Chris Floyd – According to latest report from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the United States currently deploys some 2,080 nuclear warheads, ready to launch at a moment’s notice. It has 500 tactical nuclear weapons — for combat use, not strategic strikes — primed in bases across Europe. There are also 2,680 American warheads in storage. They can be brought out at short notice and added to the active arsenal. Including retired but still intact weapons, the United States possesses 7,100 nuclear warheads, any one of which could destroy a metropolis and kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in a single eye blink.

The United States is the only nation to have used such weapons. They were used on targets consisting almost entirely of civilian populations. In the years that followed, the country vastly expanded its nuclear arsenal, declaring that it could and would launch a “first strike” against any other nation, should the leaders in Washington decide that it was in the strategic interests of the country to do so.

This threat was unprecedented in all of world history. No nation had ever possessed the power — or expressed the intention — to totally annihilate another nation in a single act of military aggression. This threat — and the reality behind it — has been the ultimate foundation of American dominance of world affairs for 70 years. Continue reading →