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nuclear war
Why Is the Media Normalizing Nuclear War and Its Effects on US Populations?
The meme-contour of recent articles seems to invite a casual shoulder shrug with respect to the dark road that we’re now heading down and to minimize the powder keg of conflict looming in the Middle East.
Jul 08, 2025
As a political journalist, I typically monitor about six or seven print publications and a somewhat absurd number of online ones. But I recently noticed a disturbing trend—a slew of articles with titles like “Apocalyptic map shows worst U.S. states to live in during nuclear war” or “Nuclear Fallout: Is Your State Safe?” Then there’s my personal favorite “10 U.S. States with the Best Odds of Surviving Nuclear Fallout and the Science Behind Their Safety.”
The second article informs us in a blithe and matter-of-fact tone that “recent geopolitical tensions have reignited concerns over nuclear safety across the United States. According to a detailed risk assessment featured on MSN, states along the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington) and East Coast (Florida, Maine, Tennessee, Alabama, Ohio) have lower immediate fallout risks compared to central states.” And then, in a tone that could well be used to describe the best air conditioners to buy this summer, we’re cautioned that: “Even states considered safer are not guaranteed refuge from longer-term global impacts such as nuclear winter and widespread humanitarian crises.” Well good to know. Now we can all plan our summer travel accordingly. (As a brief aside, it should be noted that the MSN risk assessment article referred to is no longer available and has been yanked from the website. Curious.)
Articles such as these nudge us toward the psychologically unhealthy space of accepting a situation that should never be accepted.
My first reaction upon seeing these articles was a kind of visceral astonishment. The tone was jarring and, frankly, appalling. Were these perhaps AI-generated pieces coming from a digital source that has no real idea of the emotional resonance required to discuss nuclear war? Quite possibly. Does this point to a design flaw in AI that will never really be eradicated? Also, quite possible. My second more measured reaction was that such articles might inadvertently expose flaws in the veneer of the rational calculus that underlies the basis for what we sometimes generously called modern “civilization.”
So, what’s behind this disturbing attempt on the part of various media outlets to normalize the prospect of nuclear war? For starters, articles like these speak to a deep cognitive dissonance around this topic that’s been evident in sociopolitical environment ever since the horror of Hiroshima. The meme-contour of these articles seems to invite a casual shoulder shrug with respect to the dark road that we’re now heading down and to minimize the powder keg of conflict looming in the Middle East. The matter-of-fact tonality about the possibility of nuclear Armageddon is deeply troubling. Articles such as these nudge us toward the psychologically unhealthy space of accepting a situation that should never be accepted.
Unpacking the Psychological Roots of Militarism
The Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing described our socially conditioned and sometimes blithe acceptance of war and militarism as a form of mass psychosis, noting that “insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” In a brilliant essay on this topic, clinical psychologist Frank MacHovec noted that “Wartime behavior deviates markedly from cross-cultural social norms and values. The irrationality and emotionality of war is a radical departure from accepted normal behavior... Wartime behavior of and by itself meets current diagnostic criteria for a severe mental disorder.”
MacHovec goes on to discuss war as a function of Freudian death instinct:
We award medals to and hail as heroes or martyrs those who kill more of the enemy. One nation’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist, even though it may be the same behavior… Victims are dehumanized into objects, and robot-like violence depersonalizes the aggressor in the process… Defense mechanisms of denial, externalization, projection, rationalization, and splitting block reality testing have the effect of reducing anxiety and protecting against stress. Violence then becomes part of the array of defense mechanisms. Emotion overrides reason and logic in public education and controlled news media that reinforce aggression.
Do Governments Persuade Us to Accept War as “Normal”?
As if our own unruly and erratic human impulses weren’t enough cause for concern, when it comes to the application of violence-as-solution, Western and other governments (often in a position of power as the result of war settlements and therefore having “something to defend”) spend a considerable amount of time and effort normalizing war in both popular culture and the political sphere. Here in the U.S., the CIA funds ceremonies and rituals in venues such as NFL games designed to promote acceptance of the so-called glories of war. Hollywood does its part with movies like Top Gun that position the violent extermination of enemies as noble or brave. In fairness to a broader perspective, we can and should posit that, as individuals, those who fight in wars are often in fact noble or brave in specific situations. Certainly, they have been persuaded to and are willing to risk their lives for a cause and this takes both courage and selflessness.
That said, these qualities of selflessness are often exploited to persuade us that that war itself is somehow an acceptable solution to periodic disagreements that arise between the governments of nations. Adding nuclear acceptance to the mix is when the notion of more severe psychological aberration comes in. Far from being “diplomacy by other means,” our best historians have shown us that wars often benefit economic elites in power. Even worse, modern warfare has shown a disturbing tendency to focus on harming civilian populations. History reveals that, here in the U.S., elites have at times funded both sides of a conflict or stood to gain from both supplying armaments and rebuilding in the aftermath. We see this in extremis in President Donald Trump’s bizarre plans to turn Gaza into a resort area.
Clearly, the corporate profit-driven machinery of the political establishment and military-industrial-complex can now steamroller over public opinion with cavalier impunity, aided and abetted by both political parties.
The cold hard fact is that many wars are fought for all the wrong reasons: territorial domination of economically important resources (such as oil in the case of Iran and Iraq); economic benefits associated with supply chains; or the mere continuation of empire. But when the possibility of nuclear war becomes either conveniently ignored, gamed, or normalized by any given administration including those of Presidents Trump or Joe Biden and with willing complicity from the mainstream media, then I suggest it crosses the line into the territory that Laing alludes to. It also suggests a potent reason why trust in government is at an all-time low.
Another angle on the psychology of this dynamic is offered by Dr. Kathie Malley-Morrison, a former professor of psychology at Boston University and a member of Massachusetts for Peace Action. In “No, I Can’t Help! Psychic Numbing and How to Confront It, ” she provides a valuable perspective on odd and even bizarre psychological responses to the nuclear war threat that involve either magical thinking around notions of “surviving” or garden-variety denial:
Warnings about the dangers inherent in the availability of nuclear weapons in Russia, the United States, its allies, and other nations can be heard right, left, and center across the political spectrum… Why, then, do we not hear of massive actions against the continued development and sales of nuclear weapons, and the threats by nuclear power countries to use them? One of the answers is psychic numbing—a psychological phenomenon that can affect both individuals and entire cultures in ways that allow atrocities—and existential threats—to grow and spread.
Malley-Morrison points out that psychic numbing is also called “compassion fade.” The article goes on to clarify further:
At the individual level, psychic numbing is a psychological process of desensitization to the pain and suffering of others, particularly as the number of people experiencing pain and suffering increases… Exposure to information about genocides or nuclear holocausts or other catastrophes involving more than a very few people may lead to an emotional shutdown; the very idea of such horrors can seem too painful to tolerate.
She then cites the work of Robert Jay Lifton, an American psychiatrist, while observing that “whole societies or cultures can also be subject to psychic numbing. Within militarized societies, numbing, desensitization, and a general sense of pseudo-inefficacy— the feeling that some problems are so beyond one’s control that one is helpless to solve them—may even be encouraged.”
War and unchecked militarism are unquestionably one of the greatest causes of human suffering. Is humanity now at an existential crossroads where we must simply reject it as an option and wake up to the folly of our own collective self-programming? Given the realities of large-scale polycrisis, a third world war with nuclear, AI, and autonomous weapons in the mix is the last thing humanity needs. Further, it seems abundantly clear that, as governments around the world falter in their efforts to effectively deal with the multi-headed hydra of polycrisis, many are once again falling back on a familiar pattern of state-sanctioned violence against other nations as a “solution” and a means to bolster the power of incumbency.
Sadly, even when large segments of the populace oppose militarism (as is clearly the case here in the U.S.) it has become abundantly clear that our own government will do whatever it pleases without regard to democratic input or sentiment. This might lead us to wonder whether a 2014 Princeton University study stating that true democracy in the U.S. is a thing of the past might not have been painfully accurate. Clearly, the corporate profit-driven machinery of the political establishment and military-industrial-complex can now steamroller over public opinion with cavalier impunity, aided and abetted by both political parties. And while a certain situational adaptability is likely one of the best qualities of the human species, paradoxically, it might also be one of the worse.
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Trump’s Iran Attack Was a Dangerous Showcase of Why Nuclear Apartheid Must End
Counterproductively, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran may hasten Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state.
Jun 29, 2025
Over many years, I have had the extraordinary privilege of working with Japanese and other atomic and hydrogen bomb survivors. These are people who have endured and transformed the worst imaginable physical and emotional traumas into the most influential force for nuclear weapons abolition. Their fundamental call is that “human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.”
Their courage, their call, and their steadfast advocacy of nuclear weapons abolition earned them the Nobel Peace Prize last December. In awarding the Hibakusha the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Committee sent the world a powerful message. With the possible exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world is closer to the danger of catastrophic nuclear war than it has ever been, and we must act for nuclear weapons abolition.
There are just over 12,000 nuclear weapons in the nine nuclear weapons state’s stockpiles, 93% in the U.S. and Russian arsenals. The average strategic, or hydrogen, bomb is 20 times more powerful than he Hiroshima A-bomb, and some have been 1,000 times the power of the two comparatively small A-bombs that destroyed those two cities, killing 200,000 people almost immediately, and hundreds of thousands more as a result of radiation diseases.
As with the 1953 CIA led coup that overthrew Iran’s democratic Mosaddeq government, the attack’s negative impacts will be long lasting.
As Daniel Ellsberg, who was the principal author of Presidents John F. Kennedy’s and Lyndon Johnson’s nuclear warfighting doctrines, testified, the U.S. has repeatedly threatened to initiate nuclear war during wars and international crises. Presidents have used them in the same way that an armed robber uses a gun when it points it at his victim’s head. Whether or not the trigger is pulled, the gun has been used. In my book Empire and the Bomb, I documented about 30 times that U.S. presidents have done this, most frequently to reinforce U.S. hegemony in the Middle East and Asia.
Each of the other nine nuclear weapons states has prepared and threatened to initiate nuclear war at least once. Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the U.S. nuclear playbook in his war in Ukraine.
I’ve been asked to say a little about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, one of the seminal treaties of the 20th century. Iran signed it, but following U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, the Iranian parliament has voted to stop cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and there is talk of leaving the treaty altogether. Israel refused to sign the treaty and lives outside its obligations.
In the 1960s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union recognized that the science creating nuclear weapons was no longer beyond the reach of many countries. They feared that as many as 40 countries could develop nuclear weapons by the end of the 20th century. The treaty they negotiated with the vast majority of the world’s nations rests on three pillars: Nonnuclear weapons states forswear becoming nuclear powers and have the right to develop and use nuclear power for peaceful purposes—a flaw in the treaty. Article VI of the treaty obligated the initial five nuclear powers to engage in good-faith negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons: creating a nuclear weapons-free world.
I have had the privilege of working with several Nobel Peace Prize recipients. Joseph Rotblat, the only senior scientist who resigned from the Manhattan Project because of his moral objections, was clear that because no nation will long tolerate an unequal balance of power—in this case terror—unless nuclear weapons are abolished, proliferation and the nuclear war that would followed are inevitable. Mohamed ElBaradei, who led the IAEA, decried the double standard of nuclear apartheid. Like Rotblat, he insisted that the only way forward was nuclear weapons abolition.
And on the question of double standards, our government and media have long and consciously turned blind eyes to the one nuclear weapons state in the Middle East: Israel. Few know that during the 1973 war, Golda Meir threatened to use Israel’s “Temple Weapons” to extort Henry Kissinger to open the floodgates of weapons and spare parts to turn the tide of the war.
Do not forget that the bombings were grossly unconstitutional and should be grounds for an impeachment. Only Congress has the legal right to declare war.
Counterproductively, Trump’s and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran may hasten Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state. This in turn would trigger nuclear weapons proliferation across the Middle East. We need to remember the fatwa stating that possession of nuclear weapons is contrary to Islam. But we should also acknowledge the Shiite tradition of continuing revelation—not unlike the Mormons here in the U.S. Enriching uranium to 60%, almost to weapons grade, was certainly not necessary for nuclear power generation.
But diplomacy, not war, was and remains the way.
As some initially feared, the Iranian government apparently moved some of its fissile materials from Natanz and Fordow before the attacks. And contrary to President Trump’s claims that he obliterated Iran’s nuclear project, and pathetically that the bombing was equivalent to the Hiroshima A-bombing, the Pentagon reports that they do not know how much or where enriched uranium is now stored, if the fissile materials remain accessible should Iran now opt to develop a nuclear arsenal, or what if any radioactive fallout has occurred. And with Iran’s foreign minister traveling to Moscow, the multi-dimensional Iranian-Russian-Chinese-North Korean alignment may have been strengthened by the U.S. attack and lead to future nuclear collaboration between Teheran and Moscow.
The attacks will spur nuclear weapons proliferation. Knowledge about how to build a nuclear weapon has not been eliminated, and the attacks will likely redouble Iranian will to build a nuclear weapon, at the very least to defend its independence. Other nations will take the lesson that their sovereignty and independence require having a retaliatory nuclear arsenal, as was the case in North Korea.
As with the 1953 CIA led coup that overthrew Iran’s democratic Mosaddeq government, the attack’s negative impacts will be long lasting. Coming in the tradition of that coup, of U.S. support for Iraq in its calamitous 1980s war to overthrow the Iranian government, and Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement, the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure came a day before scheduled negotiations. This reinforces the lesson that the U.S. cannot be trusted, and the loss of trust in the U.S. word and commitments will not be limited to Iran. It is being learned or relearned by the nations and people of the world, with negative consequences for the U.S. people for decades to come.
Do not forget that the bombings were grossly unconstitutional and should be grounds for an impeachment. Only Congress has the legal right to declare war.
The bombings were gross violations of international law. They undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the increasingly fragile post WWII United Nations charter order. A world in which there is no respect for law and diplomacy opens the way to international chaos, autocracies, wars, and devastating human suffering.
Even as we must rally to prevent renewed and widening war and press for nuclear disarmament and abolition, we must not be diverted from the urgent work of stopping Israel’s brutal genocide in Gaza, its attacks across the West Bank, for an Israeli-Iranian cease-fire, and for a just and sustainable Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Common security is the only path and foundation for Israeli, Palestinian, and Middle East peace and security.
No War with Iran!
Work for a Just, Peaceful, and Nuclear Weapons Free World!
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Trump’s Military Parade Is Only the Tip of the Pentagon Waste Iceberg
The cost of the parade, which was poorly attended, pales in comparison with the trillions of taxpayer dollars the U.S. military has squandered since the turn of the century.
Jun 20, 2025
Much has been made about the price tag of the military parade that took place on Saturday in Washington, D.C., commemorating the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary and, coincidentally, Donald Trump’s 79th birthday. Pegged at between $25 million and $45 million, the parade featuring 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles, and 50 aircraft has been roundly criticized as colossal waste of money.
But the cost of the parade, which was poorly attended, pales in comparison with the trillions of taxpayer dollars the U.S. military has squandered since the turn of the century.
Consider the astronomical cost of the U.S.-sponsored “global war on terror” launched after al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 assault on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people. That attack by a relative handful of terrorists triggered a wildly disproportionate response, primarily in Afghanistan, which was harboring al Qaeda, and Iraq, which had no ties to al Qaeda and no weapons of mass destruction. As of September 2021, the global war on terror cost U.S. taxpayers more than $8 trillion, including more than $2.2 trillion for veterans’ care over the next 30 years, according to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
If the Pentagon were a private corporation, gross mismanagement would have forced it into bankruptcy years ago.
(Then there’s the war on terror’s human cost. More than 7,000 U.S. service members and 8,000 contractors died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war zones, the Watson Institute calculated, along with more than 400,000 civilians, 680 journalists, nearly 900 humanitarian aid workers, and more than 190,000 Afghan, Iraqi, and other U.S. coalition soldiers.)
Certainly, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—both abject failures—predate even Trump’s first administration. But at the same time the current Trump administration is rushing to dismantle the federal workforce, slash critical safety net programs, and maintain massive tax breaks for corporations and the uber rich, its fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget plan proposes spending more than $1 trillion on the military for the first time, a 13% increase from the previous year.
No other country’s military outlay come close. In FY 2024, the U.S. military budget of $997 billion (including the cost of veterans services) was three times bigger than China’s estimated $314 billion and more than six times bigger than Russia’s estimated $149 billion, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. All told, SIPRI found, the U.S. military budget last year exceeded the next nine countries’ military outlays combined and singlehandedly accounted for nearly 40% of all military spending worldwide.
The Pentagon Wastes Our Money
If the Pentagon were a private corporation, gross mismanagement would have forced it into bankruptcy years ago. Dysfunctional internal controls, aided and abetted by years of lax congressional and administration oversight, have enabled it to waste billions of dollars annually, and the last 25 years are littered with a parade of overpriced, botched, and bungled projects.
In just the first decade of this century, the Pentagon was forced to cancel a dozen ill-conceived, ineffective weapons programs that cost taxpayers $46 billion in 2011 dollars, amounting to more than $65 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. They included the Future Combat Systems program, a fleet of networked high-tech vehicles that did not work; the Comanche helicopter, which—after 22 years in development—was never built; and the 40-ton Crusader artillery gun, which never even made it to the prototype stage.
Then there are programs the Pentagon continues to green-light with zero assurance they will ever perform as advertised. Exhibit A: The Pentagon has wasted more than $200 billion since the late 1990s on a ballistic missile defense system that has failed 43% of its 21 tests, despite the fact that operators knew approximately when and where a mock enemy missile would be launched, its expected trajectory, and what it would look like to sensors—not remotely akin to a real-world situation. A spawn of Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy, the system—based in Alaska and California—will never be able to defend the continental United States from a limited nuclear attack. Any country capable of launching a ballistic missile could easily foil the system with decoys and other countermeasures.
Trump recently announced he wants to spend $175 billion on another unworkable Star Wars offspring he dubbed Golden Dome. The Arms Control Association warns that Trump’s pipedream of defending the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, and advanced cruise missiles “will incentivize China and Russia to double down on building up their nuclear arsenals, it will cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars, and it will not work as intended.”
Another prime example of a dysfunctional weapon system is Army parade sponsor Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is 80% over budget. Now expected to cost more than $2 trillion over its lifespan, the program has the dubious distinction of being the Department of Defense’s most expensive of all time. As of last August, there were more than 1,000 F-35s in service around the world, but they continue to be plagued by serious defects, according to a highly classified Pentagon report obtained by the Project on Government Oversight late last year.
Last week, Defense One reported that the Air Force has quietly proposed to Congress halving its planned purchase of 48 F-35s in FY 2026 and increasing funding for the new F-47 fighter jet slated to be built by Boeing. Critics have questioned the necessity of yet another new fighter given the Air Force is already planning to buy at least 100 of Northrop Grumman’s next generation stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, at an estimated cost of $203 billion.
Besides the ill-fated F-35, other high-profile Pentagon lemons include:
- The Navy’s three Zumwalt destroyers, built at a total cost of $22 billion, which “suffered from poorly functioning weapons, stalling engines, and an underperformance in their stealth capabilities, among other shortcomings,” according to 2018 report by Military Watch Magazine;
- The $30 billion Lockheed Martin littoral combat ship, which the Navy began using in 2003 but started mothballing in 2019 because they constantly broke down; and
- Boeing’s problem-plagued $43 billion KC-46 aerial refueling tanker. The Air Force had to temporarily halt production of the tanker in 2020 due to serious technical problems, and in March it paused deliveries because cracks were found on two of them.
Making Us Less Safe with Costly New Nukes
Last, but certainly not least, the Pentagon is currently in the midst of spending $2 trillion over the next few decades on a new generation of nuclear weapons and delivery systems—the missiles, bombers, and submarines that make up the so-called nuclear triad.
More than $140 billion of that money is earmarked for a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Northrup Grumman’s Sentinel, to replace the 400 Minuteman III missiles currently deployed across the Great Plains states. Sentinel was originally expected to cost $77.7 billion, but the Pentagon said last year that a “reasonably modified” version of it would now cost $140.9 billion—81% more. The Air Force also will have to dig new silos for Sentinel, further complicating the program.
Meanwhile, the Air Force conducted yet another successful test of the Minuteman III on May 21, one of more than 300 it has held for the ICBM, which has been continuously upgraded. “This ICBM test launch underscores the strength of the nation’s nuclear deterrent and the readiness of the ICBM leg of the triad,” Global Strike commander Gen. Thomas Bussiere said in a statement. After a successful test in August 2020, the Air Force was even more emphatic, proclaiming that it “demonstrates that the United States’ nuclear deterrent is safe, secure, reliable, and effective to deter 21st century threats and reassure our allies.”
The United States has no legitimate security justification for maintaining the current size of its nuclear arsenal.
Then why does the Pentagon need to spend $140 billion on brand new ICBMs, especially since a growing number of experts say they are no longer necessary? A former defense secretary, two former generals, and nearly 700 scientists and engineers—including 21 Nobel laureates—argue that Americans would be safer if ICBMs were eliminated altogether. Bombers and submarines, they say, are enough to guarantee national security.
Historically, the United States has far outspent every other member of the nuclear club. Last year, it allocated $56.8 billion for nuclear weapons, more than half of the $100.2 billion spent worldwide, according to a report released last Friday by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). The second-largest spender, China, paid out $12.5 billion, less than a quarter of the U.S. outlay. The United Kingdom spent the third-largest amount, $10.4 billion, 10% of the total figure.
The United States has no legitimate security justification for maintaining the current size of its nuclear arsenal. Just one U.S. nuclear-armed submarine is capable of carrying warheads that together are nearly 10 times more powerful than all the bombs dropped during World War II, including the two atomic bombs. One full salvo from a single sub could wipe out two dozen cities—and the Navy has a fleet of 12 at sea, where they are virtually undetectable.
The money spent worldwide on nuclear weapons “is being wasted given the nuclear-armed states agree a nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought,” ICAN asserted. “It is also diverting resources from real human priorities. $100 billion could have been used to fund measures to address the threats posed to our security by climate change and the loss of animal and plant species, or to provide funding for improving essential public goods, such as healthcare, housing, and education.”
Of course, the same could be said for wasteful, non-nuclear military spending, which brings us back to Saturday’s Army parade, which gratefully did not include nuclear missiles, which are the purview of the Air Force and Navy. To be sure, spending as much as $45 million on the Army parade to stroke Donald Trump’s ego is no doubt an outrage. But even more outrageous is how much the United States spends on its military—conventional and nuclear—every year, siphoning off billions of dollars that could support critical domestic needs.
This column was originally posted on Money Trail, a new Substack site co-founded by Elliott Negin.Keep ReadingShow Less
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