(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in the Gatestone Institute. Democratic Socialists of America: The Secret Stooges)

The country is debating whether the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the new face of the Democrat Party. There are two impediments, however, to accurately discussing what the DSA is all about.

The first is that Americans are learning about DSA through the lens of the dominant media — what Rush Limbaugh often called “the drive-by media.” Largely missing is a balanced media source despite the almost universal use of the term “mainstream media” to describe the current collection of highly partisan and slanted journalists from whom most Americans get their news. While “mainstream” implies balanced and informative, most of the dominant media of today are neither.

The second impediment is an assumption that advocates of the DSA are simply against a “capitalist” system they associate with greed, and instead favor of what they consider a benign, compassionate “socialist” economy where stuff is largely free. Who doesn’t like free stuff? Capitalism, however, is not the villain. Without capital (funding), there would be no economy, free or state-run. The alternative is to go back to a barter system: I’ll paint your apartment, you give me wood for heating my house.

The issue, therefore, is not between capitalism and socialism. It is between free enterprise and economic liberty on the one hand and a state-run, often totalitarian, market on the other.

Capitalism is not synonymous with free enterprise or economic liberty. The 1776 economic manifesto The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith never used the word. It was Karl Marx who used “capitalism” as a highly pejorative description of the economies of the affluent West. North Korea and Cuba also use capital. Both are, in a way, state capitalisms: the state has all the money; the citizens are the oppressed serfs. The state provides for them, to an extent, but is careful to do so as stingily as possible.

The socialist or communist state’s first concern will not be delivering services; it will be cutting costs. As the money that comes in becomes scarcer — who is making money, the state? The first casualty invariably ends up being quality. Yes, there is free healthcare — if you can wait months for an operation, and if you qualify for it under the state’s cost-cutting rationing. Are you too old or too sick, or too medically compromised in some other way, and is someone younger and healthier more worthy of receiving the care than you?

Yes, you receive free housing, but who will guarantee that there will be sufficient heat in the winter, clean running water, that the garbage will be collected, that there will be no vermin, or that the elevator will work.

Under communism, land belongs only to the state. The price is immaterial. Ask the “kulaks,” peasant farmers in Ukraine whose land and grain were stolen by Stalin’s Soviet Union during the Holodomor in 1932-33, with the result that five million people in Ukraine starved to death.

The DSA candidates do not describe themselves as communists. What does that mean, however, when many of the DSA’s official policies are the essence of communism?:

• “[C]ollectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation…” (source)
• “[N]ationalize and socialize (through worker and community ownership and control) institutions of monetary policy, insurance, real estate, and finance…” (source)
• “Social housing must first be a redistribution of land from landowners to the landless… Social housing must expropriate property from capitalists and deliver it to the working class…” (source)

Members of the DSA, while not precisely following what communist enemies of the USA want to see happen in America, are nevertheless stooges — dupes — of our communist enemies — what during the Cold War were known as “useful idiots.” Walter Duranty of the New York Times wrote from the Soviet Union in the 1930s that “no actual starvation or deaths from starvation” in Ukraine and “there is no famine,” and he treated the Moscow Trials as justified and credible. Prior to this, shamefully, Duranty had won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, still unrevoked, for his reporting of fabrications from the Soviet Union.

Unlike the DSA, communist leaders from Lenin to Mao to Castro did not aspire to abolish the police, the military or the border patrol. If anything, these totalitarian rulers expanded the police, the prisons, and the military. They were more than happy to put millions in prison or the gulags while widening the powers of the police and security forces, whether the KGB, MININT or MMS. Certainly, they all markedly enlarged their military and security forces. How else could communist nations have killed some 120 million of their own people, just to secure and sustain power?

What is being overlooked at the moment is that the current communist rulers from Cuba to China would love the DSA to abolish the police and border patrol in America, empty the prisons, open the borders, and shut down oil and gas production. Those moves would thoroughly cripple the United States and significantly weaken its ability to defend itself — both internally and externally. No self-respecting communist government would ever adopt such crazy policies.

Supporters of the DSA appear to think that mob violence — such as was used in the summer of 2020 and currently characterizes the assault on immigration law enforcement — will enable them to seize control of the House of Representatives, then the Senate, then the presidency itself. If the Supreme Court is a barrier to the totalitarian plans of the DSA — whose plans would be so easy to implement if all that were needed was a simple majority vote in the House — the logical plan is to abolish the checks and balances of in the US constitution to fundamentally transform the US.

The DSA appears impatient with the world. Their utopia cannot wait. A thoughtful discussion of America’s future or reasonable analysis of the DSA’s objectives will not happen. Any such debate would leave these candidates in the ditch. They argue for abolishing the police on Monday, they deny they said it on Tuesday. No discussion of ramifications. The drive-by media remain complicit in the rise of the DSA by ignoring or covering for them.

What can we expect? Commentator Ryan Mauro notes that New York City’s DSA Mayor Zohran Mamdani and “chaos” funder George Soros both admire Slavoj Zizek, whose In Defence of Lost Causes calls for the return of the French Revolution’s guillotine and what he calls “emancipatory terror.” The goal, it seems, is the destruction of the West, to be replaced with Stalinist communism. Apart from their projected multiple trillions of dollars in new government spending that they cannot pay for, the DSA foreign policy agenda is also scary. The DSA seems to be pushing a global intifada, an embrace of Hamas terrorism, a wholesale rejection of Israel, and on top of all that, “defunding” the US Department of Defense.

The goals of the former Soviet Union are still being pursued — not by the KGB or the Red Army but by DSA hucksters who sadly are nothing but suckers promising a false utopia to be built on the ruins of America.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in the Gatestone Institute. Making Policy: Marxist Rainbows and Mob Shock Troops)

Ever since the time of Karl Marx, communists and their socialist brethren assumed that the envy of financial success would attract the proletariat to carry out a workers’ revolution in the rich countries of the West. It turned out, however, that even the poor would like to be rich.

In America, instead of locking up the wealthy or stealing their money, the poor tried to figure out how to get rich themselves.

Given America’s economic liberty, nearly every day, a typical American worker likely hears of some ordinary guy inventing some gizmo or figuring out how to sell millions of the same thing — and meanwhile getting wealthy.

So, how to lead a revolution if not with the workers rebelling against the rich, or in the language of today, the “oligarchs” and “billionaires”?

In 1984, Reverend Jessie Jackson created the “Rainbow Coalition.” The poor were of different races, so Jackson wanted all races to be included in this pursuit of prosperity. Years prior, the Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao Zedong had recommended that the communists in the USA exploit racial — not class or economic — identity to win elections. Mao might have reasoned that in the US, since as people of certain races were historically oppressed and slavery was exhibit #1, the white majority could be classed as “oppressors.” Add up everyone else, include women, gays, lesbians and bisexuals, and you easily win the “oppressed” majority sweepstakes.

Race-hustling is big business. The four Reverends — Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan — made it clear: No colonialists, imperialists or Zionists allowed, and that meant white people. Jackson himself led demonstrations highlighting that Western “white” civilization “had to go.” In short, only the “right” kinds of races, ethnicities, cultures and genders were allowed in the “Rainbow.”

Unfortunately, Sharpton, Joy Reid and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani today have fertile ground with which to spread racial division.

In 1965, twenty years before Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition,” the US markedly changed its immigration laws. One lead advocate was Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Key sponsors Emanuel Celler (D-NY) and Phil Hart (D-MI) vehemently argued — explicitly — that the legislation was not seeking to change the racial demography or ethnic makeup of the country or “America’s western European heritage.”

In fact, nevertheless, that was exactly what the 1965 bill was designed to do — and its sponsors knew it. The demography of America had to change. Following the new law, the very American constitutional system that was deemed “oppressive” was out.

Now, some 70 years later, the transformation is well underway. 56 million people, or 16% of the US population, are now foreign-born. Ten to twenty million more may be here illegally. Not coincidentally, the “Democratic Socialists of America” winning primaries and elections around the nation are almost entirely foreign-born immigrants or first-generation descendants of newcomers, some even originally illegal aliens.

Many also come from nations that are economic and political failures, often totalitarian, some Marxist. As Dave Portnoy, CEO of Barstool Sports, put it:

“How we’ve gotten to socialism is somehow seen as this thing that’s gonna fix the United States, and by the way, the people who are saying it have all migrated from countries that are disasters to come to the United States!”

To escape Marxism, they bring it with them, then want to establish it here in America.

Those following in the footsteps of Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition” pushed for the “right” kind of immigration: “people of color.” The assumption appears to be that people from failed third-world nations are largely poor, so that they are probably socialist in their political outlook: expecting to get the free health care, food stamps, housing subsidies and in-state tuition offered by America, irrespective of whether they arrive as illegal aliens or come through legal immigration channels.

Note that the race, ethnicity and gender of all “people of color” are inherited characteristics: none has any connection to merit. Once proclaimed to be part of the oppressed, you are in that class forever, unable to escape.

Conversely, once described as part of the oppressor class — white and successful — you also can never exit it. You are stuck for eternity, unless you are an exempted billionaire such as George Soros or a multi-millionaire such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or Representative Ro Khanna. They get a special dispensation.

The oppressed — including the immigrant or alien class, legal or illegal — can be expanded forever, never to be depleted. Note that Mamdani’s “ethnic map” of New York excluded the Italians, Irish and Jews — all white, even as it was was careful to highlight people such as Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, as part of the newly arrived oppressed class who are promised more and more free stuff— housing, medical care, groceries and education. The Democratic Socialists of America even call for a 32-hour workweek, while still being paid for 40 hours.

As for immigration, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va) proclaimed that once you get by the border patrol or customs, the US owes you amnesty, citizenship — but most importantly, the right to vote. That is apparently what is meant by reforming — actually abolishing — ICE. If we are lucky, we might get to keep some border patrol elements “for show.”

The meaning, then, of US citizenship — as well as the idea of America and its constitution — would be abolished. The US Constitution would be shredded and the entire notion of checks and balances discarded, replaced by the tyranny of a straight-up majority or “mob rule.” There would be no president, no Senate, no Supreme Court and certainly no Electoral College. Marchers in the street might demand “No justice, no peace,” just as the “turbas divinas” or “divine mobs” (civilian paramilitary shock troops of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega) did, where street violence becomes law — as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer might have hoped when he called for violence against Supreme Court justices:

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Not only would the constitutional system of checks and balances and limited powers disappear, but also all notions of accomplishment and merit. In the US, medical students and doctors are being promoted and chosen due to their ethnic, racial or gender characteristics, all of which are inherited and not “achieved,” unless, as Ward Churchill or Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, you “falsely appropriate acquisition” to be part of the class of the oppressed. Many of these “Democratic Socialists” now want to defund not only the police and border patrol but also the Department of Defense. In short, they are announcing that they would like to turn the country over to criminals, drug dealers, traffickers and conquerors. No prisons, no borders, no accountability. It is much easier that way to take over a country. You create chaos, then rush in heroically with promises to fix it — the old “you are the arsonist and firefighter” two-step.

In this new society, merit is dismissed as a result of “white privilege” rather than as a measure or value of accomplishment. Only skin color or ethnicity has merit. Even medical schools in America have been valuing race as a measure of medical competency, leading to its explicit prohibition last year.

As merit goes out the window, education test scores are not needed. School choice is demonized. Catholic schools? More “white privilege.” The Smithsonian Institute published a 3rd to 12th grade school study guide that complains, “Whiteness: an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others.”

Measurements of teaching are not based on whether the students end up knowing anything, but only if the right ideological content is taught by the “right” kind of instructor who is of the “right” race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

The entire “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) fraud is part of this clever campaign to remake America into another China or Cuba by using race and ethnicity as the lever.

The story of America that needs telling is, for instance, its extraordinary campaign to end slavery, and to extend freedom and liberty to billions of people worldwide.

That the US inherited slavery is what the noxious “1619 Project” missed, so they could sell slavery as a permanent “oppressor” brand on our Founders.

The first legislative act of the 14th US state, Vermont, was to abolish slavery. Why does no one in the US ever protest the slavery that persists in the rest of the planet?

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in RealClearDefense. The Future of Nuclear Deterrence)

In the 30 years between 1914 and 1945, 90 million people were killed in conventional war. Given the potential for conventional armed conflict remained high and nuclear weapons were present among U.S. adversaries, it was widely agreed among the allies that nuclear deterrence was required.

There were sharp disagreements and sometimes acrimonious debates over nuclear deterrent strategy directions. For example, some of the founding scientists who built the first bombs wished the U.S. had eliminated such weapons. Major arguments raged about whether the U.S. should test an H-Bomb—was this going to just add another round in the arms race.

Despite such fights, the nuclear community met some very big challenges. With the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the U.S. worried the Soviets could range orbiting nuclear warheads over American cities and be able to strike with no notice, especially when compared to the then deterrent largely made up of strategic bombers which took hours to reach their targets. NASA was formed, and with the Defense Education Act the U.S. got into the space and missile business.

When senior USAF officers told Congress that all of U.S. bomber weapons were stored at 14 bases and if eliminated would put the U.S. out of the nuclear business, the nuclear community met the challenge and created the survivable nuclear Triad. President Eisenhower secured Congressional support to build submarines running far out in the oceans and solid-fueled land-based missiles in mid-western silos, both capable of launching at the USSR from thousands of miles away, and ready on a day-to-day basis. Polaris was deployed in 1960 and Minuteman in October 1962.

President Kennedy also wisely adopted a strategy of “flexible response” moving away from simple notions of “mutual assured destruction.” The President was determined to give nuclear armed adversaries an off-ramp option that avoided the stark choice between surrender and suicide.

With the 1961 Berlin and 1962 Cuban nuclear crises, the possibility of nuclear war was placed in stark relief. It was clear that some kind of arms control and mutual restraint was needed. And thus, with the limited test ban treaty, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and then the SALT and START agreements, between 1961-2010 the U.S. led a successful campaign that eventually reduced strategic (long range) nuclear weapons to roughly 2000 deployed warheads from levels that had at one time exceeded 12,000.

With the collapse of the USSR, it was projected that nuclear weapons would be less relevant as the prospects of a nuclear conflict would be very low. It was after all “the end of history” and liberal internationalism would be the norm.

Nuclear weapons budgets dropped significantly as the U.S. officials instead concentrated on taking down terrorism.

But within a decade, the initial superpower cooperative hopes and reset buttons were dashed. Nuclear deterrent imperatives returned.

In 2010 the Administration and Congress nailed down a path for nuclear modernization, finally ending nuclear negligence that had lasted decades.

However, despite relatively stable funding for the last 16 years, and continued support for the current program of record to modernize our nuclear forces, serious divisions within the nuclear community have arisen. Just as the international environment worsened, various proposals—all of which would weaken U.S. deterrence–have been advocated, with the ten most significant being:

Stop nuclear warhead pit production and delay further production to 2050; unilaterally cut U.S. nuclear forces by over 70%, to 217 missiles/500 warheads from 800 missiles/1550 warheads allowed under New START; unilaterally eliminate all U.S. theater or short range nuclear forces from Europe; delete R&D funding for the SLCM-N cruise missile; delete all funding for the space based elements of U.S. missile defense; complicate the strategy of extended nuclear deterrence by adding new commanders in theater; adopt a firm fixed timetable for global abolition of nuclear weapons; lock-in a unilateral U.S. nuclear freeze; reduce the salience of nuclear strategy in U.S. security policy; and finally, remove sole Presidential authority to launch nuclear weapons. Some of these elements have been previously proposed in one fashion or the other, but they still had a common element: as long as nuclear weapons remained, nuclear deterrence itself continued to be a primary U.S. requirement.

However, now a new element has come forward—the dangerous idea of jettisoning nuclear deterrence as a strategy all-together.

What happened?

Well, the loose campaign to abolish nuclear weapons—an idea ongoing since the dawn of the nuclear era—has switched gears. Unable to secure abolition, a new plan has emerged. A campaign to abolish nuclear deterrence itself, even as nuclear weapons remain in the hands of America’s enemies.

What’s the origin of such an idea?

It’s a logical outgrowth of some experts believing that nuclear weapons no longer deter. Or that deterrence is more and more a “bluff” and not real. For example, Ukraine is not deterred by Russia’s nuclear weapons and Iran, and its terror proxies are not deterred by Israel’s nuclear weapons.

Another underlying assumption is that despite 80 years of successful nuclear deterrence, a future breakdown in deterrence is “inevitable.” And that a policy of actually retaliating with nuclear force under conditions of a breakdown in deterrence is foolish “warfighting” (an actually long held assumption by many in the abolition community). And that any initial use of nuclear force, no matter how limited, will inevitably lead to such subsequent widespread nuclear use that nuclear winter and civilization collapse occurs.

This theme has been promoted by Hollywood in at least three new films–Oppenheimer (2023), House of Dynamite (2025) and At the Brink (2026). The recent book (2024) “Nuclear War: A Scenario” has the same message and the re-released 1984 movie “Threads”, originally released in England as part of a campaign to stop the INF nuclear deployments, does as well. None of the movies support sustaining nuclear deterrence, extended or otherwise or accurately acknowledge that for 80 years such deterrence has worked—perfectly. Instead, what is offered are clever slogans, [“global zero”], hardly an effective deterrent alternative especially as nuclear weapons remain in the arsenals of our enemies.

To deter is serious business. Slogans and fancy worded UN declarations deter nothing. Real deterrence is in the just passed House military bill. As HASC Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) explained, the full nuclear TRIAD “improves readiness, expands our capabilities and invests in the technologies required to secure our country and protect us from our adversaries.”

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in the RealClearDefense. They’re Coming for the Military)

A number of Democratic Socialists of America party members have been campaigning on defunding the U.S. military. This is apparently part of an agenda that seeks to dismantle American military power which is seen as supporting an imperialist history with a colonial agenda. Particularly concerned are these candidates with American “business” investment overseas which they see as uniformly evil, just making “profits” and protected by U.S. militarism.

Two books in particular have made this view popular, especially among college graduates. The first was Franz Fanon’s 1961 “The Wretched of the Earth” and the second was the 1977 Lappe and Collins “Food First”. Fanon advocated violent revolution to end colonialism in the third world. Lappe and Collins argued that U.S. agribusiness reflected the worst form of colonialism and was creating the very violent revolutions the U.S. military was putting down.

Collins and Lappe (also the author of the widely popular “Diet for a Small Planet”) wrote that luxury crops grown by American agribusiness in third world nations was so extensive that it was stealing land that otherwise could grow subsistence crops for the poor. If planted with food and not luxury crops, the new land could produce enough food to literally wipe out hunger in the poorer nations of the world. Written soon after the Sahelian food crisis and the publication of “The Limits to Growth,” “Food First” was part of a Marxist narrative that U.S. business investment overseas was oppressive not beneficial. Including forcing people off the land, into crowded “favelas” and eventually forcing them to migrate north. “Wretched” explained that forced specialization in raw export crops was designed only to enrich the colonial powers, relied solely on plantation violence, and failed to feed the native citizenry. [Fanon’s book was cited by one U.S. President as having markedly affected his view of the role of the USA in the third world.]

In 1978 a study appeared in Ag World that examined such claims in remarkable detail. The study determined that in the third world land devoted to export luxury crops was at the time all of 29 million hectares. This amounted to around 3% of the then 890 million hectares (now 1.6 billion hectares) devoted to crop land, of which 97% was used for domestic food consumption. On top of which 100 million hectares, (now 200 million) of permanent crop land and 3.1 billion hectares of pastureland (now 3.6 billion hectares) were both also used for domestic food production.

Nonetheless, the narrative endured that “luxury” export crops including peanuts, cotton, coffee, sugar, and tobacco for example were being produced and exported from poor countries to rich nations. And as Lappe and Fanon argued, it was colonial agribusiness run by profit seeking oligarchs that were starving the oppressed.

Facts are all available from the Food & Agricultural Food Balance sheets [FA0] prepared by the United Nations which now details production, consumption, imports and exports for agricultural products worldwide for nearly 200 nations.

FAO’s data even back in 1978 illustrated that even if eliminated food and non-food ag exports to rich countries from the less developed world would have no beneficial impact on poverty or hunger. The export land at that time of the Ag World analysis accounted for only .7% of one percent of all agricultural land used in the poor nations of the world. Less than one percent more land wasn’t the solution to hunger. And remarkably, such a relatively small amount of land produced through free enterprise, some $300 billion in export earnings for third world nations around the world which the socialists would destroy, seriously harming the local economies.

In summary, in the poor nations of the world far more land (by a factor of 14,000 to 1) is used for domestic food consumption than luxury crop production for export to rich nations.

Obviously, the DSA types who think “free enterprise agriculture” and agribusiness are starving the world don’t even know the fundamental facts. They are convinced western white imperialists acting like colonialists are stealing top quality soil to grow luxury crops in poor countries for export to rich people in rich countries.

At that time, the coauthor of Food First even told me over lunch that the reports of “agrarian reform” causing deaths in Cambodia were widely exaggerated. But why was Collins defending Cambodia? Well from Chapter 4 in Food First there in black and white is a list of nations (all communist!) that reflect how to get food policy right: Cambodia, Ethiopia, North Korea, Cuba, China, Angola, Mali, Vietnam, and Guinea Basso. Even the USSR got an honorable mention as “at least reducing food inequality.” (Same paradigm comes up as DSA folks embrace Hamas).

Although collectively these national governments killed 80 million of their own people, Food First explicitly praised them. Even as these deaths have been documented by the Black Book of Communism published by the Marxist Institute in Paris after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the firm embrace of communism by the Food First authors was unmistakable. These nations, collectively, had in 1978 according to Ag World, the majority of the 29 million hectares of export crop land producing supposed luxury crops being exported to rich countries.

For example, Cuba grew sugar cane on 1.8 million hectares (1978) and sold the sugar to Moscow at 5 times the world price to make cheap vodka in Russia. China grew more than a million acres of tobacco to make cheap cigarettes to sell around the world. The very nations Food First praises for doing everything right were in fact doing precisely what Food First complained was causing hunger around the world!!

The reality? “Food First” was a complete fairy tale swallowed whole by the Washington Post and New York Times in glowing editorials praising the thesis of the book. They did the same with Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth.”

There’s one thing in common in the countries listed: with respect to their agriculture policies, they have killed millions of their own people. It’s not a coincidence. The DSA are selling the same stuff.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in the RealClearDefense. Budgets, National Priorities and the Radicalism)

In the last year, the country has seen the election and nomination of candidates who are Democratic Socialists of America. These include the Mayor of New York and Seattle, but most importantly a number of Senate candidates in Maine and Michigan. Some of the candidate views are controversial.

But former New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio says don’t worry about the often looney views held by some. They will not have sufficient support from Senate democratic colleagues to even get a vote on the Senate floor let along get a bill to the desk of the current President. Getting rid of prisons, the police and the border patrol, or seizing private property are not serious ideas (although being proposed) but most importantly says DeBlasio it’s not what people voted for.

DeBlasio tells Sean Hannity that people did vote for abolishing deportations, having universal government run health care and free college education, while eliminating carbon and greenhouse gases from energy production.

And such ideas are not new and have been pushed by the democratic party for many years.

For example, Medicare for all was first introduced in the House in 1993. And most Americans embrace Medicare for 65 million Americans, most of them over 65.

Free college education also sounds enticing given the multiple stories of graduating students carrying with them debt of $100,000 or more.

Open borders ideas are not new. We had that from 2021-4, and anywhere from 12-20 million illegal, unvetted migrants came to America. These people were welcomed by an administration seemingly unconcerned with the health, safety, security and economic impact of such a mass influx of unknown people into the country, often justifying such a strategy with a glib “we need more workers” while repeatedly assuring Congress and the country “the border is secure.”

And a carbon free energy world was first proposed in 1977 by Italian scientist Ceasar Marchetti.

What is surprising is the lack of a serious look at the U.S. federal budget impacts of such proposals.

Let’s begin by looking at some numbers.

Medicare costs $1.1 trillion yet Medicare premiums are only $440 billion annually. To support 350 million Americans would be costly. The average non-Medicare recipient uses $9000 in medical care compared to an average of $15,000 for a Medicare recipient. Since FY2014, Medicaid has risen 41% in costs and costs $894 billion in federal and state support, especially since the program was expanded to include all low-income adults. To cover all Americans under Medicare implies an annual additional cost of $2.6 trillion plus those currently under Medicare or $3.7 trillion. However, all annual health insurance premiums for government and private sector programs comes to $1.1 trillion so “Medicare for all” would send a new tax bill to all 166 million working Americans of $22,300 each, compared to the average Medicare tax of $6,600 now paid. The current Federal government is spending at a $7.1 trillion annual pace, so Medicare for all jacks that up to $9.7 trillion.

But there is more. Current U.S. government “college” outstanding loans are $1.9 trillion, which gives one an idea of what “free college education” would cost. This is not an annual cost but the U.S. government currently spends $126 billion each year even after the reforms implemented starting in 2025. To pay the current outstanding loans would require each of the 166 million working Americans to shell out another $11,400 each. So federal spending goes up to $11.6 trillion.

No internal U.S. deportations, the latter the idea of Senator Mark Warner, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would at least cost the U.S. $350 billion a year. Warner says once you get by the border patrol or get a visa to come to America, you are home free, working off the books, receiving universal health care and free education. So that costs very working American another $2200 a year. That puts Federal spending at $11.950 trillion.

Finally, estimates for the cost of eliminating carbon from energy production, now at 41 billion tons a year out of 61 billion tons of greenhouse gases, vary but on average would be $6 trillion a year. Given the U.S. produces 16% of energy worldwide, the U.S. would implicitly be required to spend some $960 billion a year to meet the goals of the Paris “climate accords.” However, as former Secretary of State Kerry has acknowledged, China and India produce together 5.8 billion tons of coal, or 70% of all coal worldwide. And India and China together are constructing 95% of all new coal based energy production worldwide. Given these policies, the greenhouse gas (GHG) and carbon reduction goals cannot be met. So Federal spending is now estimated to be $12.910 trillion.

So, the Mamdani wing of the Democratic party would have the Federal government annually spend an extra $2.6 trillion for health care; $126 billion for free college; another $350 billion as a consequence of no deportations; and another $960 billion for no carbon energy, or a grand total of $4.036 trillion annually to meet just the top four socialist party objectives. And push overall annual U.S. government spending to $11 trillion.

The revenue required would be eighty percent of the current $5.3 trillion now collected by the Federal government.

All 166 million working Americans would each see their tax burden jump $24,300.

If you stole the entire $9 trillion wealth of every billionaire in America, they could pay the added bill for 2 years.

Apart from doubling the Federal tax burden of every working American, the only offsetting budget cuts proposed have been defense cuts especially nuclear deterrent cuts. Senators Sanders, Warren and Markey, and Representatives Khanna and Garamendi support unilaterally cutting our nuclear deterrent from 400 to 150 ICBMs, from 60 to zero strategic bombers, and from 12 to 4 submarines, reducing U.S. nuclear capability from 640 to 214 ICBMs and SLBMs and from 1550 warheads to 400. The savings would be minor as the cost of making our strategic bombers nuclear capability is 3%. Currently we only produce one SSBN annually so budget cuts would be in the outyears as they would be for the new Sentinel missile. Reducing Minuteman from 400 to 150 could implicitly eliminate two operating ICBM bases and overtime save annually some hundreds of millions and overall, no more than $1.3 billion annually, (as previous assessments often show base closings do not provide immediate cost savings but only in the very long run.)

True, Sentinel, Columbia and an upgraded D-5 will cost some $325 billion. But the proposed cuts will save funds only in the outyears when production will end. The savings of roughly $200 billion over some 20 years or $10 billion a year have to compared to $4 trillion in additional annual costs which are some 40-fold greater.

Spend $4 trillion more and save $10 billion makes no sense. It doesn’t matter what you call these ideas–socialist, communist, democratic socialist, or progressive. To repeat, the spending doesn’t make sense. And the budget cuts harm our national security and begin a process of disarmament.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in RealClearDefense. Nuclear Choices Ahead: What Road to Take?)

With the expiration of the START series of arms control agreements, the U.S. now faces serious choices particularly how to respond to the emergence of two peer nuclear adversaries. Especially when the current nuclear modernization program of record was agreed to in 2010 when the nuclear balance was far more benign. Projected into the future, people across the political spectrum see a nuclear environment with storm clouds ahead. However, there is a serious divide as to what the U.S. should do. As a result, the U.S. will soon have some difficult choices to make.

In 1981 the U.S. faced a similar crossroad. Would détente continue along with a nuclear freeze of very large nuclear arsenals, modernized in the USSR but lacking in the U.S.? Or alternatively, would the U.S. and the West secure major nuclear reductions while modernizing, and adopt a peace through strength strategy as a pathway to dismantle the Soviet empire?

By 1991, the latter option won out. Strategic long range nuclear forces were projected to come down by over 80% through a series of START arms agreements. Miraculously, the Soviet Union collapsed and all of Eastern Europe was freed. But despite this extraordinary victory, the U.S. assumed it was the end of history, and all enemies were gone and would not emerge. And consequently, we took a subsequent interim forty year holiday from nuclear sustainment.

The U.S. now faces the challenge of simultaneously sustaining and modernizing the entirety of the nuclear deterrent.

So, like 1981, the U.S. and the West face another crossroads: either seek further nuclear reductions toward zero or abolition, while significantly curtailing nuclear modernization; or alternatively, accelerate and enhance both nuclear modernization and sustainment, while once again adopting a strategy of peace through strength but now to take down the hegemonic aspirations of the Chinese communist party.

Both options are relatively well spelled out by proponents, but they rely on very different assumptions.

Like the advocates of the nuclear freeze, abolitionists think nuclear deterrence is bound to fail. And while nuclear deterrence has worked since the dawn of the nuclear age, it will not be useful if deterrence breaks down. A key assumption underlines this new belief: if one or even a few nuclear weapons are used in retaliation, the odds are that nearly all other nuclear weapons will subsequently be used as escalation will take over. Thus, there is no capability to “use” nuclear weapons and survive.

Since the 2023 movie “Oppenheimer,” the abolition folks have brought forward a new twist on what is or is not possible for deterrence. As Annie Jacobsen in her book “Nuclear War: A Scenario” and the 2024 movie “A House of Dynamite” conclude, nuclear deterrence will someday not work and war will break out. And the assumption is that the U.S. military will “jam up” the American President to retaliate “all in.” The only alternative is nuclear abolition.

To get there HASC members Representators Mo Khanna and Jim Garamendi (both D-CA) and SASC members Senators Markey (D-MA) and Warren, (D-MA), have joined with Senator Sanders (I-VT) to propose a unilateral cut of U.S. nuclear forces from 400 to 150 ICBMs, from 12 to 4 strategic submarines and from 60 to zero nuclear capable bombers. The implied force is between 300-500 strategic warheads compared to the New START allowed 1550-1850 warheads which is the current force of choice.

On the other hand, there is an option one might describe as “Record Plus.” In 2010 the U.S. Congress strongly supported a modernized force of 12 submarines, 400 ICBMs, and 60 B2 and B52 strategic bombers for the U.S. strategic nuclear force. Funding for such modernization has generally been approved and is projected to cost $450 billion over the next decade. This was a force consistent with the limits of the 2010 New START nuclear treaty that expired earlier this year. What has yet to be decided is how much more nuclear capability the United States needs as generally recommended by the 2023 Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

The choices are relatively straight forward. The U.S. needs theater or shortrange, nuclear forces such as sea and land-launched cruise missiles, and such development funding has now been approved. The U.S. could add to the existing silo based and submarine-based missiles we already have in the legacy nuclear forces or add to the planned new nuclear forces.

Each silo-based ICBM can add upwards of two warheads. The upload process allows 3 missiles per ICBM wing per month or 44 months, while sub warheads can be added much faster. Other buildups could be an additional 3-4 submarines but that could probably only be done at the end of the current acquisition schedule, with such submarines being acquired 2041-4. The new B21 Raider is now undergoing flight testing and there is general consensus that the U.S. needs not 100 but 175-200 more nuclear capable strategic bombers, with Northrop Grumman having committed to accelerate such new acquisition.

There is however a major new concern as the U.S. moves forward on modernization. In April 1999 Russian President Yeltsin in a secret decree ordered the development of thousands of short-range, low yield, “battlefield” nuclear weapons that Russia could use to win a nuclear conflict.” One recent study determined that Russian micro-testing of very low yield strategic long-range weapons could attack all 400 U.S. silo-based ICBMs and cause less than 10,000 casualties, making a U.S. retaliatory response less than certain.

Now the current U.S. retaliatory deterrent strategy is to destroy an enemy’s leadership and their supportive security forces along with their remaining nuclear weapons and industry support. The rationale is simple: threaten to take away those things the bad guys value. Mao Tse Tung once casually dismissed the consequences of nuclear war with the United States, declaring that Chinese women would in a generation make up for the loss of a few hundred million people. He hardly cared for his own people having killed some 65 million to sustain power.

To abolitionists such a U.S. strategy is illogical as they assume such a strategy is “warfighting” and not winnable. In the two movies and one book referenced earlier, some of the abolitionists are pushing to jettison current U.S. nuclear deterrent strategy altogether as unworkable. But what does the U.S. do for deterrent strategy on the long road toward nuclear abolition? How does one deter bad guys brandishing nuclear weapons prior to their hoped for abolition? How do you still deter on the way toward abolition?

Author Annie Jacobsen was asked just this question, but she explained she would drop her explicit support for abolition but let other “experts” figure it out. The movie “Dynamite” took both deterrence by retaliation off the table and missile defense to intercept an attack in the first place. The movie assumed missile defense—even against a single warhead—would not work. And not knowing where the missile originated, the U.S. had to guess— retaliate against everyone as one military officer proposed or do nothing.

Yeltsin’s 1999 decree is being implemented. And since the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Moscow has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and its allies dozens of times. Many have assumed such nuclear strikes would involve the very battlefield nuclear forces called for in Yeltsin’s 1999 decree.

Critics of such weapons say there is no consequential difference between using a regional/theater/battlefield nuclear weapon with a minimal yield and a long-range strategic nuclear warhead of many hundreds of kilotons. Any such weapon use will result in Armageddon.

That may indeed be true.

But Moscow and Beijing may not believe so and thus would be reckless enough to use such weapons. That the U.S. and its allies must defend against and deter such use. That may take a sea-launched nuclear armed cruise missile. And a robust missile defense such as Golden Dome. Or any number of new technologies and strategies. But probably not unilateral restraint that does not take such threats seriously in the first place.

Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis and a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrent Studies & the Gold Institute for International Strategy.