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weapons of mass destruction
US Asset Managers Have 'Significant Investments' in Nuclear Weapons and Cluster Bombs: Analysis
"Many investors, given a choice, would not want to profit from companies that manufacture weapons of mass destruction," said As You Sow's Andrew Behar.
Jul 18, 2023
Amidst what the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls "an exceedingly dangerous nuclear situation" facing humanity today, the largest U.S. mutual funds—which manage the retirement and other savings of tens of millions of Americans—are profiting from investments in nuclear weapons, cluster munitions, and other banned or controversial arms, an analysis by a leading shareholder advocacy group revealed Tuesday.
Measured by dollars invested, the top 25 U.S. asset managers "all earn a D grade or worse, with significant investments in arms manufacturers and major military contractors, including companies involved with nuclear weapons and controversial weapons like cluster munitions, anti-personnel landmines, incendiary weapons, and depleted uranium," Berkeley, California-based As You Sow said in its new report.
Some of the largest corporate 401(k)s like American Funds, John Hancock Funds, and Franklin Templeton Investments were among the most heavily invested in these armaments, while "fund managers that focus on sustainable investing have less exposure to military weapons, on average."
"Nearly every retirement plan has nuclear and other controversial weapons embedded in their plan."
Seven funds profiled in the analysis—Eventide Funds, Ecofin, New Alternatives, Vert Asset Management, Aspiration Funds ,Thrivent, and Kayne Anderson—held no investments in the controversial weapons.
"Many investors, given a choice, would not want to profit from companies that manufacture weapons of mass destruction," As You Sow CEO Andrew Behar said in a statement. "Yet nearly every retirement plan has nuclear and other controversial weapons embedded in their plan. Our new ratings empower investors with the tools to know what they own so they can invest their money in alignment with their values."
As You Sow's mutual fund ratings are part of the group's Weapons Free Funds investment tool, "built to help responsible investors prioritize peace and people over war and violence."
Nuclear weapons, landmines, and cluster munitions are all banned under international law. However, the United States is not a signatory to any of the bans, and none of the world's nine nuclear powers have signed the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Common Dreams reported last month that nuclear-armed nations spent $82.9 billion on their arsenals last year, with the United States accounting for more than half of the global total, according to the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Meanwhile, U.S. House Republicans last week blocked a bipartisan amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that would have banned the export of cluster munitions. This, as the Biden administration was giving final approval to transfer cluster bombs to Ukraine's military—which, like its Russian enemy, has used the weapons during the ongoing war with devastating effects.
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Years Behind Schedule, US Destroys Last Chemical Weapons Stockpile
"Honestly, I never thought this day would come," said the head of the citizens advisory commission overseeing the destruction.
Jul 07, 2023
The White House announced Friday that the United States has destroyed what remains of its once-massive military chemical weapons arsenal, while vowing to "prevent the stockpiling, production, and use" of the internationally banned weapons of mass destruction.
"For more than 30 years, the United States has worked tirelessly to eliminate our chemical weapons stockpile. Today, I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile—bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons," President Joe Biden said in a statement.
"Successive administrations have determined that these weapons should never again be developed or deployed," the president continued, "and this accomplishment not only makes good on our long-standing commitment under the Chemical Weapons Convention, it marks the first time an international body has verified destruction of an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction."
While the U.S. military no longer has a chemical stockpile, tear gas—a chemical weapon banned in war—remains an integral part of law enforcement crowd suppression arsenals.
"Today—as we mark this significant milestone—we must also renew our commitment to forging a future free from chemical weapons," Biden said. "I continue to encourage the remaining nations to join the Chemical Weapons Convention so that the global ban on chemical weapons can reach its fullest potential."
Under the treaty, the U.S. committed to destroying its chemical arsenal by 2007; that deadline was later extended to 2012.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed Friday that "all declared chemical weapons stockpiles" around the world have now been "verified as irreversibly destroyed."
"The end of the destruction of all declared chemical weapons stockpiles is an important milestone for the organization. It is a critical step towards achieving its mission to permanently eliminate all chemical weapons," OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias said in a statement.
"Yet, more challenges lie ahead of us, which require the international community's continued attention," Arias added. "Four countries have yet to join the convention. Abandoned and old chemical weapons still need to be recovered and destroyed."
Egypt, Israel, North Korea, and South Sudan are not party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997.
As The New York Timesreported Thursay:
The American stockpile, built up over generations, was shocking in its scale: Cluster bombs and landmines filled with nerve agent. Artillery shells that could blanket whole forests with a blistering mustard fog. Tanks full of poison that could be loaded on jets and sprayed on targets below.
They were a class of weapons deemed so inhumane that their use was condemned after World War I, but even so, the United States and other powers continued to develop and amass them. Some held deadlier versions of the chlorine and mustard agents made infamous in the trenches of the Western Front. Others held nerve agents developed later, like VX and Sarin, that are lethal even in tiny quantities.
American armed forces are not known to have used lethal chemical weapons in battle since 1918, though during the Vietnam War they used herbicides like Agent Orange that were harmful to humans.
The United States once also had a sprawling germ warfare and biological weapons program; those weapons were destroyed in the 1970s.
Even after the Cold War ended, the United States was drafting plans for the possible use of chemical weapons. In service of U.S. global hegemony, then-Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy Scooter Libby authored a 1992 strategy plan, "Defense Policy Guidance," that called for possible preemptive nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare against countries that potentially posed threats to American dominance—even if they did not have or use weapons of mass destruction.
"Honestly, I never thought this day would come," Irene Kornelly, who chairs the citizens' advisory commission that has overseen the destruction of U.S. chemical weapons at the Army's Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado for 30 years, told the Times. "The military didn't know if they could trust the people, and the people didn't know if they could trust the military."
As Kornelly spoke, the depot's manager blasted the rock band Europe's 1986 hit "The Final Countdown" and handed out red, white, and blue Bomb Pop popsicles.
"Most people today don't have a clue that this all happened—they never had to worry about it," Kornelly said. "And I think that's just as well."
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Scrapping Trident and Transitioning to a Nuclear-Free World
As the illicit trade in nuclear weapons escalates alongside the risk of geopolitical conflict, it’s high time governments decisively prioritized nuclear disarmament
Feb 27, 2016
As geopolitical tensions escalate in the Middle East and the world teeters on the brink of a new Cold War, it's clear that the only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear warfare is for governments to fulfill their long-held commitment to the "general and complete disarmament" of nuclear weapons - permanently. A bold and essential step towards this crucial goal is to decommission Trident, the UK's ineffective, unusable, and costly nuclear deterrent submarines. Renewing Trident would not only undermine international disarmament efforts for years to come, it will reinforce the hazardous belief that maintaining a functional nuclear arsenal is essential for any nation seeking to wield power on the world stage.
Needless to say, modern nuclear bombs are many times more destructive than those dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War and would result in a host of immeasurably devastating impacts on the natural world and human life if they were deployed today. The extent to which nuclear weapons currently proliferate around the globe is, therefore, alarming and underscores the need for radical action on this critical issue. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, nine countries (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) possess a total of 16,000 nuclear weapons, of which 4,300 are deployed with operational forces and 1,800 are "kept in a state of high operational alert" - which means they can be launched within a 5 to 15-minute timeframe if necessary.
However, these figures don't tell the full story. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, five other European nations host US nuclear weapons on their territory as part of a NATO agreement, and 23 additional countries rely on US nuclear capabilities for their national security. Furthermore, the spread of nuclear technology and the illicit trade in nuclear weapons means that any state can potentially develop or purchase nuclear-grade weapons, which confirms the widely held view that a number of other nations unofficially harbor nuclear warheads, and many more could do so in the years ahead.
Fading visions of nuclear disarmament
The abundance of nuclear weapons and related technology highlights the weakness of the international Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has only made limited progress on nuclear disarmament since its inception in 1968 despite near-universal membership. With high levels of nuclear stockpiles still in existence, there is also a very real risk of unintended but deadly consequences. According to a report by The Royal Institute of International Affairs, there have been 13 instances of nuclear bombs being 'accidently' deployed since 1962 by Russia, the US and other countries - mainly due to technical malfunctions or breakdowns in communication. As international disarmament efforts diminish, such risks are set to increase alongside the growing likelihood of targeted terrorist attacks on existing nuclear facilities.
It's clear that Trident, like every other nuclear weapons system, is a relic of a bygone age that simply cannot guarantee the safety of any nation at a time when global terrorism and climate change pose a far more urgent threat to national security than other states with nuclear weapons. As the columnist Simon Jenkins puts it, "All declared threats to Britain tend to come either from powers with no conceivable designs on conquering Britain or from forces immune to deterrence." Indeed, most countries of the world (including 25 NATO states) don't maintain their own nuclear stockpiles, and yet they have been just as successful in 'deterring' nuclear war as the UK.
Moreover, the International Court of Justice has ruled that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law, which means that their use would be illegal in virtually any situation. Given that it is close to unimaginable that a so-called world leader would ever deploy nuclear weapons (on ethical and legal grounds, as well as for fear of retaliatory consequences) their value as an effective deterrent is unjustifiable and deeply flawed. The farcical arguments employed to rationalize building and maintaining such weapon systems are amusingly summarised in a Yes, Prime Minister comedy sketch from 1986, which aired soon after Margret Thatcher first inaugurated the Trident missile system in the UK:
Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of eastern Europe.
Hacker: I don't want to obliterate the whole of eastern Europe.
Sir Humphrey: But it's a deterrent.
Hacker: It's a bluff. I probably wouldn't use it.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, but they don't know that you probably wouldn't.
Hacker: They probably do.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn't. But they can't certainly know.
Hacker: They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn't.
Sir Humphrey: Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that, although you probably wouldn't, there is no probability that you certainly would.
Redistributing vital public resources
Given that the nine nuclear-armed governments together spend an astounding $100bn a year on nuclear forces (mainly via private corporations), those who play a significant role in sustaining this appalling industry are also likely to be profiting handsomely from it. In the UK, for example, strong support for renewing Trident comes from the lucrative and influential defense industry as well as the many banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and asset managers that invest heavily in companies producing nuclear weapon systems. According to some calculations, 15 percent of members in the UK's House of Lords "have what can be deemed as 'vested interests' in either the corporations involved in the programme or the institutions that finance them".
In both moral and economic terms, spending such vast amounts of public money on producing these weapons of mass destruction is tantamount to theft as long as austerity-driven governments profess to lack the funding needed to safeguard basic human needs and ensure that all people have sufficient access to essential public services. While estimates for the cost of renewing Trident vary considerably, it is likely that the initial outlay will be in the region of PS30-40bn ($42-56bn), although this figure could rise to as much as PS167bn ($234bn) over the course of its lifetime.
Rather than wasting these vast sums on the inhumane machinery of warfare, some of it could be used to provide emergency assistance to desperate refugees and asylum seekers that the Tory government has shamefully neglected, or to shore up overseas aid budgets that are being syphoned away to cover domestic refugee-related expenses. As the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) calculate, if PS100bn ($140bn) from the Trident budget was spent bolstering vital public services instead, it would be enough to "fully fund A&E services for 40 years, employ 150,000 new nurses, build 1.5 million affordable homes, build 30,000 new primary schools, or cover tuition fees for 4 million students."
In light of the pressing need to decommission nuclear stockpiles and redistribute public resources in a way that truly serves the (global) common good, the upcoming vote in the UK Parliament on renewing Trident presents an important opportunity for campaigners and concerned citizens to raise our voice for a just and peaceful future. Many thousands of protesters are expected to unite on the streets of London this Saturday 27th February in a joint demand to end the UK's Trident program and share public resources more equitably. As CND point out in their scrap trident campaign, it's high time the UK government complies with its obligation under international law to eliminate our nuclear arsenal: "Bydoing so we would send a message to the world that spending for peace and development and meeting people's real needs is our priority, not spending on weapons of mass destruction."
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