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Military Spending: $87 Million-Per-Hour in 2023

By Matthew Jahnke

In March, the Biden Administration submitted an $813.3 billion military budget request for fiscal year 2023, $773 billion of which would be allocated to the Pentagon. This figure does not include non-Pentagon military spending outlined below. A total of $50.9 billion of the bill is earmarked for nuclear weapons, with $34.4 billion going to the Department of Defense (DOD), and $16.5 billion going to the National Nuclear Security Administration inside the Department of Energy.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said that the nuclear weapons budget will be used to “modernize” the so-called nuclear “triad” — nuclear weapons on land-based missiles, warplanes, and submarines. The request included $6.2 billion for the Navy’s Columbia class nuclear missile submarines; about $9.5 billion dollars to be shared among the Air Force’s B-21 “Raider” heavy bomber, the long-range standoff weapons system, and the Sentinel long-range, land-based missile system set to replace today’s Minuteman III missiles.

Despite the significant increases, it does appear that some nuclear weapons programs will be zeroed out. The nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile system appears devoid of funding in the proposed budget. The same fate befalls the 1-megaton B83 gravity bomb — with 66 times the force of the US Army Air Corps’ Hiroshima bomb that promptly killed 140,000 people. Although the previous administration planned a 2025 retirement date, it now appears the B83 will be phased out earlier.

Ultimately, on June 22, the House Appropriations Committee approved a 2023 Pentagon spending bill of $761.681 billion, which is an increase of $32 billion or 4.4%, over fiscal year 2022, and translate to an eye-popping $87 million-per-hour! Military hawks in the Pentagon and Congress promoted the spending increases by catastrophizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, manufacturing “domino effect” propaganda about Russia’s imperial goals, and stirring up fears of China’s “modernization.”

As always, tens of billions in additional military spending is hidden in officially “civilian” programs. The 2022 fiscal year included at least another $182 billion of non-Pentagon military spending, specifically in allocations to Homeland Security, NASA, retiree pay and healthcare, the Justice Department, the FBI, the State Department, International Security Assistance, the Treasury, and the Secret Service. In addition, the Washington Post has reported that the CIA’s “black budget” amounted to about $52 billion in 2013, and the military portion of its current budget is unknown. (With a grand total of $995.861 billion for next year, the US military all tolled is set to take in $113 million every hour of every day.)

— Matt Jahnke is a published biologist and Nukewatch volunteer based in Duluth, Minnesota.

– teleSUR, Jul 15; Appropriations Committee, June 14; Department of Defense, March 28, 2022

– image credit: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

 

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Nuclear Pretzel Logic and NATO’s Threat to Prevent Coercion

By Lindsay Potter and John LaForge
Photo by Pierre-Philippe MARCOU / AFP

 

At its June 29 summit in Madrid, NATO ministers approved a new “Strategic Concept,” the public rationale for its ready willingness to use nuclear weapons (known as “deterrence”). Self-contradictory and heavy with euphemism, the paper says “nuclear capability is to preserve peace, prevent coercion, and deter aggression,” painting nuclear weapons with a gloss of propriety using language identical to all nuclear weapons states including Russia, North Korea, and China. The “Concept” casually rejects NATO member states’ binding obligation to disarm — agreed to in the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) — asserting: “As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance.” This promise to retain nuclear weapons indefinitely openly negates the paper’s assertion of NATO’s compliance with the NPT. The document claims that NATO is “strongly committed to [the NPT’s] full implementation, including article VI, which is the promise to denuclearize,” and seeks “to create the security environment for a world without nuclear weapons.” Yes, of course, because the best way to prevent a fire in your house is to walk around carrying a lit torch. The “concept” openly admits that “NATO … relies on the United States’ nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe.” And to confirm that it is willing to commit mass destruction with radiation and firestorms, the ministers promised, “NATO will … ensure the credibility … of the nuclear … mission”; “NATO’s … posture is based on … nuclear … capabilities”; and “We will … deliver … high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors.” Of course, the great majority of nation states find that nuclear weapons pose the most immediate and worst threat to human survival, as witness the 122 states that voted to adopt the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons. Common sense aside, NATO’s “concept” says that “strategic nuclear forces, particularly those of the United States, are the supreme guarantee of the security of the Alliance.”

— Strategic Concept here: https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/6/pdf/290622-strategic-concept.pdf

 

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Deterrencelessness: Nuclear Threats Neither Credible Nor Viable

US plans to produce about 500 new tactical nuclear bombs - experts - ВПК.name

The United States intends to produce at least 500 of these new B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bombs, many of which are scheduled to be deploy at air bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Turkey.
by John LaForge
Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2022
LA Progressive, July 26, 2020

Threatening to make attacks with nuclear weapons is known as “deterrence” when the United States does it, but it’s called madness, blackmail, or “terrorism” if Russia, China, or North Korea does.

U.S. Air Force thermonuclear weapons, about 100-to-150 of them known as B61s, are stationed at two NATO bases in Italy, and at one NATO base each in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, and Turkey. These 170-kiloton H-bombs — 11 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb — are always described euphemistically as “theater” nuclear weapons, defensive ones that are a “deterrent” to aggression.

Of course, Russian aggression in Ukraine has shown nuclear “deterrence” to be an expensive, destabilizing, terroristic fraud. That our high, holy, sacrosanct, and unquestionable arsenal of “deterrence” did not deter Russia on February 24, 2022 is dreadfully, painfully, catastrophically obvious. Yet the nakedness of the deterrent-less Emperor has hardly been acknowledged.

In the ghastly maw of ongoing war in Ukraine, the needless provocation of stationing U.S. thermonuclear B61 H-bombs at six NATO base’s facing Russia could hardly be more frightening. Then, as if to scream “fire” in the crowded auditorium, NATO’s ministers on June 30 issued their latest “Strategic Concept,” a public relations version of the alliance’s ongoing threat to wage indiscriminate, uncontrollable, and poisonous mass destruction using U.S., French and British nuclear warheads.

The Strategic Concept’s soothing, cotton candy version of NATO’s open embrace of nuclear terrorism is this: “NATO will take all necessary steps to ensure the credibility, effectiveness, safety and security of the nuclear deterrent mission.”

At the moment however, the B61 hydrogen bombs stationed at Germany’s Büchel air base cannot credibly be a part of the “mission” since they can’t be attached to Germany’s Tornado fighter jets. This is because the base’s runway is being rebuilt. Until 2026, Büchel’s 33rd Fighter-Bomber Wing of Tornado jets are based at the nearby Nörvenich air base.

For Kathrin Vogler, a Left Party member of the German Parliament in 2021, this is a chance to denuclearize Germany. The politician told the daily paper Rhein-Zeitung last year that “From June 2022 to February 2026, flight operations at Büchel Air Base will be largely discontinued and transferred to the Nörvenich military airfield…. This was confirmed to us by the German government in our minor inquiry. As far as we know, the 20 or so nuclear bombs stored at Büchel will remain there.”

“This means that German nuclear sharing will effectively not take place for four years from 2022,” Volger told the paper.

“This exposes the argumentation of the German government, which repeatedly claims that nuclear sharing is an important part of NATO’s deterrence strategy. In fact, maintaining it and thus also the Büchel nuclear weapons site is pure symbolic politics, albeit with high risks for the population. Therefore: The suspension of nuclear sharing must become a phase-out, [and] now would be a good opportunity to do so,” Volger said last year.

Proven useless, nuclear weapons can now be discarded

The June 30 NATO “concept” says, “The fundamental purpose of NATO’s nuclear capability is to preserve peace, prevent coercion and deter aggression.”

As of February 24, 2022, NATO’s nuclear weapons arsenal’s “fundamental purpose” has been utterly delegitimized, politically pulverized, and militarily reduced to ashes. The alliance’s nuclear arsenal can finally be removed without any loss of face, much less any loss of security.

NATO’s latest “concept” accidentally acknowledges the uselessness of retaining nuclear weapons in its recognition that, “The strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States, are the supreme guarantee of the security of the Alliance.”

This is the terrible farce of nuclearism. If nuclear weapon threats guaranteed any security at all, none of the tens of billions of Euro-dollars’ worth of military training, weapons, mercenaries, cyber warfare, or intelligence assistance that NATO partners and Russia are now pouring into Ukraine would be necessary.

Nuclear-armed alliances are a thing of the past which must be and now can be abolished. Under the auspices of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, along with the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, international law provides a pathway, training wheels, guide rails and a motorcade — courtesy of the great majority of the world’s governments — to a world where conflict and even wars don’t endanger whole civilizations and the biological integrity of life on earth.

 

 

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Hypocrisies and Successes at Meeting of Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

German Representative Rüdiger Bohn (center) speaking as an “observer” June 22nd at the First Meeting os States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of NuclearWeapons, Vienna, Austria.  Photo by John LaForge, for Nukewatch

By John LaForge

VIENNA, Austria — The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been ratified by 65 governments, known in diplomatic circles as States Parties. The treaty’s first Meeting of States Parties (1MSP) concluded here June 23, after painstakingly working out — in the words of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons — “a blueprint for the end of nuclear weapons.” The new Treaty is the extraordinary, crowning achievement of ICAN, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts.

At 1MSP, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany — all three of whom use U.S. nuclear weapons on their air force bases — participated as Observer States. The three have not ratified the TPNW, having acquiesced with a string of U.S. administrations — Obama’s, Trump’s, and Biden’s — that conspired at every opportunity to derail, prevent, delay, weaken, and boycott the new ban — in spite of broad public support for nuclear disarmament. Mr. Trump demanded that States Parties withdraw their ratifications. None did. Biden’s White House reportedly urged Japan not to attend the 1MSP as an Observer, and they stayed away.

German and Dutch representatives took their turn and spoke to the MSP on June 22, but both NATO members used exactly the same words to note their government’s explicit disapproval of the TPNW, and to voice their supposed support for the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both representatives said their governments “will not accede to” the nuclear ban treaty “because the TPNW is inconsistent with NATO doctrine.”

The hypocrisy in German and Dutch opposition is that their “sharing” of U.S. nuclear weapons, while consistent with “NATO doctrine” is totally inconsistent with their hallowed Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In fact, their 50-year-long dismissal of the NPT’s binding (Art. VI) obligation to begin negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament “at an early date” is also completely inconsistent with their feigned support for the NPT.

As German Representative Rüdiger Bohn said June 22, NATO “doctrine” includes the doleful edict, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear Alliance.” This embrace of genocidal atomic violence is not an Article of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty or NATO Charter. It was manufactured entirely by its nuclear-armed members, and there is no legal obligation for NATO to remain a nuclear-armed terrorist organization.

NATO “doctrine” is fluid, strictly advisory, and accepted voluntarily by its members. Even the NATO Charter’s famous Article 5, regarding collective response to a military attack on a member state, declares only that the NATO membership “will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking … such action as it deems necessary.”

In comparison, the Non-Proliferation Treaty is binding international law and includes explicit, unambiguous prohibitions and clear, binding obligations. NATO’s ongoing planning, preparations and ever-present threat to launch nuclear attacks (known as “deterrence”), is simply a ritualized practice which can be ended at any time — say by complying with the NPT’s Articles I and II which prohibit any transfer or reception of nuclear weapons between states, or its Article VI pledge to negotiate nuclear disarmament. Indeed, it is the 50-year-long postponement, or rejection of Art. VI that has prompted and propelled the overwhelming success of the new TPNW.

What might have been a week-long celebration of the TPNW’s progress in seeking a world free of nuclear threats, was dimmed by Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. It was the war’s spoken and unspoken reminders of ready nuclear arsenals in Russia and NATO that moved the MSP to say, in its final Declaration, that it “condemn[s] unequivocally any and all nuclear threats, whether they be explicit or implicit and irrespective of the circumstances.”

The Declaration castigates nuclear weapons and echoes Daniel Ellsberg’s 1959 essay “The Threat and Practice of Blackmail,” noting that the Bomb is used to coerce, intimidate, plague, curse, and terrify. “This highlights, now more than ever, the fallacy of nuclear deterrence doctrines, which are based and rely on the threat of the actual use of nuclear weapons and, hence, the risks of the destruction of countless lives, of societies, of nations, and of inflicting global catastrophic consequences.”

The Parties agreed to push ahead with resolve to eventually see the nuclear weapons states sign on, saying “In the face of the catastrophic risks posed by nuclear weapons and in the interest of the very survival of humanity, we cannot do otherwise.” ###

— This column ran June 26 at Commondreams, and June 27 at Counterpunch

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We Need an International Antiwar Movement, and Not Cheerleaders for the Weapons Industry

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2022
By Ron Jacobs

A ceasefire between the warring parties, a Russian withdrawal, a halt to arms shipments, a negotiated peace, and an end to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This is what the international left should be organizing around in regard to the Russia-Ukraine war. It shouldn’t be calling for stepped up arms shipments to Ukraine’s military or defending Moscow’s invasion. When this war is stopped, the most likely situation for the vast majority of Ukrainian working people will be one where their greatest enemy could well be the Ukrainian government. Likewise, if the war goes on long enough, the greatest enemy of the vast majority of Russian working people could well be their government. The oligarchs in both nations will still be oligarchs, while the Russian and Ukrainian people will bear the human, financial and other costs of the war.

If the reader thinks the current conflict will somehow end with a different outcome, they need to revisit the history of war, especially war of the modern kind. You know, where civilian populations are bombed, conscripts are forced to kill and die in the thousands; where international bankers make loans to all sides until the battle begins. All the while generals and politicians talk nonsense about the principles being defended as if most of them had any principles that couldn’t be purchased.

It’s becoming clearer to more and more people that this war is truly a proxy war and that Ukrainians are being sacrificed by Washington and its clients (including the government in Kyiv) while Russians are being sacrificed by their government. Neither position — Ukrainian or Russian — is one to be envied. As an acquaintance and Vietnam Veteran Against the War member pointed out on Facebook, this is the perfect war for the U.S.-dominated military-industrial complex. There are no body bags coming home, no anti-war demonstrations, and virtually no pressure to negotiate. Indeed, a substantial part of what usually constitutes the U.S. antiwar movement is actually cheering on the Ukrainian military in this conflict. In short, this is a dream situation and Washington and its minions will fight to the last Ukrainian to keep the war industry’s profits rolling in.

The fears that the war will continue to escalate are genuine. Once again, the rulers of the capitalist world prove that the only thing they can really do effectively is make war. By effectively, I mean these rulers are masters at wreaking havoc, destruction and death. Furthermore, they are once again proving they can convince the bulk of their populations that this is not only a good thing, but also moral and honorable. In this narrative, it is those of us who refuse to accept their wars and their rationales for those wars who are accused of being wrong. Since my first piece published after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, emails have arrived in my mailbox stating that my antiwar stance is criminal. My response is simple — it is not criminal to oppose the crime of war. This isn’t the first war where such accusations have been hurled at those opposed to wars. I consider myself fortunate that this isn’t World War One or Two. Many U.S. opponents of those wars were locked up. Of course, given the censorship of antiwar views by public and private entities across the west and in Russia, who’s to say that won’t occur in the future? Indeed, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (an Orwellian presence already) recently announced that it was creating a new division called the Disinformation Governance Board. The head of this board will be Nina Jankowicz, who (I quote the DHS press release) “advised the Ukrainian government on strategic communications.” (https://www.hstoday.us/federal-pages/dhs/dhs-standing-up-disinformation-governance-board-led-by-information-warfare-expert/) In other words, Jankowicz advised them on how to write and spread propaganda. She is now taking her scriptwriting to the U.S. public. One assumes she will be working with various manipulators of public opinion in the broadcast, print and social media fields. One can be certain that she will maintain and intensify the stories about Kyiv, Moscow, Washington and NATO already saturating the U.S. and much of Europe. In recent days, I have been accused (along with what one so-called socialist writer dismisses as the “peace and justice” crowd) of supporting war because I am against the escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and think the politital Left should be organizing a non-aligned international antiwar movement, not joining the cheerleading squad for NATO and its arms shipments.

My response to the charge is simple. To claim that escalating the war will prevent a longer war is just nonsense. It can already be argued that the escalation has already extended it. Very few actual wars end when a war escalates. In fact, escalation usually extends the conflict and the horror that involves. It seems to me that the people who really care about the people under fire are those calling for a ceasefire and negotiations, not those cheering the arms shipments. By rejecting the call that begins this piece, one is rejecting the only internationalist response to this conflict. In rejecting this response, they are accepting a binary choice that means more war, no matter which side one chooses. That choice is one defined by the militaries doing the fighting and the rulers pulling their strings. Making that choice is not making a choice for peace or even the consideration of peace. Plain and simple, it is choosing more war.

Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled “Capitalism: Is the Problem.” He lives in Vermont and wrote this piece for CounterPunch.

-CounterPunch, May 3, 2022

 

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