DOES IT MAKE SENSE?
Judith Mohling
“It never made any sense, as Trump’s 2021 budget had initially proposed, to increase spending on nuclear weapons by $7 billion while cutting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding by $1.2 billion. Or to create an unnecessary Space Force out of the U.S. Air Force while eliminating the vitally important directorate of global health by folding it into another office within the National Security Council.” Max Boot in the Washington Post.
Or, does it make sense that the amount of money spent in one year by the U.S. on nuclear weapons could instead provide 300,000 ICU (intensive care unit) beds, 35,000 ventilators and 75,000 doctors’ salaries, according to the Nuclear Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)–a “coalition of non-government organizations promoting adherence to and implementation of the UN nuclear weapons ban treaty.”
In its recent report, the group stated that, according to armscontrol.org, the U.S. spent $35.1 billion on nuclear weapons in 2019. The report comes as the novel coronavirus has globally infected over 870,000 people, according to an amazing website created by a 17 year old, Avi Schiffman who lives in Seattle.
A commenter after the article, which appeared in Newsweek said, “Actually if just one nuclear submarine were to launch all of their multiple warhead missiles it would be GAME OVER for the WORLD.” Does that make sense?
A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor. The United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France all have them at an average cost of 2.5 billion dollars each, according to Quora. The United States Navy currently operates the biggest fleet of ballistic missile subs, consisting of 14 18,800-ton Ohio class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, SSBNs as they are known. SSBN stands for “Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear.” France and the United Kingdom operate four SSBNs each, with France’s belonging to the 14,300-ton Triomphant class and the United Kingdom’s the 15,900-ton Vanguard class. All American, French, and British submarines are nuclear-powered and are the largest submarines ever built by each country.
To spend its money more wisely, the Trump administration needs to extend the New START treaty with the Russians and get back to the bargaining table, so it can begin cutting its nuclear arsenal to no more than 1,000 deployed nuclear weapons and cancel both the long range standoff weapon and the land-based portion of its nuclear modernization program . That will allow the United States to devote more of its limited resources to programs that actually make the country and the world safer. Now that makes sense
