January 11th, 2009
Let Them Eat Nukes
According to a paper published by the Natural Resources Defense Council , the United States spends approximately $40 Billion annually maintaining its nuclear weapons stockpile.1 That breaks down to approximately $8,000,000/year - just to maintain one nuclear weapon. That’s a staggering amount of money only to maintain existing nuclear weapons; it does not even include money spent on the research and development of new nuclear weapons, such as the reliable replacement warheads (RRW) or the national missile defense system (NMD). Forty billion dollars per year simply to maintain a nuclear arsenal that is a relic of the Cold War!
In these times of economic uncertainty, it seems unfathomable that the federal government spends $40 billion per year to maintain a nuclear weapon arsenal that far exceeds even the necessary number of nuclear weapons needed to provide security for the U.S. and its allies. The Federation of American Scientists2 estimates that the current U.S. nuclear stockpile is over 5,000 active nuclear weapons. Do we really need such an enormous stockpile? Five thousand nuclear weapons are enough to blow the whole world to smithereens many times over! Even if we reduce the stockpile by half, which we are obligated to do under the Moscow Treaty by 2012, the U.S. would still have an unnecessarily large nuclear stockpile that would continue to cost the taxpayers billions of dollars per year.
Now, consider this…undernourishment is the number one health risk in the world, more that AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. The latest figures from the World Food Programme3 estimate that there are 923 million undernourished people in the world. That’s one out of every 7 people. That number has increased by 75 million in the past two years, primarily due to increasing food prices. Programs such as the United Nations’ World Food Programme exist to provide relief to the poor and undernourished in developing countries, and rely on member countries as the primary source of funding.
Although the U.S. is one of the top contributors ($2 billion in 2008), it is still along way from solving this pressing issue. The cost of under-nutrition to the development of national economies is $20-30 billion per year USD. If the global issue of world hunger could be solved, or at least significantly reduced, developing countries may actually become productive in the international market, thus reducing the need for aid flows and saving the taxpayers of donor countries over the long run.
To provide a bit of clarity, let’s focus for a moment on what the U.S. could actually do if the government were to substantially reduce the nuclear weapons stockpile. The World Bank4 estimates that it would take between $35 and $76 billion per year to reach the Millenium Development Goals of eliminating poverty and hunger by 2015. If the U.S. government significantly reduces or completely eliminates the nuclear stockpile, the U.S. could provide a great deal of the necessary funding to accomplish those goals. On another note, it takes $.25 cents to feed one child per day. Monetary donations provide children with at least one nutritious meal every day, which “attracts children to school, boosts enrolment, promotes regular attendance, and enhances student performance.”5 Were the U.S. to spend that $40 billion per year on feeding the world’s children, rather than nuclear stockpiles, we could feed 438 million children per year!
So, why should the U.S. take on the role of ending world poverty and hunger? Shouldn’t we be more concerned with ourselves and our own economic situation? In a utopian world, the people of the U.S. would decide its their moral obligation to assist in eliminating world hunger, particularly at the expense of a nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, this is not a utopian world. Still, the U.S. can benefit from reducing world hunger and poverty in a couple of ways. First, ending world hunger and poverty would provide developing countries with the ability to continue developing and join the international economic community. By eliminating hunger, one would expect human development indicators to rise, meaning that the population would be more educated, and at risk states for internal conflict would be more likely to stabilize their governments, which decreases the potential for intra-state conflict. While intra state conflict may not always directly affect the U.S., the indirect effects via UN intervention can cost the U.S. in funding, troop provision, and machinery. Second, the U.S. touts democracy and human rights, but income disparity makes it impossible for the extreme poor to practice their political rights. By providing developing nations with the ability to bring themselves up out of the poverty mire, the U.S. can help to spread sustainable democracy. The U.S. can and should take the lead in eliminating world hunger, and by doing so, can also eliminate the nuclear arsenals that cost taxpayers billions per year and encourage other nations to proliferate.
Written by Holly Lindamood, Program Director and Research Associate
Daisy Alliance
- Norris, Robert S., Kristensen, Hans M., and Paine, Christopher E. (2004). “Nuclear Insecurity: A Critique of the Bush Administration’s Nuclear Weapons Policies.” http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/insecurity/critique.pdf. [↩]
- Norris, Robert S. and Kristensen, Hans M. (2007). “Estimates of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile: 2007 and 2012.” http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/publications1/USStockpile2007-2012.pdf. [↩]
- All figures from World Food Programme come from the Hunger Fact Sheet http://www.wfp.org/aboutwfp/facts/index.asp?section=1&sub_section=5. [↩]
- World Bank www.worldbank.org [↩]
- World Food Programme’s School Feeding Program http://www.wfp.org/food_aid/school_feeding/index.asp?section=12&sub_section=3 [↩]
January 14th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Thank you for this. It is very useful to have real examples of how the enormous sums spent on nuclear weapons could be instead used to solve the problems which create war. Think how much human suffering could be prevented by spending this $40 billion dollars a year on real human needs!
And think how much unlimited misery and death will be created if we ever are foolish enough to use these weapons in war.