The White House Corespondents’ Dinner was a target rich environment for POTUS, and many a target got theirs.  However, I took personal pleasure in watching that clueless ass-hat Donald Trump getting his ass handed to him by the President, which starts at about 9:30 — Nicely done, Mr. President.

Post Updated Below – Obama Relieves McChrystal of his Post

In his June 23 “Special Comment” regarding Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s comments to Rolling Stone – over which, McChrystal reportedly intends to tender his resignation — the host of MSNBC‘s Countdown posited that President Obama should reject it:

…Sir, you should take General McChrystal’s resignation, and fold it up, and put it in your top drawer, and tell him that that is where it will remain, and that as of now you are not accepting it. Correct.

He tenders his resignation. You tell him to get back to Afghanistan because he’s not getting out of this morass he helped create, and tell him to make sure we get the surge troops withdrawn on time or faster if he can. And then, Sir, you sit back and watch the political world’s collective jaw drop.

Olbermann then lays down some history of presidents past and how they reacted when Generals Behave(d) Badly.

Uncertain if Obama should/will heed the advice, but Olbermann makes a persuasive argument.  Watch:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Update via PoliticusUSA – President Obama Relieves General McChrystal of His Post:

McChrystal arrived at White House ready to tender his resignation Wednesday at 10:00 AM. At 1:15 PM, MSNBC announced that President Obama relieved General McChrystal of the Afghanistan war which McChrystal was commanding. MSNBC is reporting that General Petraeus has been chosen to replace General McChrystal as commander of the Afghanistan forces… (Read More)

Forget Confederate History Month, April is now ‘Nuclear Nonproliferation Month.’  Wrapping up his administration’s Nuclear Security Summit on Tuesday, President Barack Obama efforts seem to have paid off with all 47 attending delegations reaching an agreement to tighten controls on nuclear materials.

Several nations agreed to dispose of weapons-grade uranium, end plutonium production, tighten port security and other voluntary steps. All participants endorsed Obama’s call to secure vulnerable nuclear materials in four years, and agreed to seek further cooperation even as they stopped short of any enforceable international agreement.

News of the international agreement comes on the heels of a flurry of nuclear nonproliferation activity from the Obama administration.  The most notable accomplishment came last week with the April 8 signing of the START treaty between the U.S. and Russia.  Despite Sarah Palin’s childish assessment of the arms reduction commitment, proper experts have declared the cuts to be ‘modest and real.’

Internationally, these commitments will be viewed as significant, if not historic.  The domestic reaction is another matter.  It remains uncertain whether an international success will register with American voters whose focus, at present, is acutely attuned to internal issues.

The Republicans, for their part, have been predictably dismissive.  Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), quoted in The Washington Post, said, “The summit’s purported accomplishment is a nonbinding communiqué that largely restates current policy and makes no meaningful progress in dealing with nuclear terrorism threats or the ticking clock represented by Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

Kyl is technically correct.  The agreement is voluntary.  Its success or failure will be determined by the ensuing actions of the signatories.  As Obama told the press following the summit’s conclusion, “We are relying on good will.”  Kyl, though, is missing the point, vastly underestimating the Summit’s significance.

Raising (much needed) Awareness is Progress

The significance of Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit can’t be measured by the communiqué, alone.  In the grand scheme of things, simply drawing attention to the inherent threat represented by loose nuclear material makes the president’s efforts worthwhile.

It’s hugely important for the international community to treat the threat with the proper urgency.  The main reason for this is explained in a April 13 post from Peter Grier at The Christian Science Monitor (emphasis added):

…how much loose nuke material is out there? A lot. The nations of the world together have about 1.6 million kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and about 500,000 kilograms of plutonium, according to data compiled by Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Security.

Simple division shows the magnitude of the threat this stuff portends. It takes only about 25 kilograms of HEU or eight kilograms of plutonium to make a crude nuclear bomb.

Fissile material is held at hundreds of locations, with varying levels of security…

Worldwide, many of these locations need better security. Would it be difficult for terrorists to break in and get their hands on fissile material? Not difficult enough.

Indeed, recent incidents indicate that securing this material is a problem that can’t be overstated.

“In 2007, for instance,” Grier writes, “a group of eight people broke into South Africa’s Pelindaba nuclear reactor and research center. “  The Pelindaba facility was previously considered a prime example of how the security of nuclear material should be conducted.

Abandoning Belligerence of the Bush Years

Time will tell whether or not the nonbinding agreement lives up to its intentions.  Immediately obvious, however, is the administration’s rejection of the diplomatic belligerence characteristic of the Bush/Cheney years.

The Bush administration’s exercise of nuclear diplomacy amounted to figuratively poking other nations with a stick, actually seeking to expand potential justifications for the use of nuclear weapons.  Further, Bush had no problem turning that stick on his own constituents,  beating fear into the American populace during the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

Perhaps Obama’s critics are nostalgic for Bush’s counterproductive approach.  Personally, I find Obama’s efforts refreshing, and since he’s having to deal with a number of nuclear messes left by his predecessor — Iran’s nuke pursuits and North Korea’s half-assed, yet dangerous, nuclear program, to name a couple — a more pragmatic approach is certainly justified.

Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, put it much more eloquently in his April 13 Politico post:

Obama has now showed two essential strengths. First, he can deliver what he promised in September 2009, when he chaired a special Security Council session. Second, his team understands the difference between approaches that have strategic depth and can move global players into new positions versus those that are vapidly bilateral and uncompelling to either party.

By inspiring international cooperation toward lowering the potential for non-state actors to acquire nuclear material, then, Obama is potentially setting the table for increased cooperation in persuading Iran relent its nuclear ambitions.  The president is further isolating Iran without the rattling of sabers.  Quite the opposite, in fact, and though the prospects for eliminating nuke related threats are far from certain, they’re remarkably better than they were before Obama took office.

Crossposted from Care2.com ~ Originally published 15 April 2010

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Related on PiP: NSArchive ~ ‘Prague Treaty Cuts Are Modest, Real’

Old Cold War Proposals Went Lower

From The National Security Archive, GWU – 8 April 2010

By:  Thomas Blanton and William Burr

Gorbachev and Reagan at one of their one-on-one sessions at Hofdi House during the Reykjavik summit, October 1986. During these meetings, Reagan and Gorbachev discussed proposals for the abolition of nuclear weapons. U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock is seated to Reagan's left. (Source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

Washington, D.C., April 8, 2010 – The new START Treaty signed today in Prague represents “real” but “modest” cuts in strategic nuclear forces comparable to some Cold War alternatives but still higher than the most far-reaching proposals considered by Presidents Reagan and Carter, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The documents show that the Prague cuts reach levels lower than than the Carter administration’s “deep cuts” SALT II proposal in 1977 and very close to the “finite deterrence” numbers contemplated by Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke in the late 1950s. Yet the Prague cuts do not reach the far lower numbers of nuclear weapons recommended by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, or initially considered by President Jimmy Carter, or the zero nuclear forces in 10 years proposed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

The Prague Treaty represents the first time in this century that U.S. and Russian heads of state have agreed to a schedule of specific cuts of strategic nuclear force levels, but they are only a small down payment on President Obama’s pledge to use the power of the presidency to move the nuclear weapons states toward abolition. In light of the historical record, the Prague Treaty levels are still significantly higher than what some Cold War presidents and top officials thought was even possible. While President Ronald Reagan proposed going down to zero by 1996, his initial target, a 50 percent cut of strategic warheads and delivery systems, would have left the U.S. arsenal with thousands of strategic warheads and almost a thousand strategic delivery systems as of 1991. President Jimmy Carter also saw nuclear abolition as a desirable goal, but the first SALT II proposal he presented to the Soviet leadership in 1977 would have left both sides with around 2,000 strategic delivery systems, far more than what is currently being considered.

The Prague Treaty levels are in the range of what at least one Cold War military leader thought was conceivable.  During the late 1950s, Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke developed a concept of a “finite deterrent” force of 45 Polaris submarines, with 720 submarine-launched ballistic missiles [SLBMs], of which 400, or 55 percent, would be on patrol (“on station”). Burke made interesting and compelling arguments for strategic forces dominated by Polaris submarines and the numbers he had in mind are close to U.S. force levels in the Prague Treaty.

Chart: From Finite Deterrence to Zero -- Force Level Alternatives during the Cold War

The Prague Treaty numbers are significantly higher than what other Cold War statesmen thought possible or worth looking into. In 1964, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara posited a force of 400 strategic warheads (one megaton)  as enough for the basic “assured destruction” deterrence mission, Years later, McNamara revisited this number when he wrote than “less than five hundred” was enough for deterrence. In 1977, when Jimmy Carter became president he contemplated the possibility of massive cuts bringing U.S. and Soviet strategic forces down to 200-250 strategic delivery systems. Even after Secretary of Defense Harold Brown questioned whether such low numbers were compatible with U.S. security, Carter remained interested in missile force levels of a “few hundred,” although his preferences could not be translated into negotiating positions.

The United States and Russia have some distance to go in order to match the low numbers–200-250 missiles, 400-500 strategic warheads–proposed during the Cold War.  And even those numbers are far from abolition, although much closer than the thousands of missile and nuclear warheads deployed during the height of the arms race. The documents suggest that the process of moving toward zero will be a prolonged and complex one necessarily involving arms control negotiations with other nuclear states, such as China, France, India, and Pakistan, as well as the enactment of other measures, such as the fissile materials production cut-off and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Read the NSArchive post and the original documents–> http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb311/index.htm

Ron Howard directs a team of SNL‘s presidential satirists, past and present, in Presidential Reunion from the Funny or Die Team.

From the FoD post:

Barack Obama gets a surprise visit in the night from ex-Presidents Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Clinton, Ford, Reagan and Carter to get a few pointers about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and why it’s so important.