Proposal for ‘low-yield’ nuclear weapons is a farce

Published 1:30 am Monday, March 16, 2020

The advancement and deployment of a new nuclear weapon to our submarine fleet is beyond ignorance. And the fact that we are deploying “low yield” ballistic missiles to our arsenal reeks of total stupidity. This made-up Russian threat of “escalate to deescalate” is so far from reality. The reality and policy has been deterrent. You toss missiles at us we reply in force. Which would lead to total destruction of life as we know it. Trump’s request for $29.9 billion to modernize delivery systems could be better used on education, health care and infrastructure.

Sixty cents of every tax dollar goes to feed the military industrial complex. We have 800 bases outside the United States that we know of, they have two. Who’s the threat? The thinking that we can use “lower yield” weapons and not destroy ourselves in the process lacks any credibility.

In an article published in Foreign Affairs in 1982, four American statesmen declared “no one has ever succeeded in advancing any persuasive reason to believe that any use of nuclear weapons, even on the smallest scale, could reliably be expected to remain limited.” The Trump administration should contemplate these words as they embrace the new “low yield” weapons. The reality is it deters nothing.

Maybe Trump will drop the bomb to show how tough he is and then the debate will be over and if we are not vaporized in the blast zone, we can mull our slow demise while pondering why we were so stupid.

Stuart Clift

Everett