The 411 on “311”

I’ve just seen a very intriguing segment on Fareed Zakaria’s excellent “GPS” Sunday morning program on CNN. ASIDE: If you’ve not added this to your stable of Sunday news and information programs, you should definitely give it a try. Zakaria has a knack for looking at things both as an American and as a world citizen and brings insightful questioning to a distinguished list of newsmakers from around the world—ranging from Prime Ministers of Israel, Indian film stars, the leading American political and environmental thinkers (Thomas Friedman being the foremost) and opinion makers of all types. He consistently moderates in measured, lowered-voice style, bringing a civility and clarity to the discussion at all times.)

Anyway … his closing segment on today’s program was a very short report on how a group of active US Air Force strategists have “made a stunning recommendation: that the US unilaterally reduce its nuclear arsenal to 311 weapons.” Here’s the proposal in a nutshell: With 100 land-based missiles, 192 sea=based missiles and 19 missiles aboard aircraft. That’s it. Brilliant!

If you want to look at this notion a little closer, here are a couple links which may be illuminating: “International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War” ) and the coverage (with copious numbers of embedded source links) on FiredogLake.

FINALLY, here’s the kicker: Many of these esteemed proponents of the “311” number say that getting the US to this number need not take a decade of strategic arms limitation talks across the international community. Most experts state that the US could unilaterally reduce the number of nuclear weapon to 311 and still serve as a total deterrent to any Russian “sneak attack” as even if the 100 land-based missiles were taken out, there would be ample mutually assured destruction (“MAD”) capability remaining in the 211 sub-based and bomber missiles.

Plainly, an all-out nuclear Armageddon would cleanse our planet of most life as we know it. The planet, of course, survives and in whatever millennia it takes for the half-life of all that nuclear mess to deteriorate into harmless powder, the planet will regenerate and start all over again. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. (I'm with Sting--I hope the Russians love their children, too.)