Lost in Translation?

By Chris Jones

Picking up on a post earlier this week about grading the NPR, Jeffrey Lewis further clarified his statment about the declaratory options in the NPR being the choice between the plague and cholera.  For the most part, I take his point.  The difference between "sole" and "sole goal" is fairly significant in that there is an arguably limitless number of items that can be snuck under the goal umbrella.   Part of it very well may have been my misreading but I will note that Borger's wording of the "sole goal" is rather confusing:

The US goal is to the deterrence of nuclear attack the "sole purpose" of its arsenal

I think that may have intended to read "The US goal is to make the deterrence.." but as currently written could have goal referring more to deterrence than "sole purpose."

Regardless, Lewis' point about the declaratory policy options reportedly being included in the NPR not doing much to reduce the role of nuclear weapons is entirely fair.  That said, the much larger point from Tuesday's post still holds true: the entirety of the NPR needs to be graded in the context of the entirety of the Prague speech.  Declaratory policy appears to be one of the areas where the NPR will come up shortest from the left's view but that does not meant the NPR should therefore be considered all for naught.