new false start

New START's Big Winners: US Nuke Complex, Pentagon, and Contractors

by Darwin Bond-Graham

(17 Sept 2010)

Passage of New START in a 14-4 vote out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is already being hailed by Democrats and arms control NGOs as a substantial victory. A floor vote for ratification is now apparently set to occur after the elections.

While ratification is by no means guaranteed, there are several clear winners already: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet General, Alliant Techsystems, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons laboratories, Y-12 nuclear labs, the Pentagon, and Bechtel Corporation.

While much noise has been made about the New START treaty's cut to the nuclear weapons stockpile, the actual required reduction in arms may be as low as 8%, or 162 warheads out of a total of thousands. Furthermore, keep in mind too that this only affects deployed strategic warheads, not "tactical" weapons, and not weapons in the "reserve" stockpile.

So why the big deal? Why are both sides fighting like mad over a treaty that really requires virtually no change to the status quo US-Russia relationship and US nuclear stockpile?

co-opting zero

Co-opting the Anti-Nuclear Movement

by Darwin BondGraham

No medium of propaganda is as powerful and effective as film.  Think of the classics, the most notorious efforts to sway the public with the electrifying and collective passion of cinema: racial apartheid was justified in the US with Birth of a Nation.  The Soviets glorified their revolution with The Battleship Potemkin.  Then there was Triumph of the Will.

A typical propaganda film tugs at emotions and invokes fears.  It invokes dark threats to "the people," and it offers up solutions extolling state and corporate power.  Unlike a political documentary it will not criticize the state or corporations.  Instead it will celebrate great men as our leaders and saviors.  Distinct from a run-of-the-mill political documentary, a propaganda film butchers the complexity and contradictions that permeate politics and real life, presenting things in simplistic moral terms.  Functionally, propaganda is mobilized to secure popular support for a primary, often hidden agenda that is not apparent in the film's narrative.  Propaganda is a tool used by elites to secure the consent of the masses, channeling their anxieties.

Now hitting theaters is one of the most dangerous propaganda films produced in decades.  Countdown to Zero "traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs."  A promotional blurb on the film's web site claims that it "makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament, an issue more topical than ever with the Obama administration working to revive this goal today."

Before I go any further in explaining Countdown as a propaganda film I should note that not all propaganda need be the product of a secretive and manipulative council of elites behind some curtain.  Instead, the many contributors to Countdown and its promotional efforts have different motivations and intentions.  What makes this film a coherent piece of propaganda is its medium, style, and likely effects on the US political climate.  There are powerful actors who will use it for nefarious ends.

On its surface Countdown to Zero is about nuclear disarmament, but deeper down the film is making a very specific case that isn't about disarmament at all.  Its political function will prove to be quite different.  Countdown is joining a suite of political campaigns and other propagandistic efforts, the point of which is to build support for increased US spending on nuclear weapons, as well as a more belligerent foreign policy, based around Islamophobic depictions of "terrorists" and "rogue states."  Countdown is likely to be used by hawks to drum up support for military action against Iran, North Korea, and other states that would dare to transgress the current near-monopoly that a handful of states have on the bomb.