Any further reduction in U.S. strategic nuclear warheads would encourage "completely irresponsible, ambitious, aspirant nuclear powers such as Iran," former newspaper publisher and author Lord Conrad Black tells Newsmax TV.
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"I do not question for an instant the president's good intentions, but it will be just as conspicuous and in some ways more dangerous a failure than the plan of the late Defense Secretary [Robert] McNamara, who allowed the Soviet Union to gain nuclear power with the United States," Black tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview. "The assumption was that the Russians would then negotiate more respectably. Instead, they just tended to achieve nuclear superiority."
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"Unilateral disarmament has never worked. It is exactly the wrong thing to do."
Black, a member of the British House of Lords and the former CEO of Hollinger International, was responding to a Newsmax report that President Barack Obama soon will announce that the United States will unilaterally reduce its arsenal of strategic warheads to around 1,000.
That position is expected as part of the Pentagon's long-delayed Nuclear Posture Review implementation study that Obama was expected to sign earlier this year, and recent news reports say Obama may make the cuts by executive action, without congressional authorization.
The reduction represents a third of the nation's arsenal. The United States currently has 1,550 deployed warheads, mandated by the 2010 New START arms treaty, according to the Newsmax report.
The author of five books, Black’s latest is
"Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America From Colonial Independence to World Leadership."
The work chronicles America's strategic development into a world superpower from 1754 to 1992. Black details the specific strategic decisions of such statesmen as Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt that transformed the world and established America's role in it.
"Abraham Lincoln masterfully handled the whole task of finding the underlying cause of the Civil War: slavery," Black tells Newsmax. "Franklin D. Roosevelt did a brilliant job of tying the American national interest to the survival of the democracy, with the defeats of the Nazis and Japanese imperialists.
"These were all tremendous achievements that wouldn't necessarily happen just because the United States is a rich, well-populated country."
Black, 68, calls China one of America's rivals -- not adversaries -- and it's imperative that "they click with each other. The Americans need to make sure that their allies in the area, the Japanese, the Philippines, the South Koreans and others, are not intimidated by the Chinese."
But radical Islam, Black says, poses a clear threat to the United States. "It is an enemy. It's a nuisance and it's a terrible nuisance. They commit these atrocities, and they kill a lot of people."
Regarding the Middle East, Black tells Newsmax that "no durable achievement will be attained until there is a general recognition in the Muslim world of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
"The Islamic forces in general do not accept that, and Palestine could have its state next week if they would accept that. Israel should not be encouraged to and should not negotiate with anyone who does not accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state."
Black also wrote the 2007 biography, "Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full." The president faced impeachment proceedings over Watergate.
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And in recent weeks, a bevy of scandals facing the Obama administration -- the four Americans killed in Benghazi last Sept. 11, the Justice Department's secret seizure of telephone records of The Associated Press, and the IRS' targeting of conservative groups -- has led to similar impeachment calls.
That would not be good for the United States, Black tells Newsmax.
"I don't think this is, to be fair, a particularly scandalous administration. I don't think it's very successful, but I don't think they've done anything that should cause the president to be under a moral cloud.
"We just shouldn't be talking in those terms," Black adds. "We shouldn't be getting into this. I would hope that the powers that be in Washington would do something to try and reform the situation, but they're not doing it.
"You have a prosecutorial glasnost -- and it's out of control."
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