One of the more important tasks that the Biden administration will undertake
this year will be to review the pentagon's nuclear weapons budget and
modernization strategy.
According to a 2019 congressional budget office report, the US is committed
to spending $494 billion on its nuclear forces over the next decade, or
about 50 billion dollars per year.
Over the next three decades, nuclear weapons modernization plans could cost
as much as 1.5 dollars to two trillion dollars. This total includes
investment in a 100 billion dollar ground-based strategic deterrent, a
land-based nuclear missile which is slated to replace the aging minuteman
three intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Manufactured by Northrop Grumman under a 13 billion dollar contract with
assistance from other major defense contractors like Bechtel, Honeywell,
general dynamics Lockheed martin, l3 harris, and Textron the GBSD is
supposed to be made operational by 2029.
The US air force plans to order more than 600 of them. Elizabeth eaves
characterized the GBSD in the bulletin of the atomic scientists, as a
new weapon of mass destruction the length of a bowling lane which will be
able to travel some six thousand miles carrying a warhead more than 20 times
more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The human tragedy associated with the development of the GBSD is
compounded by the fact that military experts believe it will not actually
enhance u.s national security.
Former defense secretary James Mattis told the senate armed services
committee in 2015 that getting rid of America's land-based nuclear missiles
would reduce the false alarm danger. Like its predecessor the minuteman 3,
the GBSD is designed to be activated in the face of a Russian nuclear
attack.
The computer systems that warn of such incoming fire may be vulnerable to
hacking and false alarms. during the cold war, military computer glitches
caused numerous close calls. President Biden has in the past supported arms
control and nuclear weapons reduction treaties.
In 1988 he helped negotiate ratification of the inter-nuclear forces treaty
signed between soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan,
which required the U.S and USSR to eliminate and permanently force wear all
of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise
missiles with ranges of 500 to 5500 kilometers.
More recently though Biden has taken a hard line against both Russia and
China, whose supposed existential threats to u.s interests have provided a
basis for the massive government investment in nuclear weapons.
In an op-ed published during the presidential campaign, Biden supported a no
first use policy for nuclear weapons and wrote in foreign affairs that the
purpose of the US nuclear arsenal should be deterrence and if necessary
retaliating against attack.
The democratic party's platform adopted at the July 2020 convention called
Donald trump's proposal for new nuclear weapons unnecessary wasteful and
indefensible.
So far however Biden's top pentagon nominees have publicly backed all three
legs of the nuclear triad including the land-based missiles.
A major factor inhibiting the prospects for disarmament is the cloud of
defense contractors like Northrop Grumman, which spent more than 12 million
dollars in lobbying in 2020 and provided Biden with four hundred and three
thousand and seventy-two dollars during the 2020 election campaign.
Last July when Ro Khanna democrat California proposed an amendment that
would transfer $1 billion or one percent of the GBSD's projected cost into a
pandemic preparedness fund, the amendment was voted down and kana was
accused by Liz Cheney, or we of playing into the hands of china which
according to Cheney had caused the covet 19 pandemics.
Cheney represents the district encompassing Cheyenne Wyoming which is home
to the fe warren air force base, where the GBSD will be based. the city
and surrounding region anticipate a major economic windfall from the GBSD.
In 2018 Chaney received twelve thousand dollars from Northrop Grumman
affiliated political action committees and ten thousand dollars in 2020.
Northrop donated money to congressional candidates in all six states Utah,
Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Montana, and North Dakota which would-be
beneficiaries of the new missile.
Polling data indicates that public support for developing nuclear weapons is
lukewarm at best. The freeze movement was a large-scale grassroots movement
that promoted a reduction and ultimately elimination of nuclear weapons.
Pacing a strong emphasis on grassroots education, it helped play the
groundwork for the inf treaty which the trump administration repealed in
2019.
At a zoom conference on Wednesday, February 24th sponsored by the bulletin
of the atomic scientists Katrina Vandenheuvel publisher of the Nation
magazine suggested that disarmament advocates should link up with the
climate change movement, which has generated a lot of enthusiasm.
The twin threats of nuclear war and climate change demand a boldness among
grassroots political activists that will be necessary to save ourselves and
our planet.
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