The world’s nine nuclear-armed states continue to modernize their nuclear weapons as the countries deepened their reliance on such deterrence in 2023, a Swedish think tank said today.
Wilfred Wan, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) weapons of mass destruction program, said: “We have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War.”
Earlier this month, Russia and its ally Belarus launched a second stage of drills intended to train their troops in tactical nuclear weapons, part of the Kremlin’s response to aggressive overtones from the members of the NATO military alliance.
In a separate report, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, said that the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of $91.4 billion on their arsenals in 2023.
The group said that figures show a $10.7 billion increase in global spending on nuclear weapons in 2023 compared to 2022, with the United States accounting for 80 percent of that increase.
The U.S. share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together.
ICAN policy and research coordinator Alicia Sanders-Zakre said: “There has been a notable upward trend in the amount of money devoted to developing these most inhumane and destructive weapons over the past five years.”
She said: “All this money is not improving global security, in fact, it’s threatening people wherever they live.”
SIPRI estimated that some 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles and nearly all belong to the U.S. or Russia.
SIPRI’s director Dan Smith described the upward trend of warheads as “extremely concerning.”
The U.S. and Russia together have almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons, SIPRI said.
In its SIPRI Yearbook 2024, the institute said that transparency regarding nuclear forces has declined in both countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and debates around nuclear-sharing arrangements have increased in importance.
Washington suspended its bilateral strategic stability dialogue with Russia, and last year Moscow announced that it was suspending its participation in the New Start nuclear treaty.
In Asia, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are all pursuing the capability to deploy multiple warheads on ballistic missiles, the institute said. The U.S., Russia, France, Britain, and China already have that capacity.
Morning Star is the socialist daily newspaper published in Great Britain. Morning Star es el diario socialista publicado en Gran Bretaña.
A man holds a sign calling for the U.S. military to stop sending aid to Israel during a rally calling for a ceasefire, Nov. 13, 2023, outside the office of Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa, in Philadelphia. | Jose F. Moreno / The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP
So many bombs, tank shells, bullets, drones, and warplanes have been shipped to Israel by the U.S. in the months since Oct. 7—and over the last several decades—that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government want to destroy Rafah and exterminate its Palestinian inhabitants, they could do so. They have more than enough armaments for the job.
Details are largely kept secret, but U.S. officials reported in March that more than 100 separate military sales have been made to Israel since the Hamas attacks. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a right-wing think tank in Washington, happily reported the U.S. has been sending so many weapons that the Pentagon “sometimes struggled to find sufficient cargo aircraft to deliver the systems.”
And as Israeli Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari has said, “The army has munitions for the missions it plans, and for the missions in Rafah, too—we have what we need.”
It’s tempting to conclude, therefore, that President Biden’s pause on deliveries of a few categories of arms, particularly the 2,000-lb. and 500-lb. bombs used to such devastating effect by the Israel Defense Forces in their blitzkrieg, doesn’t really make much difference.
From a purely practical and logistical standpoint, that is true. The Israeli military is in no danger of depleting its stockpiles of deadly instruments. (Nor are the U.S. defense contractors who’ve profited from this war in any danger of running out of cash.) Biden’s shift is too little, too late.
However, in another sense, the hold on shipments is a major development worthy of at least some celebration. This is the first time since Israel invaded Lebanon against U.S. wishes in 1982—over 40 years ago—that Washington has actually held back on giving the State of Israel whatever lethal arms it wants.
The applause for this dramatic change goes not to the White House, though, but to the mass movement across our country demanding a ceasefire. It is pressure from below which extracted this concession from a reluctant administration.
The ceasefire campaign is a movement of millions. At its forefront in this moment are the students who have occupied campuses from coast to coast to demand their institutions divest from the apartheid state.
Standing alongside them are major sections of organized labor, hundreds of thousands of “uncommitted” Democratic Primary voters, Arab Americans and other peoples of color, stalwart peace activists, and people of various faiths—including a great many Jewish Americans in groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow who have spearheaded countless direct-action protests.
In short, the movement is a cross-section of the U.S. working class and people. It is their demonstrations, resolutions, petitions, occupations, letters, calls, and ballots that forced Biden’s hand.
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar captured the essence of this turn of events, saying, “Finally, the needle has moved in a significant way…. Don’t ever let people tell you that your voices are meaningless and your actions are worthless.” Referencing the words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Omar affirmed, “The arc of what is possible is always within us to bend.”
Just a short time ago, the president would not even let the word “ceasefire” escape his lips. U.S. government employees were threatened with termination if they mentioned things like “de-escalation” or “war crimes.” And every United Nations resolution calling for an end to the genocide was vetoed by the U.S.
Now, the commander-in-chief has actually wavered, pausing shipments to U.S. imperialism’s primary Middle East client state. Biden’s hope that this will be enough to rein in his ally’s brutality may be misplaced, though.
Determined to carry on with their bloody war, Netanyahu and the fascists in his cabinet have snubbed the request to hold off on attacking Rafah, the southern Gaza city where 1.3 million Palestinians are shuddering in tents with little food or water, thanks to Israel’s aid blockade.
Undeterred, Netanyahu said, “We will fight with our fingernails!” Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir insultingly tweeted, “Hamas❤Biden,” while Bezalel Smotrich, finance minister and governor of the Occupied West Bank, falsely accused Biden of an “arms embargo.” If only that were true.
This weapons pause is a win, but the ceasefire movement cannot take it as a sign that our work is done. We must not let this be just another act of lip-service on the part of the administration.
The strategists who sit atop the Biden re-election campaign hope that halting a few categories of bombs will be enough to placate the ceasefire movement and tamp down protests. They don’t even realize that the ceasefire movement is the force which may actually help foil the Trump win they fear by forcing the White House to change its disastrous course on Gaza.
Finally, we must remember that the current pause affects a narrow range of weapons. Twenty-five F-35 warplanes are still on their way to Israel from the U.S. The $4.4 billion dollars’ worth of arms belonging to the U.S. military but stationed inside Israel are still accessible to the IDF. And Congress just approved $17 billion more in future aid.
As we take stock of our wins, the movement must now look forward and expand the ceasefire demand: Full arms embargo now.
Don’t let the pause be symbolic. We’ve only come this far because we didn’t let up. 35,000 have already been massacred in Gaza. There is no way to bring back the dead, but we can still act to save the living.
As with all opinion and news-analytical articles published by People’s World, the views represented here are those of the author.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People’s World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left. In addition to his work at People’s World, C.J. currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of ProudPolitics.
WASHINGTON—Splitting President Joe Biden’s bonus war budget bill into several pieces proved to be the winning formula to getting (most of) it passed in the House after months of trying to clear the package as a whole repeatedly hit a wall.
In a series of five separate votes over the weekend, the House approved a total of $95 billion in fresh military funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, along with new sanctions on Iran and steps toward banning social media app TikTok, a GOP pet cause.
The extra weapons money comes on top of the nearly $900-billion-dollar 2024 Pentagon budget, bringing total U.S. military spending for the year to nearly a trillion dollars.
The White House celebrated the new armaments spending extravaganza, with Biden saying the legislation “put our national security first.” But by pumping more cash into the combat zones of Ukraine and Gaza, the bills actually weaken security around the world, guarantee the prolongation of two deadly conflicts, and pad the profit margins of the country’s biggest weapons makers.
Biden’s bonus war budget
While all four parts of the bill passed by wide margins, the Ukraine and Israel components each met with notable opposition—by Republicans when it came to Ukraine and progressive Democrats on Israel.
Proud warriors: Israeli soldiers pose for a selfie amidst a backdrop of total destruction in the Gaza Strip, Feb. 19, 2024. | Tsafrir Abayov / AP
Shoehorning Israel’s war against the Palestinian people and the Ukraine-Russia war together in his October speech requesting the funds, Biden deployed a narrative that equated “terrorists like Hamas” with “tyrants like Putin.”
Biden hoped linking the two fights would make it easier to secure the money. Any background context to the two wars—75 years of Palestinian dispossession in the first case and a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 or an eastward-encroaching NATO military alliance in the second—was absent from his speech.
His focus was solely on protecting the State of Israel and shielding Ukraine from Russian aggression. No mention was made of the need to seek a ceasefire and negotiations for a lasting peace in either conflict.
Though the Senate eventually passed a package containing most of what Biden requested, the House balked, with Speaker Mike Johnson equivocating for months. After seeing his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy booted from his seat by the right-wing Freedom Caucus for working to pass a budget measure together with the Democrats, Johnson was reluctant to be seen as cooperating with the opposition.
Iran’s military strikes against Israel last week in retaliation for Netanyahu’s bombing of its embassy in Syria, however, appeared to have moved Johnson to action. Determined to rush more arms to Israel, he advanced the package as a chopped-up collection of bills, allowing him to pass all the pieces without risking his far-right allies sinking the whole thing.
Prolonging the war in the east
Democrats unanimously approved the $61 billion Ukraine bill, waving blue and yellow flags as they cast their votes. President Volodymyr Zelensky will now get a backlog of equipment he’s been demanding, including artillery shells, air defense missile systems, and deep-strike rockets capable of hitting far inside Russian territory.
A large chunk of the money—at least $23 billion—goes almost immediately to U.S. weapons corporations like Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. That portion of the funds will be spent “restocking” U.S. arsenals that have already been emptied out and sent to Ukraine.
This subsidy to arms companies was billed as a “smart investment” by Biden when he made the pitch in October. He argued that prolonged war was a job creator and good for the American economy.
“We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores…with new equipment…made in America,” Biden said at the time.
Reflecting the long bipartisan pro-NATO consensus in Washington, most so-called “mainstream” Republicans joined the Democrats in passing the Ukraine weapons bill.
Dissenting were 40 members of the MAGA faction, the House Freedom Caucus. Much of the liberal corporate media rushed to characterize their “no” votes as proof of the affinity for Vladimir Putin that they supposedly share with Donald Trump.
In truth, however, with a close election coming, the Freedom Caucus is more likely attempting to opportunistically take advantage of widespread anti-war sentiment in the country and the reluctance many American voters feel when it comes to spending billions on overseas wars.
Some 55% of Americans in one recent poll—including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans—oppose allocating money for more weapons in the Ukraine war. Nearly 80% fear the war will drag on for years if there are no serious moves toward a ceasefire and peace negotiations.
“The days are over of the old Republican Party that wants to fund foreign wars and murder people in foreign lands while they stab the American people in their face and refuse to protect Americans and fix our problems,” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene declared Saturday.
Her isolationist populism is crafted to appeal to voters weary of war, but it is never paired with a critique of U.S. imperialism generally or any analysis of the profiteers who benefit from war. Instead, she tries to manipulate anti-war Americans into supporting the far-right’s fascist agenda.
Going nuclear in Poland
Meanwhile, as the Freedom Caucus uses Ukraine as a political prop, behind the scenes, Trump is already laying the groundwork to also extend the Ukraine-Russia war if he recaptures the White House.
Trump did not oppose the Ukraine weapons bill; instead, he asked why Europe wasn’t spending more on the effort. He met with Poland’s far-right President Andrzej Duda in New York last week. Seeking to wring more money out of the U.S. and Europe, Duda has been constantly amping up the conflict between the West and Russia.
He has claimed, without proof, that there is a “high probability” of Russia attacking other countries in Europe and has pushed NATO alliance members to increase their war preparations. His government already spends more than 4% of its GDP on the military, most of that going toward the purchase of weapons from U.S. arms companies.
Duda announced Monday morning that he now wants Poland to host U.S. nuclear weapons aimed at Russia. He revealed that talks have been underway with Washington since 2022 to move U.S. nukes onto Polish territory and compared it to the stationing of Russian weapons in Belarus.
Russia warned that the risk of a “direct military clash” between it and Western nuclear powers is rising rapidly.
Subsidizing genocide
Right after voting to extend the Ukraine-Russia war, the U.S. House approved another tranche of weaponry for Israel, even as the IDF was raining down bombs on the al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in Gaza. A total of $26.38 billion of U.S. funds will pay for replenishing Israel’s bomb and missile stockpiles and buying new advanced weapons systems.
A skull is seen at a Palestinian cemetery in Khan Younis, Gaza, Jan. 27, 2024. The Israeli military dug out the graveyard and left remains exposed after claiming they discovered a tunnel underneath it. | Sam McNeil / AP
Republicans were almost unanimous in backing the Israel aid portion, while a strong contingent of 37 Democrats voted no. Ceasefire advocates like Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman were the leading opponents, but they were joined by senior Dems like Jamie Raskin and Maxine Waters, as well.
Following the vote, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and 19 other lawmakers issued a statement accusing the Biden administration of violating U.S. law by arming Israel.
“U.S. law demands that we withhold weapons to anyone who frustrates the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid, and President Biden’s own recent National Security Memorandum requires countries that use U.S.-provided weapons to adhere to U.S. and international law regarding the protection of civilians,” the statement said. “To date, Netanyahu has failed to comply. It’s time for President Biden to use our leverage to demand change.”
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said taxpayers should “not be funding unconditional military weapons to a conflict that has created a catastrophic humanitarian disaster.” The death toll from Israel’s war in Gaza has now passed 34,000, with countless more Palestinians believed to be buried under the rubble.
Profit blowout
When added to the $8.12 billion allocated for new missiles targeting China that will be placed in Taiwan, the set of war spending bills passed this weekend adds up to a profit blowout for the major U.S. weapons corporations.
While many media outlets characterized the package as “aid” for foreign governments, in reality, the bills are a subsidy for the bottom line of the arms makers. They will benefit in the form of either direct U.S. government purchases to refill bomb supplies given to the allies of U.S. imperialism or via weapons purchase vouchers given to other governments and paid for with U.S. taxpayer cash.
On the stock market for the last two years, shares of the biggest defense companies have easily beat the benchmark numbers for other major capitalist firms on indexes like the S&P 500. But with wars and the potential for future wars heating up, 2024 is turning out to be an even bigger bonanza than expected.
Demand for U.S. government purchases was already expected to be strong for the year thanks to what Eric Fanning, chief executive of the U.S. Aerospace Industries Association, called “Chinese aggression” and “Russian aggression.” But “support for allies in the Middle East”—i.e. Israel—now figures much larger in the profit forecasts than it did before Oct. 7.
The quickest and easiest moneymaking comes from ramping up production of already-existing weapons systems, like the 2000-lb. bombs Israel has used to slaughter Palestinians and the rockets Ukraine uses in its fight against Russia.
Industry analysts interviewed by Reuters confirmed it: Stronger demand for these systems “will quickly flow to the corporate bottom line.”
The final steps required to get the money flowing into the arms companies’ bank accounts are approval of the new bills by the U.S. Senate and the signature of Biden. He promised to put pen to paper as soon as the laws arrive on his desk.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People’s World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left. In addition to his work at People’s World, C.J. currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of ProudPolitics.
As part of his $105-billion-dollar ’emergency’ war request, President Joe Biden has asked for a legal loophole that would give him the ability to secretly give Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s government billions in grants for weapons purchases. Essentially a voucher to be redeemed with U.S. weapons corporations, the grant amounts to a direct subsidy of the profits of Wall Street’s biggest war companies. Here, Netanyahu and Biden shake hands at a meeting in New York in September. | AP
That’s what Josh Paul, the recently-resigned director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department, had to say about the revelation that the Biden administration is seeking a special legal loophole allowing it to transfer billions in weapons and cash to the right-wing Israeli government without telling Congress or the American people.
Found on page 43 of the $105-billion-dollar “emergency” weapons funding package the White House sent to Congress, buried in legislative legalese, is a provision that the president be given blanket authorization to approve billions in “grants”—not loans—for Israel to spend on “advanced weapons systems” and other “defense articles.”
The money would be part of a scheme called the “Foreign Military Financing” program, or FMF. Under FMF, foreign countries are allocated blocks of money by the U.S. government that they can use to buy weapons and services from U.S. defense contractors.
Functioning like vouchers that can be redeemed with companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and others, these grants essentially pad the profits of U.S. weapons-makers.
The U.S. providing Israel with arms and free money is nothing new, but Biden is arguing that he should be granted authority to hand out these weapons vouchers to Israel in complete secrecy, without having to tell Congress or let the public know anything about it.
In his Oct. 20 letter to Capitol Hill, Biden asks that “any congressional notification requirement applicable to funds made available under this heading for Israel” be waived “if a determination is made that extraordinary circumstances exist that impact the national security of the United States.” Under his guidelines, the president alone would be empowered to make that determination.
Paul, who quit his State Department job in protest against the government’s plans to fast-track weapons for Netanyahu, told In These Times that this move by Biden is unlike anything he’s ever experienced while working in Washington.
“A proposal in a legislative request to Congress to waive Congressional notification entirely for FMF-funded Foreign Military Sales or Direct Commercial Contracts is unprecedented in my experience,” he said. “Frankly, [it’s] an insult to Congressional oversight prerogatives.”
Under normal circumstances, even if Congress has already approved an FMF request, any time there is a new sale tallied on a foreign country’s grant account, the executive branch is required to notify the legislative branch.
This triggers the publication of the sale in the Federal Register and prompts the Defense Security Cooperation Agency to issue a press release with all the details of who bought what from whom and for how much.
Journalists, arms control groups, international agencies, taxpayer watchdog groups, think tanks, research institutes, peace organizations, and others rely on these publications and statements to monitor weapons sales and track the profits of the major arms dealers.
If President Biden gets his way, no one would ever know when a fresh weapons shipment from the FMF program is on its way to the Israeli military.
His legal loophole would shroud up to $3.5 billion in arms sales in total secrecy, erasing transparency when it comes to the financial details of how his administration is enabling Netanyahu’s war in Gaza.
The measure extends the president’s grant-making power through September 2025, or beyond, if Israel hasn’t used all the voucher money by then and chooses to set some aside for later.
Though Congressional Republicans split off Biden’s allocation of $60 billion+ for Ukraine from his appeal last week, they did pass a separate $14.3 billion budget for Israel—including the secrecy loophole and their own pet cause of cutting IRS funds.
The White House says the “emergency” nature of Israel’s campaign to “re-establish territorial security and deterrence” requires speed in carrying out arms sales and justifies keeping them out of the public eye.
Paul says that is nonsense.
The law already gives the president authority to unilaterally approve weapons sales in an “emergency,” but it requires that a justification for the decision be sent to Congress. Biden’s loophole “doesn’t actually reduce the time, it just reduces the oversight,” Paul says. “It removes that mechanism for Congress to actually understand what is being transferred at the time it is being transferred.”
Former President Donald Trump invoked an “emergency” in May 2019 when he approved $8.1 billion in weapons sales for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan. Democrats in Congress complained at the time that Trump’s action, though legal, was a threat to democracy.
“President Trump is only using this loophole because he knows Congress would disapprove of this sale,” Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said then. “This sets an incredibly dangerous precedent that future presidents can use to sell weapons without a check from Congress.”
The cemeteries can’t keep up: Palestinians bury the bodies of relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza. | Hatem Moussa / AP
That future president turns out to be Joe Biden, but he’s taking things a step further than Trump did by seeking to bypass even notifying Congress of his intentions, let alone seek its approval.
Murphy sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is planning to put forward a bill that includes everything Biden asked for: money for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan—and the secrecy loophole. The senator has not yet commented on whether he still believes giving presidents blanket power to hand foreign governments money for weapons is a threat to U.S. democracy.
Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the U.S. government provided Israel with at least $317.9 billion dollars in economic and military assistance between 1951 and 2022.
Since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7th—just over one month ago—the U.S. Defense Department has rushed delivery of Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM)-upgraded “smart” bombs, 250-pound guided missiles, thousands of 155mm artillery shells from U.S. stockpiles, and nearly one million rounds of ammunition.
Illustrating the scale of Biden’s $3.5 billion in vouchers, the amount is the equivalent of giving Israel the money to purchase 116,000 new JDAM bombs from the Boeing corporation.
U.S. weapons makers are the world’s biggest arms dealers, accounting for nearly half of annual global sales and adding up to more than five times those of any other country.
Almost every bomb dropped and ammunition shell fired into Palestine by Israel is made in the United States. Biden declared at a recent White House event, “We’re going to make sure that Israel does not run out of these critical assets.”
With his secret weapons vouchers, the president appears determined to make good on that promise.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People’s World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left. In addition to his work at People’s World, C.J. currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of ProudPolitics.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF MAINE 