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March 2, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

 “End war, build peace” by Ray Acheson

RAY ACHESON, 1 MARCH 2022

Ray Acheson is an activist for peace, justice and abolition, director of the Women’s Int’l League for Peace & Freedom disarmament program in New York City, WILPF representative on the steering committee of ICAN, and author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy (Roman and Littlefield 2021).

Russia’s war in Ukraine is intensifying, with cities and civilians being targeted with missiles and rockets and a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding. The threat of nuclear war, the billions of dollars being promised to militarism, racist border crossing restrictions and ideas about conflict, and the ongoing climate crisis are intertwined with the already horrific violence in Ukraine. To confront these compounding crises, war and war profiteering must end, nuclear weapons must be abolished, and we must confront the world of war that has been deliberately constructed at the expense of peace, justice, and survival.

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report, finding that human-induced climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly. “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of an IPCC working group.

The IPCC report was released five days after Russia launched an imperial war of aggression against Ukraine—a war that itself is fossil-fueled and wrapped up with energy and economic interests, and that will contribute further to carbon emissions. Furthermore, this report comes one day after the Russian president ordered his country’s nuclear forces to be put on “combat duty,” escalating the risk of nuclear war and threatening climate catastrophe.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has already seen violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, including Russian forces using banned weapons such as cluster munitions and using explosive weapons in populated areas, hitting hospitals, homes, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. The conflict has also already involved severe environmental impacts, including pollution from military sites and material, as well as from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, radiation risks from fighting at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility, groundwater contamination, and more.

Now, it risks becoming nuclear, putting the entire world at risk. The use of even a single nuclear bomb would be absolutely devastating. It would kill hundreds of thousands of people, it would destroy critical infrastructure, [and] it would unleash radiation that will damage human bodies, animals, plants, land, water, and air for generations. If it turns into a nuclear exchange with NATO or the United States, we will be facing an unprecedented catastrophe. Millions of people could die. Our health care systems, already overwhelmed by two years of a global pandemic, will collapse. The climate crisis will be exponentially exacerbated; there could be a disastrous decline in food production and a global famine that might kill most of humanity.

In this moment, everyone must condemn the threat to use nuclear weapons, as well as the ongoing bombing of civilians, the war in general, and the Russian government’s act of imperial aggression. Providing humanitarian relief, ending the war, and preventing it from turning nuclear are top priorities. But we must also recognize what led us here. This crisis is the inevitable result of building a world order based on militarism, just as the nuclear dimension is an inevitable result of the possessing nuclear weapons and claiming they are a legitimate tool of “security”.

READ THE FULL POST HERE:

End war, build peace

 

Filed Under: Environment, Environmental Justice, Military Spending, Nuclear Weapons, Radiation Exposure, Renewable Energy, War

December 21, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Congress Forces Weapons Spending the Pentagon Wanted Cancelled 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

Writing in Roll Call October 18, John Donnelly analyzed federal spending on weapons unwanted by the Pentagon. A report made public in early October shows that Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord attempted to save about $1 billion in weapons spending, but was stopped by the Appropriations and the Armed Services Committees in both the Senate and the House.

These four committees have repeatedly kept hundreds of millions of tax dollars gushing into the coffers of the world biggest weapons contractors — for weapons declared unnecessary by the military. The committees can even refuse to reject the savings recommendations without saying why. Donnelly wrote, “None of the four defense panels provided CQ Roll Call an explanation for forcing the Pentagon to keep spending money on particular initiatives.”

“The Pentagon had said it does not need the $500 million-plus that was appropriated for the fighter jets, helicopters, ships, vehicles, and bombs made by four of its top five contractors” (Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman). But, Roll Call reports, “Congressional Appropriations and Armed Services committees, for reasons that none of them would divulge, insisted that the military spend the money anyway.”

Last year’s political contributions by some of the companies whose contracts were saved by congress, were: Lockheed: $5,055,874; Northrup Grumman: $5,269,016; General Dynamics: $3,378,838; and Boeing: $464,629, according to OpenSecrets online whose researchers also found that the top 20 weapons contractors contributed $47 million to federal candidates, parties, and outside groups in 2020. Capitol Hill arm-twisting by the top 20’s 675 registered lobbyists (1.2 for each member on the hill) totaled more than $87 million in 2021.

Some of the rejected savings were: 

M $60 million for Air Force F-35 fighter jet procurements, and going to Lockheed Martin

M $2 billion a year for the last seven years on F-35s that the Pentagon did not order

M $15 million for Lockheed Martin’s CH-53K helicopter program

M $194 million for Boeing’s Grey Wolf helicopters

M $18 million for procurement and modifications for Boeing’s Super Hornet fighter jet

M $15 million for modifications to Boeing’s Super Hornet and Growler planes

M $73 million for an unrequested Expeditionary Sea Base ship made by General Dynamics

M $66 million on unneeded “General Purpose Bombs,” mostly made by General Dynamics

M$59 million for a Northrup Grumman bomb fuse

In a related case, Boeing won a $1.62 billion contract in September to repair guidance systems on the Air Force’s 400 Minuteman III ICBMs. The 18- year contract will run simultaneously with a $2.6 billion deal for Northrup Grumman for the Minuteman III’s replacement rocket, dubbed the G.B.S.D. — emphasis on the BS.

The swamp was further described in a November 9 piece by Joe Cirincione titled “How the nuclear game is rigged to maintain the status quo,” which notes that the same giant weapons contractors also build nuclear weapons. “To protect those contracts, these arms firms deploy a small army of lobbyists in Washington, run a revolving door that shuttles officials between top policy jobs and top contractor jobs, disperse contracts to nearly every congressional district, contribute generously to lawmakers on the key committees that oversee their programs, are major advertisers in all the publications covering national security, and have flooded Washington think tanks over the past 20 years with grants to mute criticism of their programs.”

—Rollcall online, “Congress Blocks Cuts to Top Contractors Weapons Budgets,” Oct. 18; William Hartung, “Profiteers of Armageddon,” Inkstick.com, Oct. 12; Opensecrets.org; and Responsible Statecraft, Nov. 9, 2021

Filed Under: Military Spending, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter

August 2, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

 Mi$$ile Defen$e$ Fail but $till Get Billion$

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2021

Over 60 advocates, former military officers, lawmakers, and government officials have asked the Biden White House to delay or cancel parts of the scandal-ridden missile defense program. In a June 3 letter they slam the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program, a $926 million item in this year’s $8.9 billion Missile Defense Agency’s budget. The program has been “rushed, chaotic and ultimately counter-productive …, has resulted in a failed test record [and] wasted billions of dollars,” the group wrote.

Military intelligence, famous for its oxymorons, identifies this photo as, “Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Sea-Based X band radar platform arrives in Pearl Harbor.” US Navy photo by Ryan McGinley.

The signatories include former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, former Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman, and former Senators Tom Harkin and Tom Daschle. They argue the Navy’s missile test interception last year “threatened Russia’s and China’s confidence in their strategic deterrent,” and they urged Biden to delay the Aegis missile program by limiting production of ships and missiles. The White House’s budget proposal included $1 billion for Lockheed Martin’s Aegis system, and $647 million for the interceptors. 

The World Policy Institute reported in 2004 that the four top missile-defense contractors back then — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, TRW and Raytheon — spent $34 million on lobbying and $6.9 million on campaign contributions in fiscal year 1997-‘98. The legal bribery pays off, as GMD outlays were estimated in 2013 to total $40.9 billion through fiscal year 2017, according to the House Committee on Oversight and the US Government Accountability Office. 

— Defense News, June 3, 2021; Hudson Institute 2019 annual report; “Missile Defense Fraud Goes Ballistic,” Nukewatch Special Report, 2005.

Filed Under: Military Spending, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter

August 2, 2021 by Nukewatch 2 Comments

Nuclear Weapons Lobbyists Win Contracts that Buy More Lobbying

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2021

In June, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) published “Complicit: 2020 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” and its details will help abolitionists demonstrate how the nuclear weapons industry protects its government contracts. Last year the United States spent $37.4 billion on nuclear weapons and just the 21 major nuclear weapons producers profiled in the report spent $117 million in lobbying Congress. For every $1 they spent lobbying, an average of $236 in nuclear-weapons-contract money came back. For example:

•Boeing spent $15.6 million lobbying and was awarded $105 million for nuclear weapons work.

•Lockheed Martin, spent $15 million lobbying, and was awarded $2.1 billion for nuclear weapons work.

•Northrop Grumman spent $13.3 million lobbying, and was awarded $13.7 billion for nuclear weapons work.

•Raytheon Technologies spent $15.2 million lobbying, and was awarded $450 million for nuclear weapons work.

ICAN’s 73-page report details $5-to-$10 million in donations that the nuclear weapons contractors made to “think tanks” whose writers promote weapons programs, manufacture fear, and discourage disarmament, enabling lawmakers to con their constituents and to vote for more weapons. 

— ICANw.org, “Complicit: 2020 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” June 2020

Filed Under: Military Spending, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter

March 30, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Accidental Apocalypse and Nuclear War on Drugs

Image by Christopher Farrugia.

By John LaForge, Nukewatch

With existential national security threats from floods, droughts, wildfires, water pollution, sea-level rise, and peak oil,[1] the US Air Force, the Air National Guard and nuclear weapons manufacturers could do crucial defense work in the US heartland by building, installing, managing and expanding renewable (wind and solar) electric power systems — instead of polishing their 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and preparing to welcome an astronomically expensive replacement missile dubbed Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. Call such a switch a “Climate Defense Initiative” since it would constitute deterrence against actual threats.

But no. Congress’s “ICBM Coalition,” missile contractors Lockheed Martin, GE, Northrup-Grumman, Boeing, and United Technologies, hundreds of subcontractors, their lobbyists, and public relations departments have conjured implausible but scary sounding reasons for paying an estimated $264 billion for yet another new rocket system. Since 1955, the nuclear-armed rocket gravy train has invented reasons for Atlas missiles, Titan missiles, Minuteman I, II and III missiles, and even a few dozen Peacekeepers.

The proposal to replace today’s 400 land-based ICBMs is so unsound and unpopular that even centrist organizations and individuals have condemned it (most for the wrong reasons), among them the editorial board of Bloomberg News, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Arms Control Association, Defense News, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and a handful of retired military commanders.

Six years ago, the Bulletin referred to “the significant number of ‘expert’ studies that have appeared over the past five years suggesting that the ICBM leg of the nuclear triad should be deactivated”.[2] Gen. James Cartwright, a former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chaired a 2012 study group whose final report — co-signed by then Senator and later Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel — said in part: “No sensible argument has been put forward for using nuclear weapons to solve any of the major 21st century problems we face …. In fact, nuclear weapons have on balance arguably become more a part of the problem than any solution.” Secretary Perry warns at his website, in speeches and in his memoir that ICBMs, “are simply too easy to launch on bad information and would be the most likely source of an accidental nuclear war,” and he says the ICBM system is “‘destabilizing’ in that it invites an attack from another power.”

All these critics point to these same fundamental failures and risks of ICBMs: they are redundant; they turn their sitting duck locations in five states into national sacrifice zones; and they robotize military commanders by pushing them to launch “on warning” without knowing whether the warning signals are misreads, mistakes or miscalculations.

Don’t mention the drug busts

Still, the mainstream critiques of the new missile program have ignored the scandals that have rocked the Air Force over the last 15 years[3] resulting in hundreds of demotions, firings, courts martial and forced retirements. Officers among the 9,600 people in the Minuteman III missile system have been punished for sexual assaults, spousal abuse, distributing illegal drugs, violating safety and security rules, failing and/or cheating on exams, sleeping at the controls, and even illegally flying nuclear-armed Cruise missiles cross country. In 2014, the AP referred to, “a flagging sense of purpose”, “stunning breakdowns in discipline, training, morale, security, leadership”, and “a decrepit Minuteman III missile force that few airmen want to join and even fewer view as a career-enhancing mission.”[4]

Missile field duty is understood by those assigned to it as a career cul-de-sac, plagued by years of isolation and boredom in rural outbacks, and haunted by high-level discussions of eliminating the missiles. Lacking a mission beyond sitting in place at attention or rehearsing doomsday drills, and overshadowed for promotion and commendations by warzone colleagues in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere, missile crews can feel left behind. The variety and depth of staff scandals in the missile fields appears to demonstrate a broad-based disillusionment.

In 2007, three full Colonels, a Lt. Colonel and dozens of low-level personnel at Minot AFB in North Dakota were demoted or sacked after they allowed the fantastically dangerous loading and cross-country air transport of six nuclear-armed Cruise missiles.[5] The nuclear weapons, each holding up to ten times the force of the Hiroshima bomb[6] were flown 1,542 miles from Minot to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana the US staging area for its Middle East wars and an operational bomber base with 44 B-52s.

In 2008, three of the four on-duty Air Force missileers in a Minot missile launch center fell asleep at the con­trols of a com­po­nent that holds launch codes. Rules require at least two crewmembers to stay awake while on alert. They were im­me­di­ate­ly barred from missile duty and were later dis­charged from the ser­vice.[7]

In October 2010, a computer glitch knocked fifty Minuteman missiles offline at F.E. Warren AFB in Wyoming “for longer than an hour.” Five launch control centers lost all contact with the fifty far-off Minuteman III missiles they normally control. Most unintentionally, the Air Force’s response to the temporary disarmament demonstrated the missile system’s obsolete and useless status. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson told press that the electronic shutdown had “no real bearing on the capabilities of our nuclear forces.”

In 2013, Air Force missileers, two at Minot and two at Malmstrom AFB in Montana, were reprimanded for leaving blast doors open at missile launch control centers in violation of strict protocols. The lapses were described by former missileer Bruce Blair as having enabled potential saboteurs to access super-secret missile launch codes. Understandably, the blunders were attributed to a lackadaisical mindset among the missileers.

In 2014, two missile launch crew administrators at Malmstrom were accused of operating an illegal narcotics distribution system across six Air Force bases, allegedly sending messages to eleven others, three of whom were members of launch control crews. According to Lt. Gen. James Holmes’ 268-page report on the scandal, the messages mentioned “specific, illegal drug use … [including] synthetic drugs, ecstasy and amphetamines.”[8]

Separately, Gen. Holmes’ investigation uncovered widespread cheating by missileers on launch procedure exams. Consequently, a total of 92 missileers at Malmstrom’s 341st Missile Wing were suspended, decertified, and barred from launch control duty. A total of nine missile field Colonels and Lt. Colonels at Malmstrom, nearly the entire chain of command, was removed from duty for failing to detect the mass cheating.

Damn the torpedo makers

How do the ICBMS survive the corruption, accidents, “stunning breakdowns,” and high-level condemnation? One answer is in a February 9 report by William Hartung of the Center for International Policy, titled “Inside the ICBM Lobby: Special Interests or the National Interest?” Hartung details the huge sums lavished by weapons contractors on lobbying and campaign contributions in order to buy votes from lawmakers in states that host the missiles, air bases, or the contractors themselves (Montana, North Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming), even though, as the report notes, there is “no militarily sound reason to build a new ICBM.” The report says that Northrop Grumman and its major subcontractors have given $1.2 million to the current members of the Senate missile coalition since 2012 and over $15 million more to members of key Congressional committees that help determine how much is to be spent. In addition, the top eleven contractors working on the new missile spent over $119 million on lobbying in 2019 and 2020, and employed 410 lobbyists.

How can the weapons industry seem to smash or buy off everything standing in its way, whether it’s reason, precaution, or spending limits? Part of the answer is in Mussolini’s definition of fascism as the merger of state and corporate power, and in Eisenhower’s farewell warning against the same.

— This piece was originally at Counterpunch.org, March 28, 2021

Notes

  1. See Vandana Shiva, Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, South End Press, 2002; Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats, One World Press, 2008; Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, New Society Publishers, 2005.
  2. Adam Lowther, “A Year Later: Responding to Problems in the ICBM Force,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 2015, http://thebulletin.org/year-later-responding-problems-icbm-force7984.
  3. AP, “California: Navy Commander Admits Taking Bribes,” New York Times, Jan. 7, 2015; David Sanger & William Broad, “Pentagon Studies Reveal Major Nuclear Problems,” New York Times, Nov. 14, 2014; “Another Charge in Navy Bribe Case,” New York Times, April 18, 2014; Helene Cooper, “Navy Opens Inquiry into Cheating in Reactor Training,” New York Times, Feb. 5, 2014; “Fraud in Army Recruiting Bonus Program May Cost Nearly $100 million,” New York Times, Feb. 5, 2014.
  4. Robert Burns, AP, “Study Finds Troubles Run Deep In Nuclear Missile Force,” Nov. 20, 2013; AP, “Air Force Is Working To Mend Missile Corps,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, June 11, 2014.
  5. Sarah Baxter, “US Hits Panic Button as Air Force ‘Loses’ nuclear missiles,” London Times, Oct. 21, 2007.
  6. “W80-1 Warhead Selected for New Nuclear Cruise Missile,” Federation of American Scientists, Oct. 10, 2014, https://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/10/w80-1_lrso/.
  7. Barbara Starr & Larry Shaughnessy, CNN, “Air Force says officers fell asleep with nuke code,” July 24, 2008, http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/24/missile.error/index.html.
  8. Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “ND Missile Launch Officers in Drug Scandal,” Jan. 16, 2014; R. Jeffrey Smith, “Aiming High,” Slate, April 14, 2014; and Josh Harkinson, “Death Wears Bunny Slippers,” Mother Jones, Nov./Dec. 2014; “Security troops on U.S. nuclear missile base took LSD, records show”, Associated Press, NBC News, May 24, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/security-troops-u-s-nuclear-missile-base-took-lsd-records-n877056

Filed Under: Environment, Military Spending, Nuclear Weapons, War, Weekly Column

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