‘US to threaten smaller states by upgrading nuke’

Press TV has conducted an interview with Richard Becker, with the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, from San Francisco, to discuss the United States’ recent plan to spend billions of dollars on modernizing its nuclear arsenal.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Which part would you like to comment on? We are not using them in small conflicts around the world, it is what our guest [Alison Katzman] there said and also the fact that the US is a world power and there from deducting that having weapons of mass destruction gives them that edge?

Becker: Well, the idea that the previous speaker just spoke about it, the US has only used nuclear weapons once, are you kidding? Annihilating two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hundreds of thousands of people died immediately and hundreds of thousands of people, more died of the aftereffects of cancer, of radiation sickness; that is a pretty callous attitude to take indeed.

The idea that the United States has not used them in small conflicts, no, the United States has only threatened to use them in small conflicts; like this constant refrain that we hear from Washington that “all options are on the table”.

Everybody knows what “all options are on the table” mean; even Mike Rivero who ran for president in 2008 got up in one of the debates and you know, very unique occurrence, [he] actually said this is what it means, it means we are threatening to annihilate you with nuclear weapons when we say “all options are on the table” and the US is saying this about Iran all the time and as the leaders said here, you know Iran is being accused of potentially developing nuclear weapons and then [been] threatened with nuclear warfare.

This idea, world power and hegemony that your other guest there thinks is a good thing, I think is a terrible thing and one day it should come to an end and there should be the steps not toward modernizing nuclear weapons, but for toward getting rid of them.

Press TV: What do you think about the fact that the US possesses weapons of mass destruction and yet it is alerting the world in many ways about Iran’s pursuit of what they claim weaponization of their civilian nuclear program?

Becker: I must say that perhaps Ms. Katzmen is not aware that no foreign powers invaded the United States in two hundred years. It was the British who did during the war in 1812.

The idea that the United States is under siege or that Israel is under siege is that Israel has been the aggressor and war after war, attack after attack in the Middle East and it is not called to account for its possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons which France and the United Sates have insisted them in doing. The United States government’s intention is not defensive, it is offensive.

You know this idea that Iran is a rogue state, well the real rogue state in the world is the United States. What makes the United States exceptional and refer to a lot about American exceptionalism lately is how many countries it has intervened? [Which is] hundreds since World War II; how many countries and its leaders it surveils? Virtually all of them, according to what we have learned from Edward Snowden.

So, the idea that the United States is somehow, you know, threatened by others in the world is just frankly ludicrous.

Press TV: Richard Becker, this viewer, particularly the viewer that I found interesting says “When we talk about peace meaning, the US really means war,” find that pretty interesting; the US has in one way or another been engaged in this over the past what ten years if not longer. Why does the US need to feel like it needs to be at war?

Becker: The United States became involved in the war in Afghanistan and then launched the war against Iraq. The war against Afghanistan continues now, it is the longest war in the US history.

Why is the United States not ending that war? Because being the number one empire in the world means that you must maintain or attempt to maintain, in the eyes of the world, your position of unchallenged supremacy. And that notion has been severely damaged by both the resistance to occupation that took place in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

So, when you have built a war machine unlike any war machine that has ever existed before and that is what the US war machine is today, then that machine, that instrument will be used to try to maintain hegemony, the position as the number one empire, the exceptional empire in the world today.

Press TV: That was a pretty alarming statement coming from this gentleman Sheldon Adelson, I do not know if you recall when this news came out, about a couple of weeks ago?

Becker: Sheldon Adelson is a major funder of the, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of the Israeli settlement projects which are devouring even more of the land of Palestine as each day goes by.

This idea that you can launch nuclear weapons, I mean it goes back to the whole issue of upgrading the nuclear weapons capacity of the United States, to upgrade its weaponry, for what purpose? Is it to threaten smaller countries? Yes, it is for that purpose.

And by the idea that they could actually be a nuclear war and that was winnable; the concept that, it goes back many years in US military doctrine from the Eisenhower administration and then revived in the Reagan administration, is the single most dangerous idea that leaders could have.

Because the launching of a nuclear war, even one nuclear bomb that is dropped, he (Sheldon Adelson) says in the desert of Iran; well, what impact will that have on the people who are living there, the impact of radiation?

But when you think of that multiplied by hundreds of thousands of nuclear bombs being dropped, being used in battle, in war, then you are talking about the threat to the existence of humanity, perhaps the threat to the existence of life altogether on earth.

Press TV: This B-61 program, it is quite extensive, it is not just restricted to the United States, the US is actually trying to under the umbrella of modernizing its nuclear bombs, it is doing that also in Europe.

Many are calling this they are … of creating this new modernization of nuclear weapons with the US at its forefront. So, it is not just the US’s fault here. Why is it that another country needs to get involved in this case in point, we can talk about the German government, who is not too happy about this program, but yet it is compiling with it?

Becker: The US has imposed upon its allies in NATO and also in Japan the placement of nuclear weapons on their territory and, of course, this has been a big issue for many years.

Some of the generals and leaders in other countries are soon willing to go along with this, but the population is overwhelmingly opposed in all of these countries to the placement of nuclear weapons for one thing simply because if they allow US nuclear weapons or in the case of Britain and France in Europe, if they have their own nuclear weapons, then that, of course, will make them and their people immediate targets in the case of nuclear war.

The NATO alliances, which are referring to here in terms of Europe in the place in the stationing of US nuclear weapons there, that NATO alliance should be disbanded, I mean, why is there a NATO alliance after all? I mean the so-called North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has expanded all the way in to the former Soviet Union and keeps expanding and what is its purpose except to intimidate and to terrorize others who are in the path of the United States leaders who in fact … want … to dominate NATO.

Press TV: The US arsenal of reserve warheads is about 2,800; Seventeen hundred warheads mounted in silos and as I mentioned before it is said that I am going to go with the lower medium of 900 weapons, half of them on alert, half in reserve.

What does that mean when this comes out in terms of the research done that half of them are on alert? I do not quite understand how nuclear weapons can be on alert. Where is this supposedly threat coming from? The only country I can deduce that from is to be Russia, but I cannot see that being in continuous state of alert that these nuclear weapons need to be on?

Becker: No, of course not and again it is impossible to overstay; what a danger that poses to all of humanity that the launching of those missiles, even just the missiles that are on alert, would have ostensibly devastating impact on the world.

Of course, it would be met, it would be responded to by many more nuclear weapons being fired at the United States. It is really insanity; I mean from an objective point of view the idea that there can be a nuclear war, that you can win in a nuclear war, that you need all these weapons, they need to be on alert, you need to modernize them, upgrade them and so forth and so on.

It really says that we are supposedly led by people who take no responsibility for anything except perhaps the interest of the military, industrial complex in those corporations in the power of empire and pay no regard whatsoever to the lives of hundreds of millions, billions of people, all over the world and including the people of the United States.

Press TV: We had a report today that came out and said the Saudi Arabia had invested in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons that they actually, have somehow gone their hands on some of the nuclear arsenal there and this came out from British media reports, reporting NATO sources; I mean, could you imagine Saudi Arabia has been supporting these insurgents in Syria, getting their hands on nuclear weapons, therefore this should put in motion, the idea of just eliminating the world of nuclear weapons.

So, we can see that this is spreading in terms of the misuse that is going to pose. Should not there be alarm bells going off at some agency, I am going to say the UN, but I cannot see them being proactive on this?

Becker: Of course, and really where the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons, the disarmament of nuclear weapons, the doing away of nuclear weapons programs should begin is inside of the United States.

But I do not think there is any question that as long as some countries have nuclear weapons, other countries, their leaders are going to consider, at least, obtaining, finding programs to create their own nuclear weapons.

So, the nuclear weapons club will continue to grow and it is extremely dangerous now, it remains extremely dangerous, it is not like 1962, we are not talking about 50 years ago when the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the very brink of, the threat of US military strike against Cuba and the Soviet Union, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

But it remains extremely dangerous, even by accident. We have had the reports in the last few months of huge nuclear weapons being accidentally dropped in Arkansa in North Carolina that could have basically wiped out the entire population of those states. The weapons were hundreds of times bigger than … .