After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, millions of people hoped that the threat of nuclear warfare was gone after decades of military standoff between the USA and the Soviet Union. Now, we can see that that was just a dream, and the nuclear danger persists.
Although the U.S. already has at least 3,748 nuclear bombs and warheads, the military has begun a massive project to renovate and rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal and weapons production and delivery systems. This includes new and technologically advanced nuclear silos, submarines and bomber jets from which nuclear weapons can be launched, and radically increasing the volume of production of advanced uranium and plutonium. All these are being modernized for the 21st century to make the U.S. military ready to fight a nuclear war with either Russia or China.
The total projected cost of this monumental project is astronomical: an estimated $1.7 trillion. Who will benefit? General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman, Bechtel and RTX (formerly Raytheon) are the biggest beneficiaries, and will each pull in tens of billions in profits. Dozens of smaller contractors will pull in tens of millions in profits, maybe more.
At the same time as the U.S. government is doling out this money for these weapons and weapons systems, the capitalists and their politicians tell us that there isn’t money for things we need. They tell us there’s not enough, and we should get used to making do with less. Yet when they need weapons to further their competition with their global rivals, then they have all the money and more! And there wasn’t even a debate. Until recent reports in major newspapers, we didn’t even know it was happening!
The capitalist nation-states of the world won’t allow us to have our basic human needs met. Yet they will compete economically and militarily until they push the world to the brink of nuclear war. Eventually they will push the world into war. The only question will be whether a nuclear weapon is fired and triggers a larger nuclear war that could wipe out large sections of humanity, maybe all of us.
This massive U.S. investment in nuclear weapons programs is yet another sign of the utter insanity of this inhuman capitalist system. It is a clear and present danger to all of humanity and needs to be stopped.
