OPINION:
Robert Monroe’s op-ed, “Before the next mushroom cloud” (Nov. 17), highlights the dangers of nuclear proliferation and calls for the incoming Trump administration to take a lead within the United Nations to overcome the danger.
The points Mr. Monroe makes mirror precisely those we made in a Defense News article in 2009 calling the attention of the then-new Obama administration to the same problem. However, unlike Mr. Monroe, we recognized then that although the resolution of the problem lay with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, there was little chance of Russia or China falling into line with any U.S. proposal.
Our suggestion then (which we stand by today) was that the only chance of getting international support for a much stronger non-proliferation policy would need European, not U.S., leadership. The incoming Trump administration needs to work quietly with Britain and France to take the lead in the United Nations in order to build support for such a policy. It is ironic that the Obama administration would have had more chance of success had they taken such steps rather than choosing the route of trying to eliminate nuclear warheads.
We recognize that a move by the U.N. Security Council requiring North Korea and Iran to stop their nuclear programs will be much more difficult now than it would have been seven years ago, but we agree that such moves are required if we are not to live in an increasingly dangerous world. We agree with Mr. Monroe that “nuclear weapons aren’t going away — ever,” so let us develop a more realistic policy for living more safely with those weapons.
STANLEY ORMAN
Rockville
MAJ. GEN. EUGENE FOX
U.S. Army (retired)
Plano, Texas
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