Scattered across the world today on the web and in the newspapers is an opinion piece from Vice President Joe Biden called, “The President’s Nuclear Vision.”

The Vice President says, “We will spend what is necessary to maintain the safety, security and effectiveness of our weapons.”

The Obama Administration proposes spending $600 million more than last year.  That’s good, but as they say, “the proof is in the pudding” meaning the details – which will have to be worked out later.

With the United States in deep financial trouble, it sounds a little funny for the Obama Administration to be saying they will spend more on nuclear weapons.  They sure don’t seem like a “defense-minded” administration to me.  

Of course, politics play a part in any decision, so this may look good on paper and to the independent voters, etc., but if you cut the number of nuclear weapons, as I believe they will try to do, you won’t need the extra coin “to maintain the safety, security and effectiveness of our weapons.”

The key part (to me) of Biden’s whole opinion piece is this paragraph:

Our budget request is just one of several closely related and equally important initiatives giving life to the president’s Prague agenda.  Others include completing the New START agreement with Russia, releasing the Nuclear Posture Review on March 1, holding the Nuclear Security Summit in April, and pursuing ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

I believe if a new START treaty is completed with Russia, we’ll see at least one, and possibly two, ICBM bases closed – and for sure only the strongest of the three ICBM bases will survive this newest treaty.  For those new to the nuclear world, the three bases are Malmstrom in Montana, F.E. Warren in Wyoming, and Minot in North Dakota.

The President said in 2009 that he would begin the work to reduce our nuclear arsenal.

Of course, any treaty will have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate and those senators from the “missile” states (plus maybe a couple of other states) might not want to vote for something that may impact their state to the tune of hundreds of thousands each year in economic impact.  But more importantly, there may be other senators who may not want the United States to be weakened to the point of only having 150-300 land-based nuclear weapons.

This entire plan to reduce the nuclear arsenal may pit Montana against North Dakota against Wyoming with only the strongest congressional delegation being able to protect their turf.