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Cut Down On Nukes To Shave the Deficit
Hugh Pickens writes "Joe Cirincione writes in the Atlantic that the US government is set to spend almost $700 billion on nuclear weapons over the next 10 years, roughly as much as it spent on the war in Iraq over the last decade. Most of the money will be spent without any clear guidance on how many weapons we need and for what purpose. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we will need some to deter nuclear threats from others, but do we really need to duplicate the entire nuclear triad for another 50 years? 'The Pentagon budget includes funds to develop a new fleet of 12 nuclear-armed submarines with an estimated cost of $110 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Also planned is $55 billion for 100 new bombers, and a new missile to replace the recently upgraded 450 Minutemen III intercontinental ballistic missiles. ... The consensus among military officials and bipartisan security experts is that nuclear reductions enhance US national security,' writes Cirincione. As the Nuclear Posture Review says, 'Our most pressing security challenge at present is preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, for which a nuclear force of thousands of weapons has little relevance.'"
We need a thousand nukes just in case we want to nuke NK and Iran a thousand times?
Wouldn't a hundred times each be enough?
North Korea and Iran are not the problem. We've got the fly swatters for that. It's China - which isn't a problem militarily now but certainly could be and Russia (or whatever the former CCCP morphs into) with an enormous number of powerful, accurate nucs and a large identity problem.
That said, the premise of TFA is correct - we don't need to spend ALL the money we're currently spending on nuclear weapons, but the hard question is what is a reasonable level and spread.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
As long as nuclear weapons exist, we will need some to deter nuclear threats from others, but do we really need to duplicate the entire nuclear triad for another 50 years?
That's why continued reductions treaties with Russia are important. Neither country is going to do this themselves. It's not as if both countries aren't actively reducing their arsenals.
Regarding the expenditures on bombers and subs... The thing about those is you need to always be building one or the industry dies. You can build it very, very slowly, but you need to be making one at some minimum rate or you'll lose the huge investment you put into learning to build them in the first place. Aircraft carriers are similar. The problem is that when you do this, your development costs don't get spread out so the cost looks enormous - but you have to spend that money or get out of the sub/airplane/ship business altogether.
There's an argument for that, but I don't think we're ready to give up our military power just yet.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
We currently have a stockpile of 5,113 warheads if Wiki is to be believed. We could get away with 1,000. That's more than enough to keep China and Russia scared via MAD. But as far as those other nations are concerned, we only to use *1* warhead EACH. That alone should be enough to inflict serious pain if not total collapse of the nations you mentioned. Just look at Japan. It only took 2. And they were far more dedicated at imperialism than the other nations you mentioned. NK is a joke anyways. Poor SOBs wouldn't dare fire off a nuke, unless "suicide by cop" was what they were after.
Life is not for the lazy.
Woa, woa, woa, relax guy! The US still has enough nukes to turn the whole of Iran into glass and after that they would still have enough left over to turn Argentina into a huge sinkhole; and this is without spending an extra 700 billion.
As for defense of the homeland, a few well placed bunker busters would be quite enough to calm down any saber-rattling nation. Plus, the simple fact of staying home and not meddling would also reduce animosity towards the nation.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan are where the US should cut costs though.
~Syberz
It's China - which isn't a problem militarily now but certainly could be
I think you'll find that China has discovered a much easier and more profitable way to conquer the USA. A strategy they've been using successfully against America for 20+ years. They're simply buying the country.
Why bother risk getting nuked when you can simply accumulate debt from your adversary. At some point in the future the amount of american IOUs that China holds will exceed the GDP. After all, America bought Alaska off the Russians, so why shouldn't the chinese simply cash in their markers, for (say) everything west of the Rockies. Some might even be glad to see that bit go.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
you got nukes. the nukes can't be used against chavez. the nukes are not meaningful against nk's supposed, future, nuclear forces, but tomahawks are. anyways, if usa cut back a little on their corporate benefits for select few companies you could have your nukes and cake too. just giving a check for someone to build "nuke stuff" with no idea of it's use is not the answer. and ICBM's.. well. you can't get any more ICBM than what you are already have done, that's why the nuke race stalled - nothing more to race for after having pictures of nukes that deploy multiple warheads nicely and impossibly to defend. so you're giving xxx billions of money to companies which will build a cheaper version and take more money for doing it.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yes, a whopping $700 billion per decade. Wow. Why, at $70 billion per year, it'd only take about 107 years before we've saved as much as we spent on all those failed stimulus packages and bailouts! And it would only take about ten years to save as much as we spend in a single year on the social programs you mentioned.
Yes, why make big meaningful cuts, when we can make a trivial one that looks good on the evening news?
Of course, we should cut everywhere we can, but let's stop being pussies about this. Cut these extra nukes. Cut military spending. Cut social security. Cut whatever the fuck has to be cut to bring spending down to an amount lower than revenue. Period. There's no way to make cuts that will be painless to absolutely everyone, so let's stop bullshitting ourselves about "well, we can't cut this, because all those government employees will be out of a job" and "now muh gramma gonna have to choose between her tv dinners and her medication durp durp".
Woa, woa, woa, relax guy! The US still has enough nukes to turn the whole of Iran into glass and after that they would still have enough left over to turn Argentina into a huge sinkhole; and this is without spending an extra 700 billion.
As for defense of the homeland, a few well placed bunker busters would be quite enough to calm down any saber-rattling nation. Plus, the simple fact of staying home and not meddling would also reduce animosity towards the nation.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan are where the US should cut costs though.
You know Chavez is from Venezuela, right? Not sure where the attitude against Argentina came from, but they are some ok dudes... Is your map of South America maybe upside down?
Reagan won out the cold war without firing a shot.
And he also ensured that our future would forever be saddled with debt. Which makes me laugh when I read the end of your original post:
Stop Iraq, Libya and Afghan wars. There is your savings and cost reductions. Keep our military strong here at home to DEFEND us.
Spend more on your military industrial complex than you take in on taxes. THERE is your ensured debt and eventual country-wide bankruptcy. Raise the debt ceiling? Sure why not? We've done it, how many times since Reagan?
You're in fantasy land where communists are nice people, just misunderstood. Never mind the hundred + million they've killed since the 1920's.
You're in a fantasy land where a large part of today's world population are mass murderers just because they live in a communist society! Put that blame on communist leaders and we'll talk. I rip China apart more than anybody on Slashdot, I don't need to hear you assume that I think they're misunderstood angels. Their leaders are human rights violators but I don't hold the citizens responsible for death. When you nuke a country do you think the leaders are the only ones that get hurt?
The only fear monger is you "Oh God we're all gonna die!"
What in the hell are you talking about? We're trying to have a discussion about possible ways to decrease our spending so we can catch up with the insane amount of debt we've been accumulating. And you totally skirted any indication that you even understand that whether we build a thousand more nukes or stick with our current numbers, the outcome is the same. We could hold the entire world hostage right now if we wanted to just by threatening to detonate all of our nuclear weapons on ourselves and I think it's time to consider that enough force if to increase that means $700 billion.
My work here is dung.
Reagan did jack and squat the USSR was broke and falling apart no matter what we did. Commies not only kill people, but also can't run an economy for shit. Jimmy Carter lost for lots of reasons, some his fault some not, adults know that.
We have enough nukes, no one is saying give them up. Just that we don't need to spend this much on them.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower Eisenhower was a great Republican, 5 star general, Supreme Commander, from the midwest with a lot of common sense.
... so why shouldn't the chinese simply cash in their markers ...
Because they need to buy US bonds in order to drive the relative value of their currency down in order to maintain their export based economy.
It is inaccurate to think that China's current advantage is merely low cost labor. For simplistic goods, say beaded necklaces for Mardi Gras, that are priced as commodities low labor costs do help. However for the more technical and advanced goods, say an iPhone, labor represents a smaller component of the overall costs. I think GE recently announced expanding production of jet engines in the US, IIRC labor was only 15-20% of the cost of the engine so outsourcing for low labor wasn't helpful. What gives China an advantage in higher end goods is not labor costs, rather it is a currency that is artificially devalued. So what can they do with all those US dollars exporters are collecting? The exporters can't return those dollars to the various world markets, that would move the Chinese currency in the "wrong" direction. So the government buys the dollars from the exporters. What is the government to do with the dollars, like the exporters they can not return them to a world market. However they can buy US treasury notes, that will not cause their currency to rise in relative value. So as long as China has an export based economy driven by an artificially low currency they can not get rid of those notes.
Yeah but the top 10% make about 95% of the income so should be paying 95% (at least) of the taxes.
So as you note, testing is done with computers these days. The DoE has bigass supercomputers and keeps building new ones, a major reason is to accurately simulate (down to the atomic level) our nuclear weapons. Ok, well turns out those badass supercomputers are good at other kinds of simulations too, and get used for them. They aren't worthless, military only, things.
All I'm saying is consider all angles. Part of that "savings" would be cutting the US's highest end supercomptuer program. Now of course you wouldn't have to cut it, you could keep that and use them just for other kinds of research, but then your savings are less because you still spend the billions on them.
Always you need to look at the full impact of this. It is easy to look at something and say "If we cut it we save that much!" However consider what all you are cutting. You may find there is stuff in there you'd want to keep, and then your savings aren't quite what you claimed.
The biggest part of the US budget is health care subsidies currently at $793 billion a year.
That isn't even the whole of it. There are also the costs that individuals (or their employers) incur to acquire medical insurance. The overall price payed by americans for health coverage is staggering. I'm not sure where the money goes - insurance companies, drug companies, medical suppliers - but someone is getting their pockets filled.
By comparison, Canada spends about 1/2* as much per capita on health care services while offering universal coverage. There are still problems with the Canadian system but at least people are not dying due to lack of coverage/services. *Note that with the fall of the American dollar, this amount will have increased.
So the biggest economy in the world is the only advanced economy that doesn't offer universal health care. But what is really sad is what I hear in the American media - the fear-mongering from the Republican party is unbelievable. Those filled pockets must have some serious political connections to be able to spin such BS. Sad to think of all the people who buy into it - it's like shooting yourself in the foot.
Ha, a visiting elderly American once said that she pitied me for being subjected to a socialist health care system. Really? You pity me? Wow, ignorance truly is bliss.