nuclear-news

The lessons learned from this pandemic make the case for re-thinking the United States’ national security framework to decide which investments truly improve US national security and which seek to win yesterday’s wars. Who would have thought that the equipment needed to fight an enemy that has already killed far more Americans than died in World War I was not the Trident missile or B-1 Bomber, but face masks and ventilators? Or that the heroes risking their lives this year are health care workers and grocery store employees?

The United States has already learned three important lessons from its failed pandemic response that should inform its nuclear strategy, so it doesn’t repeat similar mistakes in the future: investing in prevention is key; experts matter; and America needs to adjust to a new communications environment.

Investing in catastrophe prevention. Until 2017, both Democratic and Republican administrations understood the importance of preventing a pandemic. Before leaving office, the Obama administration set up the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. In 2005, President George Bush spoke at the National Institutes of Health and said, “If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.” Indeed, one of the principal reasons for the existence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was created in 1946, is “detecting and confronting new germs and diseases around the globe to increase our national security.”

Unfortunately, the Trump administration eliminated the NSC Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense in 2018. The administration declined to renew funding for a federal pandemic detection program in 2019. The administration also proposed budget cuts to the CDC. And the Trump Administration ignored a step-by-step guide the Obama administration created on how to prevent a pandemic. … …

the budgets under the Trump administration have prioritized military spending over all other instruments of national power. We can already destroy the world several times over with our nuclear and conventional weapons. It is time to invest in our other instruments of national power.

Unfortunately, in the last few years, our diplomatic capacity has withered. As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I have seen how, under the Trump Administration, the US State Department has been gutted, as employees depart and positions go unfilled; morale has fallen; and several ambassadors and the Secretary of State have come under investigation for inappropriate or illegal behavior. We need to reverse course and re-invest in a large, professional, and ethical diplomatic corps.

We have also seen an unfortunate shift towards go-it-alone US nuclear policy that expands the risk of miscalculation and escalation. Withdrawing from nuclear arms control treaties and expanding the capabilities of our nuclear arsenal are destabilizing. The Trump administration’s decisions to withdraw from Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty last year, to announce its formal intent to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty this year, and to lay the groundwork for allowing the New START Treaty to expire early next year all amount to a regressive policy that increases the chances of a nuclear conflict.

Similarly, the Trump administration’s decision to produce new low-yield warheads increases the risk that nuclear weapons will be used. And the use of a low-yield nuclear weapon can easily escalate a conflict to an all-out nuclear war that cannot be won.   That’s one reason I and other members of Congress introduced the bicameral “Hold the LYNE Act” to prohibit low-yield nuclear weapons for submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

nstead of moving away from a prevention strategy, the United States needs to move toward one. Among the more obvious ways a catastrophic nuclear war could start is if a president launched a nuclear first strike. In October 2016, Sen. Ed Markey and I introduced the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act” to mitigate that possibility and to reassert the war making authority that the framers of the Constitution gave to Congress alone.

The current nuclear launch approval process gives the president the sole authority to decide whether and when to launch a nuclear first strike. No member of the cabinet, the judiciary, or Congress is required to be involved in that decision. And once the President orders the launch, the execution of the order would occur frighteningly fast………..

The value of expertise. Another reason America leads the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths involves the failure of far too many people, including government officials, to listen to experts.  …….

In many ways, this pandemic has taught us exactly what not to do in a nuclear-armed world where the Doomsday Clock says it is 100 seconds to midnight. We need to stop rejecting science,,……….https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/what-can-a-pandemic-teach-us-about-nuclear-threats/#