US nuclear arsenal poses threat to world peace: Academic
The US military’s nuclear arsenal and Washington’s policy in utilizing them against countries represents a far greater threat to international peace than Russia’s nuclear weapons, an American writer and retired professor says.
“If the presence of nuclear weapons, then the US certainly is a major threat to world peace,” said James Petras, a professor emeritus of sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York, and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada.
“I don’t think the mere fact that Russia has nuclear arms makes it a threat; I think the question is the politics behind and for which the nuclear weaponry has been constructed,” Petras told Press TV on Tuesday.
The US was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan near the end of World War 2.
Petras said the US and its allies “have fostered and promoted nuclear weapons aimed at Russia” for years and “the use of the Russian threat is simply a pretext to augment the US offensive nuclear capacity.”
The one-sided US policy in the Middle East in favor of Israel represents a danger to the region, he added. “I certainly think the offensive locations of nuclear weapons against Russia are also a real threat to peace in the world.”
Russia’s rising military power, including its nuclear arsenal, makes the country “the number one” existential threat to the United States, according to US Secretary of Air Force Deborah James.
Speaking to Reuters at the annual Reagan Defense Forum in California on Sunday, James accused Russia of conducting cyber attacks against the US and expressed deep concern about rising military confrontations between the two countries.
“Russia is the number one threat to the United States. We have a number of threats that we're dealing with, but Russia could be, because of the nuclear aspect, an existential threat to the United States,” James said.
Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the conference that Russia was determined to limit NATO and prevent the US from projecting power around the world.
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