Say No to Nuclear Escalation

Asheville Citizen Times 7/17/24, Letter to the Editor

The buzz in the military-industrial-political complex these days is that we need to spend more taxpayers’ dollars on our nuclear arsenal.  It is said that we must increase our nuclear weapons programs “without numerical restraints” to compete in today’s world. 

This is unwise, unneeded, and dangerous in the extreme.  The United States already has a higher defense budget than the next 10 countries with the largest defense budgets combined!  (And these 10 countries include both Russia and China.)  

The claim is made that we have no choice but to increase spending on nuclear weapons  because, in particular, the PRC (China) is increasing its program.  Really?  The best estimates say that China now has about 500 nuclear warheads.  We have over 1500!  We, along with Russia are the ones setting the bar!  

Included in the $1.5 trillion dollar “modernization” proposals on the nuclear weapons front is the replacement of our land-based Minuteman III missiles with a new missile program called the Sentinel.  This makes no sense.  Both are land-based, sitting duck missiles.  In order to have any effectiveness at all they must be launched immediately upon a nuclear alert (the so-called hair-trigger launch-on-warning policy).  This, we are told, is because their locations are widely known and would be targeted initially in a nuclear attack.  They have been justified as a “great sponge” to soak up nuclear warheads of the enemy leaving fewer of them to bomb other populations.  (Obviously this treats the people of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming as expendable).  

Because we have the other two legs of our nuclear triad, bombers and submarines (which are basically undetectable), land-based missiles are unneeded, costly, ineffective, and actually increase the likelihood of all-out nuclear war (including one begun by error or accident).

In a nuclear war everything and everyone is destroyed.  There are no winners.  Only losers.  

Please tell our representatives in the House and the Senate that we should not spend one cent more on unneeded, dangerous land-based missiles such as the Sentinel and the Minuteman III and insist on serious nuclear reduction talks with Russia and China. 

The Rev. Dr. Scott Baker

Member and Former Chair of Western North Carolina Physicians for Social Responsibility

• “without numerical restraints”: January 7, Pranay Vaddi, member, Biden’s National Security Council.  See also Robert O’Brien, National Security Advisor for President Trump in his suggestion that we increase the number of nuclear-capable B-21 stealth bombers from 100 to 256, Foreign Affairs Magazine, June 18.
• 1.5 trillion: Scientific American magazine, December, 2023.
• “great sponge”: General Lew Allen Jr. quoted in Scientific American magazine, December, 2023.