Arms race

A new Pentagon study, the Nuclear Posture Review, threatens to reverse decades of hard-won progress toward uncocking the nuclear hammer. It claims that we need new nuclear weapons to destroy underground complexes, possible storage sites for chemical and biological weapons. It imagines a future in which the weapons might be used against Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, China, and even Russia, not in response to a nuclear attack on the U.S., nor to deter such an attack, but simply as another optional weapon in the already overstocked American arsenal.

This development is horrifying. It ignores our treaty obligations and blurs the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons. It lowers the threshold of conflict at which nuclear weapons could be used and thereby increases the likelihood that they will be used.

The administration has tried to defend the study by saying that it is not “policy,” that the purpose of the new weapons would be to deter development of chemical and biological weapons. But the study promotes a policy of seeking a military answer to problems that our own unilateralist foreign policy continues to aggravate. It argues for another long, expensive arms race in which no one will be more secure.

Paul Fairchild for the

Lawrence Coalition

for Peace and Justice