nuclear-news

Bi-partisan agreement on USA’s wasteful spending on nuclear weapons

Reducing or redirecting this wasteful spending brings together a bi-partisan medley of leading national security leaders, deficit hawks, and arms control experts……

Nuclear weapons: A bad security investment THE HILL, By Major General Rogere R. Blunt (Ret.), Civil and nuclear engineer         – 05/17/12  Most debates in Washington have battle lines that are predictable and largely unmoving. Certainly this is true of most of the budget
battles, which often seem the political equivalent of trench warfare—lots of fighting, but the lines don’t move and little gets done.

There are, however, subjects where bipartisan agreement can emerge. Things get done when members put country over partisanship and assess programs with a more objective cost-benefit analysis and set aside ideological rigidity. The ability to do so should be a litmus test for voters.

America’s nuclear weapons budget is a perfect case in point. A growing consensus has emerged that we should reduce spending on redundant nuclear programs that are hugely expensive, add little or nothing to our defense capabilities, and siphon money away from our troops and more important national security priorities. Reducing or redirecting
this wasteful spending brings together a bi-partisan medley of leading national security leaders, deficit hawks, and arms control experts……
Leading nuclear strategy analysts agree that there is little logic in
high nuclear weapons spending focused primarily on countering Russia.
Greg Thielmann, a former senior staff member of the Senate
Intelligence Committee noted, “Smart planning should be grounded in
the reality that the U.S.-Russia relationship, while contentious, is
no longer the zero-sum game of a prior era.”

Sadly though, despite rare bi-partisan support for cuts and the fact
that every dollar spent on nuclear weapons is a dollar not available
to equip our troops for 21st Century threats, there are still those in
Congress fighting to increase nuclear weapons spending for pork barrel
or ideological reasons.
The House Armed Services Committee is considering spending billions on
an East Coast missile defense program the Pentagon has explicitly
rejected, and billions more on a nuclear weapons plant that the
committee of oversight (Energy and Water) already eliminated, deeming
it unnecessary.

As Laura Peterson, an analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense,
observed, “Ending earmarks has not ended congressional incentives to
spend money on parochial projects, and that is particularly true for
the defense bill.”

The American people are right to be fed up when our national security
and economic interests are jeopardized by political self-interest.
Cutting funding for nuclear programs will save the taxpayers money,
and make it easier to redirect funds from outdated Cold War weapons to
the training and equipment our troops need to face 21st Century
threats.   hehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/228029-nuclear-weapons-a-bad-security-investment

May 18, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general