https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-...costs-require-inflating-china-nuclear-threat?
These merchants of death, not China, are the real reason the US needs to spend US$2 trillion and rising on nuclear weapons.
Spiralling US costs require the inflating of China nuclear threat
American firms Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and other merchants of death are behind out-of-control nuclear spending
1725042258687.png
Alex Lo in Toronto
Published: 9:00pm, 28 Aug 2024
There is threat inflation, and then there is threat hyperinflation. The United States under Joe Biden has gone full throttle with the latter over China and the nuclear threat.
It seems that the ubiquitous “China threat”, even when coupled with nuclear weapons, is not enough in itself to scare the American public into acquiescence. It now has to be equated with “coordinated” nuclear attacks with Russia and North Korea. Seriously.
The front page story, planted in The New York Times and duly – and uncritically – reproduced in all other major Anglo-American news outlets, reported on an “updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance [to] deter Russia, the PRC [China] and North Korea simultaneously”.
“President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan … that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal,” it said. “The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade. [The] revised strategy [is] called the ‘Nuclear Employment Guidance’, which seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea.”
Questions? How likely will these three countries coordinate a nuclear attack knowing full well it will just mean retaliatory annihilation for themselves as well? Even dictators are concerned with self-preservation. Will China want to tie its own “no first use” nuclear deterrence and therefore survival to what happens in Moscow and Pyongyang?
It’s conceivable that out of desperation, Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un could go nuclear in a Hitler-style Götterdämmerung. But should that ever happen, the first thing the Chinese would do is to run for cover, not join them!
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, America’s current deployable nuclear weapons stockpile is already roughly nine times as large as China’s and the Pentagon budget is three times what Beijing spends on its military. So, given the total implausibility of this “coordinated nuclear attack” scenario, why is the US under Biden committing to the new nuclear war guidance?
It makes no sense in terms of deterrence. The US already has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, enough to annihilate Earth itself multiple times. However, it makes perfect sense if you want to escalate military spending, including taking America’s God-like world-destroying capability to an even more cosmic level. But why? Well, follow the money.
Sharon Weiner, of American and Princeton universities and former policy adviser to various US government agencies responsible for nuclear weapons, wrote in Scientific American in May: “Unfortunately, that [bipartisan] consensus seems to extend to turning a blind eye to the exploding costs, which helps explain why the original US$1 trillion [nuclear] modernisation programme proposed in 2010 today has a price tag approaching US$2 trillion. That estimate is likely to escalate even further by 2050 – the supposed end date for modernisation.”
Escalating costs from the supply-side economics of the military-industrial complex demands an escalating threat, otherwise all will have to be scaled back or cancelled.
According to the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the US arms industry has between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists working in Washington. “Most of those lobbyists hired by ICBM contractors come through the ‘revolving door’ from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch,” it said. ICBM stands for intercontinental ballistic missiles, which date back to the Cold War, but their modernisation, called the Sentinel programme, refers to a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. It’s that programme that’s pushing up most of the costs, and is dominated by the world’s biggest arms producers – Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
These merchants of death, not China, are the real reason the US needs to spend US$2 trillion and rising on nuclear weapons.
These merchants of death, not China, are the real reason the US needs to spend US$2 trillion and rising on nuclear weapons.
Spiralling US costs require the inflating of China nuclear threat
American firms Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and other merchants of death are behind out-of-control nuclear spending
1725042258687.png
Alex Lo in Toronto
Published: 9:00pm, 28 Aug 2024
There is threat inflation, and then there is threat hyperinflation. The United States under Joe Biden has gone full throttle with the latter over China and the nuclear threat.
It seems that the ubiquitous “China threat”, even when coupled with nuclear weapons, is not enough in itself to scare the American public into acquiescence. It now has to be equated with “coordinated” nuclear attacks with Russia and North Korea. Seriously.
The front page story, planted in The New York Times and duly – and uncritically – reproduced in all other major Anglo-American news outlets, reported on an “updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance [to] deter Russia, the PRC [China] and North Korea simultaneously”.
“President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan … that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal,” it said. “The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade. [The] revised strategy [is] called the ‘Nuclear Employment Guidance’, which seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea.”
Questions? How likely will these three countries coordinate a nuclear attack knowing full well it will just mean retaliatory annihilation for themselves as well? Even dictators are concerned with self-preservation. Will China want to tie its own “no first use” nuclear deterrence and therefore survival to what happens in Moscow and Pyongyang?
It’s conceivable that out of desperation, Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un could go nuclear in a Hitler-style Götterdämmerung. But should that ever happen, the first thing the Chinese would do is to run for cover, not join them!
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, America’s current deployable nuclear weapons stockpile is already roughly nine times as large as China’s and the Pentagon budget is three times what Beijing spends on its military. So, given the total implausibility of this “coordinated nuclear attack” scenario, why is the US under Biden committing to the new nuclear war guidance?
It makes no sense in terms of deterrence. The US already has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, enough to annihilate Earth itself multiple times. However, it makes perfect sense if you want to escalate military spending, including taking America’s God-like world-destroying capability to an even more cosmic level. But why? Well, follow the money.
Sharon Weiner, of American and Princeton universities and former policy adviser to various US government agencies responsible for nuclear weapons, wrote in Scientific American in May: “Unfortunately, that [bipartisan] consensus seems to extend to turning a blind eye to the exploding costs, which helps explain why the original US$1 trillion [nuclear] modernisation programme proposed in 2010 today has a price tag approaching US$2 trillion. That estimate is likely to escalate even further by 2050 – the supposed end date for modernisation.”
Escalating costs from the supply-side economics of the military-industrial complex demands an escalating threat, otherwise all will have to be scaled back or cancelled.
According to the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the US arms industry has between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists working in Washington. “Most of those lobbyists hired by ICBM contractors come through the ‘revolving door’ from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch,” it said. ICBM stands for intercontinental ballistic missiles, which date back to the Cold War, but their modernisation, called the Sentinel programme, refers to a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. It’s that programme that’s pushing up most of the costs, and is dominated by the world’s biggest arms producers – Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
These merchants of death, not China, are the real reason the US needs to spend US$2 trillion and rising on nuclear weapons.
