Washington Is Feeling Bullish On Nukes Again

With the help of a former senator, Washington is angling towards Armageddon.

By Wiliam D. Hartung, Tom Dispatch

A primary responsibility of the government is, of course, to keep us safe. Given that obligation, you might think that the Washington establishment would be hard at work trying to prevent the ultimate catastrophe — a nuclear war. But you would be wrong.

A small, hardworking contingent of elected officials is indeed trying to roll back the nuclear arms race and make it harder for such world-ending weaponry ever to be used again, including stalwarts like Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), Representative John Garamendi (D-CA), and other members of the Congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group. But they face ever stiffer headwinds from a resurgent network of nuclear hawks who want to build more kinds of nuclear weapons and ever more of them. And mind you, that would all be in addition to the Pentagon’s current plans for spending up to $2 trillion over the next three decades to create a whole new generation of nuclear weapons, stoking a dangerous new nuclear arms race.

The BAKER test of Operation Crossroads, July 25, 1946. Seconds after the water column rose, and formed a condensation cloud, it fell back, unleashing a billowing base surge forming a 500 foot high wal

There are many drivers of this push for a larger, more dangerous arsenal — from the misguided notion that more nuclear weapons will make us safer to an entrenched network of companies, governmental institutions, members of Congress, and policy pundits who will profit (directly or indirectly) from an accelerated nuclear arms race. One indicator of the current state of affairs is the resurgence of former Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who spent 18 years in Congress opposing even the most modest efforts to control nuclear weapons before he went on to work as a lobbyist and policy advocate for the nuclear weapons complex.

His continuing prominence in debates over nuclear policy — evidenced most recently by his position as vice-chair of a congressionally-appointed commission that sought to legitimize an across-the-board nuclear buildup — is a testament to our historical amnesia about the risks posed by nuclear weapons.