Dear members of the House Armed Services Committee,

I’m calling on you to reject President Biden’s proposal to fund new nuclear weapons and the “Pacific Deterrence Initiative”. 

You should reject the following proposed projects:

• 600 new underground Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with warheads 20 times more lethal than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
• Low-yield tactical nuclear weapons mounted on submarines
• Nuclear-tipped Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N)
• B-21 Stealth Bomber
• $5.1 billion Pacific Deterrence Initiative 

To continue funding the “nuclear modernization” program, estimated to cost nearly $2 trillion over the next decades, jeopardizes global security, undermines our obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and pushes us to the brink of nuclear war with China and Russia, two countries subject to wrath, sanctions and threats from the Biden administration and congressional hawks. If this possibility sounds far-fetched, let us point out that in a recent New York Times interview, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg shared classified documents revealing that the Pentagon seriously considered launching a first nuclear strike against China in 1958 (risking a potential retaliatory strike by the Soviet Union that would have targeted U.S. soil) over control of the Taiwan Strait.

The proposed Pacific Deterrence Initiative allocates 4.9 billion of our tax dollars to establish “joint force lethality” by paying weapons contractors to produce excessively costly and dangerous warships, planes, missiles, and munitions. These weapons of war are not only a misuse and waste of our tax dollars; they pollute our planet, including sacred regions that contain endangered species like the native limestone forests of Guam and the coral reefs of Okinawa, and escalate a potentially nuclear conflict through ongoing military brinkmanship exercises in the Western Pacific. We know that these military exercises create accidents and chemical spills that harm Indigenous Pacific Islander communities and U.S. soldiers alike.

Instead of investing our limited tax dollars into combating real existential threats to the United States like climate change, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative invests in polluting and expensive military equipment like the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. A single destroyer like this costs 2 Billion dollars, meaning that 40% of the entire PDI budget is going towards procuring one single ship that will contribute to climate change without protecting American lives.

As the U.S. military is finally drawing down forces in the Middle East after decades of brutal and violent warfare that often maimed and killed innocent civilians, we must not simply shift our focus to new forever wars against China but instead reduce Pentagon spending and aggressive U.S. military imperialism. Just as U.S.-led wars in the Middle East focused on controlling oil production for cheaper U.S. consumption, the saber-rattling against China often invokes its proximity to Taiwan, a leader in the semiconductor industry and major source of microchips for products consumed in the U.S. We must prioritize human and planetary survival and not allow the interests of war profiteering to lead us into extinction—to build true security for the United States and the rest of the world means accepting other nations’ right to development and prioritizing multilateralism, diplomacy, and cooperation with China to address the climate crisis.

Respectfully,