The NY Times describes the 'progress' made by Team Obama in pursuit of the President's nuclear weapons- free vision. I can't pick a favorite for "Most Ludicrous", but three passages stand out. First:
THE HAGUE — Japan announced on Monday that it would turn over to Washington a large cache of weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium, a decades-old research stockpile that is large enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons, according to American and Japanese officials.
The move is the biggest single success in President Obama’s five-year push to secure the world’s most dangerous materials...
Japan won't be nuking us or anyone - whew! Yes, obviously this has symbolic significance to true 'bad guys' like Iran or North Korea, who in turn won't be swayed by the Japanese example. And since you ask:
The nuclear fuel being turned over to the United States, which is of American and British origin, is a small fraction of Japan’s overall stockpile.
And the second nominee:
Mr. Obama’s initiative to lock down plutonium and uranium around the world was supposed to have been just the first step in an ambitious agenda to seek “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” as he said in Prague in 2009. Now, the downturn in relations with Russia has dashed hopes of mutual reductions in the world’s two largest arsenals. At the same time, North Korea has resumed its program, Pakistan and India are modernizing their weapons, and the United States Senate has not taken up any of the treaties Mr. Obama once described as vital.
No treaties from the Dem-controlled Senate? More on that:
But Mr. Obama’s agenda has also run into major troubles in the Senate. In 2009 and 2010 the White House promised to reintroduce the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was defeated in the Senate during the Clinton administration. It has never been put back in front of the Senate, for fear of a second rejection. Even seemingly noncontroversial legislation, including passage of two nuclear terrorism conventions that deal with the physical protection of materials, has been stuck.
The Times is ready to throw up their hands:
“The Obama team came in thinking a lot of things would be easier than they turned out to be,” said Matthew Bunn, a professor at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
That was 'arrogant cowboy diplomacy' when Bush did it, probably because the 'naive' label did not hang well on Cheney, Runsfeld and Powell.
And our third nominee:
Nonetheless, the effort to secure dangerous nuclear materials in Russia and the former Soviet states has been one of the big successes of the post-Cold War era, Just last year Ukraine, then still under the control of the now ousted President Victor F. Yanukovych, sent more than 500 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from a reactor back to Russia. Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons — left over after the fall of the Soviet Union — two decades ago. Had the weapons and materials remained in Ukraine, the current standoff with Russia might have taken on far more dangerous dimensions.
Peace through disarmament, and how did that work out? Maybe if the Ukraine had nukes this Crimea debacle wouldn't have happened at all. And maybe the Times wants to mention the quasi-border guarantees offered by the US. Or not.
The nuclear freeze was big on college campuses during Obama's formative years and he has learned nothing since.