Andrew Happel
Despite the end of the Cold War the United States maintains an arsenal of nuclear weapons numbering in the thousands. These warheads remain only as a monument to a bygone era of bipolar conflict, but they lack purpose in today’s multilateral world. Nuclear weapons have displayed no utility in preventing conflict, and pose an increasingly great risk to humanity through their very existence. Due to the hair trigger alert status of America, and Russia’s nuclear arsenals, any nuclear accident or miscalculation threatens to escalation to global thermonuclear war. Despite the “bigger bang for the buck” billing of nuclear weapons, the actual costs have been much higher than advertise! d or anticipated. The costs of nuclear weapons have proven to far outweigh the benefits provided to society, and because of this the United States federal government should take steps to unilaterally disarm its nuclear arsenal.
Those who support the theory of deterrence are correct that since the advent of nuclear weapons there has not been a direct confrontation between nuclear superpowers. And deterrence is a public good, that everyone benefits from regardless of whether or not they pay for it, and its value is indeterminate. So it is impossible to truly calculate the benefits provided by nuclear deterrence.
However nuclear weapons do not provide the “bigger bang for the buck” as stated by nuclear advocates. In fact since 1940 nuclear weapons have accounted for more military spending than any other military program, at approximately five trillion dollars. That does not even include negative social and environmental externalities, or the trade off with economic growth caused by nuclear weapons. Supporters of nuclear weapons also claim that nuclear weapons can deter the use of chemical and biological weapons as well as attacks by rogue nations and terrorist groups. But the United States policy is that it will not use nuclear weapons against an opponent that did not have nuclear capa! bility, excluding countries with only biological or chemical weapons as well as rogue nations and terrorist organizations. The Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention are designed to eliminate chemical and biological weapons, eliminating the need for nuclear deterrence. Most of the benefits of nuclear weapons are over exaggerated, or fabricated.
The existence of nuclear weapons creates the necessity for their existence and drives other nations to struggle to develop nuclear weapons for themselves. Countries struggle to develop nuclear weapons in order to stay ahead of their enemies which in turn causes their enemies to develop nuclear weapons in order to keep up, fueling vertical proliferation like what occurred in the USA and USSR during the Cold War. However the exclusive nature nuclear weapons, causes other nations to attempt to acquire nuclear technology, in order to attain the status of nuclear power, and creating horizontal proliferation. Nuclear weapons will just give rise to more nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons present a number of dangers, the most critical of which is the threat of accidental or miscalculated use of the weapons, which is compounded by the hair trigger alert systems of the nuclear powers that make any nuclear situation threaten global crisis. At least three times in America our nuclear weapons have been put on alert, because of an accident or failure in the nuclear chain of command. Most notably in the 1970’s in North Carolina when flight control lost contact with a B-1 bomber on a training mission, and almost started a nuclear war with the USSR, the plane had actually crashed in the Atlantic Ocean. The Russian nuclear infrastructure is particularly dilapidated, after years of suffering under Ru! ssian economic hardship, making the risk or accidental or unauthorized launch substantially high in Russian nuclear facilities. The threat is continually increasing as more nations develop nuclear weapons and nuclear infrastructure continues to deteriorate in countries with nuclear weapons already.
The cost of nuclear weapons is also astounding, and not just the monetary cost, which has been over five trillion dollars since 1940. The government hid the true cost of nuclear weapons by funding nuclear programs through the DOE and AEC budgets, allowing exorbitant government funding for nuclear weapons. This spending has had a couple of impacts: on the labor pool for technological industries, and on inflation. Government contracts and industries drive up the salaries of engineers and scientists, making it more difficult for private research industries to compete in the labor market. The other impact of government spending on nucle! ar weapons is that it fuels inflation, by pumping billions of dollars into the economy, without creating any marketable good to soak up excess currency from the market. This means that people have more money to send on the same amount of goods, and are thus willing to pay more for the same goods, increasing the price of goods. The problems is that the increased currency flow only affects a small amount of the population, those employed in the nuclear industry by the government, so the economy over all will suffer from the effects of inflation. There are also negative environmental and health related externalities, created from the development of nuclear weapons. There have been numerous recurring health problems reported by employees of the nuclear industry, and many private industries will not hire ! former employees of the government’s nuclear weapon research, because they are not willing to provide them with health care coverage. And the wastes produced by the production and decommissioning of nuclear weapons is environmentally damaging and impossible to dispose other than burying it in secluded regions of the country, as is our current practice. These are all costs associated with the deployment of nuclear weapons.
The United States has always been influential in determining international policy regarding nuclear weapons. So unilateral action to disarm nuclear weapons by the USA would undoubtedly create an international impetus to disarm nuclear weapons, and reduce the threat that nuclear weapons present to humanity. By taking the initial steps towards disarmament, including removing nuclear weapons form alert, de-targeting strategic weapons, and removing warheads from delivery vehicles, the United States would set an international trend toward disarmament, creating a much safer world.
Bibliography
Schwartz, Stephen I.. Atomic Audit. The Brookings Institute, Washington D. C.. 1998.
Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
The Acronym Institute.
Nukefix.