If a forthcoming Foreign Affairs article, authored by the outgoing/incoming Secretary of State for Defense is anything to go by, it will be business as usual at the Pentagon… or Obama and his White House staff can look forward to a rocky relationship with his Defense Secretary. Following up on his speech to the Carnegie Endowment in November, where he suggested the US faces a choice between more nuclear testing or introducing an Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, Gates again endorses an RRW as essential for the US. He says the US must be ready to maintain a credible strategic deterrent all the while any other states possess the bomb. Throughout the article, talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, and future capabilities, his operation appears stuck in the mode of maintaining dominance, nuclear and conventional.
