{"id":51039,"date":"2025-01-27T13:18:43","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T21:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=51039"},"modified":"2025-01-27T13:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T21:19:08","slug":"thermonuclear-crack-the-death-wish-of-the-elites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/27\/thermonuclear-crack-the-death-wish-of-the-elites\/","title":{"rendered":"Thermonuclear Crack: The Death Wish of the &#8216;Elites&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"body markup\" dir=\"auto\">\n<p>Isn\u2019t it high time we \u201caugment\u201d our nuclear force \u201cposture\u201d? Shouldn\u2019t we fight to achieve peace through nuclear \u201cstrength\u201d and \u201cdeterrence\u201d? Isn\u2019t it smart to \u201crefurbish, rebuild, and modernize\u201d the nuclear triad? What a great \u201cinvestment\u201d that is! And a \u201cjob-creator\u201d too!<\/p>\n<p>These are some of the buzz words thrown about by the nuclear \u201celites\u201d in America. They want to sell us on new ICBMs (the Sentinel), a new stealth bomber (the B-21 Raider), and new nuclear SLBMs (on <em>Columbia<\/em>-class submarines). All this thermonuclear stupidity is projected to cost roughly $2 trillion over the next 30 years. Quite the \u201cinvestment,\u201d right?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xjatJ36cJvM?si=h-c8hweZWicIneoU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>What the \u201cexperts\u201d don\u2019t talk about is the genocidal and exterminatory nature of these thermonuclear bombs and missiles. They don\u2019t talk about the destruction of most life forms on our planet due to thermonuclear winter. They don\u2019t talk about the enormous and rapidly mushrooming cost of these weapons. (For example, the B-21 has already climbed from $550 million per plane to $750 million; much like a missile, Sentinel costs have rocketed upward even more rapidly.) And they sure as hell don\u2019t talk about the immorality of mass murder.<\/p>\n<p>Why does this idiocy, this madness, this insanity, persist? We know why. A few quick and obvious reasons:<\/p>\n<p>1. Threat inflation: Oh my God, China is building some silos! Oh my God, Russia still has nukes! And Putin! Even though America has over 5000 nuclear bombs and warheads and the world\u2019s most accurate and survivable nuclear force, the military-industrial complex is more than willing to hype and inflate new threats.<\/p>\n<p>2. Lobbyists: There are outrageous sums of money to be made building genocidal weaponry, and a small army of lobbyists deployed to Washington by companies like Northrop Grumman to ensure the money keeps flowing to the weapons makers.<\/p>\n<p>3. Jobs: Of course, any program that spends $2 trillion is going to create a few jobs, even earth-destroying bombs and missiles. But the jobs argument remains compelling for states like Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming that profit from nuclear largesse. Senators and representatives from these states generally couldn\u2019t care less about the nature of the \u201cpork\u201d they bring home \u2013 even irradiated pork in the form of nuclear weapons \u2013 as long as they can claim it\u2019s creating good-paying jobs for the folks back home.<\/p>\n<p>4. The Pentagon: Insatiable generals and admirals always want MORE. More nuclear bombers and missiles. More submarines. More of everything. No service will ever voluntarily give up a weapon system, no matter how old and dumb it is \u2013 or dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>5. Lack of a unified movement against these weapons: In the early 1980s, the nuclear freeze movement put millions of people in the street to protest against new nukes like the American Pershing II and GLCMs. Then-President Ronald Reagan worked with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to reduce \u2013 even to eliminate \u2013 nuclear weapons. Elimination wasn\u2019t to be, but the U.S. and USSR did work to reduce nuclear weapons. That spirit of cooperation through diplomacy is dead. Meanwhile, Americans post-9\/11 have grown accustomed to endless war and mushrooming Pentagon budgets. America itself has become more segmented, more stovepiped, more supine. That said, so many problems bedevil us that nuclear annihilation, as apocalyptic as that is, seems both remote and unsolvable.<\/p>\n<p>To that last point: The nuclear threat is both near and solvable. Instead of our \u201celites\u201dstressing about the survivability of the nuclear triad, we need to focus on the survivability of humanity. President Trump allegedly seeks a Nobel Peace Prize. He also seemingly has a genuine fear of nuclear war. Americans need to push him \u2013 as well as representatives in Congress \u2013 to seek nuclear disarmament through diplomacy rather than further nuclear escalation with new weaponry.<\/p>\n<p>The problem, as one Congressman put it, is that money is the crack cocaine of politics. And nuclear weapons makers have plenty of money to hook our so-called representatives on the thermonuclear crack they\u2019re selling.<\/p>\n<p>We need an intervention to get America off its addiction to thermonuclear crack. Of course, it\u2019s never easy overcoming a nuclear addiction \u2013 all I can say is our very survival depends on it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Bracing Views<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Isn\u2019t it high time we \u201caugment\u201d our nuclear force \u201cposture\u201d? Shouldn\u2019t we fight to achieve peace through nuclear \u201cstrength\u201d and \u201cdeterrence\u201d? Isn\u2019t it smart to \u201crefurbish, rebuild, and modernize\u201d the nuclear triad? What a great \u201cinvestment\u201d that is! And a \u201cjob-creator\u201d too! These are some of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-51039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51039"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51047,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51039\/revisions\/51047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51039"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=51039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}