Letter to President Obama

I submitted this letter on the White House e-mail form just now. I suspect they get more mail than most of us could imagine. My letter is probably a drop in the ocean of mail. I hope I didn't waste my time.

I also hope I don't sound like a crank. In any case, I listened to some pretty awesome music while I was writing it. Cheers. :)

Dear Mr. President,

In the media, one frequently encounters analysis of foreign policy by writers of various political orientations. To be sure, much of this analysis is, on its own terms, clever, well informed, and insightful. Yet, many writers avoid the looming elephant in the room--the existential threat to all humans: nuclear weapons.

Mundane foreign policy analysis is all but absurd in light of the existence of nuclear weapons. Some might object that after seven decades, we've accommodated them in some manner, that we no longer feel the absurdity they create because we've incorporated them in some fashion into our human existence. Nuclear weapons, they might say, are simply another fact of life, and if life doesn't end, then life goes on. However, it is precisely that normalization and conventional-ization that makes global circumstances so dangerous. 

A low probability over a short period of time becomes a much higher probability over a longer period of time. In other words, though on any given day, or in any given month or year, the risk of a nuclear war (or other nuclear event) might be small, the risk of a nuclear war happening across the course of a human lifetime is much greater. Moreover, a so-called "small" risk is not so small considering the consequences. A fifty megaton bomb is said to be capable of causing third degree burns 100 kilometers away and damaging windows 900 kilometers away. 

It is unclear what form a nuclear-free future would take--whether it would appeal to humanity's highest ideals in spite of human nature, or whether it would it somehow harness human nature and redirect it toward safer outcomes. But what is clear is that to feel our way toward a nuclear-free future and actually bring it into fruition, heads of state would be required to be statesmen of the highest principles. I urge you to use your opportunity as president to be this kind of statesman. 

Naysayers may deride the idea of a nuclear-free world as unrealistic and naive. The problem is, we have no choice but to try.

Sincerely,

[my real name]