A Washington Naval Treaty for Submarines? |
| Published: October 18, 2007, 12:05 pm |
| Tags: one ping only, arms control, saving the whales, submarines |
|
Sonar kills whales, and Yglesias links to an interesting Hendrik Hertzberg article making the following proposal:Any real solution would have to be international, involving some serious diplomacy aimed at a new kind of arms control. The cat-and-mouse games played by submarines may have made a certain kind of sense during the Cold War, but what is the point of them now? Russia is annoying, but it is no longer our mortal enemy. The Chinese have no desire to bury us, except under piles of sneakers and kitchen appliances. Al Qaeda's navy, as the Cole incident showed, consists of the odd motorboat. The terrorists have no submarines. Perhaps the immense sums still spent on naval toys whose strategic rationale is obsolete could be redirected to teaching the relevant personnel, humans and dolphins alike, to speak Arabic. I'm skeptical. To overly simplify matters, there are really two kinds of arms control agreements, and neither of them fit submarines very well. The first kind, into which [ Full article ] |
 Blog link
|
No Comments...