Prez's Trill dollar Nuclear weapons gamble

 

 http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/02/obamas-trillion-dollar-nuclear-weapons-gamble/104217/

 

Obama’s Trillion Dollar Nuclear Weapons Gamble

February 1, 2015 By Stephen Young

Why is the president is proposing a multi-billion dollar nuclear arsenal overhaul that is expensive, dangerous, and does nothing to make the United States safer?

• Nuclear
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• Budget
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• Commentary

President Barack Obama will propose spending cuts for many federal programs in the 2016 budget request he’ll send to Congress on Monday, but not for nuclear weapons. Quite the contrary, Obama’s administration is proposing to go on a nuclear weapons spending spree. This is an expensive and profound mistake, and one that ignores the limited contribution that nuclear weapons make to U.S. security.

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Author

Stephen Young is senior analyst at Union of Concerned Scientists. Full Bio

The administration’s costly plan proposes to rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the warheads, and the missiles, planes and submarines that carry them. These plans will cost $348 billion over the next 10 years, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released last week. The National Defense Panel, appointed by Congress, found that the price tag over 30 years could be as much as a $1 trillion.What will taxpayers get for that money? Not much. Nuclear weapons do precious little to address the real threats we and our allies face today, and do nothing to address the threat of terrorism. Nothing to counter Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria. Nothing to counteract the growing risk of cyber attack.
(Related: This Is a Pivotal Moment for the US Nuclear Arsenal)
And, while recognizing the very problematic behavior of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the truth is U.S. nuclear forces did not stop the Russian military from invading Ukraine either. Spending more money on nuclear weapons would not turn them back. The conventional forces that the United States and its allies have at their disposal are more than sufficient to respond to any Russian provocation, should policy makers decide to use them.