An important transition in nuclear doctrine occurred in the immediate wake of 9/11. 

The Cold War MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine was scrapped by the Bush Jr administration in 2002, replaced by the first strike pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons as a means of self defense. (2001 Nuclear Posture Review, adopted by the US Senate in 2002).

America’s use of nuclear weapons on a first strike basis is no longer considered as a weapon of total annihilation. Quite the opposite, the preemptive use of nuclear weapons is upheld  as a means to ensuring global peace and security.

In contrast to the Truman era, however, today’s US thermonuclear bombs are several hundred times more powerful (in terms of yield) than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which resulted in the death of some 100,000 people in a matter of seven seconds.

And in the US, there is a 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program in support Donald Trump’s “fire and fury”, comparable in some regards to  Truman’s diabolical 1950 narrative pertaining to the use of the atomic bomb “as a means of self defense”.

While the US has waged countless wars in what is euphemistically described as “the post war era” (1945- present), the issue of “self defense” is erroneous: in the course of the last century, the national security of the United States of America has never been threatened.

Financing the Culture of War

Trump’s 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program constitutes a financial bonanza for the defense contractors. US media reports suggest that the nuclear weapons program “makes the World safer”.

And there are more than 5000 US nuclear weapons deployed. And now the US is committed to developing a generation of “more usable” low yield tactical nuclear weapons (bunker buster bombs) which are “harmless to surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”

“Making America Great again”…

“Blowing up the Planet” on a first strike basis as a instrument of peace and global security.

Where is the antiwar movement?

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