Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and other war profiteers behind China bashing and out-of-control nuclear weapons budget
Opinion by Alex Lo, in Toronto, Ontario. Originally for the South China Morning Post, this version has been edited by Nukewatch.
There is threat inflation, and then there is threat hyperinflation. The U.S. under Joe Biden has gone full throttle with the latter over China and the nuclear threat.
It seems that the unquestioned “China threat,” even backed with nuclear weapons, is not enough in itself to scare the U.S. public into acquiescence. The myth now has to be [coupled] with a “coordinated” nuclear attack threat by Russia and North Korea. Seriously.
A front-page story in the New York Times and duly — and uncritically — used by other major news outlets, reported on an “updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance [to] deter Russia, the PRC [China], and North Korea simultaneously.”
“President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan … that, for the first time, reorients [U.S.] deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal,” it said. “The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade. [The] revised strategy, called the ‘Nuclear Employment Guidance,’ seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia, and North Korea,” the Times said.
Questions? How likely is it these three countries will coordinate a nuclear attack knowing full well it would mean retaliatory annihilation for themselves? Even dictators are concerned with self-preservation. Will China want to tie its own “no first use” nuclear weapons pledge (and its own survival) to what happens in Moscow or Pyongyang?
It is at least conceivable that out of desperation, Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un could “go nuclear” in a Hitler-style Götterdämmerung. But should that ever happen, the first thing the Chinese would do is run for cover, not join them!
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the currently deployable U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile is roughly nine times as large as China’s, and the Pentagon budget is three times what Beijing spends on its military. So, given the sheer implausibility of this “coordinated nuclear attack” scenario, why is the U.S. under Biden committing to the new nuclear attack program?
It makes no sense in terms of deterrence. The U.S. has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, enough to annihilate life on Earth multiple times. However, it makes sense if you want to increase military spending, and take the Pentagon’s world-destroying capability to an even more cosmic level. But why? Well, follow the money.
Sharon Weiner, an Associate Professor of International Relations at American University, and author of Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise, wrote in Scientific American in May: “Unfortunately, that [bipartisan] consensus seems to extend to turning a blind eye to the exploding costs, which helps explain why the original $1 trillion [nuclear] modernization program proposed in 2010 today has a price tag approaching $2 trillion. That estimate is likely to escalate even further by 2050 — the supposed end date for modernization.”
Escalating costs from the supply-side economics of the military-industrial complex demands a growing threat, otherwise the spending could face Congressional challenges and could be scaled back or cancelled.
According to the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the U.S. arms industry has between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists working in Washington. “Most of those lobbyists … come through the ‘revolving door’ from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch,” it said. The ongoing so-called “modernization” of the nuclear arsenal refers to production of a new generation of missiles, bombers, submarines, warheads and the arsenal’s whole manufacturing base. It’s this rebuild program that’s projected to cost at least $1.7 trillion. And the tax monies are going to the world’s biggest arms producers — Bechtel, Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.
These corporate war profiteers, not China, are the real reason the U.S. intends to spend $2 trillion or more on nuclear weapons.
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