Mortal Frienemies

"We've asked DOE what they're going to do with it, and we're waiting on a response."
--Shelly Wilson, federal facilities liaison for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control on the indeterminate status of weapons-grade plutonium that had been scheduled for more processing at the Department of Energy Savannah River Site in South Carolina

How is it possible that the US is adamant that other nations--like Iran--absolutely cannot have a nuclear bomb while we continue to stagger forward and backward in what was a major promise made 45 years ago to the people of planet Earth, that we would dismantle all nuclear weapons? Of course Iran shouldn't have The Bomb. Neither should Israel--Iran's favorite Most Hated Nation in the Neighborhood. As long as Israel has hundreds of them, Iran will aspire to have them too.

Meanwhile, the US is dazed and confused about its own nukes, its massive amounts of radioactive exploding poison for bombs, and its path forward. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize for a nice speech against nukes, a speech full of broken promises, and those promises will stay broken without citizen pressure to mend them and tend them and finally earn that positive peace we need so badly. Instead, we lurch along with the ultimate negative peace, the nuclear gun to the head of the rival, a gun that will kill most life on Earth if the trigger is ever pulled by intent or mistake.

We have a political ecosystem of war. We need a political ecosystem of peace.
 

What we have now is a series of bizarre co-dependent relationships of enemies dependent upon each other to justify abominable weapons and corrupt policies. We threaten global annihilation 24/7/365 and we plan to make it worse. We need Putin and his nukes to justify ours, just as Pakistan needs India with their nukes to justify theirs, and China needs Russia and possibly India and possibly the US to justify theirs. Fatal attractions. Lethal co-dependencies. Mortal frienemies.

 

Only one power will fix this. Civil society will rise up and end this insanely immoral activity or the "I'll wager the future of the human species as long as I make my riches" war profiteers will continue to twist the narratives until they are as broken as the promises. Up to us. Can we get to it?

References

Asberry, Derrek (2014). Health department: Waste, tank treatment a priority at SRS. http://m.aikenstandard.com/article/20140326/AIK0101/140329561