By Kira Webster
Last year, President Donald Trump released his Nuclear Posture Review, detailing his administration’s 10-year plan to sustain and modernize nuclear delivery vehicles, warheads, and associated infrastructure. The Congressional Budget Office estimated nuclear forces account for about six percent of the total 10 year cost for all national defense programs. Policymakers and nuclear experts have expressed concern about the sustainability of these plans as well as the impacts of rising costs on national security priorities.
One review highlighted items that will increase total estimated costs by $17 billion: new sea-launched cruise missiles, nuclear warheads with relatively low yield for submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and plutonium pit development. Several other areas of funding have been raised significantly since the 2017 budget estimates. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM’s) were given a $16 billion increase – $18 billion more than previously estimated. This caused an increase in development of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program and also in the development costs for new re-entry vehicles and interoperable warheads for new ICBM’s. The ballistic missile submarines budget has also increased by $17 billion as well as the strategic bombers’ portion estimating to be around $104 (including full costs of both B-52 and B-21 bombers).
The CBO released an updated December 2018 report, “Options for Reducing the Deficit,”saving approximately $100 billion over 10 years by modifying the number of warheads and delivery systems. The report also deferred and canceled certain modernization programs. The estimates from these modifications are over 40% larger (around $30.4 billion) than the savings projected in the CBO’s 2016 reduction report.
Harvard International Relations Professor Dr. Stephen M. Walt stated that creating costly proposals for modernizing our arsenal will not necessarily send the message that we intend to use them. The modernization plan itself is intended not only to update our current armaments and keep them reliable, but it also develops a newer generation of smaller nuclear weapons with more flexible targeting agilities – meaning they will be easier to use. Walt believes that taxpayers are not paying for their potential use but for their capabilities as a deterrent.
There seems to be no end to the process of investing in our nuclear arsenal. This is partially due to contracting lobbyists, but it goes a little deeper than that. Walt pointed out the U.S. has spent several trillion dollars on nuclear development since the Manhattan Project, and while we have the most capable arsenal collection, there is a deep irony in how little confidence Americans seem to have in our nuclear abilities. Walt wrote that “even if the United States were attacked first, the 1500-plus warheads that are presently deployed are capable of destroying any society on earth in a retaliatory strike. Yet somehow these vast powers aren’t enough to make the United States confident that it can take on much weaker nuclear powers, such as North Korea. President Donald Trump boasts that his ‘button’ is bigger than Kim Jong Un’s, but official Washington acts as if the opposite were true.” It’s puzzling, since our nuclear deterrents have never failed us in the past with Stalin, Zedong, Khrushchev and Kim Il Sung. Yet, we still remain partially unconvinced to a leader like Kim Jong Un, which, ironically, might mean that he could be led on to believe his weapons are more potent than they really are due to how we exhibit our insecurities about ours.
Walt also pointed out that this new Nuclear Posture Review sends a clear message to the world: “even if you are a continent-sized superpower with the world’s largest economy, the world’s most powerful conventional forces, no enemies nearby, and no powerful adversaries openly seeking to overthrow your government, you still need lots and lots of highly sophisticated and expensive nuclear weapons in order to be secure.” This mentality will make weaker countries like Iran and North Korea believe even more that they need nuclear weapons for security. It will also convince other powerful countries, like China and Russia, that they need to build more sophisticated weapons of their own. Leading not only to our costs rising, but threats to our safety as well.
Kira Webster is an intern at the Peace Economy Project
