What is a nuclear umbrella?

Nü-kl¯-er em-'bre-l:e

1) An exceptionally effective and powerful umbrella. Ex. "Is that some sort of nuclear umbrella, Andy? There's not a drop of rain on me."

2) An actual band in Melbourne, Fla.

According to the unhelpfully vague description on their MySpace page (myspace.com/nuclearumbrella), they play "Afro-Beat/Ambient/Celtic" that sounds like "north/central/south america, europe, middle east, africa, india, far east, + australia, mixed together."

I listened to a few of their tracks. I think a better description of their music is "met via the food co-op bulletin board" mixed with a little "gimme back my hacky sack. I'm late for the drum circle."

3) A promise to use American nuclear weapons to protect other countries from nuclear attack.

The concept of the nuclear umbrella goes back to the months and years following WWII.

During that immediate post-war period, Japan wrote into its laws (under U.S. pressure) that it would rely on the United States for much of its military-needs capability.

Japan would develop a small military self-defense force (called, appropriately, Japan Self-Defense Forces), but it would rely on the presence of the U.S. military for strategic defense against the aggressive godless commie pinkos in the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China.

Japan explicitly swore off the idea of building its own nuclear weapons and chose instead to rely on U.S. nukes. An attack on Japan would be interpreted by the United States as an attack on the United States. Which put Japan under our umbrella (ella, ella, eh, eh, eh).

What did the United States get from this arrangement? In the first half of the 20th century, Japan was the United States' main Pacific rival. Suddenly, it was our bitch.

Did I say bitch? I meant ally. My bad.

Japan became a giant aircraft carrier from which the United States could project its military power into Asia (see Korean War, Vietnam War).

A similar umbrella-like arrangement took shape in Europe around the same time. To encourage West Germany from arming itself with nukes to halt Soviet expansion, the United States erected a nuclear umbrella over Europe in the form of the NATO alliance. This umbrella arrangement was slightly different from the one with Japan because two of the nations under the umbrella, the U.K. and France, also maintained nuclear arsenals. The United States was like the big umbrella and France and Britain had those cute little cocktail umbrellas.

At last week's Democratic presidential debate (the one between Sens. Barack Hussein Lapel Pin and Senator Hillary Rodham-Sniper-Fire), the subject of extending our nuclear umbrella to defend Israel against Iran came up.

Sniper-Fire was more explicit than Lapel Pin, but both senators emphasized their commitment to treat Israel's defense with the utmost urgency. Sen. Sniper-Fire even suggested that our umbrella should be tilted to shield Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

One of the purposes of the nuclear umbrella is to prevent nuclear proliferation – meaning, we'll protect you with ours so you don't have to build your own. Extending our umbrella to the Middle East might stop Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE from nuke shopping in the future, but Israel already has had nukes for 35 years. Lots of them. It even has nukes on submarines – which means that even if Iran took out all of Israel's land-based nukes in a surprise raid (which won't happen), Israel could still retaliate via sea-launched nukes.

Covering Israel with our nuclear umbrella would represent an American foreign policy shift, but not the one you think. We're already committed to Israel's defense. There's no question about that.

The shift would be in our stance toward Iran. By extending the umbrella to Israel and the Middle East, we're essentially saying we believe U.S. nukes can deter Iran from attacking our allies in the Middle East. That idea undermines the argument made by the Bushies who argue for a pre-emptive strike against Iran. If you think they can be deterred, why start a pre-emptive war?