The Administration’s reckless pursuit of a National Missile Defense (NMD) system is designed to perpetuate the notion that the US can retain its nuclear arsenal forever and protect its people from nuclear attack. Star Wars is now and always has been a high-tech duck-and-cover scheme driven by the military-industrial complex that will increase — not decrease — the risk of nuclear war. And billions of taxpayer dollars are filling corporate coffers while millions throughout the world live in abject poverty and die from preventable diseases.
The Administration claims that the Bush-Putin agreement on strategic nuclear arsenals includes meaningful reductions. It doesn’t. Under the plan, an additional 7,800 intact nuclear warheads and components for 5,000 more will remain in storage, ready for re-deployment. With the 1,700-2,200 that will be actively deployed, this makes a total of some 15,000 warheads remaining in the US arsenal. And this agreement does nothing to de-alert the thousands of US and Russian strategic weapons that remain on hair-trigger alert ready to be launched within minutes.
The Bush Administration’s recent Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) sets the US — and the world — on a very dangerous course. It greatly lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and calls for plans to use nuclear weapons in response to an Iraqi attack on Israel or another country and in response to an attack by North Korea on South Korea, to name a few. And for the first time since World War II, the US is targeting non-nuclear nations with nuclear weapons.
The Administration claims that the Bush-Putin agreement on strategic nuclear arsenals includes meaningful reductions. It doesn’t. Under the plan, an additional 7,800 intact nuclear warheads and components for 5,000 more will remain in storage, ready for re-deployment. With the 1,700-2,200 that will be actively deployed, this makes a total of some 15,000 warheads remaining in the US arsenal. And this agreement does nothing to de-alert the thousands of US and Russian strategic weapons that remain on hair-trigger alert ready to be launched within minutes.
The Bush Administration’s recent Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) sets the US — and the world — on a very dangerous course. It greatly lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and calls for plans to use nuclear weapons in response to an Iraqi attack on Israel or another country and in response to an attack by North Korea on South Korea, to name a few. And for the first time since World War II, the US is targeting non-nuclear nations with nuclear weapons.