The Green New Deal is a progressive response to climate change, because it's a solution commensurate with the scale of the problem. It also has a coherent vision for its implementation that is equal parts optimistic and realistic. Meanwhile, the arms control community is largely trapped in damage-control mode, valiantly resisting President Trump's efforts to build dangerous new nuclear weapons and withdraw from critical nuclear agreements. Environmentalists are playing offense, while the nuclear community is playing defense.
Most progressives would argue that the answer is global zero -- a nuclear-free world. However, that is a long-term solution. Just as the Green New Deal does not immediately see a fossil-fuel-free world, a progressive nuclear policy cannot immediately see a nuclear-free one.
This does not mean, however, that progressives should be satisfied with occasional and incremental nuclear policy tweaks. By applying core principles of the Green New Deal -- international cooperation, reductions, transparency, and justice -- to nuclear weapons, progressives can begin to craft a plan that seeks to ambitiously and coherently restructure U.S. nuclear policy.
The Green New Deal aims to make the United States "the international leader on climate change." In similar fashion, a progressive nuclear policy should seek to place the United States at the forefront of global disarmament efforts -- acting as an international leader in nuclear transparency, diplomacy, and reductions.
President Trump has foolishly undone earlier diplomatic successes by killing off successful arms control treaties -- including the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned an entire missile class -- and threatening to terminate President Barack Obama's New START, the treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear arsenals. Nevertheless, a progressive nuclear policy should begin by emulating and expanding upon specific policies from not only the Obama era, but also from the Trump administration.
In a similar vein, the United States should immediately end its bellicose rhetoric toward Iran and attempt to pick up the shattered pieces of the Iran nuclear deal. These efforts might require targeted sanctions relief and economic inducements to convince participating countries to return to the table in good faith.
With regard to other nuclear powers -- particularly Russia and China -- the Trump administration has embraced great-power competition and gung-ho militaristic policies that will drag the world deeper into a renewed arms race. Instead, the United States should engage with Russia to reconstruct the INF Treaty, with both countries returning to compliance; immediately extend- and try to expand New START; pursue arrangements to reduce military tension, draw up a long-term plan to include China and other nuclear-armed states in the arms-control process; and finally ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
The Green New Deal suggests the U.S. technological expertise can be leveraged to help other countries achieve Green New Deals of their own.
"Since 2016, JP Morgan Chase --which received $25 billion in TARP funds -- poured $196 billion into coal, oil, gas projects around the world. Wells Fargo was given the same amount and has invested in new fossil fuel infrastructure to the tune of $153 billion over the same period." [1]
"Any bank that wants a check from the federal government, for example, should have to stop financing the companies wrecking the earth. Bailout recipients should be subject to a strict carbon audit that examines the lifetime emissions of projects they finance." "As of 2018, over ten [of the] largest insurers in the United States were holding just over $50 billion in fossil fuel investments. Just two of these companies disclosed that they considered climate change when making investment strategies."
"New procurement standards mandating zero-carbon fleets see unionized workers building tons of thousands of electric vehicles for agencies like the US postal services. That massive purchasing power will continue to swell; more plant and animal species will die off ; people will suffer hotter summers, colder winters, longer hours, worse benefits, less pay, and minorities will feel their pain compounded by the weight of marginalization." "That brings us to where we are today, with a veneer of economic prosperity, but few guarantees for working people in the future."
Footnote"
[1] Kate Aronoff, "A Green Bailout for the People," The Nation, November 25, 2019.
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