US allots billions to nukes

The United States has allocated billions of dollars to its nuclear weapons complex, despite agreeing to the New START treaty which demands a reduction of nuclear warheads.

According to Newsweek, US President Barack Obama’s administration has earmarked 84.5 billion dollar for modernizing America’s nuclear arsenal over the next decade.

That is an increase of at least 20 percent compared to money spent on nuclear laboratories during Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush’s tenure.

The new development comes months after Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to reduce the number of their active nuclear warheads.

The pact inked on April 8, 2010, would limit Washington and Moscow to a maximum of 1,550 deployed warheads each, about 30% down from the current level of 2,200.

The ratification of the New START in US Congress was seen as a huge win for Obama.

Many said that the endorsement of the deal would finally enable Washington to slash its way toward its so-called “nuclear free world” motto.

However, the recent move by the White House to spend tens of billions of dollars to rejuvenate its nuclear warheads questions Washington’s decade-long slogans for a nuke-free world.

This is while previous US actions have also indicated Washington’s inconsistency with its much-publicized world denuclearization plan.

The United States is the first country in the world to develop nuclear weapons and is the only one to have used them.

More than 210,000 people were killed in Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, when the US bombers dropped atomic bombs on the cities.

Before and during the Cold War the US conducted over 1000 nuclear tests and developed long range delivery systems.

Figures show that the Pentagon has also built over 67,500 nuclear missiles from 1951 to the present day, and some 4,680 nuclear bombers from 1945 until now.

In addition to deploying weapons on its own soil, America has also stationed nukes in 27 foreign countries and territories, including Japan, Taiwan, Germany and Turkey.

Arms control advocates believe that these facts question the very basic idea that the US is after a world free of nuclear weapons.