October 16 Day Of Action

From Beyond the Bomb: Under current policy, the President of the United States has limitless authority to launch a nuclear strike. The notion that any one person, regardless of character or party affiliation, could have such vast power to end life on Earth is appalling in the best of times — let alone during a time of increasing nuclear rhetoric and vast foreign policy shifts.

The United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 and from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. Both pacts significantly reduced the dangers of nuclear war.

From Back From The Brink: The United States has roughly 1,700 deployed nuclear weapons and another several thousand in reserve. Four hundred of these are on missiles in underground silos, ready to be launched within minutes of a presidential order. This alert status — called hair-trigger alert — increases the chance of a launch in response to a false alarm. 

From Beyond the Bomb: The U.S. is set to spend $264 billion dollars on the projected lifetime cost of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program, which is set to replace the land-based nuclear missiles. Meanwhile, a growing consensus among nuclear weapons experts asserts not only that the U.S. doesn’t need these weapons for its security, but that keeping them keeps the U.S. needlessly vulnerable to a massive nuclear attack.

H.Res. 1185 “calls on the President to embrace the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and make nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of U.S. national security policy. It also calls on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war.”

Half of the U.S. government’s discretionary budget goes to military spending — while vast numbers of people lack adequate health care, education, housing and other basic needs, at the same time that the climate emergency and other environmental crises are worsening. Budgets are moral documents, and should be devoted to sustaining life instead of destroyed life.