Washington’s “Second Nuclear Age”. Threatening Russia and China

Tuesday, June 21, 2016
By Paul Martin

By Andre Damon
Global Research
June 21, 2016

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.

The Rest…HERE

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