| “How quickly they forget,” is a bit of a cliche, but this article below is ridiculous! And what the links I provide don’t even begin to describe what all Trump did to accelerate taking us not only to the abyss, but a deep dive into it. Which Biden as a Goldwater Democrat has dutifully, for the most part, followed his Goldwaterite “Traditional Conservative” predecessor, Trump. BLUF: "In his single term in the White House, Donald Trump expanded America’s nuclear arsenal and undermined decades of arms-control efforts. . . . "For that reason alone, Trump’s atomic legacy will be a meaningful one. “He drove the final few nails in the coffin for the first era of arms-control,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. "Kingston Reif, a missile expert at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C., neatly summarized Trump’s nuclear initiatives on Twitter in mid-December. To paraphrase: "1. Trump nudged the Pentagon to double the number of low-yield nuclear weapons, which according to experts raise the risk of nuclear war by making nukes seemingly more “useable” in an armed clash between major powers. At the same time, Trump’s nuclear doctrine expanded the list of external threats that officially justify nuclear retaliation. Perhaps most notably, the list of threats now includes a major hacking event. The U.S. Navy subsequently deployed the low-yield W76-2 variant of its Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile. "2. At the opposite end of the yield spectrum, the billionaire president accelerated development of high-yield SLBMs and canceled a Pentagon plan to decommission the megaton-class B83-1 gravity bomb. 3. To arm these new weapons, Trump took steps to restart production of plutonium cores for nuclear warheads, despite arguments that the United States already possesses plenty of cores. The core-production falls under a roughly $9-billion budgetary boost that Trump helped push through for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Agency, which oversees America’s nukes. Here’s a general review of so much that Trump did to heighten tensions with Russia and China, far above what Obama had, and leaving intact for Biden to continue Trump’s war-making schemes. Of which Russia finally realized we were serious about annihilating them, along with China and Iran. With everybody’s favorite think-tank here, Heritage Foundation, calling for even more in another term: "While the country has been coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, economic decline |
"Overall, the budget for making and maintaining nuclear warheads has risen more than 50 percent since Trump was elected in 2016, substantially outpacing the rates of increase for the defense budget and overall federal spending during his presidency before the pandemic. On Monday, Congress approved Trump’s proposal to increase spending next year alone for the production of such weaponry by roughly $3 billion." You thought there was mass hysteria in the US with the so-called “Missile Gap,” cooked up by the Rand Corporation, and always a central propaganda meme against Eisenhower by . . . Conservatives, get a load of this and get ready to kiss whatever well being we have left, good-bye: https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-world-becoming-ever-more-dangerous-the-president-must-revitalize-the-us US formally withdraws from nuclear treaty with Russia and prepares to test new missile - August 2, 2019 BLUF: "The United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia Friday, as the US military prepares to test a new non-nuclear mobile-launched cruise missile developed specifically to challenge Moscow in Europe, according to a senior US defense official."The US withdrawal puts an end to a landmark arms control pact that has limited the development of ground-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers and is sparking fears of a new arms race. . . ."The Trump administration casts the forthcoming test of the new ground-based missiles as necessary to US national security, even as it seeks to tamp down any suggestion that the US is triggering an arms race, a claim that’s met with skepticism in the arms control community.” https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-09/news/us-completes-inf-treaty-withdrawal “In October 2018, on the sidelines of a campaign rally, Trump stated that he planned to “terminate” the INF Treaty. Since then, U.S. and Russian officials held only a few unsuccessful meetings to discuss the treaty."And, "U.S. to pull out of Open Skies treaty, Trump's latest treaty withdrawal” "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it would withdraw from the 35-nation Open Skies treaty allowing unarmed surveillance flights over member countries, the Trump administration's latest move to pull the country out of a major global treaty.” . . . "Trump's arms control negotiator mounted a full-blown defense of the administration's arms control policies, focusing on the president's proposal that China join the United States and Russia on a replacement for New START. (TP- a “poison pill” to an agreement.) "We know how to win these races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion. If we have to, we will, but we sure would like to avoid it," Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea told the Hudson Institute think tank.” (TP-see above, so they include a poison pill requirement.) That Trump didn’t withdraw from any more Arms Control Treaties was only because after Republicans GWB and Chaney got done with them, there were only three left, with Trump withdrawing from 2 of the 3 remaining treaties, with New START being allowed to expire on its own. Not always a fan of Just Security, but this is just stating actual facts! BLUF: "It is now clear that the Trump administration has waged an assault on international law unparalleled in the post-war era. It has embraced what has sometimes been called the “new sovereigntist” critique of international law. (TP-as demanded by his closest allies, the Israeli Fascists, and arcticulted constantly by National Conservative Yoram Hazony!) According to this view, international treaties give too much authority to foreign States and international organizations, taking away power that should instead belong to domestic political institutions. To those who hold this view of international law, almost any constraint is too much, even if entirely voluntary and revocable and even if the agreement promises to bring significant reciprocal benefits. . . . "Specifically, Trump has withdrawn from an unprecedented five Article II treaties in three years:
It was abundantly clear that Trump intended to let New START expire, and blame it on the Russians as he did with his Treaty withdrawals! Do facts and truth not matter at all anymore when it comes to getting Trump back as POTUS to “finish the job” of turning the US into an even “Greater Authoritarian Ultra-Militarist State” than it already is, which he bears a lot of responsibility for from the first time he was in office. Evidently not.
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