The
silence is deafening. Not once has a professional journalist raised the
question about the issue in all the debates of either party. If any citizen
broached a concern about it in close encounters with candidates during the
primaries, it’s news to me.
I’m
speaking, of course, about the plans of the United States government to spend
upwards of a trillion dollars over
the next few decades to renew our already bloated nuclear arsenal.
In
the long, painful history of war, every weapon invented has eventually been
used. There is no reason nuclear weapons will be any different—sadly we witnessed
this in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But
wait, maybe there is a reason it could be different with nukes. That reason is
a ray of hope and sanity: computer models suggest that a war that used as few
as .05% of nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals could cause worldwide
climate change and subsequent famine. What makes this hopeful, and not a
further nightmare?
Because
the absolute negativity of nuclear winter is something all nations share as the
context of negotiation toward less and less rather than more and more, or newer
and newer, weapons systems. Our military rationalizes renewal by saying they
are developing smaller and more precise nuclear weapons. This only makes more
likely the possibility of crossing the nuclear threshold in the midst of
battle. The hope that escalation can be controlled is a mirage.
Many
of us have serious reservations about letting someone like Mr. Trump anywhere
near such weapons. The truth is that they are way too powerful for any human,
no matter how smart or professionally trained, to use as a strategic tool.
Obsolete
establishment logic goes like this: the only way to make sure these horrendous
weapons will never be used is for the U.S. to possess overwhelming nuclear
superiority. Politicians cling to this unworkable status quo because
disarmament plans with teeth are a political third rail. Admitting the futility
of nuclear strategy suggests to the electorate appeasement or cowardice, leaving
aside the threat to the bottom line of weapons manufacturers. Dr. Ashton
Carter, our Secretary of Defense, recently gave a speech to the Commonwealth
Club firmly declaring the unavoidability of the trillion-dollar upgrade.
We
don’t have to be experts to see that this is nonsense posing as sober-sided
necessity. Carter’s confident assertion only becomes an incentive for other
nuclear powers to keep up. We build, they build, toward an inevitable omega-point
of misunderstanding, misjudgment, and mass death.
Meanwhile
where is that trillion dollars really needed, if we are to have any realistic
chance of preventing tragedy? Wouldn’t it be to mitigate the effects of global
climate change, the disruptions of which strategists predict will be the major
cause of future conflicts? Wouldn’t it be to accelerate the process of global transition
to sustainable energy and agriculture? A trillion would be more than enough.
Whether
in Russia or China, in Israel or North Korea, in India or Pakistan, in Britain
or the U.S., the empire of deterrence has no clothes. The U.S. should lead by
example and begin to cut back on present levels of armaments, instead of doing
just the opposite as the primary driver of a race toward the ever-receding goal
of superiority.
We
should participate vigorously in existing conferences on nuclear weapons built
around helping the nine present nuclear powers to live up to our obligations
under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. We should aggressively advocate for
new conferences, weapons sales bans, and weapons-free areas. Twenty-four
American cities or counties, points of common sense in a sea of darkness, have
declared themselves nuclear-free zones.
The
community of nations—and without nuclear weapons we would indeed be more of a
community—choosing together to turn away from certain mass death and toward
life for all will be a useful precedent for finding solutions to other
international challenges including global climate instability.
Let’s
mention the unmentionable, and urge candidates to tell us where they stand on nuclear
weapons renewal as a crucial test of our national vision.
