“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
Aug 08, 2024
A North Korean test launch of a long-range nuclear capable-carrying ICBM missile
LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Thursday, (08/08/2024)
From the article: “Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons?” That says it all. Need I say more?
This ‘use it or lose it’ factor is a huge part of the concept of ‘deterrence’, which I’ve been harping about for months, including my last two “All Things Nuclear” blog posts prior to this one.
But let me ask just a couple of questions, which is about the very logic of ‘deterrence’:
- If we spend trillions to upgrade our nuclear arsenal, how much will Russia, China, and perhaps North Korea spend to do the same with their nuclear arsenal in order to maintain the ‘deterrence’ balance of equality?We, and the other nuclear armed nations already have enough nuclear weapons to destroy virtually every human life on Earth (including most other life) several times over, so we are already at a point where ‘deterrence’ doesn’t matter beyond our collective insanity of ‘keeping up with the [nuclear] Jones’s”.
- If ‘deterrence’ goes on and on, toward ad infinitum, when, where, and why does it stop?‘Deterrence’ is useless because a financially strapped country (or maybe just a sick of the waste of wealth one like say, Russia, China, or, in particular, North Korea decide the ‘deterrence game of thrones’ is beyond sanity and decide to ‘end it all’ by launching their existing ICBMs or their entire triad of nuclear weapons of mass destruction on one of the others. I say, just “one” because that’s all that’s necessary to start WWIII, meaning the instant retaliatory involvement of all nations, including, unfortunately, those who are not nuclear empowered.~llaw
Meet the army of lobbyists behind $2 trillion nuclear weapons boost
The ‘Sentinel’ ICBM is the latest boondoggle to avoid cancellation due to massive industry investment in the right places
Analysis | Military Industrial Complex
Hekmat AboukhaterWilliam Hartung
Aug 08, 2024
The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing.
This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act — a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon weapons programs — found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81% over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future.
That Pentagon review had the option of canceling the Sentinel program because of such a staggering cost increase. Instead, it doubled down on the program, asserting that it would be an essential element of any future nuclear deterrent and must continue, even if the funding for other defense programs has to be cut to make way for it. In justifying the decision, Deputy Defense Secretary William LaPlante stated: “We are fully aware of the costs, but we are also aware of the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.”
Cost is indeed one significant issue, but the biggest risk to the rest of us comes from continuing to build and deploy ICBMs, rather than delaying or shelving the Sentinel program. As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has noted, ICBMs are “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” because they “could trigger an accidental nuclear war.” As he explained, a president warned (accurately or not) of an enemy nuclear attack would have only minutes to decide whether to launch such ICBMs and conceivably devastate the planet.
Possessing such potentially world-ending systems only increases the possibility of an unintended nuclear conflict prompted by a false alarm. And as Norman Solomon and the late Daniel Ellsberg once wrote, “If reducing the dangers of nuclear war is a goal, the top priority should be to remove the triad’s ground-based leg — not modernize it.”
This is no small matter. It is believed that a large-scale nuclear exchange could result in more than five billion of us humans dying, once the possibility of a “nuclear winter” and the potential destruction of agriculture across much of the planet is taken into account, according to an analysis by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
In short, the need to reduce nuclear risks by eliminating such ICBMs could not be more urgent. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” — an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict — is now set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been since that tracker was first created in 1947. And just this June, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defense agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a potential first step toward a drive by Moscow to help Pyongyang expand its nuclear arsenal further. And of the nine countries now possessing nuclear weapons, it’s hardly the only one other than the U.S. in an expansionist phase.
Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61% of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.
The Pentagon’s misguided plan to keep such ICBMs in the U.S arsenal for decades to come is only reinforced by the political power of members of Congress and the companies that benefit financially from the current buildup.
Who decides? The role of the ICBM lobby
A prime example of the power of the nuclear weapons lobby is the Senate ICBM Coalition. That group is composed of senators from four states — Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming — that either house major ICBM bases or host significant work on the Sentinel. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the members of that coalition have received more than $3 million in donations from firms involved in the production of the Sentinel over the past four election cycles. Nor were they alone. ICBM contractors made contributions to 92 of the 100 senators and 413 of the 435 house members in 2024. Some received hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The nuclear lobby paid special attention to members of the armed services committees in the House and Senate. For example, Mike Turner, a House Republican from Ohio, has been a relentless advocate of “modernizing” the nuclear arsenal. In a June 2024 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which itself has received well over a million dollars in funding from nuclear weapons producers, he called for systematically upgrading the nuclear arsenal for decades to come, while chiding any of his congressional colleagues not taking such an aggressive stance on the subject.
Although Turner vigorously touts the need for a costly nuclear buildup, he fails to mention that, with $305,000 in donations, he’s been the fourth-highest recipient of funding from the ICBM lobby over the four elections between 2018 and 2024. Little wonder that he pushes for new nuclear weapons and staunchly opposes extending the New START arms reduction treaty.
In another example of contractor influence, veteran Texas representative Kay Granger secured the largest total of contributions from the ICBM lobby of any House member. With $675,000 in missile contractor contributions in hand, Granger went to bat for the lobby, lending a feminist veneer to nuclear “modernization” by giving a speech on her experience as a woman in politics at Northrop Grumman’s Women’s conference. And we’re sure you won’t be surprised that Granger has anything but a strong track record when it comes to keeping the Pentagon and arms makers accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse in weapons programs. Her X account is, in fact, littered with posts heaping praise on Lockheed Martin and its overpriced, underperforming F-35 combat aircraft.
Other recipients of ICBM contractor funding, like Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers, have lamented the might of the “far-left disarmament community,” and the undue influence of “anti-nuclear zealots” on our politics. Missing from the statements his office puts together and the speeches his staffers write for him, however, is any mention of the $471,000 in funding he’s received so far from ICBM producers. You won’t be surprised, we’re sure, to discover that Rogers has pledged to seek a provision in the forthcoming National Defense Authorization Act to support the Pentagon’s plan to continue the Sentinel program.
Lobbying dollars and the revolving door
The flood of campaign contributions from ICBM contractors is reinforced by their staggering investments in lobbying. In any given year, the arms industry as a whole employs between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists, well more than one for every member of Congress. Most of those lobbyists hired by ICBM contractors come through the “revolving door” from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch. That means they come with the necessary tools for success in Washington: an understanding of the appropriations cycle and close relations with decision-makers on the Hill.
During the last four election cycles, ICBM contractors spent upwards of $226 million on 275 extremely well-paid lobbyists. For example, Bud Cramer, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who once sat on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, netted $640,000 in fees from Northrop Grumman over a span of six years. He was also a cofounder of the Blue Dog Democrats, an influential conservative faction within the Democratic Party. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that Cramer’s former chief of staff, Jefferies Murray, also lobbies for Northrop Grumman.
While some lobbyists work for one contractor, others have shared allegiances. For example, during his tenure as a lobbyist, former Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Trent Lott received more than $600,000 for his efforts for Raytheon, Textron Inc., and United Technologies (before United Technologies and Raytheon merged to form RX Technologies). Former Virginia Congressman Jim Moran similarly received $640,000 from Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
Playing the jobs card
The argument of last resort for the Sentinel and similar questionable weapons programs is that they create well-paying jobs in key states and districts. Northrop Grumman has played the jobs card effectively with respect to the Sentinel, claiming it will create 10,000 jobs in its development phase alone, including about 2,250 in the state of Utah, where the hub for the program is located.
As a start, however, those 10,000 jobs will help a minuscule fraction of the 167-million-member American workforce. Moreover, Northrop Grumman claims facilities tied to the program will be set up in 32 states. If 2,250 of those jobs end up in Utah, that leaves 7,750 more jobs spread across 31 states — an average of about 250 jobs per state, essentially a rounding error compared to total employment in most localities.
Nor has Northrop Grumman provided any documentation for the number of jobs the Sentinel program will allegedly create. Journalist Taylor Barnes of ReThink Media was rebuffed in her efforts to get a copy of the agreement between Northrop Grumman and the state of Utah that reportedly indicates how many Sentinel-related jobs the company needs to create to get the full subsidy offered to put its primary facility in Utah.
A statement by a Utah official justifying that lack of transparency suggested Northrop Grumman was operating in “a competitive defense industry” and that revealing details of the agreement might somehow harm the company. But any modest financial harm Northrop Grumman might suffer, were those details revealed, pales in comparison with the immense risks and costs of the Sentinel program itself.
There are two major flaws in the jobs argument with respect to the future production of nuclear weapons. First, military spending should be based on security considerations, not pork-barrel politics. Second, as Heidi Peltier of the Costs of War Project has effectively demonstrated, virtually any other expenditure of funds currently devoted to Pentagon programs would create between 9% and 250% more jobs than weapons spending does. If Congress were instead to put such funds into addressing climate change, dealing with future disease epidemics, poverty, or homelessness — all serious threats to public safety — the American economy would gain hundreds of thousands of jobs. Choosing to fund those ICBMs instead is, in fact, a job killer, not a job creator.
Unwarranted influence in the nuclear age
Advocates for eliminating ICBMs from the American arsenal make a strong case. (If only they were better heard!) For example, former Representative John Tierney of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation offered this blunt indictment of ICBMs:
“Not only are intercontinental ballistic missiles redundant, but they are prone to a high risk of accidental use…They do not make us any safer. Their only value is to the defense contractors who line their fat pockets with large cost overruns at the expense of our taxpayers. It has got to stop.”
The late Daniel Ellsberg made a similar point in a February 2018 interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
“You would not have these arsenals, in the U.S. or elsewhere, if it were not the case that it was highly profitable to the military-industrial complex, to the aerospace industry, to the electronics industry, and to the weapons design labs to keep modernizing these weapons, improving accuracy, improving launch time, all that. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about is a very powerful influence. We’ve talked about unwarranted influence. We’ve had that for more than half a century.”
Given how the politics of Pentagon spending normally work, that nuclear weapons policy is being so heavily influenced by individuals and organizations profiting from an ongoing arms race should be anything but surprising. Still, in the case of such weaponry, the stakes are so high that critical decisions shouldn’t be determined by parochial politics. The influence of such special interest groups and corporate weapons-makers over life-and-death issues should be considered both a moral outrage and perhaps the ultimate security risk.
Isn’t it finally time for the executive branch and Congress to start assessing the need for ICBMs on their merits, rather than on contractor lobbying, weapons company funding, and the sort of strategic thinking that was already outmoded by the end of the 1950s? For that to happen, our representatives would need to hear from their constituents loud and clear.
This article was originally published at Tom Dispatch and was republished with permission.
Hekmat Aboukhater is a Democratizing Foreign Policy program Intern at the Quincy Institute. Previously, Hekmat worked with the United Nations Department of Peacebuilding and Political Affairs.
The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.
William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget.
The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.Subscribe
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
- All Things Nuclear
- Nuclear Power
- Nuclear Power Emergencies
- Nuclear War
- Nuclear War Threats
- Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are 3 Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
- IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Thursday, (08/08/2024)
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
The nuclear weapons era is making a comeback, and experts say we’re all not paying attention
Business Insider
“We have the opportunity between now and 2035 to try to get Russia back to the negotiating table and to get China to start talking to us about …
Manhattan Project Director’s Files Illuminate Early History of Atomic Bomb
National Security Archive – The George Washington University
The Groves files also include records capturing early discussions about the role of heavy water nuclear reactors in the Manhattan Project and in post- …
The nation’s oldest nuclear plants power Central NY. Are they key to our clean energy future?
Syracuse.com
For every kilowatt-hour it produces in New York, Constellation earns about 35% more than what it earns at its 17 reactors in other states, according …
Nuclear Power
NEWS
Third nuclear power plant proposal lodged in Norway
World Nuclear News
Norsk Kjernekraft has submitted a proposal to Norway’s Ministry of Energy for an assessment of the construction of a power plant based on multiple …
Third nuclear power plant proposal lodged in Norway
World Nuclear News
Norsk Kjernekraft has submitted a proposal to Norway’s Ministry of Energy for an assessment into the construction of a power plant based on …
France Warns of Nuclear Power Cuts as Heat Triggers Water Curbs – Bloomberg.com
Bloomberg.com
The Bugey nuclear power station beside the Rhone River in France. Photographer: Jose Cendon/Bloomberg.
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Department of Health Distributes Free Potassium Iodide Tablets to Pennsylvanians Living …
Pennsylvania Pressroom
… nuclear power plants, as part of routine preventive efforts in case of future emergencies. The DOH hosts an annual distribution event every summer …
Russia strengthens security at Kursk nuclear power plant amid Ukraine’s assault in region
Anadolu Ajansı
The office of Kursk’s Acting Gov. Alexey Smirnov announced that emergency situation forces were introduced in the region because of ongoing combat …
Russia: State of emergency in Kursk amid incursion – DW – 08/07/2024
DW
… emergency declared by the regional governor and security tightened around a nearby nuclear power plant. “To eliminate the consequences of enemy …
Nuclear War
NEWS
US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembered amid growing threat of nuclear war
Peoples Dispatch
Despite knowing the widespread destruction and irreversible losses caused by the attack, the US dropped another nuclear bomb on Nagasaki just three …
IAEA is monitoring situation around Russia’s Kursk nuclear plant – RIA | Reuters
Reuters
MOSCOW, Aug 8 (Reuters) – The International Atomic Energy Agency is aware of developments around Russia’s Kursk nuclear … war, an aide said on …
Russia, China, Britain, U.S. and France say no one can win nuclear war
Yahoo News Canada
… nuclear arms and a nuclear war should be avoided, according to a joint statement by the five nuclear powers published by the Kremlin on Monday. It …
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
The Renaissance That Wasn’t: The Weaknesses of the Current Deterrence Debate
Internationale Politik Quarterly
The director stayed put—and dealt with his horror of nuclear war … However, it is obvious that these nuclear threats have not had the intended effect.
Meet the army of lobbyists behind $2 trillion nuclear weapons boost | Responsible Statecraft
Responsible Statecraft
… Nuclear War. In short, the need to reduce nuclear risks by eliminating such ICBMs could not be more urgent. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists …
As Japan marks atomic bombing anniversaries, its military emerges from shadow of WWII
VOA News
… threats, said Yee Kuang Heng, a professor of international relations at the University of Tokyo. “The DPRK’s [North Korea’s] nuclear missile