Marija Carter: Held at a Nuke Point
The American 5,428 nuclear weapons and 1,054 detonations hell of a power-trip
At the peak of the nuclear arms race in 1967, the US held 31,255 nuclear weapons. The largest American field test was conducted with a nuclear weapon with a yield of 15 megatons – for contrast, the bomb that doomed Hiroshima to be a symbol of hell on Earth had a yield of 16 kilotons.
Despite the enormous reductions in nuclear arsenals since the hottest days of the Cold War, it is crucial to remember that the 5,428 weapons the US possesses are each capable of inflicting barely imaginable suffering. It is incomprehensible how much of an overkill 5,428 is – not only 428, not only 28, but even ‘just’ 8 would constitute an existential threat to humanity and the planet as a whole.
The US holds one of the most advanced nuclear stockpiles in the world. While large sections of its specifics are classified, the world got an update on its most important particulars in May 2023. The Pentagon released its nuclear warhead data, in a bid to pressure Russia back into participation in the New START following Kremlin’s earlier decision to suspend participation. The US noted that of its 5,428 total warheads, 3,708 are operational strategic and non-strategic, and 1,419 are deployed.
The birthplace of the atom bomb, with the first successful detonation on 16 July 1945, remains to this day the only nation that has ever employed them in an attack. Today, the country maintains an incredibly expensive nuclear triad – it is estimated that since the start of the Manhattan Project to 2023, over $12.2 trillion in present-day terms was spent on nuclear weapons development, storage and testing. In addition, the US boasts three state-of-the-art delivery systems. The US Air Force operates a fleet of Minuteman III, which are land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying multiple warheads simultaneously. Further, there are submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), notably the Ohio-class submarines Trident II D5, and lastly, ‘old fashioned’ strategic (gravity) bombers such as the B-2 Spirit and the B-52 Stratofortress.
This armed-to-the-teeth approach provides redundancy, ensuring that the compromise of any of its pillars does not infringe on nuclear capabilities. The US continues modernising its nuclear arsenal, supposedly to ensure safety as well as reliability and effectiveness, especially following the 3 July 2017 Associated Press revelations that the Pentagon knew of critical shortcomings in the safety of storage systems and reacted by ‘pass-fail’ grades being declared off-limits in audits, justifying this clear breach of national safety by a desire to ‘prevent adversaries from learning too much about nuclear weapons vulnerabilities.’
The US denied participation in the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons but is a signatory to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which aims chiefly to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Through this Treaty, the US is technically committed to eventual nuclear disarmament, however, it has never made any attempts to even pretend it fully accepts this premise.
On the international stage, the US positions itself as a prominent advocate for non-proliferation – after all, it burned Iraq to the ground over dubious allegations of an active nuclear weapon programme, and enthusiastically threatened Libya and Iran should they fail to pledge towards strict 0-nukes deals. One cannot overlook the irony of the situation: 5,428 to 0.
This approach does not, as is sometimes opined, raise questions about the credibility of the US commitment to non-proliferation. On the contrary: it proudly lays the answer out. The US maintains its nuclear arsenal as a way to project its power and secure its interests on the global stage. The danger that US stakes would be subjected to the nuclear threat, let alone a nuclear attack, is literally non-existent.
The stockpile is not maintained for defence purposes: it exists purely to shape other nations’ behaviour in ways that benefit the US. The only risk it eliminates is the risk of resistance on the grounds of state sovereignty under international law. This becomes particularly comically obvious when used to extract nuclear disarmament deals from states that seek to arm in response to US imperialism.
While the only world worth striving towards is the one with no nuclear weapons whatsoever, if one accepts the US argument that nuclear weapons are a deterrent to conflict, it would follow that it makes infinitely more sense for Arab nations to arm themselves than it does for the US or any NATO nation. Any Pentagon-advanced argument to the contrary is only a glaring example of the instability of its rationale, as well as a glaring illustration of never-ending geopolitical inequality.
The US is not alone in its responsibility for the slow pace of nuclear disarmament under the 1968 NPT. It remains, however, the most arrogant obstacle.
Composed by Marija Carter for Denuclearise.com on the 27th of July 2023
