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Deterring Our Way to Doomsday

Mordor is the fictional realm of the Dark Lord Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, located in the southeastern part of Middle-earth. [1, 2]

Loving the Bomb Yet Again

by William Astore | Sep 29, 2026 , https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2026/09/29/deterring-our-way-to-doomsday/

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

It’s amazing the enormous sums of money the U.S. government spends on destructive weaponry in the stated cause of deterring massive destruction. It’s MAD, of course, this notion that peace is only attainable via the promise of annihilating another people. And now we know that annihilation won’t be limited to Russia or China or Iran: that a “general” nuclear strike would likely produce a nuclear winter that would end most life on our planet. Yet the Pentagon persists in nuclear “modernization” and further “investments” in the Triad.

In the early 1960s, the Air Force wanted 10,000 ICBMs but “settled” for 1000 Minuteman missiles. To preserve “the American way,” they built a nuclear command center (Cheyenne Mountain) under 2000 feet of granite, which was rendered obsolete soon after it was built by more accurate Soviet ICBMs with warheads in the megatons.

As a young Air Force officer, I hunkered down in the 1980s in Cheyenne Mountain. I visited Los Alamos. I’ve walked the Trinity Test Site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, site of the first atomic test in 1945. Friends of mine have sat in ICBM silos, ready and able to unleash Armageddon. Imagine young lieutenants and captains in their twenties, sitting underground, waiting for the president’s command to launch missiles that will unleash a nuclear holocaust to kill millions, if not the planet itself.

All this fresh talk of “investment” in “modernized” nuclear weapons is sheer madness – a collective death wish – a “strange love” for world-destroying nukes. Yet again, we’ve come to love the bomb.

Recently, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF) spoke of nuclear weapon “recapitalization”: truly an abomination of the English language. You don’t “recapitalize” genocidal weaponry. Both the Sentinel ICBM missile program and the B-21 bomber are unneeded weapons systems that will likely cost $500 billion or more over the next 20 years. Sadly, he isn’t the only general who’s positively gleeful about all the money being thrown at nuclear weapons, the Golden Dome, and weapons in space.

This mad (MAD) glee for money in the cause of mass destruction and madcap militarism is destroying not just our democracy. It’s like our “leaders” are out of Mordor, searching for the One Ring of Power, with AI data centers and surveillance the equivalent to Sauron’s eye that sees all.

I wonder if Sauron spoke of “modernization” and “recapitalization” in Orcs and Nazgûl and Balrogs?

The current CSAF promises to “advocate relentlessly” for new weaponry like the Sentinel ICBM and B-21 Raider. He says “readiness” to fight is an airman’s “first responsibility.” Actually, that first responsibility is to support and defend the U.S. Constitution. We must be guided by the law of the land, not by the beauty of our weapons (Brian Williams) or a warrior’s urge to use them (Pete Hegseth)

America, stop the MADness. A policy of Mutually Assured Destruction means we’re all dead. As the Outlaw Josey Wales said: “Dyin’ ain’t much of a living.” Nor is deterring our way to Doomsday.

October 13, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war