Nuclear apocalypse a more pressing danger than Islamic terrorism

Rearming for the apocalypse By Stephen Kinzer , Boston Globe, JANUARY 24, 2016 AMERICANS ARE IN near-panic over the danger posed by Islamic terrorists. That danger, however, pales beside an emerging new one. President Obama has proposed a frighteningly wrongheaded plan to “modernize” our nuclear arsenal at the unfathomable cost of about $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Terror will never reach even 1 percent of our population. Nuclear “modernization” increases the prospect of true devastation.

The nuclear threat seems diffuse and faraway, while the prospect of a deranged fanatic shooting up a cinema is as vivid as today’s news. Perhaps we have been lulled into security by the fact that no nuclear weapon has been used since 1945. Voices trying to alert us to the true threat are drowned out in a frenzy of over-the-top campaign speeches and TV rants about crazed Muslims.

The most sobering of these voices belongs to William Perry, who during the 1970s and ’80s directed the development of air-launched nuclear cruise missiles and later became secretary of defense. Now Perry is campaigning against Obama’s plan to develop and buy 1,000 new missiles with adjustable nuclear capacity, 100 new long-range bombers, and a new fleet of nuclear-armed submarines. . He warns that if the plan becomes real, disputes among nations will be “more likely to erupt in nuclear conflict than during the Cold War.”…..

Obama’s proposed “modernization” increases our vulnerability, not our security. The first and most obvious reason is that it will certainly lead other countries to seek equivalent arsenals of their own. It is especially upsetting to Russia, which already feels under increasing American threat as a result of our military maneuvers on its borders and the fact that many of our missiles are positioned in Germany, Turkey, and other countries near its territory. The Russian defense minister recently announced that in response to Obama’s plan, Russia will “bring five new strategic nuclear missile regiments into service.” China would surely match that escalation. If it does so, India will follow. Then Pakistan will jump into the race. It is a recipe for disaster……….

Besides these grave dangers — global proliferation, accidental war, and nuclear terror — there is another: national bankruptcy. Obama’s project is ruinously expensive. Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calls it “spending ourselves into oblivion.” He describes our skyrocketing national debt as “the most significant threat to our national security.”

Now is the time to stop this program. So far, enthusiasm for it is confined to the White House and Pentagon. Once it is launched, rich procurement contracts will be portioned out to the districts of influential members of Congress. That will produce a self-interested constituency and give the project unstoppable momentum………https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/01/24/beware-obama-nuclear-weapons-plan/IJP9E48w3cjLPlTqMhZdFL/story.html