Biden-Harris continued Trump’s nuclear buildup
Polygraph | Newsletter n°266 | 18 September 2024
* My latest article for Responsible Statecraft is about a horrifying trend in Gaza: Aid groups share their coordinates with Israeli authorities and then are attacked by the IDF at those same coordinates. I discuss 14 examples of this happening. Read more here.
*Please welcome and thank Joe R. for becoming Polygraph’s latest paid subscriber. Joe joins the esteemed list you see at the bottom of each newsletter. Add your name here:
Situation
Democrats once criticized Trump’s profligate spending on nuclear weapons but now applaud the Biden-Harris administration for spending even more.
According to the 2020 Democratic Party Platform, the US has a “moral responsibility and national security imperative” to eventually eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide. Democrats criticized Trump’s “reckless embrace of a new arms race” that’s made the world less safe. “Rather than reduce nuclear dangers, he's amplified them, and brought the world closer to catastrophe,” the platform read. Presenting a saner alternative, Democrats said “The Trump Administration’s proposal to build new nuclear weapons is unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible” and committed to “reducing our overreliance and excessive expenditure on nuclear weapons.”
But the Biden-Harris administration continued Trump’s nuclear buildup. Trump’s final budget, for fiscal year 2021, enacted $48 billion for US nuclear forces (in 2024 dollars). The amount Biden enacted for nukes in FY2024 was $57 billion. A few months ago, he requested an inconceivable $69 billion for nuclear weapons next year. If enacted, the Biden-Harris nuclear buildup will trump Trump’s — while the last administration increased the nuclear weapons budget by over $14 billion, this one is on track to increase it by about $20 billion.1
In the 2024 Democratic Party Platform, Democrats boast that “The [Biden-Harris] Administration is modernizing each leg of our nuclear triad, updating our command, control, and communication systems, and investing in our nuclear enterprise — to ensure that we can sustain and enhance if necessary capabilities and posture.” The platform says that in the next term, the Democratic administration “will continue to invest in upgrading…deterrence capabilities such as our submarine force and the nuclear triad.”
Global nuclear weapons spending last year was $7 billion higher in inflation-adjusted terms than it was in 2020. The US share of the global total increased from less than 52% to more than 56% during the same stretch. The Doomsday Clock — a device to warn the public about how close humanity is to destroying itself with its own technologies, namely, nuclear weapons — was 100 seconds to midnight in 2020. It’s now 90 seconds to midnight.
^Alt text for screen readers: Biden-Harris continued Trump’s nuclear buildup. This column chart shows U.S. spending on nuclear weapons in 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025. The values for each of those years, expressed in billions of dollars, are 34, 40, 48, 53, and 69. Fiscal year 2017 was an Obama budget, 2019 and 2021 were Trump budgets, 2023 was a Biden budget, and the $69 billion for 2025 is the amount Biden proposed for that fiscal year. The budgets in this chart are expressed in constant 2024 dollars. Data: Congressional Budget Office, Arms Control Assoc. More: stephensemler.com
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Alan F., Andrew R., Bart B., BeepBoop, Bill S., Byron D., Chris G., David S.,* David V.,* Francis M.,Frank R., Gary W., George C., [Podcast by George]Hans S., Irene B., James H., James N., Jcowens004, Jerry S., Joe R., John A., Joseph B., Kheng L., Linda B., Linda H., Lora L., Marie R., Matthew H.,* Megan., Meghan W., Nick B., Omar D.,* Peter M., Philip L., Rosemary K., Silversurfer7, Spookspice2, Springseep, Theresa A., Themadking724, Tim C., [Orca Cascadia]Tony L., Tony T. Viviane A.
* = founding member
-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)
This ~$20 billion difference between FY2021 and FY2025 is based on the projected inflation adjustment for next year’s budget, i.e., $69 billion in FY2025 dollars is estimated to be $68 billion in FY2024 dollars. I left the $69 billion figure in the chart so as to not confuse people about the amount reported in Biden’s latest budget request.