At a symposium sponsored by Peace House and the SOU Department of History, Economics and Politics, two national speakers highlighted the urgent need to stop the modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons modernization program.
Kevin Martin, President of Peace Action, highlighted the public ignorance surrounding the issue of modernizing the U.S. arsenal. Despite the reduction in the total arsenals around the work, the number of nuclear weapons states has increased and the situation today is as precarious as ever. That public ignorance extends to the staggering cost of the modernization. The current estimate is $1.7 trillion over the next thirty years and it is bound to increase significantly. The opportunity cost of this spending preclude necessary support for a wide variety of needed programs.
Martin highlighted important advances, the most important being the passage and adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. To oppose these unnecessary expenses and focus on the securing the future, Martin suggested the renunciation of first use, ending the sole authority of the President to launch nuclear weapons, ending the hair trigger alert. Another suggestion focused on “not banking on the bomb,” that is, to move one’s funds to banks and funds that do not support nuclear weapons production.
Eddie Laiché of Students for Nuclear Disarmament, focused on the immoral aspect of nuclear weapons, the threat to annihilate all human life on earth. He recounted hearing Dr. Ira Hefland describing the effects of a nuclear explosion and reacting with horror that humans could even contemplate using such weapons. He urged the listeners to look inside themselves and revisit their own enemy images and work for peace.
Peace House members Estelle Voeller and Michael Niemann added their observations. Voeller spoke of the array of NGOs which are active in preventing this terrible modernization process. Niemann outlined the functioning of the military-industrial complex which promotes and profits from the modernization of the country’s arsenal.
