Biden signs Trump's trillion-dollar plan to create new nuclear weapons

For those who expect a significant change in national priorities as a result of the last administration's huge increase in defense spending - approximately $100 billion over four years - President Joe Biden's national defense budget for FY 2022 is a big disappointment.

President Joe Biden in an electric Ford F-150 at Ford's Dearborn development center in Michigan on May 18, 2021. © Nicholas Kamm / Associated Press

On Friday, the Biden administration presented its budget request for the 2022 financial year - with a whopping 752,9 billion dollars allocated for national defense, 715 billion of which is intended for the Pentagon, reports businessinsider.

The proposed funding actually increases defense spending by roughly $11 billion since the Trump era.

Congressman Mark Pokan and Congressman Barbara Lee called Biden's defense budget "a failure that does not reflect the real needs of this country."

The Pokan-Li joint statement, published last Friday, criticized Biden's proposal, stating that the "increase in defense spending" by itself "is 1,5 times the entire $8,7 billion budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." .

On the other hand, the defenders were just as frank in their criticism, arguing that Biden's defense budget does not take into account inflation, which means that in order to keep up, the Pentagon's expenses must be increased to the level of 3% to 5% annually.

"President Biden's defense budget request is grossly inadequate -- not enough to provide our service members with the resources, equipment and training they need," said Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jim Inhofe (D-Oklahoma) and his House counterpart. , a member of the House of Representatives, Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Ala), said in a statement.

"It is disingenuous to call this request an increase, because it does not even keep up with inflation - it is a reduction."

Opposing positions are likely to be a source of contention in the coming weeks as Congress clarifies who gets what.

The biggest disappointment for progressives is the apparent support of the Biden administration for the Trump administration's decision to spend heavily on the "modernization" of America's nuclear forces - a decision that could cost the country $1,5 trillion over the next 15 years and $634 billion over the next 10 years , according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Progressive congressmen describe this amount as completely unnecessary and extravagant spending.

For example, Biden's budget reflects the decision of the White House to double the amount that the country will spend on the development and deployment of ground-based strategic deterrents, from $1,4 billion to the proposed $2,6 billion.

An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile is launched during a test at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, February 5, 2020. © USAF / Senior Airman Clayton Weir

This money does not include the modernization of launcher sites and nuclear laboratories, which will cost tens of billions more.

The GBSD is designed to replace the 50-year-old Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.

Although the $2,6 billion figure may seem modest compared to the bulk of defense spending, the GBSD serves as a template for the nuclear modernization program (accounting for $27,7 billion in Biden's budget), while the US commits to maintaining the nuclear triad – the trilateral mix nuclear weapons, launched with the help of missiles, submarines and bombers.

In total, the modernization of Minuteman III can cost more than 264 billion dollars during the period of its development and deployment.

Additionally, in addition to funding the increasingly controversial GBSD, Biden's defense budget includes spending on a new Columbia-class submarine, further development and deployment of the B-21 bomber, and long-range weapons.

The pilot examines the training bases of intercontinental ballistic missiles at the base of the USAF F.E. Warren in Wyoming, July 22, 2012. © USAF / R.J. Oryez

In the weeks leading up to the release of the new budget, progressives in Congress and their anti-nuclear NGO allies have been gearing up to fight nuclear modernization, arguing that land-based nuclear missiles are the most destabilizing part of the US arsenal – and the part of the triad that is most prone to accidental start-up.

These advocates argue that spending on GBSD is unnecessary because the Minuteman III can be regularly upgraded over the next 10 years without accepting the budget targets proposed by the Trump administration.

This thinking is consistent with a number of options detailed in an intriguing study by the Congressional Budget Office, which would reduce the number of delivery systems and nuclear warheads within 10 years – saving tens of billions of dollars – but without any erosion in the nuclear deterrent.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is one of those who will probably lead the charge in the nuclear modernization program, especially given that she focused attention on it during the February Senate hearings on the nomination of Dr. Kathleen Hicks for the post of Deputy Secretary of Defense.

"I know you believe in a safe, reliable and secure nuclear deterrent, but we're going to spend $44,5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, which is more than the entire budget of the State Department and foreign operations accounts," Warren told Hicks. back in February.

"Will you undertake that your review will not just be a rubber stamp of our current nuclear strategy, but that you will actually examine and re-question the basic assumptions that underlie it?"

Hicks assured Warren that it would. "Quite right, Senator," she replied.

Now, after President Biden's apparent approval of a significant portion of the previous administration's nuclear modernization program, that assurance is highly questionable, despite Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's public testimony last week before a hearing of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee that Biden's team will conduct its own review in the coming months.

In all of this, there is a sense that both the White House and the Pentagon are trying to downplay how close the defense budget of the Biden administration is to the most recent defense budget proposed by Donald Trump.

The strategy involved delaying the release of the budget at the last minute until the end of the day on the Friday before Memorial Day ("not a coincidence," as one senior Pentagon civilian told Responsible Statecraft).

This was a purposeful soft-pedaling of the defense dollar amount compared to the administration's other priorities and heavy-handed public statements that emphasized Biden's commitment to "innovation," "advanced capabilities" and "advanced modern technologies" (such as microelectronics, artificial intelligence, hypersonics, machine learning , 5G networking).

Missile mine at the Vandenberg air force base, July 17, 2007. Katsper Pempel / Reuters

It was a purposeful, if transparent, sleight of hand, as if Biden's team wasn't actually committed to buying weapons, but rather took a "forward-looking" and "progressive stance," as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described it.

Few seem to have been fooled: “At a time when the most serious challenges to people's lives and livelihoods stem from threats like pandemics and climate change, maintaining Pentagon spending at more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars per hour is poor planning budget and bad security policy," said William Hartung from the Center for International Policy.

Hartung's criticism will echo in the coming weeks as Biden's defense budget becomes an increasingly important focus of a deeply divided Congress.

Although both the left and the right have something to attack, the apparent reluctance of the Biden administration to lobby for nuclear weapons is likely to be the most contentious issue for both parties.

It will be debated in Congress on the question of whether the United States is protected by buying, building and deploying more nuclear weapons - or whether it is increasingly at risk.