Tuesday, October 04, 2016

Some questions for the candidates

From Andrew Bacevich:
  • What is the present-day justification for maintaining the US nuclear “triad,” a strike force consisting of manned bombers and land-based ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles?
  • Why is the Pentagon embarking upon a decades-long, trillion-dollar program to modernize that triad, fielding a new generation of bombers, missiles and submarines along with an arsenal of new warheads? Is that program necessary?
  • How do advances in non-nuclear weaponry — for example, in the realm of cyberwarfare — affect theories of nuclear deterrence devised by the likes of Kahn and Wohlstetter during the 1950s and 1960s? Does the logic of those theories still pertain?
  • What lessons should be drawn from America’s costly and disappointing post-9/11 wars and how should those lessons apply to future policy?

1 comment:

R J Adams said...

I doubt either one would know what he was talking about. Having now read the article (I didn't see the debate) it's obvious they wouldn't.