nuclear-news

Increased risk of nuclear war by accident, by miscalculation

Red lines and mushroom clouds, Online opinion, By Marko Beljac , 16 December 2015  When the great powers set red lines they do so under the shadow cast by mushroom clouds.It’s just as hard to miss the tinge of red in the mushroom clouds produced by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb as it is the setting of “red lines” that has coloured much international relations over recent times.

In June 1983 the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, warned US envoy Averell Harriman that the actions and rhetoric of the Reagan administration were leading the US and the USSR toward “the dangerous red line” of nuclear war through “miscalculation.” Six months later that red line was reached, but thankfully, was not breached. It was a close run affair, we now know……

Today all the nuclear powers, so far as we are aware, are modernising their nuclear weapons precisely as they are setting new red lines. They are doing so because they understand that red lines stay bright red when the shadow cast by the mushroom cloud remains clear to all and sundry.

All this moves us toward the “dangerous red line” of nuclear war through “miscalculation.” This is because the nuclear weapons of the US and Russia remain on high alert, a posture known as “launch on warning.” In a crisis high alert levels lead to a “use them or lose them” dynamic that puts a premium on striking first…….

To make matters worse the red line that the United States casts for Russia now sits on her very borders. That has been perhaps the most significant long term strategic affect of the crisis in Ukraine. We now have both Washington and Moscow thinking they can play cat and mouse with nuclear weapons, and that when the red lines sit upon the Rodina herself.

The United States has no red lines; it is free to subvert, bomb and invade at will in order to advance its interests. Russia, by contrast, cannot act to secure its interests beyond the red line…….

Despite what may be the case on the ground the most important strategic affect of the Ukraine crisis is the official extension of the US red line to the borders of Russia.

The imposition of sanctions, the isolation of Russia politically, and the significant freezing of US-Russian relations means precisely this……..

In Syria we see the deployment of military firepower by both Russia, US allies such as Turkey and, of course, the United States itself. These deployments seek to establish and maintain red lines, as demonstrated by Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian military aircraft, a dangerous precedent, and Russia’s deployment of firepower to prevent anti Assad forces from crossing red lines in the internal conflict. The United States has also set red lines in Syria which Assad dare not cross.

The scramble to set red lines also occurs in the Asia Pacific as witnessed by the interplay between China, the United States and Japan. China is setting red lines a little bit beyond its borders in strategically and economically significant islands.

However, as with Russia, the United States has set its red line on China’s border as evidenced by its efforts to counter what it calls Beijing’s strategy of “anti access/area denial,” which is designed, we are told, to deny the Pentagon access to China’s red lines namely her borders…….

As the world slowly becomes more multipolar the expansive US setting of red lines, whilst maintaining freedom of action for itself, undermines global strategic stability, for the setting and counter setting of red lines compels the military forces of the great powers to increasingly engage in military exercises in close proximity to each other…..

In the nuclear age more than ever security is a common property or a common resource. This is because, despite all the efforts to achieve escalation control, the nuclear powers are locked into a condition of interdependency that technology and strategy cannot break.

To reignite an impetus for common security will require remobilising the peace movement; one of the benefits of the end of the cold war for elites was that it had the affect of demobilising the movement. Although it sprang up again in the context of Iraq and the “war on terror” it lacked an encompassing vision for common security, was largely reactive, and so as a consequence was easily dispersed.

We need to rearticulate a programme of common security and fight for it using the panoply of mobilisations and direct actions that the peace movement of the 1980s was noted for.

Meaningful human survival will depend upon an aroused global citizenry that dares once again to set red lines for the world’s elites. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17898

December 18, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war