World nuclear arms spending hit $73bn last year – half of it by the US
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  World nuclear arms spending hit $73bn last year – half of it by the US
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Author Topic: World nuclear arms spending hit $73bn last year – half of it by the US  (Read 694 times)
PSOL
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« on: May 13, 2020, 12:49:49 PM »

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/nuclear-weapons-world-record-spending
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The new spending figures, reflecting the highest expenditure on nuclear arms since the height of the cold war, have been estimated by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican), which argues that the coronavirus pandemic underlines the wastefulness of the nuclear arms race.

The nine nuclear weapons states spent a total of $72.9bn in 2019, a 10% increase on the year before. Of that, $35.4bn was spent by the Trump administration, which accelerated the modernisation of the US arsenal in its first three years while cutting expenditure on pandemic prevention.
I wonder if 99 Luftballoons will make a comeback as a trendy song.
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CumbrianLefty
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« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2020, 01:13:33 PM »

So many right wingers see nukes as this almost literally phallic national virility symbol, don't they?

Freud would genuinely have had a field day.
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cris01us
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« Reply #2 on: May 15, 2020, 02:10:36 PM »

It makes me wonder how much of that was to replace and upgrade systems, systems that have probably been long over due for such?  It wasn't to long ago folks were joking about the Air Force still having to use floppy discs on some of their systems.
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Bismarck
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« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2020, 04:01:16 PM »

So many right wingers see nukes as this almost literally phallic national virility symbol, don't they?

Freud would genuinely have had a field day.

Yep dumb right wingers and their phallic nuclear compensation. We in the enlightened west should just unilaterally disarm. I’m sure Moscow and Beijing would quickly follow suit.
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GlobeSoc
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« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2020, 11:51:50 PM »

So many right wingers see nukes as this almost literally phallic national virility symbol, don't they?

Freud would genuinely have had a field day.

Yep dumb right wingers and their phallic nuclear compensation. We in the enlightened west should just unilaterally disarm. I’m sure Moscow and Beijing would quickly follow suit.

Nah, the real chad move would be to launch a conventional war with both Russia and China Smiley MAD is for losers with bad missile defense tech
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Kalwejt
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« Reply #5 on: May 16, 2020, 04:09:27 PM »

Either all nuclear weapons should be eliminated (unrealistic), or more countries should have them. The current system is a handful of countries imposing and maintaining an unfair advantage over everybody else.
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Omega21
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« Reply #6 on: May 16, 2020, 04:59:09 PM »

So many right wingers see nukes as this almost literally phallic national virility symbol, don't they?

Freud would genuinely have had a field day.

Yep dumb right wingers and their phallic nuclear compensation. We in the enlightened west should just unilaterally disarm. I’m sure Moscow and Beijing would quickly follow suit.

You literally spend more than all the others combined, including China, Russia, India, Pakistan, France, the UK and every other nuclear power on the planet lol...

But I get it, yours are for defence, theirs are FOR WORLD DOMINATION!!!!
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dead0man
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« Reply #7 on: May 17, 2020, 12:31:34 PM »

So many right wingers see nukes as this almost literally phallic national virility symbol, don't they?

Freud would genuinely have had a field day.

Yep dumb right wingers and their phallic nuclear compensation. We in the enlightened west should just unilaterally disarm. I’m sure Moscow and Beijing would quickly follow suit.

You literally spend more than all the others combined, including China, Russia, India, Pakistan, France, the UK and every other nuclear power on the planet lol...

But I get it, yours are for defence, theirs are FOR WORLD DOMINATION!!!!
if we (who exactly?) wanted to dominate the world with our nukes, what's stopping us from doing it now?
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Zinneke
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« Reply #8 on: May 17, 2020, 12:56:47 PM »
« Edited: May 17, 2020, 01:00:24 PM by Zinneke »

Either all nuclear weapons should be eliminated (unrealistic), or more countries should have them. The current system is a handful of countries imposing and maintaining an unfair advantage over everybody else.

The implications of proliferation are much much more serious than the situation we have now.

 If we take the Iranian example, affording Iran nuclear weapons is, in constructivist terms, allowing it to take the mantle it claims for itself as a regional great power, and militarily it allows it to have an insurance policy when attacking. Now I'm not saying the Iranian leadership are as crackpot as the US and Israel right-wing makes out, but turning it into a nuclear power emboldens it considerably as a regional player and then leaves the door open to its proxies acquiring them too...after that who knows what's on the agenda.

Proliferation means an exponential function of nuclear arms being made and sold, potentially on the black market. When Iran gets one, KSA needs one (see India-Pakistan). When NK gets one, SK needs one. Put the US and the neo-cons (and the military industrial fanaticism in building nukes to rip the taxpayer off) to one side...we can still avoid such proliferation by maintaining the status quo.


The real question is...why is the US's department for disarmament of all this expensive hardware only consisting of like 4 people these days? Just get Putin round the table and start talking about reducing the arms race in light of Corona.  

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CumbrianLefty
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« Reply #9 on: May 17, 2020, 12:59:32 PM »

Either all nuclear weapons should be eliminated (unrealistic), or more countries should have them. The current system is a handful of countries imposing and maintaining an unfair advantage over everybody else.

Given that nukes can't be "dis-invented" unfortunate though that is, I've always thought we should try to get numbers down to a bare minimum. Enough to put us off the idea of using them, and no more.

Of course, that may not be terribly realistic.
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CrabCake
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« Reply #10 on: May 19, 2020, 11:52:07 AM »

Either all nuclear weapons should be eliminated (unrealistic), or more countries should have them. The current system is a handful of countries imposing and maintaining an unfair advantage over everybody else.

the issue with proliferation is that it increases the risks of nuclear materials and knowledge falling into the hands of really dodgy non-state actors in the event of state collapse/incompetence. Like, even total rogue states like DPRK and Iran are "rational" enough of their weaponry that they would understand the risks of using them unilaterally; logic that may not apply to terrorist groups that could spring up during a civil war.
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Karpatsky
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« Reply #11 on: May 20, 2020, 01:59:01 PM »

Either all nuclear weapons should be eliminated (unrealistic), or more countries should have them. The current system is a handful of countries imposing and maintaining an unfair advantage over everybody else.

the issue with proliferation is that it increases the risks of nuclear materials and knowledge falling into the hands of really dodgy non-state actors in the event of state collapse/incompetence. Like, even total rogue states like DPRK and Iran are "rational" enough of their weaponry that they would understand the risks of using them unilaterally; logic that may not apply to terrorist groups that could spring up during a civil war.

Correct, and in the dense and flammable cities of the developing world, even a small number of nuclear detonations would be enough to cause a global catastrophe.

On the other hand, it's not clear to me that the other option given (total non-proliferation) is actually preferable, as I would argue the existence of nuclear weapons is the primary reason for the lack of great power wars since 1945 - and for the record, $73 billion is an extremely low price to pay for something which is doing >90% of the global defense industry's job in maintaining global peace.

The ideal scenario in my view, which I think is actually achievable in the long run, is to bring the great powers down into the mid double-digit warhead range - enough to remain an insurmountable deterrent, but insufficient in the case of an accidental exchange to threaten human extinction, as do current stockpiles.
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #12 on: May 20, 2020, 08:11:39 PM »

It makes me wonder how much of that was to replace and upgrade systems, systems that have probably been long over due for such?  It wasn't to long ago folks were joking about the Air Force still having to use floppy discs on some of their systems.

That's a feature, not a bug.

Hard for hackers to mess with an ancient system that runs on floppy disks.
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