With virtually
no discussion in the media and
no mention in the presidential election campaign, the United States is moving ahead with its trillion-dollar nuclear weapons modernization program.
Last week, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published a report noting that the
Obama administration is leading a global expansion of nuclear weapons programs. It said the US "plans to spend $348 billion during 2015 - 24 on maintaining and comprehensively updating its nuclear forces," adding that "Some estimates suggest that the USA's nuclear weapon modernization programme may cost up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years."
Hans Kristensen, a co-author of the report, declared, "The ambitious US modernization plan presented by the Obama administration is
in stark contrast to President Barack Obama's pledge to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and the role they play in US national security strategy."In the latest milestone in this ongoing process, the House of Representatives last week voted down an amendment that would have slowed the development of a $37 billion program to construct a new nuclear-armed cruise missile called the Long Range Standoff Weapon.
Behind the scenes, the program had met with muted opposition from sections of the military establishment, who criticized it on the grounds of its exorbitant cost and the fact that it would make nuclear war, either intentional or accidental, more likely.
"Because they can be launched without warning and come in both nuclear and conventional variants, cruise missiles are a uniquely destabilizing type of weapon," wrote former defense secretary William J. Perry and former assistant defense secretary Andy Weber in a comment published in the
Wall Street Journal last year.
They warned that such weapons, which do not trace the tell-tale arc into space of ballistic missiles, are hard to detect and impossible to distinguish from their conventional, or nonnuclear, counterparts.
This makes deadly miscalculations by other countries more likely. However, with the latest House vote, such concerns were brushed aside.
Comment: There is a long history of Western hegemonics in Asia, brought to prominence with the Brits, and highlighted by the Pentagon Papers (1969) as a greater strategy to control China and prevent the geo-political organization of SE Asia. Hence the Asian supranational bloc the US now maintains through NGOs, the military and socioeconomic manipulations. With China's influence gaining trust and momentum, look for indications of US meddling to create SE Asian destabilization...the ace in its playbook; one we now know so well.
Selfie a new world order? Encircle and master or destroy all others? Every action has a reaction. Blinded by hubris, the US will cause ITSELF to be encircled and subsequently annihilated by all that it sought to control. A very unstrategic enclosure, in fact, a dead end.