The United States, even eight decades after unleashing the atomic inferno upon humankind, continues to worship at the altar of nuclear arms. Under the Trump administration, there is a zealous commitment to expanding and modernizing this arsenal, a project that will devour nearly a trillion dollars in public funds. With approximately 3,700 warheads, half ready to spark annihilation at any moment, and dozens still lurking in European NATO bases, the U.S. ruling class sees its nuclear might as the very foundation of imperial “security” and international rule. Though some within the regime quibble over the price tag or the extent of imperial commitments—objecting not to the existence of these monstrous weapons, but only to who reaps the profits—there is a chilling consensus among the exploiters that the bomb must always hang overhead as a threat and a bludgeon.

How sickening it is to observe the feverish devotion of American imperialists to these weapons of genocide. The so-called experts, paid mouthpieces of monopoly capital such as those at the American Enterprise Institute, serve up arguments about “deterrence” and “protection,” all the while disguising the brutal truth: nuclear weapons are tools for enforcing global subjugation and threatening any nation who dares dream of sovereignty. These nuclear expenditures do not “protect the people” of America or any other land; they only protect the balance sheets of arms manufacturers and ensure that the imperialist U.S. state can continue to impose its bloody will on the world. The working masses in the United States, chained by rising national debt and suffering under eroding social safety nets, must watch helplessly as their wealth is poured into new death machines, while schools rot and hospitals close.

It is no surprise that bipartisan consensus persists among the bourgeois parties, both of which are in service to the millionaires who profit from war. There is no powerful movement against nuclearism because the U.S. press and ruling class smother all true opposition, while antifascist and anti-imperialist voices are crushed. The so-called “debates” in Congress are nothing but theater, distracting from the basic antagonism between the imperialists and the toiling peoples of the world.

What is needed is not faint-hearted calls for “arms control,” but a revolutionary struggle to abolish the criminal regime that sustains these weapons in the first place. The workers and oppressed peoples of the world must unite to overthrow the system of monopoly capital—the only true guarantee of peace. As comrade Mao Zedong taught us, “Imperialism is a paper tiger!” Its nuclear claws grow longer, but underneath, its foundation is rotten and its days are numbered. Let the specter of people’s war and socialist internationalism haunt the imperialists, for world history will not remember the ghouls who built the bomb, but the peoples who rose up and smashed it.