Nuclear Weapons

October 17, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

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

October 17, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear Pretzel Logic and NATO’s Threat to Prevent Coercion

By Lindsay Potter and John LaForge

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

October 17, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Assassination, Pacifism, and Nuclear Capability in Japan

By Lindsay Potter

The religious cult behind the assassination of Japan’s Prime Minister (PM) Shinzo Abe has its roots in CIA anti-communist meddling and US spycraft dating back 75 years. Abe’s confessed killer, Tetsuya Yamagami, told police he shot Abe because of his ties to the Unification Church, or “Moonies,” founded in South Korea in 1954 to fight against communism. Details continue to surface of links between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), opposition party members, and the Moonies, and of the church’s contributions to campaigns of sitting cabinet members. Clearly aligned with US foreign and military policy, the church has historical connections to the Republican Party and to former presidents Nixon, Bush I, Bush II, and Donald Trump. The LDP itself was formed by the CIA to quash left-wing movements in Japan. Abe’s grandfather and great uncle served as prime ministers, and his LDP has been in power for 63 of the last 67 years, since its inception in 1955. Deep ties between the LDP and CIA have raised suspicions due to the extreme rarity of Abe’s shooting in Japan, a country of 126 million with an average of ten gun deaths a year.

Deleting Article IX

Abe struggled but failed to repeal the constitution’s Article IX, the pacifist clause imposed by post-war US occupying forces which prohibits Japan’s use of military force in international conflicts. Following the July 8 assassination, voters rallied to the LDP and other “pro-amendment” (repeal) coalition parties, and for the first time they won a two-thirds parliamentary majority, the percentage required to revise the constitution. Article IX also forbids maintaining federal land, air, or sea forces, all of which Japan, with strong US support, has increasingly developed and armed in the name of “self-defense.”

Japan is deeply entangled with US and allied military operations. Since 2001, Japan has implemented new laws in the name of “counter-terrorism” militarizing Japanese Self Defense Forces (JSDF), establishing a base in Djibouti, and allowing JSDF to defend allies in combat. Japan’s navy in the Indian Ocean refueled US warplanes headed to Afghanistan and, in 2004, the JSDF deployed to Iraq for “reconstruction.”

Abe’s Nuclear Legacy

In 2002, Abe publicly claimed, like PMs before him, that Japan’s possession of nuclear weapons would not violate the constitution as long as they were for “defense.” Japan has enough plutonium and enriched uranium to develop nuclear warheads and it has ballistic missile capability. Last February, Abe promoted joining a NATO-style “nuclear sharing” pact and stationing US nuclear weapons in Japan. Both proposals would violate Japan’s three “non-nuclear principles,” limiting research, development, and utilization of nuclear reactors to peaceful uses.
The current PM Fumio Kishida hinted that a situation similar to the Russia-Ukraine conflict could break out between China and Taiwan, which US policy seems determined to provoke. As Japan prepares to release its first “national security strategy revision” since 2013, the document may publicly change Japan’s identity into a military power, potential host of American nukes, or proxy for US wars in the region.

It is hard to imagine that Japan’s population, with its historical aversion to nuclear weapons, would allow nuclear weapons in any way. But Abe brought nuclear reactors back on-line in spite of majority public opposition. Meanwhile, Kishida, who’s from Hiroshima, advocates nuclear disarmament and was the first Japanese PM to attend a Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Still, under heavy US pressure, Japan has not signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and did not attend the treaty’s First Meeting of States Parties in Vienna, even as an observer. How will Kishida’s personal politics stand up to entrenched LDP policy and to Washington’s incendiary affronts to China, especially as Japan sits between nuclear-armed neighbors? Japan’s nuclear posture remains ambiguous: a large economy returning to nuclear power, poised for contested constitutional revision, in a precarious position as tensions escalate in the Pacific.

—Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Aug. 24; The Guardian, Aug. 1; and CNN, July 11, 2022.

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