EDITORIAL: "To Russia With Love: Degrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal," Wall Street Journal, 4-5 April 2009.

Obama's team proposes a replacement to START that would limit both sides to 1k nuclear warheads (not weapons, warheads). We currently have about 4k and Russia has 5k. Bush-Cheney had an agreement with Moscow to go down to 1700 US and 2200 Russia by 2012.

I could live with both sides dropping down to maybe 2500 a piece, but to me, 1k is too low. I like a big, "unthinkable" lead on the rest of the world and I don't worry about having Russia along for that ride, because we cancel each other out in that regard.

But we can argue over the best long-term number. What we should not argue over is this notion of trying to get the world to zero. Since that simply will not happen for rising great powers any time soon, we need to remain many-fold larger than their current/desired arsenal levels, and we need to keep our arsenals in solid shape.

That's why Obama's rejection of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (simple updating) program is deeply flawed. Gates wants it and so does the military. Without it, our arsenal degrades and becomes less safe and less operationally sound.

In short, the RRW is the equivalent of taking all your old VCR tapes of family events and transferring them to DVDs to preserve quality, ease of use, and longevity. This is a no-brainer in terms of national security spending.

But when Obama's opposition is combined with this nutty call for ridding the world of nuclear weapons, then I get really nervous, because everything we do to shrink the "unthinkable" gap between ourselves and the rest of the world will only encourage the rest of the world to close it further. It will not aid in non-proliferation whatsoever, either. Dozens of countries have nuclear capacity but refuse to exploit the weaponization alternative because it provides them nothing in terms of additional security. But once you lower the threshold for great-power war by pursuing the zero option, that will logically change with great speed.

Let me be absolutely clear on this: pursuing the zero option is likely to increase proliferation among those already with nuclear capacity. The reason why they don't now seek that weaponization path is that the gulf between them and truly acknowledged nuclear-weapons states is vast and hugely expensive to overcome. And why bother doing it unless they face the distinct possibility of attack from a nuclear great power?

Given all of Obama's solid calls on foreign affairs and national security, this is a stunning boner--a real clanker that makes the Dems seem foolishly out of touch on hardcore national security issues.

It is Clinton's gays-in-the-military times ten.