Increasing Nuclear Weapons

 

The world's nuclear powers actually increased spending on nuclear weapons by $1.4 billion more than they had put out the previous year. 

And that increase was only a small percentage of the ongoing investment of nine countries in their growing nuclear arsenals.

More than half of the total 2020 "investment" in weaponry appropriate for world-ending scenarios, $37.4 billion to be exact, was by the USA. A staggering $13.3 billion was given to weapons maker Northrop Grumman alone to begin the development of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, the one thing our thoroughly troubled world obviously needs.  The US is now be planning to devote at least $1.7 trillion over the next three decades to "modernizing" what's already the most modern nuclear arsenal on the planet.  in 2020, the USA alone had more than 5,000 nuclear weapons, at least 1,300 of them deployed and ready to use—enough, that is, to destroy several worlds. In 2021, the U.S. is preparing to invest more than $100 billion in producing a totally new ICBM, whose total cost over its "lifespan" is already projected at $264 billion—and that's before the cost overruns even begin.

A nuclear war between two regional powers, India and Pakistan, could throw so many particulates into the atmosphere as to create a nuclear winter on this planet, one likely to starve to death billions of us. 

 In all, those nine nuclear powers spent an estimated $137,000 a minute in 2020 to "improve" their arsenals. Imagine if all that money had instead been devoted to creating and disseminating vaccines for most of the world's population. Imagine a planet on which every dollar earmarked for nuclear weapons would be invested in  green solutions to a world growing ever warmer.

Opinion | Nuclear Weapons: An All-American Horror Story | Tom Engelhardt (commondreams.org)