{"id":57268,"date":"2026-01-21T08:39:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=57268"},"modified":"2026-01-21T08:39:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:39:25","slug":"william-astore-were-building-a-bigger-war-hammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/21\/william-astore-were-building-a-bigger-war-hammer\/","title":{"rendered":"William Astore: We&#8217;re Building a Bigger War Hammer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, I went on Judge Napolitano\u2019s show, and we talked about several challenging issues. Among them, the Trump administration\u2019s military coup in Venezuela and the illegality of the same, the difficulty of disobeying illegal orders (and of distinguishing what is legal under pressure and within a hierarchical organization), colossal spending on the U.S. military, and the ongoing threat of nuclear armageddon, even as the \u201cglitter\u201d of nuclear weapons continues to enthrall, appealing to technical arrogance while offering illusions of illimitable power, as Freeman Dyson once explained.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DpaPEkLhXIU?si=NfUyGG8OWu8n9Fn7\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A clarification: I mentioned in the interview that there are more than 5000 nuclear weapons and warheads around the world; I should have said that\u2019s the number in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Russia has an equivalent number, China a much smaller but growing arsenal, and other countries like Britain, France, India, and Pakistan have their own. The total global arsenal is roughly 13,000 nuclear weapons, which I suppose illustrates our collective death wish (though we\u2019ll take most of life on earth with us if we ever use these weapons).<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks to Judge Napolitano for being willing to address such serious issues, issues that are rarely discussed in the U.S. mainstream media today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Yesterday, I went on Judge Napolitano\u2019s show, and we talked about several challenging issues. Among them, the Trump administration\u2019s military coup in Venezuela and the illegality of the same, the difficulty of disobeying illegal orders (and of distinguishing what is legal under pressure and within a hierarchical [&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-57268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Might Makes Right?"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57268","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=57268"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57274,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57268\/revisions\/57274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57268"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=57268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}