worth getting rid of Saddam, but definitely not in the Arab world,” said Randa Habib, a political analyst and newspaper columnist in Amman, Jordan. “Jordanians still see Iraq as being manipulated by outside forces. Their minds have been manipulated by Americans and Iranians, and the outcome of the election will not be the best for Iraqis.” [...]

“In contrast to the Western and especially U.S. portrayal of these elections as ‘do or die,’ ” [Mirella] Dagher [a regional analyst at Mideastwire.com.] said, “the Arab media seems to be under no illusion that Iraq is heading toward either progress and democracy or complete disaster with these polls. Instead ‘more of the same’ is generally being seen as a continuation of the country’s problems.”

Friedman also suggests that Iraq’s elections “will subtly fuel the discontent in Iran.” While I actually hope that this could be true, I should also note that it’s not a suggestion that I’ve ever heard confirmed by an actual Iranian, or really by any Middle East analyst whose reputation wasn’t somehow bound up with the Iraq war.

It’s stating the obvious to note that Middle East publics experienced the Iraq war in a completely different way than Americans did, and are therefore drawing entirely different lessons from it. The general narrative that’s taken hold in the U.S. is that, even though Bush and Cheney misled us into the war and then screwed it up really badly for a number of years, the surge pulled Iraq back from the brink and gave Iraq a fighting chance at democracy. (This is what enables people like Rep. Dana Rohrbacher to complain that “I have never heard one word of gratitude from the Iraqi people about the 4,300 Americans who lost their lives.”)

As far as I can tell, when people in the Middle East look at Iraq they see a U.S. invasion that resulted in over 100,000 dead Iraqis, four times as many maimed and wounded, over 4 million displaced within and without the country, an occupation that produced a government still unable to resolve its most serious political tensions, and a country still plagued by terrorism — “the number one country in the world most at risk for terrorist attacks,” in fact. We shouldn’t act surprised that few in the region see this as something to be grateful for, much less a model to be reproduced.