The cost of maintaining and developing America's massive nuclear arsenal is “astronomical, especially if it involves long-term projects, which are often poorly costed, and which promise to deliver little that is of tangible benefit,” Joseph Camilleri, emeritus professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne and one of Australia's leading international relations scholars, told Sputnik.
He recalled that current US nuclear modernization programs are estimated by the US Congressional Budget Office to cost a total of $634 billion over the 2021–2030 period, for an average of just over $60 billion a year.
Camilleri said that by the time these plans are fully implemented, “the actual cost is likely to prove much higher,” adding that “’catching up and overtaking’ by either side is a fool’s game.”
“The only sane response is for all nuclear armed states to negotiate an agreement for progressive and verifiable nuclear reduction measures leading within a specified timeframe to universal support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” the professor pointed out.
Touching upon the US’ new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which is embedded into the Pentagon’s fresh National Defense Strategy (NDS), Camilleri noted that the document “does speak of the need to move towards the strengthening of measures in arms control and nuclear non-proliferation but only in very general terms.”
“No concrete or specific commitments are made. The US security establishment sees itself as needing to defend America’s global and reginal position, and to do this, it is prepared to pursue a nuclear policy that is deliberately ambiguous, even though such ambiguity raises the risk of miscalculation,” he added.
Michael Shannon, a political commentator and Newsmax columnist, for his part, noted in an interview with Sputnik that drawing parallels between the publication of the NDS and the Biden administration struggling with its failures on the domestic front ahead of the November 8 midterms is irrelevant. Shannon said that he doesn’t think that “the release of this particular report had anything to do with the election” because “they periodically issue these threat reports or strategic reports, and they come out fairly regularly.”
“And this election is going to be strictly domestic issue. International issues are going to have almost no relevance to the American voter. So I think that the release now is just coincidental with the election, and I don't think it will have any impact,” he pointed out.
The Newsmax columnist argued in this regard that US President Joe Biden’s current foreign policy is “torpedoing” his party and that the upcoming midterms will be “a domestic election” , which is “going to be on crime, inflation, gas prices” as well as on “a radical, insane gender theory and grooming children in schools.”
“And foreign policy is just not there. If the Biden administration is hoping that this foreign policy will, well, salvage their election or even help them a little bit, they are just dreaming,” Shannon claimed.
However, according to Timothy Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa, "given that the Democrats' electoral prospects seem poor for the coming midterms, the timing of this release makes it easy to wonder if the Biden administration is looking for ways to change the focus away from areas where they are struggling (e.g., inflation, high gas prices) to issues where they feel they are stronger or which energize their base voters. Thus far their efforts have been largely unsuccessful, so it's understandable to wonder if they are still attempting to do so."
Commenting on the fact that Washington has identified China as America's primary threat in its Nuclear Defense Strategy, Hagle suggested that it "could be explained based on" China's "economic power and its ability to control certain valuable resources, in particular certain minerals and metals that are key to the manufacture of microchips and the like."
The comments came after the US Department of Defense released its first NDS in almost five years, combining it with two other documents typically issued separately, the NPR and the Missile Defense Review.
The NDS prioritizes the modernization of America's massive nuclear arsenal while blaming President Biden’s failure to live up to his pledge to reduce nuclear weapons on Russia and China. The document also characterizes Moscow as an acute and more immediate threat to US interests and values than Beijing, which is painted as a "pacing challenge."