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USA’s dangerous and useless addiction to nuclear weapons

In his book “Dangerous Ground: America’s Failed Arms Control Policy, from FDR to Obama,” Ritter pinpoints the major challenges facing the international community in the post-Bush era and presents a blueprint for confronting them.

‘US addicted to nuclear weapons’, PressTV -Sep 2, 2010, Former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter says the US is addicted to nuclear weapons to use them as deterrence against its imaginary enemies.

It was the US that introduced the nuclear weapons to the world and it is the only nation in the history of the world to actually have used nuclear weapons in a time of war, Ritter told Press TV in an interview.Although the US used nuclear bombs under the pretext of shortening the war against Japan and saving hundreds of thousands, the reality is that Japan was on the verge of surrender prior to United States’ use of nuclear weapons, he added.
“The documents of the time shows that the key decision makers, especially in Truman administration, were convinced that using the nuclear bomb against Japan wasn’t about bringing Japan to its knees, it was about making a statement to the Soviet Union so that the US could control the post-war competition that was going to occur between the West and the Soviet Union,” Ritter said.

The US created a policy of deterring the Soviet Union that was based on a threat that never existed, Ritter added.

“The truth of the matter is that nuclear weapons never deterred anything, we talked about deterring the Soviet Union and yet we had conflicts (in different parts of the world) and nuclear weapons did not stop any of these wars. Nuclear weapons are just a myth that we have been addicted to,” the top arms control expert said.

The Bush administration ignored Ritter’s assertion in 2002 that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. ……
Nuclear blueprint

In his book “Dangerous Ground: America’s Failed Arms Control Policy, from FDR to Obama,” Ritter pinpoints the major challenges facing the international community in the post-Bush era and presents a blueprint for confronting them.

He offers a series of concrete proposals ranging from the creation of an international body of weapons inspectors under the aegis of the United Nations to call for the US to abandon the unilateralist actions of the Bush era.

The most important aspect of building the blueprint of this nuclear disarmament is to ensure that the central theme is the elimination of the role of nuclear weapons, Ritter says.

PressTV – ‘US addicted to nuclear weapons’

September 4, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear weapons