On the NewsHour tonight there was a piece about the upgrading or 'modernization' of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, slated to cost on the order of one trillion dollars over the next several decades. There has been no discussion in the presidential campaign, at least so far as I'm aware, about the absurd levels of overkill embodied in the current arsenal, and it appears that the issue has not attracted much Congressional attention either. This despite the fact that a number of informed analysts have concluded that the U.S. nuclear triad as currently configured makes no strategic sense.
ETA: IMDb reminds me that Run Silent Run Deep (1958) is a WW2 movie; it involves submarines, but not nuclear ones. But as we say on the interwebs: whatever.
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In similar vein, Australia has just released a Defence White Paper which I'm reading. Looks more like a shopping list than a strategic review. Eyebrows are being raised at the expenditure of many billions on things of little conceivable utility. See John Quiggin's blog.
Interesting, thks.
If I had to do it over again, I think the politics of defense expenditure in various countries would have made a good research topic. Certainly wd have made me more 'marketable' in academia or the think-tank world than the topic I wrote about. (Of course I still might have ended up as what I am now, i.e., a failed academic; hard to say.)
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