Saving the World By Stopping the Pentagon's Programs

[reprehensor]

http://alternet.org/story/47009/

Saving the World By Stopping the Pentagon's Programs

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted January 22, 2007.

The Doomsday Clock now stands at five minutes to twelve. Here's how the 110th Congress can start pushing the minute-hand back.

"...But this is no time for forgetting, or for fatalism. There are hard policy levers that impact the probability of both nuclear terrorism and the still extant possibility of full-scale nuclear war. The new Congress must grasp this and rain legislative hellfire down on a raft of Strangelovean policies and programs currently in place or seeking funding. This means canceling some weapons while submitting them to fierce public inspection and ridicule, and boosting funds for and explaining the importance of nonproliferation programs that actually enhance national security.

The 110th can't save the world. Real progress will take new executive leadership and arduous diplomacy to reopen and deepen the U.S.-Russia disarmament process, and to close the Non-Proliferation Treaty loophole that allows countries to enrich and reprocess their own nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. In the meantime, Congress can begin raising awareness of nuclear issues. It can kill or stall destabilizing nuclear-related programs where they can, retarding administration and Pentagon efforts to create a world of more nukes at home through obscene levels of defense spending, and less nukes abroad through the application of mindless, counterproductive, and hypocritical force.

High on any list of Congressional priorities should be expansion of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, known as Nunn-Lugar after its authors. Since its passage in 1991, CTR programs operated by the departments of Defense and Energy have helped decommission and secure thousands of warheads in the former Soviet Union. They've also tightened safeguards at hundreds of supply depots holding nuclear material. Any serious and honestly fought "war on terror" would involve steroid injections for globalizing CTR, which last year saw its funding slashed to under $400 million for the first time since 1991.

More than 1400 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and 500 tons of plutonium still sit in poorly guarded facilities around the world. A global lockdown must be accelerated..."

Continued...
http://alternet.org/story/47009/