The Nuclear Domino Effect (AntiWar.com)

[mike_c]

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/stapp.php?articleid=4886

February 19, 2005
The Nuclear Domino Effect
by Katherine Stapp

Even as the United States leans on North Korea and Iran to renounce any nuclear objectives, peace activists say it has stepped up spending on its own arsenal, including investments in a new generation of longer lasting and sturdier "bunker buster" weapons.

The "quiet effort," first reported by the New York Times last week, involves a relatively modest budget of nine million dollars for engineers at the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia. Its goal is to produce new warhead prototypes in the next decade.

According to the Western States Legal Foundation, an anti-proliferation group, U.S. nuclear weapons spending has swelled by 84 percent since 1995, now amounting to 40 billion dollars annually. This budget supports the maintenance of some 10,000 nuclear warheads – 2,000 on hair-trigger alert.

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More the hyprocrisy of U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

[cliss]

1. My thoughts turn to the debates with

John Kerry and George Bush last year. At one point, Kerry stated that we should "work with our allies" and try to work things out together.

A few seconds later, Bush practically lunged out of his seat and gestured wildly. He said, "the US is the leader of the world, and we're prepared to lead".

Meaning = we're the leader of the world, and we'll do what we want. I think this attitude was established at the Bretton Woods conference after WW2, when the US emerged at the top of the heap.

A lot has changed since then. We simply squandered our supremacy and became soft and weak. Cream-puffs, that's what we became. And we also became VERY used to skimming off the economies of the rest of the world.

No longer. Now, all we have left is military prowess, a hollowed-out industrial base and an economy that's an empty shell. And...the threat of nuclear capability.