As President Obama prepares for a major address at the United Nations this week on nuclear weapons, he faces resistance from entrenched interests, in and outside government, to his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. Julian Borger of UK's The Guardian [2] talked at length to Joe Cirincione, who said that Obama was not just up against existing doctrine, but against a huge industry. "There is $54 billion spent [annually in the US] on nuclear weapons and weapons-related programmes. That's a lot of contracts and a lot of jobs, and right now it's a battle for budgets," Cirincione said. "The new weapons programmes are seen as a way of guaranteeing funding and jobs in the infrastructure. Obama is trying to convince [the weapons establishment] that he is going to look after them in ways other than building new weapons."
Links
[1] https://ploughshares.org/file/1135
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/20/pentagon-obama-nuclear-arms