As someone who loves history, I know you cannot understand the present unless you grasp the past. Or, as George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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But what about those who do remember the past and take away all the wrong lessons? They are even more pernicious because they have no excuse for their errors. Christine Wormuth, a civilian who served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under Obama and Secretary of the Army under Biden, is one of those people, and she deserves to be called out and shamed.
Since leaving the White House, Wormuth has a new gig: She’s the CEO and President of an organization called the Nuclear Threat Initiative. It defines its priorities as follows:
NTI is focused on reducing nuclear, biological, and emerging technology threats imperiling humanity. Our impact model, expertise, and facilitating power allow us to mitigate existing and evolving risks while leveraging real-world technology and governance solutions to design and build a safer world.
I can agree with that. I’d love to see those threats reduced. Specifically regarding nuclear threats, NTI states:
As long as the world continues to rely on outdated nuclear deterrence theories, we live with the risk of catastrophic failure. A new framework for a secure nuclear future is needed—one where peaceful nuclear technologies still exist, but the world no longer relies on nuclear weapons for security. Through novel strategies, dialogues, and partnerships, NTI promotes new thinking about the legal, normative, institutional, and technological requirements needed to confidently verify, monitor, manage, and control the peaceful use of nuclear materials and technology in a world without nuclear weapons.
Yes, they are going to return the threat to Pandora’s box, put the genie back in the bottle, unscramble this particular egg, or whatever other metaphor you want. I don’t see it happening because there is no incentive for rogue nations to back away from all that nuclear power. The only way to make them give up their nuclear programs is to destroy them (as Trump is doing with Iran) or to offer threats so overwhelming that they have no choice but to give up weapons.
Ukraine’s choice—giving its nuclear stockpile to Russia, which allegedly dismantled it, in return for promised security assistance—shows what happens to a nation that voluntarily disarms during peacetime. If Ukraine were still nuclear, it’s doubtful Russia would have invaded.
Only stupid nations give up their weapons, and it seems that some foreign governments are hopeful that America will be stupid. I say this because there seems to be evidence that significant parts of NTI’s funding come from foreign governments. Or perhaps those governments are just utopian lunatics who illustrate the principle that a fool and the money he demands from taxpayers will soon be parted.
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A nation that voluntarily disarms isn’t a virtuous world citizen; it’s a sitting duck. But Ms. Wormuth, NTI’s leader, has that dream, and her dream gets me to my point about someone learning all the wrong lessons from history.
In a LinkedIn post on the anniversary of the atomic attack on Japan, which abruptly ended WWII, Wormuth wrote,
Let me repeat that first sentence: “Eighty one years ago my grandfather, a WWII veteran, was repairing Army airplanes on Iwo Jima when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Is it possible that this one-time Secretary of the Army does not understand that her grandfather, stationed on Iwo Jima, almost certainly made it home from the war because of the bomb? (And as an aside, are you as offended as I am that she mourns the Japanese dead without celebrating the Americans who did die?)
When Truman dropped the bomb, the U.S. estimated that Operations Olympic (invading Kyushu, the militarily important south of Japan), and Coronet (invading the Tokyo plain) would see the war last at least another year. The War Department estimated that there would be 1.7 million 4 million U.S. casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 American deaths.
Simultaneously, they predicted 5-10 million Japanese deaths from a continued war, because they believed that the Japanese intended to put every man, woman, and child into battle. That understanding of the Japanese defense when America conquered Japan and reviewed its defense documents.
The atomic bomb claimed 210,000 to 215,000 Japanese lives—a horrific and tragic number, but still infinitely better than the probable 5-10 million deaths. And of course, American troops finally came home, safe and sound.
My first thought when I read Wormuth’s utterly inane, ahistorical comment was “What a maroon.” My second thought was true dismay when I realized how she held such a prominent voice in America’s defense planning for so many years. And my third thought, like something out of a horror movie, was that she is not alone. The Democrat party is filled with people just like her and, unless Republicans can get off their derrieres and vote, these people will control our future defense policy.
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