Constituents Address Senator Feinstein’s Nuclear Policy Stance

Special to Environmentalists Against War

Dear [Name of constituent withheld]:

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about nuclear weapons. I appreciate the time you took to write, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

The United States ushered in the nuclear era, creating and using the first atomic bombs in 1945. Nuclear weapons now pose grave dangers to all nations, and as the pioneers of the nuclear age, the United States has a responsibility to guard against the potential harm that comes with this powerful technology.

I share your belief that the United States should be working to rid the world of nuclear weapons while reducing our own nuclear weapons stockpile. I have consistently supported nuclear arms control agreements, including the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which President Biden extended in January through 2026.

You can read my statement commending the President on this agreement with Russia here: https://sen.gov/feinstein/68P7

Additionally, I firmly believe the United States must declare a “no first-use policy.” That is why I am a proud cosponsor of a bill to “Restrict the First-Use Strike of Nuclear Weapons (S. 1148), which Senator Ed Markey (D- MA) introduced on April 15, 2021. This critical legislation would prohibit the President from conducting a first-use nuclear strike without an explicit declaration of war by Congress.

As tensions between the world’s nuclear powers increases, nuclear nonproliferation has become even more important. Today, nine nations — including North Korea — have nuclear weapons.

Some of them, like China, are building their nuclear arsenals without any constraints on the number or type of warheads and delivery vehicles they can produce. This is of great concern to me, and I look forward to working with President Biden and his Administration on the diplomatic pursuit of international nuclear arms control and nonproliferation agreements.

Once again, thank you for writing. Should you have any other questions or comments, please call my Washington, D.C., office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at feinstein.senate.gov. You can also follow me online at YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Best regards.
Sincerely yours, Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Alice S. Responds —
(Expletive.] She doesn’t acknowledge that Obama negotiated with the congress for a one trillion plus program over 30 years for new nuclear bombs, two new factories at Los Alamos and Kansas City, new planes, subs, missiles. Trump upped it and Biden upped it again.

I didn’t see Feinstein objecting to throwing all that money and commitments out the door for nuclear weapons, when we still have about 6,000 nuclear bombs with 1500 of them mounted on missiles, poised and ready to fire, when we only used 2 nuclear bombs iin WWII in Japan since 1945 or for 77 years! Why are we building new ones?!.

INTERESTING NOTE: China has only 350 nuclear warheads, and unlike the US and Russia, keeps the warheads separated from the missiles, so they can’t go off by accident rash action! Ah the wisdom of the East!!

There are about 14,000 nukes on the planet and 13,000 or so are in the US and Russia. The other seven countries have about 1,000 between them — China, UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea.

So it’s really up to the US and Russia. And we went from 70,000 to 14,000 over the years so we know how to disable and dismantle them under verified inspections and controls. It’s nothing short of lunacy to have so many even today. See the Veterans for Peace Nuclear Posture Review, for the whole story, including that the US keeps nuclear weapons in five NATO states, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Turkey, The Netherlands.

Indeed, the deal JFK made with Khruschev to prevent a nuclear holocaust over Cuba was to take our missiles out of Turkey! Well they’re back!! How do you think Russia feels about that?!

In the 1950s during the Red Scare, the US cartoonist Walt Kelly wrote in his Pogo comic strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” What has changed?

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

B. Davis Responds —
In politics I think it is many times easy to make “nice tries” so long as one does not get out of step with the leadership.

Who is not against stopping nuclear weapons and preventing nuclear wars???

So here is a woman with long experience who is now very old as I am and Biden is and Schumer is and McConnell is and Pelosi is.

Come to think of it what “leaders” in Congress and the executive branch aren’t old men and old women. Too old to fightback against much though Sanders tries at times.

We have a world organization that the USA help set up after WWII called the United Nations to stop future wars.

Were any of the top politicians at that time sincere or was it all a charade to help blind people across the world.

The politicians of today try to make us believe that there are no cops in the dangerous world we live in.

It is like being a child in a dangerous low-income neighborhood in America filled with gangs shooting at each other. The adults wring their hands about how things should be as they bury the dead with the little kids watching.

A little child stands at the gravesite after the minister gives the oration over another shot-to-death citizen. The child asks the Reverend “How come you don’t ask the police for help?” The Reverend says, “Oh child, they are all corrupt and can not help us.”

We switch back to Congress and in this whole situation of the Congressional Progressive Caucus trying to say we 30 members (or however many signed that good-but-not-good-enough letter) and then most of what I read about them retracting the letter, etc.

DID ANYONE FIND LEGISLATORS SAYING WE SHOULD CALL IN THE COPS, CALL IN THE UNITED NATIONS, TELL THEM WE AND THE OTHER NATIONS HAVE MADE A MESS OF THIS CRISIS AND WE NEED HELP BEFORE WE BLOW UP EVERYONE IN THE WORLD?

If you did find any calls for help, I missed them.

Did any of the legislators demand the USA use it Security Council vote to actually promote peace rather than voting NO to prevent proposed peace efforts to try to create peace via negotiations with all the players at the table.

If that has happened, I missed that also.

I think Biden should resign along with the Congressional leadership of both parties because it is for me, at this time, hard to see how we can do worse.

It seems all the leaders are just walking in circles patting each other on the backs, then walk in that circle again and again chanting oh we are doing the best job that can be done, oh it is so difficult being a leader, oh, none of you could ever do it better, oh my it looks like I will have to stay in office until I am one hundred because all these young people in their 70’s, 60’s, 50’s, 40’s and 30’s are just not ready for the heavy responsibilities of leadership, oh my we are weary but must carry on, etc.

I say bullshit. These youngins cannot do much worse than you old greasers. Pass the damn torch before it goes out!

N. Davies Responds —
The use of nuclear weapons in response to unspecified non-nuclear actions by other countries was authorized in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. Please note the language: “to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies and partners” and “include but are not limited to.”

This language removes any specific limitations to the circumstances in which the US will use nuclear weapons. Partners can be any country from South Africa to Peru to the Philippines, and the phrase “are not limited to” means exactly that:
The United States would only consider the employment of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies, and partners.
Extreme circumstances could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks. Significant non-nuclear strategic attacks include, but are not limited to, attacks on the US, allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on US or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.
The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.
Given the potential of significant non-nuclear strategic attacks, the United States reserves the right to make any adjustment in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of non-nuclear strategic attack technologies and US capabilities to counter that threat.