Capitalism and nuclear threat.

Sean O'Torrain.

The authors of this blog have maintained that capitalism threatens life on earth as we know it. This threat comes from climate change, pollution and nuclear war, or a combination of all of these. Climate change, pollution, nuclear war are inevitable under capitalism. While many people recognize that climate change and pollution are inevitably part of capitalism they think that with the cold war over the threat of nuclear war is also over. This is not the case. There are numerous nuclear armed regimes such as Pakistan and India which are extremely unstable. But more important there are the huge advanced capitalist countries with their nuclear arsenals. The most important of these is of course the US.

The US has 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles. It has submarines, bombers and missile silos which contain over 1,600 nuclear weapons. As if this were not mad enough the Obama regime has ordered the Pentagon to plan for 12 new missile submarines, up to 100 new bombers and 400 land-based missiles, either new or refurbished. It is a law of capitalism that the various capitalist powers will regularly go to war with each other. The threat of nuclear war has held the major capitalist powers back from all out nuclear war. The last time capitalism came close to this was when the US  dropped the bombs on Japan and this was an exercise aimed more at the then Soviet Union than at another capitalist state. However there are all sorts of regimes with nuclear arms in existence which are extremely unstable and led by the most crazed elements. India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers. Then there is the threat of crazed individual terror groups and religious and nationalist groups getting their hands on nuclear weapons.

It is a law of capitalism that the various capitalist powers will inevitably exist in conflict with each other. It is a law of capitalism that where these powers have arsenals of weapons that at some stage these will be used against each other. Capitalism does not build huge arsenals for fun. These will be used under capitalism. That is what they have been built for. Just as war cannot be ended under capitalism the threat of nuclear war cannot be removed for as long as capitalism lasts. This may be "only" initially a war between smaller nuclear states but even that threatens life on earth as we know it.

Think about the madness of it. Israel has many nuclear weapons. It sees these as guarantees of its future. But they are no such things. If it uses these nuclear weapons there will inevitably be a response from other nuclear states. But it is not only that the fallout of the use of these weapons would engulf Israel itself. After all it would use these weapons against its close surrounding states and inevitably this would mean Israel being overcome with nuclear fallout.

As we on this blog have explained life on earth as we know it will be destroyed under capitalism. One of the forms this destruction can take is nuclear war.

Then there can be the accidents. The nuclear arsenal in the US is in a terrible state of disrepair and dysfunction. For its 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles it had only a single wrench, yes only one,  single wrench that could attach the nuclear warheads. Well come to think of it maybe this was a good thing. Well maybe not. At times that single wrench could not even be found. They started to FedEx this tool around the country to the three bases. Then there is the question of morale in the nuclear weaponry complex. In March the air force fired nine officers and accepted the resignation of the commander of Malmstrom base in Montana for failing to provide adequate oversight of the 100 or so officers who were caught cheating in tests.

Life on earth will be destroyed unless capitalism is overthrown. The human species exists in a period of history where it is either international democratic socialism or nuclear annihilation.

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