Monday, May 24, 2010

An Arsenal We Can All Live With


The Pentagon has now told the public, for the first time, precisely how many nuclear weapons the United States has in its arsenal: 5,113. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the Senate to advocate approval for a "New Start" treaty. The treaty's ceiling of 1550 warheads deployed on 700 missiles and warheads will leave the United States with fewer warheads since John F. Kennedy was president. Yet, many people believe the United States can reduce their warheads even more. Maxwell Air Force Base calculated that America could reduce it's nuclear warheads to 311, without sacrificing security. 311 nuclear warheads would provide 1900 megatons of explosive power. Considering America has no real threats since the Soviet Union, limiting their nuclear warheads sounds logical.
America needs a nuclear arsenal. But they certainly don’t need one that is as big, expensive and unnecessarily threatening to much of the world as the one they have now.

I believe that the idea Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton proposed are good, however, they are not reducing the amount of nuclear warheads enough. I agree with what the Maxwell Air Force Base has to say. If America can reduce the amount of warheads without jeopardizing the nations security, what is there to lose? Why can't the American government remove something that is costing billions of dollars when it is of no use to Ameria? Personally, I believe it is because it represents their power. The more nuclear warheads America has, the more powerful they feel. But they must realize that having so many nuclear warheads is useless. If they only need 311 to maintain their security and power, why keep 1550? It seems that their insecurity for power is causing them to waste money and time on something that can now be considered useless.

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