This appendix is intended to provide some background information to the questions asked in Peace Action Maine’s 2008 Peace Voter Guide. Here, we’ve defined some terms that might be unfamiliar and also offered some fun facts that help put some of these issues into perspective. So if you’ve never heard of the Arms Export Control Act before or are tickled to learn more about current U.S. defense spending, check out the entries below! To make things a bit easier, we’ve divided each listing by chapter, in the order it appears in the voter guide.
Human Rights and International Relations
Question #1: The Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) allows for those detained as part of the Global War on Terror to be tried by military commissions “for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes.” Moreover, the MCA allows defendants to be convicted for actions that were not illegal at the time of their completion and denies “unlawful enemy combatants” (a classification that does not exclude U.S. citizens) the right to invoke the writ of habeas corpus.
Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, however, states that no ex post facto law shall be passed (meaning a law that convicts those for an action that is now illegal, but was not illegal at the time of the act’s completion) and that the writ of habeas corpus (that is, the right to challenge detention) “shall not be suspended” except in cases of “rebellion or invasion”. To learn more about the Military Commissions Act (constitutional law can be a bit confusing), visit this website prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Question #6: Economic sanctions or embargoes are unique in that they intentionally target civilian populations. They differ from corporate divestment or from measures that attempt to deter suspected war criminals or human rights violators from accessing certain resources.
Question #7: Despite the popular notion that undocumented immigrants are “a drain on the system”, a National Research Council study found that the nation’s 34 million immigrants collectively pay more in taxes than they consume in public services and benefits. (“Effect of Immigration on Jobs, Wages Is Difficult for Economists to Nail Down”, The Washington Post, 4/15/2006)
Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power
Question #3: The US-India Nuclear Deal, finalized in August of 2007, is a bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation agreement which, among other things, lifts the U.S. moratorium on nuclear trade with India and pledges U.S. assistance to India’s civilian nuclear energy program.
Critics argue that the agreement lacks the sufficient safeguards to prevent New Delhi from continuing to produce nuclear weapons, and in fact, makes it easier for them to do so. They argue further that the US-India Nuclear Deal undermines America’s attempts to prevent states like Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons and potentially contributes to a nuclear arms race in Asia.
Question #4: The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program is a series of warheads designed to replace the current nuclear arsenal due to concerns about the aging of existing weapons. Opponents to the program argue that RRW uses the claim of warhead “unreliability” as an attempt to replace the entire US nuclear arsenal. Researching and developing a new generation of “reliable” nuclear weapons, they say, could undermine arms control and non-proliferation objectives by setting off a nuclear arms race.
In 2006, the JASON group, an elite scientific advisory group contracted by Congress, discounted the administration’s concerns about the “unreliability” of aging warheads, concluding that the plutonium in most nuclear weapons will remain “reliable” for the next 100 years at least.
Question #5: Complex Transformation is the administration’s plan to restructure and rebuild the Nuclear Weapons Complex, the network of facilities that develop and maintain the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. Complex Transformation would consolidate weapons-grade nuclear materials into fewer locations and reduce the Complex’s footprint.
A key element of the Complex Transformation plan is also the construction of a new nuclear weapons facility, known as the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Plant (CMRR). The CMRR would have the annual capacity to build 80 plutonium pits, or “triggers,” for new nuclear warheads and sharply increase U.S. capacity to produce new nuclear weapons - a capacity the U.S. has not had since 1989.
Question #6: The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository is a U.S. Department of Energy terminal storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other radioactive waste in Nye County, Nevada. However, legal challenges, concerns over how to transport nuclear waste to the facility and various political and funding pressures have all served to delay Yucca Mountain’s opening. Thus, the facility has still not begun accepting radioactive waste.
Arms Sales and Military Aid
Question #1: Cluster bombs are weapons that are designed to scatter smaller explosives (known as bomblets) over a large area of land. However, due to their high error rate, cluster bombs often do not explode upon impact and thus, become de fact landmines that endanger civilians years after a conflict has ended. Over the past forty years, 98% of cluster bomb casualties have been civilians. Currently, there is an active international movement that is working to ban the use of cluster bombs. In May 2008, over 100 governments met in Dublin, Ireland to finalize a global treaty that would ban cluster bombs. The United States, which currently produces, trades, uses and stockpiles cluster bombs, has chosen not to be a part of these negotiations. To learn more about the movement to ban cluster bombs visit our page on Maine’s Campaign to Ban Cluster Bombs and this page sponsored by the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Question #2: The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty is the international agreement that bans antipersonal landmines. As of 2007, 158 nations have signed on this treaty, however, the United States has refused to become a party to this Convention.
Question #3: Examples of governments who currently employ child soldiers and receive weapons and military aid from the United States include Burundi, Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda.
Question #6: Some governments who receive U.S. military aid and/or arms sales that are also classified as “undemocratic” by the U.S. State Department include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.
Question #7: The Arms Export Control Act requires that weapons received by foreign governments from the United States be used only for self-defense purposes. Moreover, the Act prohibits the United States from exporting weapons to governments that “contribute to an arms race, aid in the development of weapons of mass destruction, support international terrorism, increase the possibility of outbreak or escalation of conflict, or prejudice the development of bilateral or multilateral arms control or nonproliferation agreements or other arrangements”.
By exporting weapons to governments or countries engaged in violent conflicts, the United States risks violating the Arms Export Control Act by exporting weapons that a) are not being used strictly for self-defense and b) escalate the current violence further. At this time, Algeria, Angola, Burma, China, Colombia, Congo (Zaire), Georgia, India, Indonesia, Israel, the Ivory Coast, Laos, Moldova, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Iraq, Uzbekistan and Yemen are all involved in global conflict(s) or civil wars.
Militarism and the War Economy
Question #2: Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act mandates that secondary schools must grant military recruiters access to their students’ personal contact information in order to qualify for federal funding.
The Act does grant students and parents the right to “opt-out” of this provision and prohibit a school from releasing their private information to military recruiters without prior written consent. However, most parents and students still remain completely unaware that they have even “opted-in” - that is, that their school is currently sharing their home address and telephone number with military recruiters without their permission.
Question #5: Curious about U.S. defense spending? The discretionary budget request for the 2009 Fiscal Year includes $540.9 billions for the Department of Defense, an estimated $70 billion for the “Global War on Terror”. The Department of Education, on the other hand, was allotted $61.9 billion of 2009’s discretionary budget.
Without accounting for any funding of the current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “National Defense” category of the federal budget for FY’09 represents 54% of all discretionary spending, whereas the “Education” category represents 6.2% of all discretionary spending.
To learn more about our country’s military budget, visit The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
