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Geoff Gratwick of Bangor is a retired doctor and former state senator. Kathryn Bourgoin is a family physician in Orono. Both are members of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Nuclear weapons are in the headlines. They demand attention.
The U.S. is about to embark on an expensive and dangerous nuclear arms race. We in Maine can do something about it. We turn to U.S. Sen. Angus King.
King is chair of the U.S. Senate Strategic Arms Subcommittee. He is in a pivotal position to guide policy and answer questions in two areas. First, will we be safer by engaging in a nuclear arms race? And second, should the president have the sole authority to launch nuclear missiles?
Our nuclear defense is based on the concept of mutual assured destruction, which has guided U.S. policy for over 70 years. Its premise is that no one, neither an adversary nor even us, would be foolish enough to attack another country with nuclear weapons because everyone knows that they would be annihilated in return.
Since 1945, this threat of nuclear armageddon has essentially kept the peace. Currently there are more than 12,000 nuclear warheads in the world, about 3,800 available for deployment here in the U.S. Many are as much as 30 times more powerful than the bomb that annihilated Hiroshima. We have weapons on land-based missiles, submarines and long-range bombers. The likelihood that an adversary would be able to destroy 100 percent of these in a first strike is near zero. If 100 of these weapons were exploded in a “limited” nuclear war, estimates are that many millions of us would die quickly.
The U.S. is now in the process of upsetting this precarious balance of terror. In 2010, we started modernizing our nuclear arsenal and replacing some of its antiquated parts. But in August 2024 the Pentagon released a plan to increase the number of our weapons to keep up with Russia and China. Our action will not only risk violating the New START Treaty but will cost more than $1.5 trillion. That would mean spending $108,000 per day for 30 years. These estimates are almost certainly low; the Sentinel Missile modernization itself is already 81 percent over budget.
To what end? The mutual assured destruction doctrine will still deter potential adversaries because they will know that at least one of our missiles will reach its target. In addition, the control of nuclear arsenals may fail because of dangerous leaders, technical glitches, AI run amok, accidents, misunderstandings or the fog of conventional war. With all that can go wrong we cannot accept that our fate and that of our planet depend on building more bombs. This makes absolutely no sense.
What can Sen. King do? He must insist that there be public hearings on the Pentagon’s modernization plans. Congress must hear from a wide range of experts, not just those in the military-industrial complex, as it considers whether more bombs will make us safer.
In addition, it is vitally important that King hold a second set of hearings to examine whether the president should have the sole authority to order a nuclear attack.
There is nothing in current official policy that prevents the president from launching missiles even if we are not under attack. There is no one with higher authority than the president, no one able to countermand a presidential order to launch missiles because of a perceived threat.
In a recent series of articles in the New York Times, W.J. Hennigan reported that in 1969 President Richard Nixon was often drunk and depressed during the final days of his administration. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had to persuade Nixon not to attack North Korea after it downed a U.S. spy plane, Hennigan wrote.
Again, in 2017, President Donald Trump threatened military action against North Korea. Retired Air Force General Robert Kehler tried to assure Congress that internal checks were in place. He said he would not have proceeded to launch missiles even in the face of a direct presidential order. When asked what would happen next, he replied: “Well, as I say — I don’t know exactly. Fortunately, we’ve never — these are all hypothetical scenarios,” according to the New York Times series.
There will be no winners in a nuclear war, only losers. There is no medical response to the detonation of even one nuclear bomb, let alone hundreds or thousands. The decision to turn countries, including ours, into radioactive wastelands should not be left in the hands of one person.
We are members of the national grassroots organization Back from the Brink. We advocate for fundamental changes in U.S. nuclear policies. We turn to Sen. King. It is imperative that he and Congress deal openly with the threat that these weapons pose for us, our civilization, and our planet. He must resist the strident voices calling for a new arms race. And he must call for reevaluation of the president’s sole authority to launch U.S. nuclear missiles. This decision is too grave to be left in the hands of a single individual.
Sen. King can lead us away from the brink. He needs to hear from us all.