The $1 trillion price tag of modernizing America’s nuclear weapons falls to the next president, Business Insider Yeganeh Torbati, Reuters “………..-budget constraints almost certainly will force the next president to decide whether and how quickly to proceed with the Obama administration’s plans to maintain and modernize the US nuclear arsenal.
Crunch time
The crunch comes in the next decade as American ballistic missile submarines, bombers, and land-based missiles – the three legs of the nuclear triad – reach the end of their useful lives.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the total cost of nuclear forces through 2024 at $348 billion, but that does not include some of the costliest upgrades, scheduled for the latter half of the next decade. Independent estimates have put the cost of maintaining and modernizing the arsenal at about $1 trillion over 30 years.
“There’s a bipartisan commitment to doing that upgrade, so we have to assume those funds will come through,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told Reuters on Sept. 20. “But it will be a significant budget increase, especially in the next decade.”
The Energy Department shares responsibility with the Pentagon for the nuclear arsenal, and some of its research and production facilities are 73 years old.
The next administration could abandon or delay some aspects of modernization to cut costs. Or it could raise taxes, increase the budget deficit, or cut domestic programs, all unpopular steps with American voters.
The most vulnerable elements of the modernization plans are a long-range standoff weapon, or LRSO – a nuclear-capable cruise missile launched from an aircraft – and new land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Ten US senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, called on President Barack Obama in July to cancel the LRSO, saying it “would provide an unnecessary capability that could increase the risk of nuclear war.”
A vote today for Hillary Clinton is a vote for endless, stupid war https://wikileaks.org/hillary-war/ 9 Feb 16 by Julian Assange Hillary didn’t just vote for Iraq. She made her own Iraq. Libya is Hillary’s Iraq and if she becomes president she will make more.
I have had years of experience in dealing with Hillary Clinton and have read thousands of her cables. Hillary lacks judgement and will push the United States into endless, stupid wars which spread terrorism. Her personality combined with her poor policy decisions have directly contributed to the rise of ISIS.
Pentagon generals objected to destroying the Libyan state. They felt Hillary did not have a safe post-war plan. Hillary Clinton went over their heads. Libya has been destroyed. It became a haven for ISIS. The Libyan national armory was looted and hundreds of tons of weapons were transferred to jihadists in Syria. Hillary’s war has increased terrorism, killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians and has set back women’s rights in the Middle East by hundreds of years. Having learned nothing from the Libyan disaster Hillary then set about trying do the same in Syria.
Hillary publicly took credit for the destruction of the Libyan state. On hearing that the country’s president had been killed by her handiwork, she became wild-eyed and gloated “We came, we saw, he died!”. In the momentary thrill of the kill, she had aped, of all people, Julius Ceaser.
Hillary’s problem is not just that she’s war hawk. She’s a war hawk with bad judgement who gets an unseemly emotional rush out of killing people. She shouldn’t be let near a gun shop, let alone an army. And she certainly should not become president of the United States.
Neither candidate has focused much on nuclear energy during the campaign.
Although Clinton mentions “advanced reactors” in her clean energy plans, the Nuclear Energy Institute took aim at the proposals, saying they fall short of “recognizing that the current and future workhorse of carbon reduction in the nation’s power generation is nuclear power.”
On her campaign website, Clinton does say those who want to “rapidly shut down our nation’s nuclear power fleet put ideology ahead of science,” making it harder and more costly to build a clean energy future.
Trump has vowed to pursue “all forms of energy.” In his North Dakota speech he said that would include nuclear, wind and solar energy – “but not to the exclusion of other energy.
End destructive energy extraction and associated infrastructure: fracking, tar sands, offshore drilling, oil trains, mountaintop removal, natural gas pipelines, and uranium mines.
Halt any investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas, and phase out all fossil fuel power plants.
Phase out nuclear power and end nuclear subsidies.
End all subsidies for fossil fuels and impose a greenhouse gas fee / tax to charge polluters for the damage they have created.
Clinton pledged to make sure the “climate benefits” of existing plants are “appropriately valued,” adding she wanted to “increase investment in the research, development and deployment of advanced nuclear power.”
The nuclear industry, on the other hand, was happy about Clinton’s embrace of nuclear power.
“We absolutely appreciate that from the Hillary camp,” Baker Elmore, director of federal programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “When she was Senator, she had a very controversial plant at Indian Point in her state of New York. She was never really overly critical of it which was a big plus. We really appreciate the new statement.”
Clinton’s campaign did not return requests for comment to TheDCNF in time for publication.
e flip-flops began when Clinton was running for the Democratic nomination in 2008, however, she started off from a pro-nuclear power position, saying, “I think nuclear power has to be part of our energy solution,” in February 2007. “We get about 20% of our energy from nuclear power in our country,” Clinton continued. “Other countries like France get much much more, so we have to look at it because it doesn’t put greenhouse gas emissions into the air.”
“I’m agnostic about nuclear power,” Clinton said in July 2007 during a YouTube Democratic primary debate. “Until we figure out what we’re going to do with the waste and the cost, it’s very hard to see nuclear as a part of our future. But that’s where American technology comes in. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do about the waste and cost if we think nuclear should be a part of the solution.”
As her 2008 race with Obama got closer, Hillary migrated to an even more vehemently anti-nuclear position, explicitly excluding the industry from her platform.”I don’t include nuclear power in my energy policy, which I think is an appropriate approach given the problems we have with it,” Clinton told SentinelSource.com during an interview in late 2007.
After Clinton lost the Iowa caucus, she said that, “I have a comprehensive energy plan that does not rely on nuclear power,” in a January 2008 debate in Las Vegas.
When she lost the race for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Clinton’s views regarding nuclear power shifted radically. She began representing American nuclear companies to other countries as Obama’s secretary of state. Clinton used her position to support American nuclear companies in bids to construct and operate reactors in other countries, and helped American nuclear companies get contracts in countries like Japan, the Czech Republic and India.
“I think that nuclear power will remain a component of the energy supply globally, currently the United States, last time I looked, got 20 percent of our energy from nuclear plants,” Clinton said in October of 2012.
By the time Clinton pulled ahead of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in March, her policy director told a local Idaho news source that, “nuclear energy has an important role to play in our clean-energy future.”
After locking down the Democratic nomination, Clinton shifted back to opposing nuclear power.
Clinton’s platform for 2016 calls for having the nation run “entirely on clean energy by midcentury,” with a goal of “getting 50 percent of our electricity from clean energy sources within a decade.” The platform never defines clean energy, but other sections clearly indicate that it excludes nuclear, even though a single nuclear reactor can prevent 3.1 million tons of carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions annually. The phrases “nuclear energy” or “nuclear power” never appear in Clinton’s platform.
CNN fact-check: No, Hillary Clinton did not cut Russia’s nuclear arms http://hotair.com/archives/2016/09/24/cnn-fact-checks-claim-hillary-clinton-cut-russias-nuclear-arms/BY JOHN SEXTON Yesterday, Jake Tapper fact-checked a claim about Russian nuclear arms made in two different Hillary Clinton campaign ads this year. One of the ads, which was aired thousands of times in Colorado and Virginia back in April, claims Hillary secured “a massive reduction in nuclear weapons.” FactCheck.org looked at that claim at the time and concluded, “the record doesn’t show that Clinton was responsible for ‘securing a massive reduction in nuclear weapons.’”
A new Clinton ad, which is airing in seven states this month, echoed the previous claim saying Hillary “got the treaty cutting Russia’s nuclear arms.”
But as Jake Tapper points out nearly all of this is false. It’s true that there is a treaty called New START which sets limits on the number of strategic nuclear weapons Russia can deploy. However that treaty doesn’t say anything about short range nukes or the number of total nuclear weapons Russia can have. It doesn’t require a single nuclear weapon be destroyed.
Even more striking, Tapper notes that Russia was already under the agreed limit when the treaty was signed in 2011. Russia has since increased the number of strategic nuclear arms by nearly 200, from 1,537 to 1,735. “Not only did it not cut the number of nuclear weapons,” Tapper says, “there’s actually been an increase.” Here’s a chart [on original] created by FactCheck.org back in April showing the number of strategic nuclear arms held by the U.S. and Russia. Note that the number of warheads held by Russia is up:
Tapper and FactCheck.org both grant that the treaty has value but the claims Clinton is making about the treaty reducing the number of Russian arms is false. Here’s the full fact-check: (youtube)
Where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump stand on climate change, Business Insider, REBECCA HARRINGTONSEP 26, 2016 “……..The candidates’ positions on environmental issues are very different.
We’ve rounded up their statements publicly and on their websites to find out how the two stack up on environmental issues.
On her campaign site, Clinton calls climate change an “urgent threat” to “our economy, our national security, and our children’s health and futures.” She wants to uphold the Paris Agreement that sets targets to reverse the worst effects of global warming, which nearly 200 countries agreed to last December.
“When it comes to climate change, the science is crystal clear,” Clinton said on ScienceDebate. “That’s why as President, I will work both domestically and internationally to ensure that we build on recent progress and continue to slash greenhouse gas pollution over the coming years as the science clearly tells us we must.”
Clinton has proposed investing in clean energy and more efficient vehicles, cutting energy waste by implementing more robust efficiency and pollution standards, and cutting subsidies on oil and gas as ways of dealing with climate change.
In response to a question about his views on climate change on ScienceDebate, Trump implied that the US shouldn’t waste “financial resources” on climate change and should instead use them to ensure the world has clean water, eliminate diseases like malaria, increase food production, or develop alternative energy sources.
Hillary Takes the Nuclear-Energy Option, National Review, by ROBERT BRYCE September 22, 2016 She recognizes that public perceptions about nuclear power are becoming more positive. Amid the avalanche of criticism aimed at Hillary Clinton in recent weeks about Pneumonia-gate, the Clinton Foundation, and her never-ending e-mail troubles, the Democratic nominee actually made an important policy statement, one that puts her directly at odds with America’s biggest environmental groups as well as her own party’s platform. What did Clinton do?
She endorsed nuclear energy.
In a candidate questionnaire published in the September 13 issue of Scientific American, she said that addressing climate change is “too important to limit the tools available in this fight. Nuclear power . . . is one of those tools.” She went on, pledging to make sure that the “climate benefits” of existing plants are “appropriately valued,” adding that she will “increase investment in the research, development and deployment of advanced nuclear power.”……….
She has also straddled the fence on nuclear. In 2007, she said nuclear “has to be part of our energy solution.” A few months later, she said she was “agnostic” about nuclear energy. Then, in early 2008, during a Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas, she touted her “energy plan that does not rely on nuclear power.”
Nevertheless, Clinton has now come out in favor of nuclear. By doing so, she has broken with the orthodoxy of the anti-nuclear Left, a group that includes the New York Times editorial board, as well as the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, 350.org, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and many others. Recall that in June, Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club declared that his group “remains in firm opposition to dangerous nuclear power.” Furthermore, Clinton is contradicting her own party. For four decades, the Democratic party has either ignored nuclear energy or stated outright opposition to it.
In July, the party released its platform, which says climate change “poses a real and urgent threat to our economy, our national security, and our children’s health and futures.” But it doesn’t contain a single mention of nuclear energy. Indeed, you have to go all the way back to 1972 to find a positive statement in the party’s platforms about nuclear energy. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, voters who identify as Republican are twice as likely (47 percent to 24 percent) to support nuclear energy as are those who identify as Democrats.
Why a Donald Trump Victory Could Make Climate Catastrophe Inevitable, Michael Klare on the forces moving us toward an uninhabitable planet. Mother Jones, MICHAEL KLARE, SEP. 17, 2016 “……., the fate of the planet rests on the questionable willingness of each of those countries to abide by that obligation, however sour or bellicose its relations with other signatories may be. As it happens, that part of the agreement has already been buffeted by geopolitical headwinds and is likely to face increasing turbulence in the years to come.
That geopolitics will play a decisive role in determining the success or failure of the Paris Agreement has become self-evident in the short time since its promulgation. While some progress has been made toward its formal adoption—the agreement will enter into force only after no fewer than 55 countries, accounting for at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, have ratified it—it has also encountered unexpected political hurdles, signaling trouble to come…….
Great Britain’s astonishing Brexit vote has complicated the task of ensuring the European Union’s approval of the agreement, as European solidarity on the climate issue—a major factor in the success of the Paris negotiations—can no longer be assured. “There is a risk that this could kick EU ratification of the Paris Agreement into the long grass,” suggests Jonathan Grant, director of sustainability at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The Brexit campaign itself was spearheaded by politicians who were also major critics of climate science and strong opponents of efforts to promote a transition from carbon-based fuels to green sources of energy. For example, the chair of the Vote Leave campaign, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, is also chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank devoted to sabotaging government efforts to speed the transition to green energy. Many other top Leave campaigners, including former Conservative ministers John Redwood and Owen Paterson, were also vigorous climate deniers.
In explaining the strong link between these two camps, analysts at the Economistnoted that both oppose British submission to international laws and norms: “Brexiteers dislike EU regulations and know that any effective action to tackle climate change will require some kind of global cooperation: carbon taxes or binding targets on emissions. The latter would be the EU writ large and Britain would have even less say in any global agreement, involving some 200 nations, than in an EU regime involving 28.”……..
In his first major speech on energy, delivered in May, Trump—who has called global warming a Chinese hoax—pledged to “cancel the Paris climate agreement” and scrap the various measures announced by President Obama to ensure US compliance with its provisions. Echoing the views of his Brexit counterparts, hecomplained that “this agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use on our land, in our country. No way.” He also vowed to revive construction of the Keystone XL pipeline (which would bring carbon-heavy Canadian tar sands oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast), to reverse any climate-friendly Obama administration acts, and to promote the coal industry. “Regulations that shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants and block the construction of new ones—how stupid is that?” he said, mockingly……..
nationalistic exceptionalism could become something of the norm if Donald Trump wins in November, or other nations join those already eager to put the needs of a fossil-fuel-based domestic growth agenda ahead of global climate commitments. With that in mind, consider the assessment of future energy trends that the Norwegian energy giant Statoil recently produced. In it is a chilling scenario focused on just this sort of dystopian future………
Indeed, the future pace of climate change will be determined as much by geopolitical factors as technological developments in the energy sector. While it is evident that immense progress is being made in bringing down the price of wind and solar power in particular—far more so than all but a few analysts anticipated until recently—the political will to turn such developments into meaningful global change and so bring carbon emissions to heel before the planet is unalterably transformed may, as the Statoil authors suggest, be dematerializing before our eyes. If so, make no mistake about it: We will be condemning Earth’s future inhabitants, our own children and grandchildren, to unmitigated disaster…….
To avoid an Eaarth (as both Bill McKibben and the Statoil authors imagine it) and preserve the welcoming planet in which humanity grew and thrived, climate activists will have to devote at least as much of their energy and attention to the international political arena as to the technology sector. At this point, electing green-minded leaders, stopping climate deniers (or ignorers) from capturing high office, and opposing fossil-fueled ultranationalism is the only realistic path to a habitable planet.
This blackout of the Fukushima related trip to Japan was so important, it required committing a crime to not provide these emails under subpoena. I am dumping these screen captures of all the Fukushima emails that I reviewed. I have all the PDFs downloaded and stored and backed up.
But I want to get this out there now, so you can view. Of this $400B dollar a year industry (nuclear), how much do you think they funneled to Hillary or some Super-Pac?
First off, she knew of the dangers of Fukushima, and the precautions that should have been taken, the next 3 graphics are from 1 email, March 12, 2011
She needs to be in treatment, not running for president. I do not believe that she is a sociopath, for one, she can’t lie that well. I believe she is highly ambitious and power hungry and will do anything to get power. But at the same time, she realizes the evil that she does. That puts a lot of stress on a person. And it’s catching up.
Why do I say she is dangerous?
Read below, this really spells it out very clearly. Hillary Clinton Threw American’s Under The Bus, Doubtless Costing Many Lives and Painful Diseases
Her emails, and lack of emails proves this clearly.
Here is the breakdown:
Clinton was Secretary of State at the Time
She was clearly briefed on the dangers of Fukushima
She was getting several emails a day on Fukushima updates
People in government were pushing her hard to make a trip to Japan even though she was very tired and overworked
These same people were imploring her to “Go talk to Kissinger” about strategies for the Japan/Fukushima deal
Hillary went and got a strategy from Kissinger, and decided to make the trip to Japan to meet one on one with top officials.
Now, with a big trip to a world super power and close allie, after the worst industrial accident in history, you know that there would be a lot of emails to coordinate the trip.
But after that meeting with Kissinger there was not a single Japan or Fukushima related email in what she turned over. Not one. They were all disappeared. Under penalty of contempt of court, a jailable offense, or worse, she had all those emails purged. Why would anyone take a risk this large just to coverup a trip and discussion with one of our closest allies? 60 other top secret emails were released to the FBI (not disappeared), BUT the coverup of the Fukushima story was so important that Clinton and her group committed a felony by removing these from the record.
What is known and what is the most likely story that makes sense.
Schlosser explained that in the military, Trump “would be forbidden from working with nuclear weapons Eric Schlosser, author of “Command and Control,” in a Facebook Live interview with Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir on Tuesday, warned of the dire possibility that GOP presidential nominee could wind up with sole control of the United States’ nuclear arsenal.
“I feel compelled to make a political remark,” Schlosser said. “It’s extraordinary that there’s any possibility Donald Trump could be president of the United States and commander-in-chief and in charge of our nuclear arsenal. Under the law, the only person who’s authorized to order the use of nuclear weapons is the president. And he or she is pretty much unrestricted about when he or she wants to use them.
Schlosser explained that people who work with nuclear weapons in any capacity must pass a personnel reliability program — “basically a personality test to see if you should be let anywhere near nuclear weapons.”
“Donald Trump would fail that on every score,” he continued. “He’s a liar, he’s got all kinds of personal business problems and debts, he’s clearly emotionally unstable, and in the military he would be forbidden from working with nuclear weapons. And the notion of him being commander-in-chief, with the launch codes, capable of devastating cities and countries, is extraordinary. It’s like the plot out of a science-fiction film.”
US Will Not Allow North Korea To Have Deliverable Nuclear Weapon: Clinton, News 18.com September 11, 2016 Washington: The US will not allow North Korea to have deliverable nuclear weapons, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said on Sunday.
“I absolutely believe that it has to be made very clear we will not allow North Korea to have a deliverable nuclear weapon, and we will approach this from a number of perspectives,” Clinton said.
President Barack Obama had earlier said that the US will never accept Pyongyang as a “nuclear state”. Responding to a question, Clinton said she has had conversations in the past with the Chinese about North Korea…….
we have got to make it clear missile defense is going in as quickly and broadly as possible,” Clinton said.
The ad from Priorities USA, called “I Love War,” juxtaposes Trump’s past remarks about his affinity for war and the power of nuclear energy against a backdrop of images of mushroom clouds, land stripped bare by massive explosions and old-time war reels. “I’m really good at war, I love war in a certain way,” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, says in one clip.
“Including with nukes, yes, including with nukes,” he says.
Priorities USA is putting $5 million behind the ad, which will run begin running on Friday in six battleground states: North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire.
“Nuclear is just, the power, the devastation is very important to me,” Trump says in the ad.
“I want to be unpredictable,” he says as the spot concludes.
Allies of Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, are hammering Trump in a coordinated effort to portray him as unfit to be commander in chief.
The Trump campaign is pushing back, rolling out endorsements on Tuesday from 88 retired military figures who are backing Trump for president, calling him the leader to deal with “burgeoning threats” facing the country.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein calls for climate state of emergency Presidential hopeful points to California wildfires and Louisiana flooding in push for Green New Deal to address both environment and economy, Guardian, Edward Helmore, 20 Aug 16, “We need to acknowledge the true state of emergency we are in,” Stein said. “The fires in California and floods in Louisiana are going to become day-by-day occurrences, and, within our lifetimes, there is going to be potentially catastrophic sea-level rise.
“We need to ensure that these disasters do not become a daily way of life for all Americans and people all over the world,” she said, “and this is why we need to declare a climate state of emergency so that we can respond in real time in the ways that we need to.”
In poll after poll, Stein added, the American people say they want substantial action on climate change that meets the severity of the crisis. She called for empowering Americans to instruct their elected officials – namely Congress – to act in their interests, not in the interests of lobbyists.
Stein remarked that she was astonished to be witnessing a Republican party that appeared to be “unravelling at the seams”. But she also warned that Democrats were moving to the right………
The Green party nominee, currently polling as high as 6% but well below the 15% threshold required for a podium position in the coming presidential TV debates, said declaring a state of emergency would address two related crises in the climate and the economy….
Part of the solution would be the Green New Deal, a plan that would rapidly create 20m new jobs, lead to a sustainable economy and transition the US to 100% clean energy by 2030.
The New Deal, Stein said, would help revive the economy, turn the tide on climate change and make wars for oil obsolete. “When you have 100% renewable energy, you do not need and you cannot justify a military budget that distributes soldiers and weapons all around the world.”
The plan includes “restoring critical infrastructure, including the ecosystem, cleaning up rivers and waterways, restoring our wetlands and forests and ensuring that we have water systems for our communities that are not toxic”.
Part of the program, she added, would be to call for a complete ban on new fossil fuel and nuclear infrastructure. Communities dependent on coal or fracking would be assured that jobs would be replaced before they were laid off.
Stein estimates the costs of the transition would be completely offset by the money saved by not using fossil fuels. The savings, she suggested, would include billions of dollars related to healthcare costs from asthma, emphysema, heart attacks, strokes and cancers related to exposure to fossil fuels.
The party’s vice-presidential nominee, Ajamu Baraka, also appeared at the event. A longtime human rights activist, he told the gathering that participatory job creation and planning was paramount in the development of a Green New Deal economy. “It’s imperative that the people are direct participants,” he said. “It’s a principle that this party and this campaign stands for.”…..
As a medical doctor, of course I support vaccinations,” she tweeted. “I have a problem with the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] being controlled by drug companies.”
But on the campaign trail, Stein largely limited her remarks to concerns over climate change. She proposed introducing a carbon tax of $60 a ton that would yield around $360bn annually and increasing the estate tax to its level during the Reagan administration. Her proposals, she argued, were now a necessity.
“Each month now, we’re seeing records set for climate change and global warming. Science is telling us that the day of reckoning is coming closer. This is not something that can wait another four years.
Neglecting nuclear security in the 2016 election, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 19 AUGUST 2016, Jeff Murphy Chris Kruckenberg Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once said, “[W]hen you’re asked what keeps you awake at night, it’s the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear.”
He isn’t the only public servant to feel this way; nuclear threats have haunted US leaders since the United States used the first atomic weapons and realized others could do the same. These fears are not totally unfounded: A team from the Government Accountability Officerecently succeeded in procuring ingredients for a dirty bomb within the United States, and would-be terrorists could possibly do the same. Recent administrations have focused on this issue, perhaps none more than that of Barack Obama. But are the 2016 presidential campaigns putting nuclear security on the back burner? Despite their public safety theme, Republican National Convention speakers never mentioned nuclear security issues outside of the Iran nuclear deal, and the party platform only indirectly touches on nonproliferation.Democratic National Convention speakers primarily focused on questioning the wisdom of giving the nuclear codes to the opposing candidate, but at least devoted a section of their party platform to nuclear nonproliferation.
This is disturbing to us. As nuclear security interns at the Stimson Center, we never thought our research would affect our vote in the 2016 presidential election. Like many interns in Washington, DC, we simply sought professional experience in hopes of pursuing careers in international affairs and living the American Dream. However, what we’ve seen during the campaign has raised questions for us about the future of nuclear security and whether the goal of a world without nuclear weapons is still possible. The troubling disconnect between the Republican and Democratic campaigns should be worrisome for everyone……..
Looking ahead. Throughout the 2016 election season, there has been a disconcerting lack of discussion regarding the future of WMD nonproliferation. Republican candidate Donald Trump has already been on record expressing his comfort with allies—such as Japan and South Korea—developing their own nuclear arsenals, and while Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has declared nuclear proliferation to be one of the most important security threats to the United States, she has been mostly silent on whether she would continue specific Obama administration policies. Unfortunately, scandals and trivial politics have overshadowed policy in the 2016 campaign; bad hair and silly nicknames have trumped nuclear security.
This isn’t just a discussion for national and international leaders; individual citizens need to be involved as well. A populace educated about nuclear security issues will be more willing to demand that it be addressed—and there is an opportunity, especially during a political season, to become informed. Some things, like simply asking congressional representatives what they’re doing to assist nonproliferation efforts, can be done by anybody. This would force politicians to take proliferation more seriously: nuclear as well as chemical and biological. Younger people like us can get involved through efforts such as the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 International Student Essay Contest, which received almost 150 proposals on how to strengthen nonproliferation efforts.
Regardless of who the next president is, progress made on nuclear security under Obama needs to continue. Two interns should not be the only ones raising these questions; would-be leaders owe all of us some explanation as to how they would facilitate this process, especially those who would be president.
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