Tri-Valley CAREs works to strengthen global security by stopping the development of new nuclear weapons in the US and by promoting the elimination of nuclear weapons globally. Tri-Valley CAREs monitors nuclear weapons and environmental clean-up activities throughout the US nuclear weapons complex, with a special focus on the Lawrence Livermore Lab and surrounding communities.
Tri-Valley CAREs' Member Matthew Swyers Writes About his Concerns With the 2011 Nuclear Wepons Budget
Mar11
Date: March 10, 2010
By: Matthew Swyers
Published in: The Tri-Valley Hereld
http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/letterstotheeditor/ci_14640928
Arm or disarm?
On Feb. 18, Vice President Joe Biden spoke about "the future of nuclear deterrence." Oddly, most of his speech was a weak attempt to conflate the Cold War action of deterrence with disarmament. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty demands that signatory nuclear states disarm; it says nothing about deterrence. Biden represents the largest nuclear weapons budget in history as central to disarmament, but money for weapons dismantlement was actually cut in this proposed budget.
Biden defends this $624 million increase by claiming the weapons complex has been underfunded during the last decade, when, in fact, funding has remained flat or slightly higher each year.
I would agree that the weapons labs have been neglected from any real oversight as mismanagement, illegal accounting, security violations and dereliction in environmental cleanup have become the norm.
The administration needs a two-thirds Senate vote to ratify the START treaty. In an extortion quid pro quo letter, Senate Republicans and Joe Lieberman made it known that without this increased weapons funding, the START treaty is DOA.
But, as has been seen in numerous recent negotiations, these same senators can hardly be trusted.
To paraphrase Albert Einstein, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for (nuclear) war."
Matthew Swyers
Livermore