2020 April 30 « nuclear-news

Could President Trump launch a nuclear attack via Twitter?

Could President Trump Tweet Out the Nuclear Launch Codes? The National Interest talked nuclear command and control with Professor Alex Wellerstein. 29 Apr 20, by Matthew Petti Follow Matthew Petti on Twitter

The proverbial “big red button” is one of the most important responsibilities that a U.S. President has. But Americans know very little about it.

Professor Alex Wellerstein is one of the foremost authorities on nuclear command and control. A historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Wellerstein created the popular NUKEMAP tool for understanding the likely effects of a nuclear war, and has written extensively on the history of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

National Interest spoke to Wellerstein about presidential authority, myths swirling around the “big red button,” and how a nuclear war might—and probably wouldn’t—unfold. Below is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

We don’t have a system that’s designed to have gatekeepers for this order……

They [the military] already have built into their system clearly—and probably built into their legal guidance—the idea that lower yields are more usable. That’s going to make it much harder to push back, I imagine.What would it be in practice? I don’t know. What I worry about is situations where that ambiguity could result, plausibly, in ill-advised nuclear use. The consequences of being wrong about many decisions could be quite high, but the consequences of being wrong about nuclear weapons could be existential.

So it’s important to me that we think about these situations ahead of time, and even potentially set up a system where we’re pretty sure that nuclear weapons would not be used except under—as a last resort in the worst kinds of situations.

Last week, he said that is ordering the Navy to “shoot down and destroy” Iranian boats that get too close to U.S. ships, and then the Pentagon turned it into a reminder that “our ships retain the right of self-defense.”

Do you see any situations where the President says something ambiguous, and then the military has to figure out whether he meant to use nuclear weapons, or some other similarly drastic measure?……..

The modern military has long adapted to the idea that nuclear weapons are a relatively clunky think to imagine using in practice. They might work as a strategic threat, but the United States benefits a lot more from not using them, and from using our many conventional options that are very diverse and capable, instead.

If we normalize the use of nuclear weapons, we are a very big target…….

I do worry about—it’s somewhat clear that the President and the military have a complicated communications relationship.

There have a number of things that the President announced via Twitter, that he clearly did not get full consent from the military on or did not even inform them on…….

Maybe your secure phone lines don’t work. Maybe your regular phone lines don’t work. You could imagine a situation in which Twitter is the only channel by which the President can communicate with the military, and he would tweet out an order on it, but it would have to be a very well-formed order. ……

if the President’s Twitter account suddenly started tweeting legitimate nuclear authentication codes and nuclear launch orders, I think that would raise a lot of questions for the military. Even in that situation, assuming they don’t see incoming missiles coming at them—which is to say, they’re not under any belief that this is a true, obviously unambiguous nuclear war situation—I think that would go through rather extreme efforts to contact the White House, or the Secretary of Defense, and/or anybody around there, just to find out if this was real or not.

That would definitely be a weird way for the world to end.

We live in weird times!

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/could-president-trump-tweet-out-nuclear-launch-codes-149311

April 30, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia warns US against using low-yield nuclear weapons, threatening all-out retaliation

Russia warns US against using low-yield nuclear weapons, threatening all-out retaliation, SCMP, 29 Apr 20

US State Department had argued that deploying such warheads in submarines would help counter new threats from China and Russia
Moscow says any attack involving submarine-launched missiles will be perceived as nuclear aggression

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected US arguments for

fielding low-yield nuclear warheads

, warning that an attempt to use such weapons against Russia would trigger an all-out nuclear retaliation.

The US State Department argued in a paper released last week that fitting the low-yield nuclear warheads to submarine-launched ballistic missiles would help counter potential new threats from Russia and China…… https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia-central-asia/article/3082226/russia-warns-us-against-using-low-yield-nuclear

April 30, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, Russia, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Federal appeals court dismisses case against GE over Fukushima nuclear disaster

Federal appeals court dismisses case against GE over Fukushima nuclear disaster, Jurist

APRIL 28, 2020 Andrew Hursh

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit by numerous Japanese individuals and business who hoped to sue General Electric (GE) over its role in building and maintaining the reactors that exploded in the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.

The Japanese plaintiffs had sued the company in federal court in Massachusetts, and they contended that this was the appropriate forum because Japanese laws that governed liability for the disaster precluded them from recovering damages from GE if they sued in Japan. The district court, however, dismissed the case last April on the grounds of “forum non conveniens,” holding that Japan, not US federal court, is the adequate forum for the plaintiffs to recover for their losses. The plaintiffs appealed and argued in the First Circuit that the district court incorrectly assessed the adequacy of their legal relief in Japan, but the appeals court disagreed, stating on Friday that they agreed with the lower court and, on a couple of points, that they “have little difficulty concluding that the district court did not abuse its discretion.”

Compensation for the Fukushima disaster in Japan is covered by a 1961 law addressing nuclear damages—the Compensation Act. The Compensation Act creates a complex scheme with several ways for injured parties to recover, and it ultimately places all liability for Fukushima in the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) that operated the plant. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against GE, as well as millions of others, had recovered money from TEPCO in Japan through lawsuits, claims directly to the company, and mediated processes. But the plaintiffs in this case also wanted to recover money from GE, which had built, designed or maintained all the reactors at Fukushima, and, according to the plaintiffs, were responsible for some of what went wrong there during the tsunami in 2011. The plaintiffs sued in Massachusetts because GE is headquartered there.

GE argued, however, that the case should be dismissed because an adequate forum exists in Japan and that practical considerations favor litigating there. GE noted that it was available to be served process in Japan and subject to jurisdiction there. ….. https://www.jurist.org/news/2020/04/federal-appeals-court-dismisses-case-against-ge-over-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/

April 30, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

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