Peace Talk and War Budget
"I've determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one third." -- Obama's Berlin speech, Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2013.
Mr. President, This is the wrong goal. We should not "maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent." We should lead the world in abolishing nuclear weapons before they abolish us. The choice is real and immediate.
While the president promised to work for peace, the National Nuclear Security Administration presented a new budget to Congress in June for the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP) for 2014, with plans for the distant future. This budget, covering the next 25 years, details plans to replace all of our current nuclear warheads with new models to be built in new facilities for $275 billion. The SSMP, in the rarified atmosphere of the nuclear establishment, makes no mention of reducing warhead stockpiles or delivery systems.
The politics of nuclear weapons reveals a Congress that wants to maintain the current expenditure, keep the stockpile, the laboratories, bases, and the business of making more planes, missiles and submarines to deliver them. (see Bombs Versus Budgets, Hartung & Anderson, Center for International Policy, June 6, 2012) But, nuclear weapons are not a matter of corporate profits, congressional district payrolls, or pleasing Congress and its generous lobbyists. Nuclear policy must be approached from the viewpoint of national security and the preservation of Life on Earth.
We now know that even a relatively small nuclear exchange and its fires would cause a giant cloud of radioactive debris to circle the Earth producing a Nuclear Winter of failed food crops and starvation. Radioactive fallout would poison friends and foe alike, damaging genes and causing illness and death. Life on Earth and in its oceans would be substantially reduced. The result of these forecasts is that many nuclear-weapons-free nations are now concerned for the safety of their people, and impatient for the nuclear nations to proceed promptly with the 1970 NPT agreement to abolish these weapons.
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http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17376-peace-talk-and-war-budget
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