"The

 

The Big, Quiet Issue Biden and Xi Are Avoiding

"But perhaps the policy area where Biden’s China policy is most Trumpian is on nukes. When it comes to the U.S. nuclear posture in East Asia — deploying and expanding America’s nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to Chinese hostilities — Biden is not only following Trump’s lead but in some ways taking an even more aggressive stance than his predecessor did. And that, in the view of many nuclear experts, is pushing the United States into a new nuclear arms race."

"This is in stark contrast to what Biden said he would do as president. For most of his long political career Biden had fought to de-emphasize nuclear weapons, de-escalate nuclear tensions and embrace arms control. As far back as 1990 when he was a U.S. senator, Biden declared that “the military rationale for the first use of nuclear weapons has disappeared.” In 2020, while campaigning for the presidency, Biden sought to dramatically narrow the circumstances under which nuclear weapons could be used. In a Foreign Affairs article, he wrote that, “the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring and, if necessary, retaliating against a nuclear attack” — rather than to counter any conventional attack — and he pledged he would “work to put that belief into practice” as president. Even now Biden has stuck to his guns rhetorically, publicly condemning any hint that nuclear weapons should ever be used in a conventional war. In remarks at a fundraiser last month Biden declared that even the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine would usher in “Armageddon” and said current tensions resembled the Cuban Missile Crisis."

"And yet in practical terms, the administration has dropped those earlier pledges of de-escalation and reaffirmed the use of nuclear deterrence in conventional war. The “sole purpose” of America’s nuclear arsenal has now been expanded to shore up conventional deterrence, and what’s known as “no first use” seems to be off the table. As Biden’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review concluded — echoing the last Nuclear Posture Review under Trump in 2018 — to make a pledge of “no first use” or a declaration of sole purpose at this time “would result in an unacceptable level of risk.” Indeed, Biden is expanding America’s “extended deterrence” nuclear posture into Asia, for example by pledging to deploy a nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea for the first time since the early 1980s. Last month, during military exercises, the U.S. landed a B-52 strategic bomber — a primary vehicle for nuclear bombs — in South Korea for the first time in three decades.

 "Why has Biden changed his approach? Several administration officials did not respond to a request for comment. But Biden’s new embrace of nuclear deterrence is clearly a response to dramatically changed circumstances. More than two years ago satellite photos stunned Washington’s national security community by revealing China’s dramatic — and highly secret — nuclear buildup, including as many as 300 new missile silos. Those revelations were followed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine the following year and his repeated threats to deploy nuclear weapons, as well as Putin’s announcement earlier this year that Russia would be suspending its participation in New START, the last remaining U.S.-Russia arms control pact."

"Indeed, even before these latest revelations, Biden’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review endorsed much of what the Trump administration had concluded four years before in its own NPR in 2018. Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association, said in a statement that the Biden administration merely “rubber stamps,” to a large extent, most of the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar program for modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including 400 new land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, a new fleet of nuclear-armed strategic submarines, a new strategic bomber (the B-21), a new air-launched cruise missile, a newly designed nuclear warhead (the W-93), and the refurbishment of other nuclear warhead types. To the alarm of some arms-control advocates, Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review also endorsed Trump’s initiative for the W76-2 lower-yield warhead on submarine-launched ballistic missiles."

people and the party change.

But the positions stay the same.

Why?"

$800 Billion over 10 years.

And people cant afford groceries.

What are we protecting exactly?

The right for defense contractors to make $?

And for the average Joe to be ripped off forever?

The paraphrased quote 

was from none other than

BTW.

And he has a point.

Why do the parties 

and the individuals change 

but not the policies?