Jeffrey Sachs seems to be bent on proving that symmetry is the hobgoblin of small minds. Spare us the legalistic game-playing. The stakes are far too high.



1. It is all very well to cite the NPT treaty obligations, but it takes (at least) two to negotiate. Russia and China show no signs of interest in being interlocutors.



2. Russia is embarked on a massive program to modernize its nuclear arsenal. As Stephan comments nearby, "in a Nuclear armed world only a US led by retarded idiots would get rid of Nuclear Weapons." If we ever allow Putin to believe that he has acquired a nuclear edge, a risk Sachs seems willing to run, that would not only be folly; it would be a war crime. Maybe the greatest war crime in history.



3. Sachs is guilty of the fallacy of moral equivalence. It makes a difference WHO has nuclear weapons. For than seventy years, the US has had a nuclear arsenal, and no nuclear weapon has been used in anger. But if a leader of a hermit kingdom/rogue state who murders his uncle with anti-aircraft weapons acquires nuclear weapons, the world will enter a period of far greater uncertainty. Better the devil you know ...



4. No matter what one thinks about the Iraq war, Sachs plays fast and loose with history by implying that the US invaded Iraq because of George W. Bush's pique at Saddam Hussein (?) or for regime change. Regime change was a means to the end of ending Iraq's WMD program. It is sly and disingenuous to say that Saddam "had acceded to US demands to end their nuclear programs." For sound reasons the world did not believe Saddam. The UN Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, in his book, Disarming Iraq, said that his gut feeling, even in early 2003, was that Iraq was still concealing weapons of mass destruction.



5. Sachs scoffs at the idea that the world is living under a Pax Americana. The fact is that, under the US nuclear umbrella, the world has experienced the greatest reduction in poverty in history -- and that despite Sachs' economic advice.