Coming to Our Senses Regarding Nukes | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community
As part of President-Elect Trumps daily tweets this past week he stated:
The United States must greatly
strengthen its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to
its senses regarding nukes.
In his 140 character tome he proposes
maintaining a status quo of the mythology of nuclear deterrence and
self-assured destruction (SAD) or a “coming to senses” of the nuclear
states. As President of the United States, he will have a significant
role to play in determining which path is followed. He can lead us
further down the road toward nuclear annihilation or lead us at long
last to nuclear abolition and a world free of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear deterrence is indeed a myth
propagated for 71 years since the beginning of the nuclear age. Rather
than deterring a nuclear arms buildup, it is instead the greatest driver
of the arms race as each time one nation has a new weapon, technology
or expenditure then all adversaries must match and exceed that number.
We are on the verge of a new nuclear arms race robbing a proposed
trillion dollar expenditure from our basic human needs to rebuild our
nuclear arsenals over the next 30 years. I am certain this is not the
jobs program that President-Elect Trump has in mind.
A U.S. nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in 1946. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/cc)
