US stockpile of nuclear arms totally illegitimate: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Scott Bennett, a former US army officer from San Francisco, on the Pentagon’s proposal for updating the United States’ atomic weapons.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It is amazing how the so-called world powers, in this case the US, are openly calling for the modernization of their nuclear weaponry and arsenal instead of focusing on nuclear disarmament. Isn’t it?

Bennett: The amazing thing about the US arsenal and nuclear weapons is that they’re totally illegitimate and non-necessary in today’s day and age. You have a variety of asymmetric warfare opportunities that rely on more information operation, psychological warfare, public relations, civil affairs, things that are more of a non-kinetic interface.

And here you have the drama queens of the Pentagon and bureaucrats wearing uniform asking for new submarines and bombers and all sorts of nuclear devices that are totally unnecessary for today’s modern age.

And what’s most offensive is that the Pentagon, drama queens, all emphasize that point because that’s exactly what they are. They don’t have the fortitude of a true warrior, but these Pentagon bureaucrats and drama queens are telling the Congress what the Congress needs to do rather than in a democracy, the Congress is the ones, which tell the United States military what to do. And the Congress determines who is in uniform and who is not.

So, we have a situation where the United States is vastly falling into a police state environment destroying all semblance of democracy in Republican government and turning the American people into pawns for a military bureaucracy class, which is really more hated than loved around the world.

Press TV: This brings into focus the issues of proliferation, where the main issue at stake here essentially has been the nuclear proliferation, has it not? Now, there are states with nuclear weapons of course who neither disarm themselves such as the US nor let other states to become what is now known as nuclear-threshold states. How do you evaluate this policy of double standard?

Bennett: It’s simply the United States’ Pentagon jockeying for money and power. That’s all it is. It’s not about keeping the United States safe, because nuclear weapons and a nuclear arsenal really are more threatening and offensive to the rest of the world than they are intimidating.

And they aren’t necessary, because no other nuclear power in the world is going to use them in any offensive way. Not Russia, not China, not Iran, not Europe, but the United States is the only one that seems to be holding this as a Sword of Damocles over the heads of the world and that’s going to ostracize the United States much more quickly diplomatically and economically.

So, the blowback and the misfire is going to be great and again it comes down to bureaucrats in uniform at the Pentagon asking for bombers, for submarines, for the nuclear arsenal simply for resource development and to increase their forces in the conventional military sense.

When what we need is an unconventional, asymmetric sort of attitude and posture; so, we are not looking for direct confrontation but we approach things from Special Forces’ point of view, which is to aid people and countries in their development and their ability to build bridges rather than to burn them up and destroy them.

Press TV: Speaking of people, we get to the very delicate issue of peace. Now, nuclear states such as the US continually drum the beat of promoting peace throughout the world. That’s what they claim. Now, to what extent you think this new posturing, in terms of nuclear proliferation, is going to contribute to that world peace?

Barrett: Well, I think it’s going to have a negative effect, a blow-back effect where the United States should be focusing all of its peace efforts on, first and foremost, stopping the bombing and the destruction of Syria, of Iraq, of any of the Middle East countries and stopping the exodus of refugees into Europe.

That is the first step to peace as well as telling Turkey and the Saudi Arabians not to send 350,000 troops into Syria, not to provoke a Middle East war and not to rely on the United States to bail them out of that war.

And the rest of Europe and Russia, China and Iran need to solidify a coalition which says that in no uncertain terms, and takes it to the United Nations and makes that the policy of the world.

So, the United States is not telling the world what they’re policy is, the world is telling the United States what they will tolerate, what they will not.

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