Obama should be much more like George H W Bush

Yes, the comparison would probably make him cringe, but Freeman Dyson makes an interesting and accurate observation in an interview. He notes that the two presidents most responsible for dramatic arms reductions were both Republican; Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush.

HW especially reduced nuclear weapons stockpiles by a greater percentage than any other president. He was responsible for negotiating the START treaty with the Soviet Union which remains the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history; its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80 percent of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence.

As Dyson notes, for all the enthusiasm on the left, Obama is actually doing much less than both Reagan and Bush and needs to do much more to reduce nukes. Maybe, as Dyson wryly says, one needs to be a right wing Republican to get rid of nuclear weapons.

“Dyson: Well he should be doing much more. I mean this is… I like Obama and I like what he is doing, but this is not at all impressive. George Bush, Sr., did far more. I mean George Bush, Sr., got rid of more than half of our nuclear weapons just like that. He was the one who really got rid of nuclear weapons on a big scale, but George Bush, Sr., was careful because he was a Republican. He did it very quietly. He didn’t want to have his name associated with that, but he got it done. Of course with Obama it’s sort of the opposite that he would like to get the credit for it, but he is not really doing it, and so it’s, I think he should be doing far more and I hope he will, but he is in a much more difficult position. It helps to be a right-wing Republican if you want to disarm…”

The official slide into absurdity

There’s been so much said about Obama prematurely winning the Nobel Peace Prize that I cannot possibly add to it. This was one of the very few times when both his detractors and his supporters were united in their recognition of this absurdity. I bet the news has given a headache to Obama and undoubtedly introduced another lofty expectation and complication in his life.

Suffice it to say that it’s at times like this that I feel gratified to be working in the sciences. Sure, Nobel Prizes in the sciences have also been controversial, but nowhere as controversial as the literature, peace and economics prizes. The peace prize has officially turned into a joke and the economics prize is close to being one. But the ribosome, DNA structure, symmetry breaking in weak interactions and high-temperature ceramic superconductors have a ring of certainty and permanence that no achievement in finance or peace can have, although an achievement in literature might come close to being this way. Uncle Alby’s words speak again; “Politics is ephemeral but an equation is forever”…

Missile shield to be scrapped

It’s a great day. This piece of news makes me feel extremely gratified as I am sure it does many others. Missile defense against ICBMs has been an eternal bug that has bitten almost every President since 1960. The Bush administration had aggressively pushed plans to implement a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. There has always been evidence that the efficacy of such a shield will ultimately be severely limited by the basic laws of physics, and that the adversary can essentially and cheaply overwhelm the defense with decoys and countermeasures.

I have written about these limitations and studies about them several times before (see below). The best article arguing against the European missile shield is a May 2008 article by Theodore Postol and George Lewis in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (free PDF here).

And as arms expert Pavel Podvig succinctly wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists only three days back, it’s not just about the technology, but it’s about a fundamentally flawed concept:

“The fundamental problem with the argument is that missile defense will never live up to its expectations. Let me say that again: Missile defense will never make a shred of difference when it comes to its primary mission–protecting a country from the threat of a nuclear missile attack. That isn’t to say that advanced sensors and interceptors someday won’t be able to deal with sophisticated missiles and decoys. They probably will. But again, this won’t overcome the fundamental challenge of keeping a nation safe against a nuclear threat, because it would take only a small probability of success to make such a threat credible while missile defense would need to offer absolute certainty of protection to truly be effective…It’s understandable that people often talk about European missile defense as one of the ways in which to deal with the missile threat posed by Iran. Or that someday missile defense could provide insurance for nuclear disarmament–this is the vision that Ronald Reagan had. When framed in this way, missile defense seems like a promising way out of difficult situations. But this promise is false. If a real confrontation ever comes about (and let’s hope it never happens), we quickly would find out that missile defense offers no meaningful protection whatsoever”.

Now the Obama administration has decided to scrap the unworkable shield and has decided to replace it with a much more realistic defense against short-range missiles. I cannot imagine how gratified this must make the scores of scientists, engineers and policy officials who have long argued against the feasibility of the shield. It also signals a huge shift in Bush-era foreign policy. Notice how the administration has diplomatically and shrewdly avoided mentioning the basic failures of the earlier system.

Unfortunately, the sordid history of missile defense and the inherent satisfaction that seems to stem by arguing in favor of a “shield” to protect the population makes me skeptical in believing that the concept is dead forever. But for now, there is peace in our time and this is a significant breakthrough.

Past posts on missile defense:
Made For Each Other
Missile Defense: The Eternal Bug
Holes in the Whole Enterprise
Czechs halt missile shield progress

Czechs halt missile shield progress

Finally, some promising development on this front. I have talked about the futility of missile defense several times before. In a nutshell, the only time an ICBM can truly fruitfully be intercepted is in midcourse, when it is descending to earth above the atmosphere. At this point it is being guided only by gravity, and it can release thousands of simple decoys from which it will be essentially indistinguishable for an incoming warhead. Several scientists over the last three decades have written articles arguing this point (read the excellent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists), and yet missile defense stubbornly refuses to leave the minds of US presidents.

Plus, the underpinnings of missile defense totally miss the point and indicate vastly misplaced priorities. What in the name of Wotan is the possibility that N. Korea or Iran would attack the US with ICBMs and risk being reduced to dust? What on the other hand are the chances of someone slipping a small WMD through the incompletely guarded ports in the US? And what are the chances of alienating Russia by erecting such a shield a stone’s throw away from Russian territory?

The former administration did not believe in the laws of physics, nor in the laws of human nature. Seems this one does.

A breath of fresh air

When was the last time a US President stood before Congress and talked with such captivating eloquence, reason and idealism grounded in reality for 52 minutes? How effortlessly, elegantly and modestly the words flowed. This could well have been a State of the Union address.

It truly felt like tinkling music to my ears. It was like listening to a perfectly rendered version of Mozart’s “Linz” after 8 years of constantly listening to a badly mangled Marilyn Manson album while being incarcerated in a dark box. It was like going to the world’s most luxurious and pristine spa and cleansing your system with nectar after 8 years of living in the gutter and eating lard. The English language was finally resurrected yesterday in Congress.

Now let’s just hope he can walk the talk.

AND NOW, FROM MIT…

“Voting analysis shows Obama won because of his support among blacks”

This was the conclusion of a recent MIT study that analyzed Obama’s win. In other news, pandas have shown a willingness to eat bamboo shoots.

Does anyone else get the feeling that supposedly high-profile research sometimes reveals facets of life that are intuitively obvious?

But jokes aside, the research has a point. Many people behaved as if racial barriers were finally shattered and that race relations were now officially over. While people’s joy and hope was palpable and understandable and while this has indeed been a very important election, history does not really care for exaggeration. I personally never believed that Obama truly transcended race in the minds of many. In fact, as accomplished as he is, I think that he won as much because of the utter incompetence of the other side as because of anything else. Would he have won if he had been running against Ronald Reagan? I don’t think so. We are not old enough yet for that to have happened.

BARACK”S MOMENT

I just finished listening to Obama’s inaugural speech (text). I didn’t think that the speech was particularly more inspiring than some of his other speeches, but given the fact that the average Obama speech is already very inspiring and eloquent, it does not really matter. It was excellent and was definitely one of his best. And I have to say I have heard very few speeches which encompassed so many issues comprehensively and succinctly in 15 minutes. He talked about everything; science, reaching out to poor and hostile countries, shoring up the economy, sustaining both freedom and security without having to sacrifice one for another, fighting climate change and nuclear proliferation, becoming independent in energy, getting the minimal necessary aid provided by government, and welcoming outsiders wanting to live the American dream.

And even though Obama has been inspired by Abraham Lincoln and has alluded to him several times, he deemed it fit to quote the firebrand of the American Revolution Thomas Paine in the end:

“Let it be told to the future world … that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it”

I AM FROM THE GOVERNMENT

And I am here to help…this time for real

The dreaded government official might now be necessary to buttress a crucial factor in the energy crisis- nuclear power. In a sad bit of collateral damage, it seems the global financial crisis might stem the growth of nuclear power- never too encouraging and strong to begin with- throughout the world and especially the US. As a Nature article reports:

The growing difficulties in attracting investment may prevent nuclear power from playing a significant role in the fight against climate change. A global energy outlook published on 12 November by the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization that guides energy policy, called for an 80% increase in the world’s current nuclear capacity by 2030 in order to keep global carbon dioxide levels from rising above 450 parts per million. That would require bringing some 25 new reactors online every year between now and 2030, five times the current rate of construction, according to Matthew Bunn, a nuclear-policy expert at Harvard University. Given the bleak financial outlook and the limited production capabilities of power-plant vendors, “nuclear can no longer support climate-change needs and targets”, he says.

This is particularly sad given the new nuclear power plant designs that are based on higher efficiency, safety, economy and better proliferation resistance. Britain has for example decided to wisely double its nuclear power capacity with the goal of meeting an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases. But the financial meltdown has made some wary of this target.

The way I see this, it’s pretty clear that some major policy initiatives will have to be axed because of the financial crisis. However, the credit crunch should clearly affect government funding initiatives less than private funding ones. For example, in China nuclear power generation is slated to be quadrupled through government spending, and this won’t be affected as much.

Thus, with government funding for nuclear now becoming crucial, the real question is which policy initiatives the government should ax, if any. It would a very big folly as I see it to stifle nuclear and fund renewables instead. In fact what I fear is that because of the poor public perception of nuclear, private investors as well as the government might actually come forward and fund renewables, thus propelling the country and the world down a path that would not promise any significant returns in the crucial next decade for mitigating climate change and providing higher energy density. After that it might be too late.

To me the solution looks simple, even if non-trivial to implement; if the government pot of money is small but the private pot of money is smaller, the government needs to prioritized its spending, make sure that nuclear gets its fair share of investment. It’s up to the government now who can really help. This would be a pretty good test for the energy policy of the Obama administration. That should make the choice of energy secretary even more important and anticipated.

TAPPING THE PHONE LINES: NON NSA STYLE

As part of the election, I did something which I had not really planned for; I made 30 phone calls to voters on behalf of Barack Obama’s campaign. I did this pretty much on impulse and in spite of not being a US citizen. But I also think that there was a genuine reason behind it. Perhaps that reason points to how important we felt this election was not just for the country but for the world. It indicates how much each of us were fed up with bullying, cronyism and irrationality, and how all of us wanted a breath of fresh rationality, honesty and compassion in the national and international dialogues of our times. Perhaps it especially demonstrated how those of us who have come to these shores with a certain image of the US in our mind wanted to resurrect that image after we were sorely disappointed with how badly that image was tarnished.

I started with registering on barackobama.com and noting my address. After that it was really simple. They gave me a list of tasks I could do, such as driving people who cannot drive to the polls. Since it was a little late for that, I thought I would do the next thing on the list which was really easy: call people. Call them to make sure they have voted. If they have, ask them if they considered supporting Obama. If they have not, ask them when they plan to vote. And ask them if they will strongly consider supporting Obama. If nobody is home, leave a message with the above questions and comments. If the phone number is not working, note this fact on the website. That was really it.

I had an interesting experience overall. Most of the times I either talked to people who have already voted, or left a message. In some cases I left a message with another member of the household. As I made one call after another, I understood the value of doing this. I realise that sometimes when people are sitting on the fence, a simple phone call from a campaign (and a lack of one from the other) can possibly change their minds. I guess that’s what all the talk about grassroots efforts is about.

My last phone call was the most interesting of all, when I had to accomplish the difficult task of convincing someone to vote for Obama. I reached a 88 year old voter in Ohio. This man had lived through the Depression and the War. He probably was fed up with both political parties. Before I could say anything, he asked me to recite the first 7 words in the Declaration of Independence. I was completely caught unawares and hesitatingly began with the words “We the people” before quickly embarrassing myself and realizing that that was the Constitution. I had another chance to salvage my dignity, but then I realized that the most famous words of the Declaration, the whole part about all men being created equal which I did know, could not possibly be the beginning. Nevertheless I mumbled those words and got another reprimand from him. Finally he decided to give this anonymous Obama supporter (with an accent!) a last chance and asked me who wrote it. I said Jefferson and thereby barely managed to save the last shreds of my dignity. But then it got interesting. Somewhat bitterly, he asked me why he should support Obama if I did not know the Declaration. To which I falteringly answered that while I profusely apologized for my ignorance, I did know what the document stands for and I thought that its implications and ideals were more important than its exact wording. That seemed to satisfy him. I breathed a sigh of relief and wiped my brow before thanking him and hanging up, although it turned out at the end that he had already voted “at high noon” and this was probably a “test”. Later I asked many of my American friends the same question, and all of them except one or two ended up citing the same lines from the Declaration or Constitution as I did. I guess they are as ignorant about Obama and what he stands for as I am!

So I had an interesting experience. But I also realized the power of grassroots efforts and the medium of the Internet. If I could so easily place 30 phone calls and out of those 30 voters if I could convince even 2 to vote, imagine what it would be for hundreds of thousands of such people around the country to constantly make phone calls days on end and talk to voters.

It may sound strange and perhaps even unpatriotic that I who have never voted in India am now contributing to a drive to garner votes in a country where I am not a citizen. In fact not voting in India when I had one chance to do it is something that I count as a failure in my life and, although I had my reasons, I feel ashamed of not doing it. In my flimsy defense, I was blissfully uninterested in politics when I was in India. This was mainly because I was too cynical about it and also because I was too interested in science and music to find time for it. My protests against politics had a ring of truth to them; what’s the point of voting if all of these people are going to mess up the country anyway? But it was later that I realized that even if my disillusionment with the national political scene made sense, by not voting I was not exercising the most crucial right I have in my country, and ironically by not doing this I was not helping to improve the same situation that I had been deploring for so long. More importantly, even if none of them were good, someone has got to be better than the previous one. He doesn’t need to be a paragon, he simply needs to be better than the previous one and that should be reason enough to vote for him or her.

I resent the fact that I did not vote or do such simple volunteering in India. If I am back in India at some point and can do it, I surely will. But in spite of being an outsider, I am glad I did this here on Tuesday. Perhaps it was the scientist in me that encouraged me to do this for a man who respects scientific inquiry more than many of his predecessors. It was my shout out not just to Obama but more importantly to rationality, a virtue without national boundaries.

HISTORY

Image: New York Times

Till I was about 13 or 14 years old, my readings of American history consisted only of offerings from the history of the United States during World War 2, an old and enduring historical interest of mine. It was when I picked up Harold Evans’s The American Century, a superb and magisterial illustrated history of the country during the twentieth century, that I became painfully and woefully aware of the injustice that African-Americans faced in this country for two hundred years. I was horrified to read about Jim Crow, the dog squads and water hoses on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, the lynchings in Mississippi. As a boy who was about the same age then, I was especially sickened and completely shaken by the relatively recent story of Emmet Till, a story that has been vividly seared into my mind ever since.

I could not believe that this was the country enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the land which first and foremost looked at the integrity of one’s character and his or her abilities and not where he or she came from. And yet I saw hope and fundamental human decency in Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. But since then, I have often felt whether any event or moment in the United States could possibly mentally transport me to a pre-Harold Evans time when I had a singularly auspicious and pristine perception of this country. Such a moment would never come because one cannot erase the scars inflicted on this country’s character for two hundred years. But I feel convinced that if there would be a moment closest to such a moment in my life, that moment would be yesterday night.

At midnight, I stood on the 15th floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel and amid the car horns constantly blaring on the street downstairs, I strained my ears to catch every word that he spoke on the TV screen. The overriding feeling among everyone around me was one of peace and relief and tears even more than elation.

He looked tired, relieved and happy but not jubilant. He knows the difficult task that lies ahead and knows that celebration right now is premature. He knows that there’s much to be done and that this is just the beginning. He knows that he may not be able to bring about a sea change in the way things have been done. But he knows that he will nudge the country in the right direction by valuing and fostering rationality and honest debate. He knows he will be upfront and forthright about what he thinks and he understands the value of the journey, even if the final destination may not be known. He understands the value of incremental progress.

And he knows that his extraordinary story culminating in yesterday’s night healed at least some of the internal divisions among his own people and will go a long way in reviving his country’s image in the world as the land of opportunity, diversity and respect.

He did it. Now we have to do it. Now we can get back to our lives.