This is my second recent anti-nuke post, prompted by an article I read this past Sunday (October 13). I opened The New York Times to the “Sunday Opinion” section where I found the headline noted above. The caption below the title read “The U.S. military is spending mightily to overhaul the nation’s outdated nuclear arsenal. Why are we back here?”

What?

The United States will be spending almost $2 trillion over a thirty year period to replace and expand our nuclear arsenal! Good heavens, I had no idea! Yet this spending spree started in 2010 as reported by The Times. The new nuclear arms initiative has fallen behind its original goal of  completion by 2042 and so far is way over budget.

I was taken aback. There has been little, if any, reporting—at least that I am aware of–on this massive, under-the-radar nuclear buildup by the United States military. This article comes only a few months after the publication of Annie Jacobsen’s new book, Nuclear War, which scared the bejesus out of me but did not include material about this massive nuclear weapons buildup. Why hasn’t this been a big issue? And whatever happened to the idea of nuclear disarmament? I thought that following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s we were on a course to get rid of these weapons of mass destruction, not to increase them. What happened? Who is responsible?

Friends, this is insanity!

From Jacobsen’s book, we know that the 5,000 “outdated” nuclear weapons at our disposal still have the power to destroy our adversaries many times over and to alter the climate of the planet Earth.  A nuclear winter could last for years and possibly decades. We currently have 14 nuclear submarines, which continuously cruise deep beneath the surface of the ocean and cannot be detected. Given orders to attack they could respond within seconds with enough warheads to destroy any adversary on the planet. So even if the United States got hit by surprise attacks from Russia, China or North Korea which destroyed most of our nukes that are  in silos, they would still pay the price of being annihilated. Yes, the United States would be devastated, but so would they. This is, of course, the premise of MAD– Mutually Assured Destruction. And it has worked so far.

In other words, even if our nuclear arsenal is old, we still have the capacity to strike back. Why would replacing and expanding our nuclear arsenal change that fact?

There are two major reasons why this initiative is insanity. First, it is costing a huge amount of money that could be put to better use by reducing budget deficits, leveling the economic playing field in the US, and addressing human needs here and around the world. Second, it could bring us closer to a nuclear war, which would mean the end of life on the planet Earth as we know it.

The Cost Issue

Here are some of the facts listed in the Times article:

• The current spending on our nuclear weapons buildup amounts to an average of $57 billion per year or $108,000 per minute and will continue for at least two more decades.
• Each day more than 110,000 scientists, military personnel, and contractors are currently involved in expanding and updating the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Yet because of labor shortages, the initiative is way behind schedule and is experiencing excessive cost overruns. The article points out that many more workers are needed in the effort, and the main government contractor, General Dynamics, is even teaching classes at the elementary and high school level to attract people when they finish school. They also are advertising heavily to recruit more workers.
• While the nuclear weapons in the silos located around the nation are being replaced or upgraded, the biggest investment is for expanding the nuclear submarine fleet. We currently have 14 of these monsters, which are 550 feet long and currently cost $11 billion per ship to build. Operating costs are also high since each sub has a crew of 100 sailors. Every sub carries up to 20 long range nuclear missiles, each of which can carry multiple warheads. The plan now underway calls for building one new sub every year along with two new attack submarines. At the end of the redevelopment period the fleet would increase from 14 to at least 35 nuclear subs. The nuclear missiles would increase from around 300 to over 500. If these subs were given orders to fire their missiles, they could destroy any adversary several times over.
• The best case scenario is that the missiles never get fired, which means that $1.7 trillion has no benefits other than providing jobs and avoiding a holocaust, which one could argue may be worth the cost—if there is certainty that the MAD theory will work forever. But what if it doesn’t?

The Nuclear Holocaust Issue

The impetus for modernizing and expanding our nuclear capability is due, I presume, to classified information regarding what China, Russia and North Korea are doing with their nuclear military programs. The Pentagon analysts must have concluded that if we do not keep up with what our enemies are doing, we will fall behind and lose our MAD deterrent capability. In other words, if our enemies conclude they can knock us off before we can respond, they will do just that. However, just as we spy on them, they also spy on us; and if they conclude that our buildup gives us the edge, they will have no choice but to expand their nuclear capacity. This is what happened during the Cold War, resulting in at least 70 thousand nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Soviet arsenals. This was followed in the 1980s and 1990s by several nuclear disarmament treaties, which eventually reduced the weapons to about 5,000 for both the Soviet Union (and Russia) and the U.S. Other countries, however, have now joined the nuclear club—the U.K., France, Israel, India, Pakistan, China, and North Korea.

Does anyone think that these weapons will never be used? Ever? What are the odds given that from time immemorial we humans have used whatever weapons we have to defeat our adversaries? We surely did in 1946. I do not doubt that we would do it again if we believed our country’s survival was threatened and we determined we would not suffer the consequences if we used our nukes.

So, MAD has worked so far, but will it always work? What are the chances of a miscalculation or a mistake? There have already been several close calls when we thought Russia was launching weapons but were able to correct the error minutes before we retaliated.

So, yes. This nuclear buildup and expansion on our part is insanity. The only solution is to rid the planet of these hideous weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. That is where our energy needs to be focused. We still have a long way to go, but we have made progress on countries coming together to fight climate change. The same energy and determination now must include nuclear war. The threat of Nuclear Armageddon is closer now than it has been since the height of the Cold War. It is time for mass demonstrations around the globe focusing on the goal of ridding the world of these weapons forever—not increasing the risk as our current buildup is doing.  A new, vigorous peace movement and anti-nuke movement may help us avoid catastrophe and enable us humans to avoid being part of  the Sixth Great Mass Extinction on the planet Earth. Doing nothing is not a viable option.