The Bomb Is Back - The Nightmare Continues

By: Douglas Mattern

"A dangerous world just grew more dangerous", warns Senator Ted Kennedy, referring to reports that "the administration is contemplating the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in Iraq". Kennedy cites President Bush's Nuclear Posture Review, in which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is reported to have ordered plans for employing nuclear weapons in different situations, including the possible destruction of underground bunkers in Iraq.

It's more than a decade since the end of the Cold War, but the world remains saturated with nuclear weapons. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports the current total of nuclear weapons is more than 30,000.

The Center for Defense Information (CDI) lists the number of warheads in the U.S. stockpile at 10,455, of which approximately 7,000 are operational strategic nuclear warheads. Russia has 8,400 nuclear warheads in its stockpile, of which approximately 5,000 are strategic nuclear warheads. Thousands of these warheads are loaded on missiles and placed on a hair-trigger alert, ready for launch in a few minutes notice. Whether by accident or design, nuclear incineration remains a daily threat.

The Moscow Treaty (Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty) would require the U.S. and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads. This treaty may be approved by the Senate in a month or so; however, this is still far more weapons than is needed to annihilate each country. Moreover, due to length of time required to complete the reductions, the U.S. would still have some 10,000 nuclear weapons by the year 2012 as reported by the CDI. Each country can rescind the treaty at any time with only a few months notice to the other side.

Jonathan Shell reminds us that the U.S. has led in all matters nuclear, from inventing and using the atomic bomb, inventing the hydrogen bomb, developing the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction, developing the delivery vehicles, and now finding new uses of nuclear weapons.

And here we go again! The Bush administration is in the process is escalating the nuclear arms race, including potential plans to resume nuclear testing at the Nevada underground test site, and to develop a new class of small nuclear weapons for possible use in future Iraqi-type wars.

Bush's requested military budget for fiscal 2004 is $399.1 billion. This includes funds for the nuclear weapons program that is funded in the budget of the Department of Energy (DOE). Over $6 billion is requested for nuclear weapons related funding. CDI reports the U.S. annually spends $27 billion to prepare to fight a nuclear war.

The requested military spending for FY 2004 is a $16.9 billion increase over FY 2003, and this is only the beginning! The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that U.S. military spending could escalate to $480 billion a year in the next decade. These projections are based on the planned military buildup of the Bush administration.

Much of the funding is to pay for a whole new generations of weapons, including the those needed for militarization of space, which would turn the heavens into a new source of terrorism for humanity below, but remain a source of never ending profits for the weapons industry.

Jonathan Shell says: "The bomb is back. But those of us who oppose the bomb are back, too. And we're not going away." Surely, we cannot go away at this pivotal period of history, in which the former nuclear weapons club of the U.S., Russia, Great Britain, China, and France, now includes Israel, India, and Pakistan, with several other countries desperate to join this macabre club.

Shortly before his death in December 2002, Philip Berrigan put nuclear weapons in this perspective: "I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself."

The only rational answer to this "curse" is the total elimination of all nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. There can never be security for the world community as long as these weapons exist. This is our challenge, and we must not fail.