The Cold War Is Over, Let’s Act Like It!
Win Without War
(April 26, 2021) — One of the most tragic lessons that we have learned over the last year is that our country is not prepared for the real threats to our collective safety and security. As funding for public and global health has plunged, the spending on expensive and ineffective weapons and defense programs continues to grow every year.This has sapped the resources needed for social and health programs that are meant to keep Americans safe from disease, hunger, and deprivation and this unacceptable.
In the midst of hundreds of thousands of deaths, we must refocus our spending and priorities. We can no longer sustain a Pentagon budget that was designed to fight a Cold War that is long over. Unfortunately, the military contractors and their enablers in Congress are pushing for a new Cold War with China and still want the billions of dollars funneled to them for dangerous and unnecessary nuclear weapons programs. This must stop.
But there is some hope. Senator Ed Markey and Representative Ro Khanna are looking to the future and finding new ways to reprioritize our budget to reflect the world we live in now. They have introduced bills in both the House and Senate to shift $1 billion from building new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to fund research for the development of a universal COVID-19 vaccine and they need our help to make it happen.
Let’s be honest. Nuclear weapons never made us safe. For decades the world has lived under the terror that an uncontrollable nuclear conflict could start any minute. ICBMs in particular are especially destabilizing, but that did not stop the Trump administration from pushing through a new nuclear missile program known as the ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD). This program would cost $264 billion over its lifetime and defense contractor Northrup Grumman is hungry for our tax dollars.Asking for $1 billion of that money to be spent to protect us from COVID-19 is a drop in the bucket.
Congress will not change the way we spend our money if we don’t make them, so we must let them know that we stand behind Senator Markey and Representative Khanna. This isourmoney, it does not belong to Northrup Grumman, it does not belong to Members of Congress tied to defense companies, it belongs to us and should be spent to keep us safe.
68 years ago this month, as the Cold War began to consume our world, President Eisenhower warned us that every weapon we build is a theft from those who were hungry or in need. In the last year, we have seen this concretely as our neighbors and loved ones suffered from sickness, unemployment, and hunger. We have waited far too long to start righting this wrong. Let’s take this first small step to put us on the right path now.
THE LETTER
In the midst of hundreds of thousands of deaths, we must refocus our spending and our priorities. We can no longer sustain a Pentagon budget that was designed to fight a Cold War that is long over.
As millions suffer from the effects of COVID-19 worldwide it is clear that we must refocus our national security priorities to fund the programs that keep us safe. It is time to shift money away from dangerous and unnecessary nuclear weapons programs and towards programs that enhance and protect global health.
I urge you to cosponsor the Investing in Cures Before Missiles (ICBM) Act to transfer $1 billion of funding from new nuclear weapons to research for a universal COVID-19 vaccine.
