An American political analyst says the fact that the US is placing a high priority on boosting its nuclear arsenal rather than its ailing health system amid the coronavirus pandemic shows "the United States has become a culture of death."

Daniel Kovalik, author and international Human Rights lawyer from Pittsburgh, made the remarks during a Friday edition of Press TV’s The Debate program while commenting on the reasons why the US government spends hefty budgets on developing nuclear weapons and why war is given precedence over health.

A watchdog group has revealed that nuclear-armed states spent a record 73 billion dollars on nuclear weapons in 2019, with the US accounting for nearly half of it.

Moreover, a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office shows that Washington seeks to boost its nuclear capabilities, estimating that it will spend some 500 billion dollars on nuclear arms from 2019 through 2028. This shows an increase of 94 billion dollars or 23 percent from the previous 10-year estimate.

Analysts say Washington seeks to expand its nuclear arms in order to divert attention from the humiliating losses it has suffered in the fight against the coronavirus. The pandemic has infected over 1.4 million people in the United States, killed more than 85,000 and devastated the economy.

"The United States has become a culture of death... the priority is on death and destruction not life and creativity; we are seeing the result of it with the pandemic outbreak here which has completely gotten away from the government if they ever intended to be on top of it," Kovalik told Press TV.

"We have known for many years that a pandemic like this was very likely that’s why [former President Barack] Obama created a pandemic task force which Trump dismantled in 2018, leaving us disarmed for this pandemic when it came. Moreover, Trump dawdled for at least six weeks when he should have known that the pandemic was here, he did nothing and he denied it. They say even if he had moved four days earlier than he had, he would have saved or cut death rate by one-half. That is evidence or symptom of our leadership in this country which does not value human life and values the ability to destroy life in military arms more," he went on to say.

"We need to be focusing on working with other countries like Russia, like China, on just these types of issues: global warming, fighting pandemics, not continuing to try to build up our defenses which frankly are not defensive, they are offensive weapons," Kovalik underlined.

The US Defense Department said in March it had successfully tested an unarmed hypersonic missile, a weapon that could potentially overwhelm other missile defense systems.

Hypersonic weapons can take missile and nuclear warfare to a new and more threatening level since they can travel much faster than current ballistic and cruise missiles, at different altitudes and with the maneuverability that makes them difficult to track and target with current missile defense systems.

Both Russia and China are developing similar military capabilities as they seek to field the technology and erode America’s military dominance.

Michael Lane, founder of American Institute for Foreign Policy from Washington DC, was the other panelist invited to The Debate program, who claimed that the US administration was modernizing and not expanding its nuclear arsenal.

"Any time you have a nuclear weapon some place, the opportunity exists for it to be misused or an accident to happen or a misjudgment to happen or something like that, I can’t say that more nukes equal a safer world," Lane said.

"We are not just building additional nukes; those are limited by the nuclear arms reduction talks - the START treaty - what we are doing is we are looking to modernize our nuclear arsenal so that it more suits the potential need in today’s world more so than most of our stuff which was configured and built for the Cold War," he added.

In December, Russia declared it had placed into service their first Avangard hypersonic missile, making it the first country to claim an operable hypersonic weapon. China is also investing significantly in the development of hypersonic glide vehicles.

Trump’s public rhetoric and withdrawal from key arms control treaties have fueled fears of a new nuclear arms race with Moscow and Beijing.

SOURCE: PRESS TV