12/09/2013 - 17:16

Why vote for nuclear disarmament?

Kennette Benedict

Kennette Benedict




They and their legislators need lots of reasons to choose nuclear disarmament. Here are three to get started.

Disarmament will prevent catastrophic accidents. Nuclear weapons are very dangerous whether or not they are actually used in war. In the November/December issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nate Jones describes how a routine NATO military exercise in 1983 led the Soviets to place their nuclear arsenals on high alert because they believed the United States was about to attack. Knowledge of the misperceptions, accidents, and near-misses that he and writers like Eric Schlosser describe—incidents that could have resulted in nuclear exchanges of devastating proportions—would be enough to make any sensible person understand that the risks posed by these weapons far outweigh any purported benefits in an era of relative peace among major powers.

Disarmament will save money.At a time of fiscal restraint, the savings from reducing US arsenals would be significant, even when taking into account the costs of dismantlement. The United States spends $30 to $35 billion per year to maintain its current deployed nuclear force of some 1,500 weapons, and only about $6 billion per year for dismantling and cleanup under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia. If Washington continues to reduce nuclear arsenals, the net savings would add up to real money over time.






The truth is that the nuclear weapons complex—including research and design; bomb making; manufacturing delivery vehicles; situating and maintaining missiles; and storage and clean-up of toxic materials—is so integrated into the fabric of the US economy that nuclear weapons have become normalized as a fact of life. Yet to make the world more secure, democracies stronger, and economies more prosperous, citizens of the United States and Russia will want to disentangle their societies from nuclear weapons. They have plenty of reasons to embrace disarmament—even beyond the terrible possibility of nuclear war.