Adoption of revamped nuclear doctrine by US destroys global strategic stability — diplomat http://tass.com/politics/989106, It’s important to pinpoint the fact openly, the Russian deputy foreign minister said , NOVOSIBIRSK, February 8. /TASS/. Adoption of a revamped nuclear doctrine by the US destroys global strategic stability, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday.
“By passing the revamped nuclear doctrine, the US Administration undermines strategic stability if not simply destroys it in the most immediate way,” he said. “It’s important to pinpoint the fact openly and that’s what we’ll be doing.”
“I hope we’ll have an opportunity to discuss it with my counterpart [US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas] Shannon shortly,” Ryabkov said.
February 9, 2018
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US attacks North Korea, Russia AND China over nuclear ambitions in STUNNING tirade THE UNITED States has taken aim at North Korea, Russia and China and accused the countries of growing their nuclear stockpiles while “pursuing the development of new nuclear capabilities to threaten other peaceful nations”. By WILL KIRBY, Express UK Feb 6, 2018
US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood, addressing the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, refused to mince his words as he hit out at Washington’s nuclear rivals and issued a terrifying warning and North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated weapons programme.
He said: “Russia, China and North Korea are growing their stockpiles, increasing the prominence of nuclear weapons in their security strategies, and – in some cases – pursuing the development of new nuclear capabilities to threaten other peaceful nations.”
He then warned Pyongyang “may now be only months away from the capability to strike the US with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles”.
The only way to address the “urgent and unpredictable threat to the United States, its allies and partners” posed by North Korea is, according to Mr Wood, to ensure the hermit state’s nuclear programme is “completely, verifiably and irreversibly eliminated”.
In response, North Korea accused the US of seeking to aggravate the delicate situation on the Korean peninsula by “deploying large nuclear assets” nearby.
Pyongyang diplomat Ju Yong Chol said the scale of the US military enforcements shows “they are designed to make a preemptive strike against the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea].”
Ju said: “US officials including the defence secretary and the CIA director repeatedly talked about DPRK nuclear and missile threat to justify their argument for a military option and a new concept of a so-called ‘bloody nose’, a limited pre-emptive strike on the DPRK is under consideration within the US administration.”
North Korea launched a series of ballistic missiles in 2017 as well as carrying out its biggest-ever nuclear test, prompting fears across the globe about the Kim regime’s ability to attack the international community.
Estimates on the size of North Korea’s arsenal vary but it is likely to be dwarfed by the weapons caches of its rivals.
The US has 450 silo-based Minuteman III missiles, while Russia has 369 missiles based in silos or mobile launchers.
China, meanwhile, has between 55 and 65 missiles deployed in an underground tunnel network……. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/915088/north-korea-nuclear-usa-russia-china-missile-attack-trump-weapon-stockpile-world-war-3
February 7, 2018
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Ironically, an Obama-era nuclear agreement with Russia went into full effect Monday. It was aimed, like previous agreements forged by the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, to defuse the possibility of just such a cataclysmic “Great Power” conflict. Under the terms of the New START treaty, as it’s known, both Russia and the United States are committed to deploying no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads. There’s a strict verification regime on both sides, and proponents of the pact say those inspections have built confidence in the otherwise severely strained U.S.-Russia relationship.
Trump’s nuclear policy is taking us back to the Cold War, WP By Ishaan Tharoor February 6 2018 The Trump administration has touted its new nuclear policy, released at the end of last week by the Pentagon, as a tough, realistic assessment of foreign threats and U.S. capabilities. The Nuclear Posture Review, the first to be conducted since 2010, purportedly describes “the world as it is, not as we wish it to be” — and calls for an expansion of America’s nuclear arsenal to confront the evolving capabilities of other nuclear powers.
If that is the administration’s view of the world, it is far from a consensus. A legion of critics blasted a potential nuclear buildup as dangerous, fiscally ruinous and redolent of outdated Cold War thinking. Some pointed out that a coterie of nuclear hawks helped draft the NPR, including one academic who argued in 1980 that the United States could defeat the Soviet Union in a nuclear war, while stomaching “approximately 20 million” casualties, “a level compatible with national survival and recovery.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, echoed the administration’s recommendations to increase the stockpile of “low-yield” nuclear weapons — armaments that could still wipe out whole cities — and deploy a number of these warheads on submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles as a sign of American intent. “The U.S. must recognize the reality of a return to great power competition and posture itself accordingly,” he wrote in an op-ed for Defense News.
President Trump also plugged the new approach during last week’s State of the Union address.
Though boosters of the administration’s nuclear agenda frame it as a continuation of long-standing American policy, it is a marked reversal from the strategy of Trump’s predecessor. “The previous administration’s policy hinged on what President Barack Obama called a moral obligation for the United States to lead by example in ridding the world of nuclear weapons,” wrote my colleague Paul Sonne. “Officials in the Trump administration and the U.S. military argue that Obama’s approach proved overly idealistic, particularly as relations with Moscow soured. Russia, China and North Korea, they say, all advanced their nuclear weapons capabilities instead of following suit.”
Skeptics of the Trump administration’s embrace of nuclear weapons argue that they won’t be able to credibly deter the sort of low-level aggression carried out by countries like Russia in Eastern Europe and North Korea in northeast Asia. The strategy seems to embrace the weapons more for their own sake than any utility they might provide.
“The document reads less like a strategy of how best to deter threats to the United States and its allies and more like a piece of advocacy for nuclear weapons — a self-conscious defense of their utility, affordability, and an effort to expand their mission. It is less a Pentagon policy document than a memo from a powerful lobby,” wrote Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. “Rather than working to reduce nuclear dangers, the nation’s nuclear policy now reflects the reasoning of U.S. adversaries and readily follows them into a more dangerous world.”
Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which pushes for global disarmament, warned that the new nuclear posture also gives Trump wider scope to order nuclear strikes. That’s something a majority of Americans don’t trust him with, according to a recent Washington Post poll.
“The authors spend pages arguing that the world has grown exponentially more dangerous due to the weakness of Trump’s predecessors,” Cirincione said in a recent op-ed. “They completely ignore the agreements that decreased Russian arsenals, rolled back and froze Iran’s nuclear program, and eliminated and secured tons of nuclear material from terrorists. The Nuclear Posture Review paints a world of terrifying ‘Great Power’ conflict.”
Ironically, an Obama-era nuclear agreement with Russia went into full effect Monday. It was aimed, like previous agreements forged by the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, to defuse the possibility of just such a cataclysmic “Great Power” conflict. Under the terms of the New START treaty, as it’s known, both Russia and the United States are committed to deploying no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads. There’s a strict verification regime on both sides, and proponents of the pact say those inspections have built confidence in the otherwise severely strained U.S.-Russia relationship.
But there’s little indication that the Trump administration has much interest in extending the agreement beyond 2021, when it is set to expire. Critics say that’s a scary prospect. “Even in this environment, as long as Russia complies, extension is critical,” wrote John F. Kerry, the former secretary of state, who as a senator marshaled support for the treaty’s passage through Congress. “To let one of the last elements of constructive engagement expire with no follow-on process would ignore the hard-fought lessons of the Cold War. It would court nuclear competition that brings neither stability nor security.”
ndeed, experts warn that the climate of nuclear competition ushered in by Trump could risk a new global buildup of nuclear weapons that offers little strategic gain.
“Risking a new nuclear arms race, as is now likely and would be even more so should New START be allowed to expire without a replacement in hand, would divert American resources away from our conventional advantage, and bring us no additional security,” wrote Jon Wolfsthal, a nonresident fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former Obama administration official. “It would also repeat the great mistakes of the Cold War when we learned that arms races and nuclear wars cannot be won, and are better left unfought.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/06/trumps-nuclear-policy-is-taking-us-back-to-the-cold-war/?utm_term=.4f13c0dbcc63
February 7, 2018
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The Hindu 3rd Feb 2018, Watching the Republic Day parade, where 10 ASEAN leaders were chief guests,
it was easy to miss the fact that the dates of their visit also marked the
anniversary of another big visit three years ago: the visit by then U.S.
President Barack Obama, when he announced a “breakthrough” in the
India-U.S. civil nuclear deal, to finally pave the way for a commercial
contract.
“The deal is done,” Sujatha Singh, who was Foreign Secretary
at the time, said as the government issued papers and held briefings
describing the nature of the agreement between India and the U.S. on
supplier liability and tracking requirements, which would enable American
companies to build nuclear power reactors in India.
Today, nearly a decade since the memoranda of understanding were inked, and three years after the
last wrinkles were ironed out, there is no sign yet of any concrete
contract between an American company and the Indian authorities to build a
reactor.
In 2009, both GE-Hitachi and Toshiba-Westinghouse had begun talks
on techno-commercial agreements for six reactors each in India. These
commercial contracts were to be the start of the ‘payoff’ for the U.S.
that had considerably shifted its stand on non-proliferation to give India
the waivers needed, and they were to herald India’s arrival on the global
nuclear power stage in return.
Instead, GE-Hitachi’s plans were shelved after it rejected the Obama-Modi agreement in January 2015, saying GE would
not accept the compromise formula on supplier liability. (While others have
indicated they would accept the liability offer, none of them has put that
on paper.) Toshiba-Westinghouse then carried the baton to actualise the
India-U.S. civil nuclear deal, but ran into a different storm as both
Toshiba and Westinghouse had major financial troubles last year. After a
near-bankruptcy, Toshiba jettisoned Westinghouse for just $4.6 billion to a
Canadian consortium, a deal that is now expected to be cleared by the end
of 2018.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/forging-a-new-nuclear-deal/article22637628.ece
February 5, 2018
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China accuses US of ‘Cold War mentality’ over nuclear policy BBC News 4 Feb 18 China has urged the US to drop its “Cold War mentality” after Washington said it planned to diversify its nuclear armoury with smaller bombs.”The country that owns the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, should take the initiative to follow the trend instead of going against it,” China’s defence ministry said on Sunday.
The US military believes its nuclear weapons are seen as too big to be used and wants to develop low-yield bombs.
Russia has already condemned the plan.
Iran’s foreign minister claimed it brought the world “closer to annihilation”……….
China said on Sunday it “firmly” opposed the Pentagon’s review of US nuclear policy.
The defence ministry in Beijing said Washington had played up the threat of China’s nuclear threat, adding that its own policy was defensive in nature.
“We hope that the United States will abandon its Cold War mentality, earnestly assume its special disarmament responsibilities, correctly understand China’s strategic intentions and objectively view China’s national defence and military build-up,” its statement said. …..http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42935758
February 5, 2018
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Iran says Trump’s hostility to nuclear deal scares investors, http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/iran-trumps-hostility-nuclear-deal-scares-investors-52826053
Iran says President Donald Trump’s hostility to the 2015 nuclear deal is dampening foreign investment in the energy sector despite the lifting of sanctions.
Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh told reporters on Sunday that the uncertainty over the future of the agreement, which Trump has repeatedly threatened to scrap, is scaring off potential investors.
Trump re-certified the deal in January but said he would not do the same in May unless it is fixed.
Iran hopes to attract more than $150 billion to rebuild its energy industry after years of sanctions. Last year it signed a $5 billion gas deal with France’s Total SA and a Chinese oil company to develop a massive offshore gas field.
February 5, 2018
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http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2018/02/02/0401000000AEN20180202008700315.html SEOUL, Feb. 2 (Yonhap) — The top U.S. nuclear envoy said Friday that Washington wants to open dialogue with North Korea for its denuclearization.
After meeting with South Korean Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung in Seoul, Joseph Yun also told reporters that he sees the resumed inter-Korean talks and easing tensions after the North’s decision to join the upcoming Winter Olympics as a “good opportunity” for denuclearization efforts.
“We want to open dialogue with North Korea, we want to have a credible dialogue, a dialogue that could lead steps towards denuclearization,” he said. “That is our goal and of course President Moon has also emphasized that goal too.”
February 3, 2018
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Xinhuanet 1st Feb 2018, China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN), a major Chinese nuclear
power operator, said Wednesday that nuclear projects in Britain were
proceeding well. He Yu, chairman of the board of CGN, said since the deals
were inked in 2016 with French energy company EDF and the British
government, CGN has invested 1.7 billion British pounds in order to advance
the projects. CGN signed agreements in 2016 for Hinkley Point C (HPC), a
nuclear project in Somerset, and a suite of agreements relating to the
Sizewell C (SZC) in eastern England and Bradwell B projects (BRB) in Essex.
“A total of 15 Chinese suppliers and contractors have passed a preliminary
qualification assessment for the HPC project,” He said. “HPC, which is
Britain’s first new nuclear power station in a generation, is the largest
construction in Europe.”
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-02/01/c_136940068.htm
Reuters 31st Jan 2018, Notable Chinese investments in Britain include the Hinkley C nuclear power
station which is being built by China General Nuclear Power Corp and the
British arm of France’s EDF (EDF.PA), while British firms, such as Rolls
Royce (RR.L), have won large deals from Chinese firms to supply items like
plane engines. Both May and senior Chinese officials have restated their
commitment to the “golden era” in ties but a row over May’s decision
to delay approval for the Chinese-funded Hinkley nuclear plant in late 2016
chilled relations. However, Britain was the first Western country to sign
up to the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and it sent
Finance Minister Philip Hammond to a Beijing summit last year about
President Xi Jinping’s flagship ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ – a
trillion-dollar infrastructure-led push to build a modern Silk Road.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-britain/chinas-li-says-ties-with-britain-to-stay-unchanged-through-brexit-idUSKBN1FK023
February 3, 2018
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On 17 December 2017 Mexico became the fourth country to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
This comes at a time where the World Economic Forum has recently disclosed that fear of a nuclear attack is one of the top things people all over the world fear most at the beginning of 2018.
This is a legitimate fear. With North Korea and the USA using threatening rhetoric about the size of their nuclear arsenals and stating that the nuclear option is on the table, who would have thought that the world would return to nuclear attack being a primary concern for so many people.
Now, more than ever, is the time to rally governments to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
This treaty makes the production, transfer and selling of nuclear weapons illegal and if we had created and ratified this early, North Korea would not have been able to develop their nuclear weapons. But it is still not too late, over 50 states have already signed the treaty, the next step is for each state to ratify it, making it part of their national law. Once 50 states send the official letter saying they have ratified the treaty (known as an instrument of ratification) to the UN headquarters in New York, the treaty becomes law and every country in the world has to respect it, including North Korea.
North Korea is already facing crippling sanctions from the USA which will hinder it from its economic growth plans. Banning these weapons means that it will not be able to continue developing its nuclear weapons programme. Of course the other side of the coin is that USA, UK, India, Israel and Russia will also have to freeze their production and focus on creating a plan to denuclearize their arsenals. That would mean all states would essentially be getting rid of their nuclear capabilities together.
January 31, 2018
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Lessons of Seoul Games’ triumph over terror 30 years ago, NBC News, 28 Jan 18 by ERIK ORTIZ, South Korea offering an olive branch. North Korea striking a defiant tone. And the world waiting to see if tensions rattling the Korean Peninsula could undermine an Olympic Games, with calamitous consequences.
That was the backdrop 30 years ago as South Korea prepared to host its first Olympics in the summer of 1988.
In some ways, the fears then are reverberating today — with potentially even more at stake because of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
But this year, as snow-capped PyeongChang — just 50 miles from the border with the North — prepares to host the Winter Olympics next month, foreign policy analysts say the lessons of the Seoul Games could show the region how to move closer to not only a trouble-free event, but a path to permanent peace.
The 1988 Games were “a major missed opportunity for South Korea,” said Sergey Radchenko, a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington who has studied North Korea’s role in the Olympics. “They missed the opportunity to engage with the North.”
So what’s different this time around?
High-level talks between the North and South this month led to an agreement to not only have their Olympic athletes march together for the first time since the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy, but to form their first unified Olympic team.
A dozen female ice hockey players from North Korea will join players from the South to compete under a blue-and-white unification flag……..https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/winter-olympics-2018/lessons-seoul-games-triumph-over-terror-30-years-ago-n840631
January 29, 2018
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Soros: Trump has US ‘set on a course towards nuclear war’ CNBC , Jeff Cox | 26 Jan 18
- Billionaire investor and political activist George Soros said President Donald Trump has the U.S. set on a course for nuclear war with North Korea.
- Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Soros said Trump is trying to establish a “mafia state” in the U.S. but has failed so far.
- The progressive activist said he sees the president’s place in the world as “temporary” and likely to “disappear in 2020 or even sooner.”
President Donald Trump has the U.S. on course for a nuclear war with North Korea, billionaire investor and progressive political activist George Soros said Thursday.
In a blistering critique of the country under Trump’s leadership, the head of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations painted a bleak picture.
“The fact of nuclear war is so horrendous that we are trying to ignore it, but it is real,” Soros said during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Indeed, the United States is set on a course towards nuclear war by refusing to accept that [North] Korea has become a nuclear power.”
“This creates a strong incentive for North Korea to develop its nuclear capacity with all possible speed, which in turn may induce the United States to use its nuclear superiority pre-emptively, in effect to start a nuclear war to prevent a nuclear war, obviously a self-contradictory strategy.”
That wasn’t the only place Soros attacked Trump.
He compared the president to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, saying Trump also would like to create a “mafia state” that suppresses individual rights. He can’t “because the Constitution and the institutions and a vibrant society won’t allow it.”
Soros said he is using his foundation and the billions at his disposal to “protect the democratic achievements of the past……..https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/25/soros-trump-has-us-set-on-a-course-towards-nuclear-war.html
January 27, 2018
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Mike Pence confirms US intention to withdraw from Iran nuclear deal, The US vice president’s visit to Israel has prompted anger from Palestinians over US policy in the Middle East. The Independent ,By Ken Thomas, January 23 2018 US vice president Mike Pence has reiterated to Israeli leaders that the Trump administration plans to pull out of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal unless the pact is amended.
The remarks came as Mr Pence wrapped up his visit to Israel. On Monday, he repeatedly referred to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, speaking alongside the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also used a high-profile speech to the parliament to announce plans to speed up the timing of the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, moving it from Tel Aviv, by the end of 2019.
On Tuesday, Mr Pence met with Israeli president Reuven Rivlin and vowed the United States would counter the Iranian nuclear threat………https://www.independent.ie/world-news/mike-pence-confirms-us-intention-to-withdraw-from-iran-nuclear-deal-36520699.html
January 24, 2018
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Controversial Pacific trade pact revived, Perth Now, Lisa Martin with Reuters | AAP, January 24, 2018 The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which had been on life support since America’s withdrawal, has finally been resuscitated.
The 11 remaining countries are expected to sign a tweaked agreement on March 8 in Chile, Trade Minister Steve Ciobo has confirmed.
Canada threw a spanner in the works at the APEC summit in Vietnam last year derailing efforts to finalise the deal.
Ottawa has since been coaxed back to the fold following lobbying efforts from Tokyo and Canberra……….The TPP 11 is made up of:
Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam……..
Some opponents of the TPP fear it opens doors for companies to sue governments for changing policies if it harms their investments. The deal has a controversial investor state dispute settlement clause.
* China is not part of the TPP and is trying to get up a rival deal with seven TPP countries, including Australia, and eight others.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnershp is much narrower and less ambitious.https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/controversial-pacific-trade-pact-revived-ng-s-1822008
January 24, 2018
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