‘Pakistan advanced nuclear weapons programme despite economic challenges’
Pakistan is reported to have 170 nuclear warheads as of January 2023
By: Pramod Thomas, 17 Apr 24, https://www.easterneye.biz/pakistan-nuclear-programme-india-us/
DESPITE economic challenges, Pakistan continued upgrading its nuclear capabilities, driven by its ongoing tensions with India, top US intelligence official told Congress.
The remarks by Lt Gen Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency came during a Congressional hearing on China on Monday (15).
Kruse told lawmakers that Pakistan has sought international support, including from the UN security council, to resolve its dispute with India about Kashmir.
Separately, Islamabad and New Delhi have maintained an uneasy ceasefire along the shared Line of Control since February 2021, he said.
“Pakistan has sustained its nuclear modernisation efforts despite its economic turmoil. Terrorist violence against Pakistani security forces and civilians also rose last year,” he said.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Pakistan is reported to have 170 nuclear warheads as of January 2023.
Cash-strapped Pakistan is banking on close allies like China and Saudi Arabia for loans to tide over its economic woes. Moreover, Pakistan’s finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb is now in Washington to discuss a new loan package with the International Monetary Fund.
Pakistan’s contentious relationship with India continues to drive its defence policy, Kruse told US lawmakers.
However, cross-border violence between the countries has decreased since their February 2021 recommitment to a ceasefire, he said.
“Islamabad is modernising its nuclear arsenal and improving the security of its nuclear materials and nuclear C2 (command and control). In October, Pakistan successfully tested its Ababeel medium-range ballistic missile,” he said.
In 2023, militants killed around 400 security forces, a nine-year high, and Pakistani security forces have conducted almost daily counterterrorism operations during the past year.
Islamabad and New Delhi have a long history of strained relations, primarily due to the Kashmir issue as well as the cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
In 2019, Pakistan downgraded its diplomatic ties with New Delhi after the Indian government abrogated Article 370 of the constitution, revoking the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcating the state into two union territories.
India has been maintaining that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan while insisting that the onus is on Islamabad to create an environment that is free of terror and hostility for such an engagement.
New Delhi has also asserted that the constitutional measures taken by the Indian government to ensure socio-economic development and good governance in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir are matters internal to India.
Bombs and viruses: The shadowy history of Israel’s attacks on Iranian soil
From cyberattacks and assassinations to drone strikes, Israel-linked plots have targeted Iran and its nuclear programme for years.
Israel’s leaders have signalled that they are weighing their options on how to respond to Iran’s attack early Sunday morning, when Tehran targeted its archenemy with more than 300 missiles and drones.
Iran’s attack, which followed an Israeli strike last week on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, that killed 13 people was historic: It was the first time Tehran had directly targeted Israeli soil, despite decades of hostility. Until Sunday, many of Iran’s allies in the so-called axis of resistance — especially the Palestinian group Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq and Syria — were the ones who launched missiles and drones at Israel.
But if Israel were to hit back militarily inside Iran, it wouldn’t be the first time. Far from it.
For years, Israel has focused on one target within Iran in particular: the country’s nuclear programme. Israel has long accused Iran of clandestinely building a nuclear bomb that could threaten its existence — and has publicly, and frequently, spoken of its diplomatic and intelligence-driven efforts to derail those alleged efforts. Iran denies that it has had a military nuclear programme, while arguing that it has the right to access civil nuclear energy.
As Israel prepares its response, here’s a look at the range of attacks in Iran — from drone strikes and cyberattacks to assassinations of scientists and the theft of secrets — that Israel has either accepted it was behind or is accused of having orchestrated.
Assassinations of Iranian scientists
- January 2010: A physics professor at Tehran University, Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, was killed through a remote-controlled bomb planted in his motorcycle. Iranian state media claimed that the US and Israel were behind the attack. The Iranian government described Ali-Mohammadi as a nuclear scientist.
- November 2010: A professor at the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Majid Shahriari, was killed in a car explosion on his way to work. His wife was also wounded. The president of Iran at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blamed the United States and Israel for the attacks.
- January 2012: Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemical engineering graduate, was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran. Iran blamed Israel and the US for the attack and said Ahmadi Roshan was a nuclear scientist who supervised a department at Iran’s primary uranium enrichment facility, in the city of Natanz.
- November 2020:Prominent nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in a roadside attack outside Tehran. Western and Israeli intelligence had long suspected that Fakhrizadeh was the father of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. He was sanctioned by the United Nations in 2007 and the US in 2008.
- May 2022: Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was shot five times outside of his home in Tehran. Majid Mirahmadi, a member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged the assassination was “definitely the work of Israel”.
Israel’s cyberattacks on Iran
- June 2010:The Stuxnet virus was found in computers at the nuclear plant in Iran’s Bushehr city, and it spread from there to other facilities. As many as 30,000 computers across at least 14 facilities were impacted by September 2010. At least 1,000 out of 9,000 centrifuges in Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility were destroyed, according to an estimate by the Institute for Science and International Security. Upon investigation, Iran blamed Israel and the US for the virus attack.
- April 2011: A virus called Stars was discovered by the Iranian cyberdefence agency which said the malware was designed to infiltrate and damage Iran’s nuclear facilities. The virus mimicked official government files and inflicted “minor damage” on computer systems, according to Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization. Iran blamed Israel and the US.
November 2011: Iran said it discovered a new virus called Duqu, based on Stuxnet. Experts said Duqu was intended to gather data for future cyberattacks. The Iranian government announced it was checking computers at main nuclear sites. The Duqu spyware was widely believed by experts to have been linked to Israel.- April 2012: Iran blamed the US and Israel for malware called Wiper, which erased the hard drives of computers owned by the Ministry of Petroleum and the National Iranian Oil Company.
- May 2012: Iran announced that a virus called Flame had tried to steal government data from government computers. The Washington Post reported that Israel and the US had used it to collect intelligence. Then-Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not confirm the nation’s involvement but acknowledged that Israel would use all means to “harm the Iranian nuclear system”.
- October 2018: The Iranian government said that it had blocked an invasion by a new generation of Stuxnet, blaming Israel for the attack.
- October 2021: A cyberattack hit the system that allows Iranians to use government-issued cards to purchase fuel at a subsidised rate, affecting all 4,300 petrol stations in Iran. Consumers had to either pay the regular price, more than double the subsidised one, or wait for stations to reconnect to the central
- distribution system. Iran blamed Israel and the US.
- May 2020: A cyberattack impacted computers that control maritime traffic at Shahid Rajaee port on Iran’s southern coast in the Gulf, creating a hold-up of ships that waited to dock. The Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that Israel was behind the attack, though Israel did not claim responsibility.
Israel’s drone strikes and raids on Iran
- January 2018: Mossad agents raided a secure Tehran facility, stealing classified nuclear archives. In April 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel discovered 100,000 “secret files that prove” Iran lied about never having a nuclear weapons programme.
- February 2022: Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett admitted in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal in December 2023, that Israel carried out an attack on an unmanned aerial vehicle, and assassinated a senior IRGC commander in February of the previous year.
- May 2022: Explosives-laden quadcopter suicide drones hit the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, killing an engineer and damaging a building where drones had been developed by the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces. IRGC Commander Hossein Salami pledged retaliation against unspecified “enemies”.
- February 2024: A natural gas pipeline in Iran was attacked. Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji alleged that the “explosion of the gas pipeline was an Israeli plot”.
- January 2023: Several suicide drones struck a military facility in central Isfahan, but they were thwarted and caused no damage. While Iran did not immediately place blame for the attacks, Iran’s UN envoy, Amir Saeid Iravani, wrote a letter to the UN chief saying that “primary investigation suggested Israel was responsible”.
Environmental impacts of underground nuclear weapons testing
While underground nuclear tests were chosen to limit atmospheric radioactive fallout, each test still caused dynamic and complex responses within crustal formations. Mechanical effects of underground nuclear tests span from the prompt post-detonation responses to the enduring impacts resulting in radionuclide release, dispersion, and migration through the geosphere. Every test of nuclear weapons adds to a global burden of released radioactivity (Ewing 1999).
Bulletin, By Sulgiye Park, Rodney C. Ewing, March 7, 2024
Since Trinity—the first atomic bomb test on the morning of July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico—the nuclear-armed states have conducted 2,056 nuclear tests (Kimball 2023). The United States led the way with 1,030 nuclear tests, or almost half of the total, between 1945 and 1992. Second is the former Soviet Union, with 715 tests between 1949 and 1990, and then France, with 210 tests between 1960 and 1996. Globally, nuclear tests culminated in a cumulative yield of over 500 megatons, which is equivalent to 500 million tons of TNT (Pravalie 2014). This surpasses by over 30,000 times the yield of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
Atmospheric nuclear tests prevailed until the early 1960s, with bombs tested by various means: aircraft drops, rocket launches, suspension from balloons, and detonation atop towers above ground. Between 1945 and 1963, the Soviet Union conducted 219 atmospheric tests, followed by the United States (215), the United Kingdom (21), and France (3) (Kimball 2023).
In the early days of the nuclear age, little was known about the impacts of radioactive “fallout —the residual and activated radioactive material that falls to the ground after a nuclear explosion. The impacts became clearer in the 1950s, when the Kodak chemical company detected radioactive contamination on their film, which was linked to radiation resulting from the atmospheric nuclear tests (Sato et al. 2022). American scientists, like Barry Commoner, also discovered the presence of strontium 90 in children’s teeth originating from nuclear fallout thousands of kilometers from the original test site (Commoner 1959; Commoner 1958; Reiss 1961). These discoveries alerted scientists and the public to the consequences of radioactive fallout from underwater and atmospheric nuclear tests, particularly tests of powerful thermonuclear weapons that had single event yields of one megaton or greater.
Public concerns for the effects of radioactive contamination led to the Limited (or Partial) Test Ban Treaty, signed on August 5, 1963. The treaty restricted nuclear tests from air, space, and underwater (Atomic Heritage Foundation 2016; Loeb 1991; Rubinson 2011). And while the treaty was imperfect with only three signatories at the beginning (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union), the ban succeeded in significantly curbing atmospheric release of radioactive isotopes.
After the entry into force of the partial test ban, almost 1,500 underground nuclear tests were conducted globally. Of the 1,030 US nuclear tests, nearly 80 percent, or 815 tests (See Table 1 on original ), were conducted underground, primarily at the Nevada Test Site.[1] As for other nuclear powers, the Soviet Union conducted 496 underground tests, mostly in the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan, France conducted 160 underground tests, the United Kingdom conducted 24, and China 22. These underground nuclear tests were in a variety of geologic formations (e.g., basalt, alluvium, rhyolite, sandstone, shale) to depths up to 2,400 meters.
In 1996, after some international efforts to curb nuclear testing and promote disarmament, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was negotiated, which prohibited all nuclear explosions (General Assembly 1996). Since the negotiation of the CTBT, India and Pakistan conducted three and two underground nuclear tests, respectively, in 1998. And today, North Korea stands as the only country to have tested nuclear weapons in the 21st century.
While underground nuclear tests were chosen to limit atmospheric radioactive fallout, each test still caused dynamic and complex responses within crustal formations. Mechanical effects of underground nuclear tests span from the prompt post-detonation responses to the enduring impacts resulting in radionuclide release, dispersion, and migration through the geosphere. Every test of nuclear weapons adds to a global burden of released radioactivity (Ewing 1999)…………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………….. Containment failures and nuclear accidents
Underground nuclear tests are designed to limit radioactive fallout and surface effects. However, containment methods are not foolproof, and radioisotopes, which are elements with neutrons in excess making them unstable and radioactive, can leak into the surrounding environment and atmosphere, posing potential risks to ecosystems and human health.
Instances of radiation leaks were not uncommon…………………………………..
Unintended radioactive releases from underground nuclear tests occurred through venting or seeps, where fission products and radioactive materials were uncontrollably released, driven by pressure from shockwave-induced steam or gas. In rare cases, more serious nuclear accidents occurred due to incomplete geological assessments of the surrounding medium in preparation for the test. A notable example of accidental release is the Baneberry underground nuclear test on December 18, 1970, which, according to the federal government, resulted in an “unexpected and unrecognized abnormally high water content in the medium surrounding the detonation point” ……………………………………………………………………………………………
Mechanical and radiation effects of underground nuclear tests
Three main factors affect the mechanical responses of underground nuclear tests: the yield, the device placement (i.e., depth of burial, chamber geometry, and size), and the emplacement medium (i.e., rock type, water content, mineral compositions, physical properties, and tectonic structure). These factors influence the physical response of the surrounding geological formations and the extent of ground displacement, which, in turn, determine the radiation effects by influencing the timing and fate of the radioactive gas release.
Every kiloton of explosive yield produces approximately 60 grams (3 × 1012 fission product atoms) of radionuclides (Smith 1995; Glasstone and Dolan 1977). Between 1962 and 1992, underground nuclear tests had a total explosive yield of approximately 90 megatons (Pravalie 2014), producing nearly 5.4 metric tons of radionuclides. ……………………………………………….
……………………………..The partitioning of radionuclides between the melt glass and rubble significantly impacts the subsequent transfer of radioactivity to groundwater.
…………………………Temperatures produced by large explosions can change the permeability, porosity, and water storage capacity by creating new fractures, cavities, and chimneys……………………. The explosion also affects the porosity of the surrounding rock. For example, a fully contained explosion of 12.5-kiloton yield in Degelen Mountain at the former Soviet Union’s Semipalatinsk test site resulted in up to a six-fold increase in porosity within the crush zone surrounding the cavity (Adushkin and Spivak 2015). Increased permeability and porosity of the surrounding rock can lead to more radionuclides being released, as more groundwater can pass through the geologic formation.
Hydrogeology and release of radioactivity
The main way contaminants can be moved from underground test areas to the more accessible environment is through groundwater flow. …………………………………………..
Given their long half-lives (Table 2 on original ), the ability of plutonium isotopes to migrate over time raises concerns about the long-term impacts and challenges in managing radioactive contamination.
In all these cases, colloid-facilitated transport allowed for the migration of radioactive particles through groundwater flow over an extended period—long after the nuclear tests or discharge occurred (Novikov et al. 2006). ………………………
The risks associated with the environmental contamination from underground nuclear tests have often been considered low due to the slow movement of the groundwater and the long distance that separates it from publicly accessible groundwater supplies. But these studies demonstrate that apart from prompt effect of radioactive gas releases from instantaneous changes in geologic formations, long-term effects persist due to the evolving properties of the surrounding rocks long after the tests. Long-lived radionuclides can be remarkably mobile in the geosphere. Such findings underscore the necessity for sustained long-term monitoring efforts at and around nuclear test sites to evaluate the delayed impacts of underground nuclear testing on the environment and public health.
Enduring legacy
Nearly three decades after the five nuclear-armed states under the CTBT stopped testing nuclear weapons both in the atmosphere and underground, the effects of past tests persist in various forms—including environmental contamination, radiation exposure, and socio-economic repercussions—which continue to impact populations at and near closed nuclear test sites (Blume 2022). The concerns are greater when the test sites are abandoned without adequate environmental remediation. This was the case with the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan that was left unattended after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, before a secret multi-million effort was made by the United States, Russia, and Kazakhstan to secure the site (Hecker 2013). The abandonment resulted in heavy contamination of soil, water, and vegetation, posing significant risks to the local populations (Kassenova 2009).
In 1990, the US Congress acknowledged the health risks from nuclear testing by establishing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which provides compensation to those affected by radioactive fallout from nuclear tests and uranium mining. Still, there are limitations and gaps in coverage that leave many impacted individuals, including the “downwinders” from the Trinity test site without compensation for their radiation exposure (Blume, 2023). The Act is set to expire in July 2024, potentially depriving many individuals without essential assistance. Over the past 30 years, the RECA fund paid out approximately $2.5 billion to impacted populations (Congressional Research Service 2022). For comparison, the US federal government spends $60 billion per year to maintain its nuclear forces (Congressional Budget Office 2021).
As the effects of nuclear testing still linger, today’s generations are witnessing an increasing concern at the possibility of a new arms race and potential resumption of nuclear testing (Drozdenko 2023; Diaz-Maurin 2023). The concern is heightened by activities in China and North Korea and with Russia rescinding its ratification of the CTBT. Even though the United States maintains a moratorium on non-subcritical nuclear tests, its decision not to ratify the test ban treaty shows a lack of international leadership and commitment. As global tensions and uncertainties arise, it is critical to ensure global security and minimize the risks to humans and the environment by enforcing comprehensive treaties like the CTBT. Transparency at nuclear test sites should be promoted, including those conducting very-low-yield subcritical tests, and the enduring impacts of past nuclear tests should be assessed and addressed.
Endnotes………………………………………………………………more https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-03/environmental-impacts-of-underground-nuclear-weapons-testing/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter04152024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_EnvironmentalImpactsNuclearTests_03072024
Biden Tells Netanyahu US Won’t Support Attack on Iran
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.
The US is portraying the Iranian attack as an Israeli victory
by Dave DeCamp April 14, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/14/biden-tells-netanyahu-us-wont-support-attack-on-iran/
President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US wouldn’t join Israel in any offensive action against Iran, multiple media outlets have reported.
US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, which was a response to Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1.
“Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange. It took out the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] leadership in the Levant, Iran tried to respond, and Israel clearly demonstrated its military superiority, defeating this attack, particularly in coordination with its partners,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters, according to The Times of Israel.
In a statement on the attack released by the White House, Biden said he would convene with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”
Israeli officials claimed 99% of the Iranian missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems and with assistance from the US, Britain, and Jordan. Some missiles got through and damaged the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. Only one person was injured in the attack, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev, and nobody was killed.
Iran gave Israel plenty of time to respond to the attack by announcing it fired the drones hours before they reached Israeli territory, and Tehran said it gave other regional countries a 72-hour notice. Iranian officials said the attack was “limited” and made clear they do not seek an escalation with Israel.
But Tehran is also warning it will launch an even bigger attack if Israel responds. “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday.
While the US is signaling it seeks de-escalation and won’t support a potential Israeli attack on Iran, it’s unclear what Israel will do next. The Israeli war cabinet convened to discuss the situation on Sunday, and Israeli media reports said they agreed a response would come but didn’t decide on where or when.
Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz vowed Israel would respond but signaled it wouldn’t be imminent. Gantz said the “event is not over” and that Israel should “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.
Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria killed 13 people, including seven members of the IRGC. Israel has a history of conducting covert attacks inside Iran and killing Iranians in Syria, but the bombing of the diplomatic facility marked a huge escalation.
The short march to China’s hydrogen bomb
Bulletin, April 11, 2024. (very lengthy historic and technical detail. Good graphics)
On December 28, 1966, China successfully conducted its first hydrogen bomb test—only two years and two months after the successful explosion of its first atomic bomb. In so doing, China became the fastest among the five initial nuclear-weapon states (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France, collectively known as P5) to pass from its first atomic bomb explosion to a first hydrogen bomb detonation.
There is still very limited knowledge in Western literature about how China built its first H-bomb. Based on newly available information—including Chinese blogs, memoirs, and other publicly available publications—this account reconstructs the history of how China made a breakthrough in understanding hydrogen bomb principles and built its first H-bomb—without foreign help.
Beyond the previously untold story of China’s early exploration of the hydrogen bomb theory, the article also explores in detail the so-called “100 days in Shanghai”—a milestone of China’s hydrogen bomb development—and describes the efforts that led to a series of three nuclear tests that happened in 1966 and 1967 and that are often called “the trilogy” of the H-bomb development in China.
Early explorations
Moscow’s broken promise
China officially started its nuclear weapon program on January 15, 1955.[1] About two years later, China and the Soviet Union signed the New Defense Technical Accord in Moscow. Under that agreement, Moscow would provide Beijing with a prototype of an atomic bomb model and relevant technical materials. In June 1959, however, as many major relevant facilities in the Chinese nuclear weapon program were at the peak of construction, Soviet-Sino relations deteriorated,[2] and Moscow sent a letter to Beijing formally announcing it would not provide the promised model and data. From the second half of 1959 onward, the Second Ministry of Machine Building Industry—China’s government ministry overseeing the nuclear industry—followed central government policy and relied on the country’s own capabilities to complete the task of developing the atomic bomb.[3]
In early 1960, the weaponeers of the Beijing institute of nuclear weapon research—called the Ninth Institute and placed under the leadership of the Second Ministry[4]—started to explore atomic bomb science and technology. As those weaponeers started working hard on the atomic bomb program, then-Minister of the Second Ministry Liu Jie began considering ways to conduct the nation’s hydrogen bomb development. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
On January 7, 1965, Liu Jie delivered a speech at the meeting of the Second Ministry, conveying Mao’s new instructions to the audience: “If we have hydrogen bombs and missiles, wars may not be fought, and peace will be more secure. We make the atomic bombs but will not be too many. It will be used to scare [enemies] and embolden [ourselves].” Mao also said that “it still needs three years to have the hydrogen bomb, which is too slow.” [23]
……………………………………… On February 3, 1965, the Second Ministry set the goal of testing the first hydrogen bomb device in 1968.[25]………………………………………………
…………………From February 1965 onward, the weaponeers tried different routes and proposed different ideas, but none was successful. ………………………………………………………………………
Gathering in Shanghai
In late September 1965, Yu Min and over 50 researchers gathered in Shanghai for what may have been the most intense period in the development of the hydrogen bomb………………….
……………………………….For nearly 100 days—and nights—all the physicists, mathematicians, and research assistants gathered in Shanghai would arrange shifts and take turns in the computer room around the clock to solve problems.[43]
…………………………………………………………………………….The group in Shanghai also continued the optimization design work of the boosted three-phase hydrogen aerial bomb.
Finally, in early January 1966, the researchers returned to Beijing with the new hydrogen bomb principle they had sought so hard for nearly 100 days and nights in Shanghai.
Testing the Bomb
………………………………………………..A new two-year plan included preparations for three nuclear tests that aimed for a breakthrough in confirming the H-bomb principle.
………………………….Low-yield hydrogen bomb (device 629).………………………………………………………………………………………………On December 28, 1966, the hydrogen bomb device 629-1 successfully exploded.[70]
………………..Third test: Full-yield hydrogen bomb (device 639)
…………………………………………………………………………………………..On June 17, 1967, China successfully conducted its first hydrogen bomb (device 639) air-burst test, which was coded operation 21-73……………………………..
more https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/the-short-march-to-chinas-hydrogen-bomb/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter04152024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_ChinaHydrogenBomb_04112024
Civil and military nuclear mutuality
‘The UK government is pursuing an uneconomic nuclear programme in large part so as to maintain & renew military nuclear capabilities’.
Rishi Sunak backs both civil and military nuclear: ‘Safeguarding the future of our nuclear deterrent and nuclear energy industry is a critical national endeavour’. French president Emmanuel Macron is even more upfront about it all: ‘Without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear.’ With the USA, China and Russia also evidently locked into similar paths, the global future doesn’t look too good.
‘The UK government is pursuing an uneconomic nuclear programme in large part so as to maintain & renew military nuclear capabilities’.
backs both civil and military nuclear: ‘Safeguarding the future of our nuclear deterrent and nuclear energy industry is a critical national endeavour’. French president Emmanuel Macron is even more upfront about it all: ‘Without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear.’ With the USA, China and Russia also evidently locked into similar paths, the global future doesn’t look too good.
Renew Extra Weekly, 13 Apr 24
Until recently, the UK government has always said that civil and military nuclear technologies were separate things, for example in response to claims that expansion of civil nuclear power capacity could lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons making capacity. But, as researchers at the University of Sussex have relentlessly catalogued, there seems to have been a change of view underway, culminating formally in March in a new policy document from No. 10 Downing Street. Entitled ‘Building the Nuclear Workforce of Tomorrow’ it claims that ‘domestic [civil] nuclear capability is vital to our national defence and energy security, underpinning our nuclear deterrent and securing cheaper, more reliable energy for UK consumers’. So they are intertwined and mutually beneficial- we need both!
UK Prime Minister Sunak says that ‘in a more dangerous and contested world, the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is more vital than ever’ and that civil nuclear power is the ‘perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain- it’s green, cheaper in the long term and will ensure the UK’s energy security for the long term’.
There are many issues raised by these claims. Leaving aside all the major moral and political issues associated with nuclear weapons, it is not at all clear that new nuclear reactors will be as costs effective as renewables. Indeed, the cost of renewables has fallen dramatically in recent years while the cost of nuclear projects has continued to escalate. It could be that, recognising this imbalance in cost, what we are now seeing is the government trying to provide a compensating justification for new civil nuclear- it will aid defence. Even if, arguably, it makes little economic sense as Business Green argued: ‘The UK government is pursuing an uneconomic nuclear programme in large part so as to maintain & renew military nuclear capabilities’.
Basically, as the Sussex University researchers have argued, it does seem that the government is just responding to military pressures. More specifically though, it’s a matter of rapidly expanding skill requirements- and shortages. Matthew Lay, Head of EDF Nuclear Skills Alliance, says that ‘the UK Government’s commitment to nuclear power must be seen in the context of a steady increase of nuclear capacity worldwide as well as growth in defence expenditure,’ and especially the growth in the ‘defence industry’s demand for nuclear skills, to deliver established and new nuclear submarine programmes’. So it’s about expanding nuclear skills for building nuclear sub power plants and civil reactors, including possibly Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which have some similarities. Presumably also about making fuels for them both too.
Some may be happy about civil-military skill sharing, but it’s a long way from the old rhetoric about ‘atoms for peace’. In 1953 President Eisenhower called for nuclear bomb technology to be turned to peaceful ends around the world, with US help e.g. in transferring nuclear plant technology to developing countries. That had floundered due, in part, to the high cost of nuclear plants. According to a review by Drogan, a State Department Intelligence Report, circulated in January 1954, ‘Economic Implications of Nuclear Power in Foreign Countries’, noted that ‘nuclear power plants may cost twice as much to operate and as much as 50 percent more to build and equip than conventional thermal plants’. So it warned that the introduction of nuclear power would ‘not usher in a new era of plenty and rapid economic development as is commonly believed’. You could say that we are still waiting!
There were also potential conflicts between the ‘atoms for peace’ idea and proliferation issues. Indeed that is now even more of a problem, with some newly developing countries, following the UAE’s lead, looking to have nuclear plants, which, in theory, could give them the ability to make bombs. And (the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty apart!) why not, if nuclear weapons states like the UK are seen as no longer maintaining a clear separation between civil and military nuclear technology? Except of course the high cost of civil nuclear may make renewables a much better deal- especially solar, of which many countries (in the Middle East and Africa for example) have plenty. ……………………………………………………………………………..
Clearly UK Prime Minister Sunak doesn’t see it this way- he backs both civil and military nuclear: ‘Safeguarding the future of our nuclear deterrent and nuclear energy industry is a critical national endeavour’. French president Emmanuel Macron is even more upfront about it all: ‘Without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear.’ With the USA, China and Russia also evidently locked into similar paths, the global future doesn’t look too good.
Do we really have to continue with all this? In 1995, Sir Michael Atiyah, then retiring as President of the Royal Society, said ‘I believe history will show that insistence on a UK nuclear capability [weapons and energy] was fundamentally misguided, a total waste of resources and a significant factor in our relative economic decline over the past 50 years’. He may have been right. https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2024/04/civil-and-military-nuclear-mutuality.html
Not enough war on the ground, the US is taking it to space
The military industrial complex is suiting up for a new arms race, far beyond the stratosphere
STAVROULA PABST, APR 05, 2024, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/u-s-space-race/
Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX recently secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of “spy satellites” for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source telling Reuters that “no one can hide” under the prospective network’s reach.
While the deal suggests the space company, which currently operates over half the active satellites orbiting Earth, has warmed to U.S. national security agencies, it’s not the first Washington investment in conflict-forward space machinery. Rather, the U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies.
In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race — in space.
Space arms, then and now
Attempts to regulate weapons’ presence and use in space span decades. Responding to an intense, Cold War-era arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty established that space, while free for all countries to explore and use, was limited to peaceful endeavors. Almost 60 years later, the Outer Space Treaty’s vague language regarding military limitations in space, as space policy experts Michelle L.D. Hanlon and Greg Autry highlight, “leave more than enough room for interpretation to result in conflict.”
Stonewalling subsequent international efforts to limit the militarization of space (though the U.S. is participating in a new U.N. working group on the subject), Washington’s interest in space exploration and adjacent weapons technologies also goes back decades. Many may recall President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was established to develop land-, air-, and space-based missile defense systems to deter missile or nuclear weapons attacks against the U.S. Cynically referred to by critics as the “Star Wars” program, many SDI initiatives were ultimately canned due to prohibitive costs and technological limitations.
And while the Pentagon established Space Command in 1985, the Space Force, an entirely new branch of the military “focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain,” was launched in 2019, signaling renewed emphasis on space militarization as U.S. policy.
Weapons contractors cash in
Long-term American interest in space war tech now manifests in ambitious projects, where defense companies and startups are lining up for military contracts to create a new generation of space weaponry and adjacent tech, including space vehicles, hypersonic rockets, and extensive surveillance and communications projects.
For starters, Space Force’s Space Development Agency recently granted defense contractors L3Harris and Lockheed Martin and space company Sierra Space contracts worth $2.5 billion to build satellites for the U.S. military’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of hundreds of satellites, built out on tranches, that provide various warfighting capabilities, including the collection and transmission of critical wartime communications, into low-Earth orbit.
The PWSA will serve as the backbone of the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an effort to bolster warfighting capacities and decision-making processes by facilitating “information advantage at the speed of relevance.”
Other efforts are just as sci-fi-esque. Zoning in on hypersonic weapons systems and parts, for example, RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Northrop Grumman have collaborated to secure a DARPA contract for a Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept, where scramjet-powered missiles can travel at hypersonic speeds (Mach 5 or faster) for offensive purposes.
And Aerospace startup True Anomaly, which was founded by military officers and has received funding from the U.S. Space Force to the tune of over $17 million, is developing space weapons and adjacent conflict-forward tools. An example is True Anomaly’s Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle, an imaging satellite able to take on, according to True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers, “rendezvous and proximity operations missions” with “uncooperative” targets.
As True Anomaly finds fiscal success, accruing over $100 million in a December 2023 series B fundraising round from venture capitalists including Eclipse Ventures and ACME Capital, other aerospace start-ups are flooding the market with the assistance of the U.S. government, both in funding and other critical partnerships.
Take how Firehawk Aerospace — which wants to “create the rocket system of the future” to “enab[le] the next generation of aerospace and defense systems” — partnered with NASA in 2021 to test rocket engines at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. It recently secured Army Applications Laboratory and U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research Awards to advance developments in its rocket motors and engines.
And data and satellite-focused American space tech company Capella Space, a contractor for federal agencies including the Air and Space Forces, specializes in reconnaissance and powerful surveillance tools, including geospatial intelligence and Synthetic Aperture Radar monitoring that help national security officials identify myriad security risks. In early 2023, Capella Space even formed a subsidiary, Capella Federal, to provide federal clients with additional access to Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery services.
We need diplomacy, not space superiority
The funding of expensive, futuristic space surveillance and weapons projects indicates the U.S.’s eagerness to maintain superiority, where military personnel posit such advancements are critical within the context of both a “space race” and an increasingly tumultuous geopolitical climate, if not the possibility of war in space outright.
As Space Force General Chance Saltzman declared at the recent Mitchell Institute Spacepower Security Forum: “if we do not have space, we lose.” Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in late February, U.S. Space Force General Stephen N. Whiting explained that the U.S. Space Command must bolster its military capacities through increased personnel training and investments in relevant technologies so that the U.S. is “ready if deterrence fails.”
While upping its own military capacities, however, Washington is simultaneously pushing against other countries’ anti-satellite weapons testing, a capability the U.S. already has.
In any case, such pointing fingers, when coupled with ongoing space deterrence and weapons proliferation efforts, does little to advance genuine diplomacy, where states could instead discuss, on equal terms, how space should be used and shared amongst nations.
Ultimately, weapons and aerospace companies’ efforts have launched a new generation of weaponry and adjacent tech — buoyed by consistent support from a “deterrence”-focused U.S. As a result, the military industrial complex has further expanded into the domain of space, where defense companies have new opportunities to score lucrative weapons contracts and theoretically even push for more conflict.
Will Biden’s zero sum game approach to foreign conflict bumble US into regional/nuclear war in Europe and Middle East?
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 14 Apr 24, https://heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com/
President Biden continues on his astonishing and disheartening path to regional/nuclear war in both Europe and the Middle East.
In Europe, he plows ahead with his foolish demand to squandering another $61 billion in weapons for the lost cause in Ukraine. Any weapons manufactured will not reach Ukraine before their impending collapse, turning Ukraine into a rump state of abject poverty requiring endless US/NATO assistance.
Biden views the Russo Ukraine war as a zero sum game: US must win, Russia must lose. That requires endless US efforts to reclaim all Russian held Ukraine territory and bring Ukraine into NATO. Biden’s approach? Assisting Ukraine attacks on Russian territory.
Ukraine President Zelensky’s only hope is to widen the war to obtain direct US intervention. He almost provoked that 2 years ago when he claimed an errant Ukraine missile that killed 2 Poles in neighboring NATO Poland, was a Russian strike requiring immediate NATO response. Every day this 26 month long war continues represents another chance for US belligerence to make that happen. But Biden pushes on to possible all out war with his refusal to pivot from military provocation to diplomacy. That would require Biden dropping his zero sum game. Not likely.
The Middle East is more precarious still. The US has been Israel’s go to weapons and diplomatic supporter in their grotesque genocidal ethnic cleansing of 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza. That has turned both Israel and America in pariah states worldwide.
Besides the genocide, the possibility of all out regional war between Israel and its Arab neighbors looms daily. Biden remained silent when Israel launched its dastardly bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria, killing 7. But when Iran signaled its intent to reply militarily, Biden invoked his standard zero sum game view that Israel can do no wrong. Iran? They can do no right. That’s a recipe for all out war.
President Biden only learned one thing from his six decades of political leadership: America is 100% right in foreign affairs; our imagined enemies 100% wrong. History is filled with empires that disappeared from that zero sum game.
Will Biden’s America be next?
The Longer it Takes the West to Accept that Ukraine is Losing, the Worse Things Will Get for Ukraine
Our leaders keep warning us that Putin will roll his tanks into the Baltic States and maybe even Poland should the Russians be successful in beating the Ukrainians. France’s President Macron is even telling us that we may have to send NATO troops to fight in Ukraine. Everyone seems to automatically assume that Putin’s ambition is still to conquer all of Ukraine and incorporate it in the Russian Federation. This is despite the fact that he said that it was to keep Ukraine out of NATO and to safeguard the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine from Ukrainian nationalist militias.
Well, we do seem to have got ourselves into a bit of a pickle in Ukraine. How we get out of it is not immediately obvious.
Like many wars, this one seems to have started due to catastrophic blunders by the ruling elites on both sides. To simplify a rather complex situation, I believe that there were two massive blunders.
The West’s blunder – for several years Putin has warned NATO “not one inch further” – that he would not accept further NATO expansion eastwards and would not allow countries like Ukraine and Georgia, both with long borders with Russia, to join NATO. In 2008, Putin even attended a NATO summit during which he gave a speech warning NATO that Russia would not accept Ukraine’s and Georgia’s admission to NATO. To me that seems reasonable. After all, the U.S. would hardly accept Russia doing a deal with, say, Mexico which would allow Russia to establish bases close to the U.S.-Mexico border (although it’s also understandable that Ukraine and Georgia wanted to join NATO, given Putin’s sabre-rattling). And, of course, there was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the USA was not too pleased about Russian missiles being situated close to the American mainland. Probably due to stupidity, hubris or a belief that Putin was bluffing, NATO delivered a diplomatic note to the Kremlin reiterating NATO’s view that countries like Ukraine and Georgia could join the Alliance if they wished. The result – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Putin’s blunder – Putin seems to have believed that it would only take a couple of weeks for the Russian army to get to Kiev, overthrow and murder the Zelensky Government and install a Russian-friendly regime. He got that one wrong and several hundred thousand Russians have been wounded or killed as a result. Moreover, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted Sweden and Finland to join NATO – another consequence Putin seems to have failed to foresee.
The war seemed to have started well for Ukraine. The Ukrainian army surprised the Russians and the world by fighting off the initial Russian invasion. Then the success of the summer 2022 Ukrainian offensive appeared to suggest that Ukraine might even be able to push the Russians out of Eastern Ukraine, retake Crimea and, by humiliating Putin, maybe even cause a coup in Russia which could overthrow Putin and his mafia cronies.
But after the 2022 Ukraine summer offensive, the Russians built formidable defensive lines protected by miles of minefields, dragon’s teeth and trench systems. So, when the 2023 Ukrainian combined operations offensive was launched, the Ukrainians were caught in a death trap and suffered huge losses of personnel and equipment while making little progress
We are now in a third phase of the war – the war of attrition – in which Russia is gaining the upper hand. Russia can massively out-produce Ukraine (and the quivering West) in terms of munitions, tanks, planes, missiles, artillery systems, drones and numbers of soldiers. Moreover, Russia has also received military material from North Korea, Iran, Syria and probably China. Meanwhile, Ukraine is running out of ammunition and troops. Some sources have suggested that the average age of Ukrainian forces is a worrying 43. And Ukraine doesn’t have time to mobilise, equip and train the numbers necessary to stem the Russian advance. In a war of attrition, the side with the greatest resources usually wins by grinding down its opponent. And that’s what we’re seeing now with small but continual Russian advances and Ukrainian retreats.
Our leaders keep warning us that Putin will roll his tanks into the Baltic States and maybe even Poland should the Russians be successful in beating the Ukrainians. France’s President Macron is even telling us that we may have to send NATO troops to fight in Ukraine. Everyone seems to automatically assume that Putin’s ambition is still to conquer all of Ukraine and incorporate it in the Russian Federation. This is despite the fact that he said that it was to keep Ukraine out of NATO and to safeguard the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine from Ukrainian nationalist militias.
By the end of the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, Putin’s forces could have walked into the Georgian capital Tbilisi. Instead, they withdrew and merely stayed on to guard the Russian-speaking enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – the equivalent of the similar enclaves in Ukraine.
Putin has the habit of doing exactly what he says he’s going to do. This is a concept which contemporary Western politicians find so alien to their natures, of course, that they’re totally unable to grasp it (although their distrust of Putin is understandable).
Moreover, if we look at military budgets, you might wonder who is actually threatening whom. The USA’s military budget is around $877 billion. The total NATO military budget in 2023 (including the USA) a cool $1.3 trillion. The Russian Federation military budget prior to the Ukraine invasion? Just $86 billion a year.
Our rulers have repeatedly told us that we must “do whatever it takes” to stop Putin and that the West will support Ukraine for “however long is necessary”. But it seems to be becoming clear to everyone except our rulers that Ukraine is losing and can now never win if winning means expelling all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.
The best Ukraine can now hope for is an untidy truce which involves a loss of the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine – at least 20% of Ukrainian territory. Though the longer this war goes on, the more territory Ukraine will lose.
So, what will our rulers choose – humiliation or annihilation?
Will our rulers accept total humiliation by pushing Ukraine to do a deal with Russia in which Ukraine will have to hand over at least 20% of its land area to the Russian Federation and agree that what little is left of Ukraine will be a neutral country and never join NATO? And how will our rulers explain this defeat to us, their electorates? Moreover, what will the West’s defeat do to the global balance of power? It will, of course, embolden those in the anti-Western bloc – Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – who wish to do us harm. Moreover, it will convince many non-aligned countries that their future lies in alliances with the resurgent and increasingly powerful autocratic anti-Western bloc rather than with the declining, defeated, war-weary, supposedly democratic West.
Or will our rulers decide to try and save face and their own careers by ‘upping the ante’ – getting us more involved in helping Ukraine? Thanks to the incompetence of the head of the German air force, whose unsecured phone conference was recorded by Russian spies, we now know that British troops are apparently in Ukraine already, possibly helping with the loading and targeting of Storm Shadow missiles. It’s a pity our politicians ‘forgot’ to tell us that British troops are actually operating in Ukraine. Moreover, the New York Times recently revealed that the CIA has between 12 and 14 bases in Ukraine where it trains Ukrainian soldiers. If our rulers do get Western troops directly involved in killing Russians, as France’s President Macron has repeatedly proposed, we would risk the possibility of a nuclear war between Russia and the West.
I’m no military strategist. But it seems obvious to me that our rulers have blundered into a situation without any plan for how to extricate us in the event of things not turning out as they planned, thus forgetting the most basic rule of war – that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Or, as boxer Mike Tyson explained, “Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face.”
It will be interesting to see whether our rulers choose humiliation by accepting Ukraine’s and, by extension, NATO’s defeat, or instead go for escalation which could lead to nuclear annihilation.
J.D. Vance – New York Times: The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up
The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque.
Mr. Zelensky’s stated goal for the war — a return to 1991 boundaries — is fantastical.
J.D.Vance, The New York Times, Fri, 12 Apr 2024 , https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/jd-vance-ukraine.html
President Biden wants the world to believe that the biggest obstacle facing Ukraine is Republicans and our lack of commitment to the global community. This is wrong.
Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president.
The Biden administration has applied increasing pressure on Republicans to pass a supplemental aid package of more than $60 billion to Ukraine. I voted against this package in the Senate and remain opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war. Mr. Biden has failed to articulate even basic facts about what Ukraine needs and how this aid will change the reality on the ground.
The most fundamental question: How much does Ukraine need and how much can we actually provide? Mr. Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong. This $60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor. But this is not just a matter of dollars. Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.
Consider our ability to produce 155-millimeter artillery shells. Last year, Ukraine’s defense minister estimated that the country’s base-line requirement for these shells was over four million per year but that it could fire up to seven million if that many were available. Since the start of the conflict, the United States has gone to great lengths to ramp up production of 155-millimeter shells. We’ve roughly doubled our capacity and can now produce 360,000 per year — less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs. The administration’s goal is to get this to 1.2 million — 30 percent of what’s needed — by the end of 2025. This would cost the American taxpayers dearly while yielding an unpleasantly familiar result: failure abroad.
Just this week, the top American military commander in Europe argued that absent further security assistance, Russia could soon have a 10-to-1 artillery advantage over Ukraine. What didn’t gather as many headlines is that Russia’s current advantage is at least 5 to 1, even after all the money we have poured into the conflict. Neither of these ratios plausibly leads to Ukrainian victory.
Proponents of American aid to Ukraine have argued that our approach has been a boon to our own economy, creating jobs here in the factories that manufacture weapons. But our national security interests can be — and often are — separate from our economic interests.The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict.
The story is the same when we look at other munitions. Take the Patriot missile system — our premier air defense weapon. It’s of such importance in this war that Ukraine’s foreign minister has specifically demanded them. That’s because in March alone, Russia reportedly launched over 3,000 guided aerial bombs, 600 drones and 400 missiles at Ukraine. To fend off these attacks, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and others have indicated they need thousands of Patriot interceptors per year. The problem is this: The United States only manufactures 550 every year. If we pass the supplemental aid package currently being considered in Congress, we could potentially increase annual production to 650, but that’s still less than a third of what Ukraine requires.
These weapons are not only needed by Ukraine. If China were to set its sights on Taiwan, the Patriot missile system would be critical to its defense. In fact, the United States has promised to send Taiwan nearly $900 million worth of Patriot missiles, but delivery of those weapons and other essential resources has been severely delayed, partly because of shortages caused by the war in Ukraine.
If that sounds bad, Ukraine’s manpower situation is even worse. Here are the basics:Russia has nearly four times the population of Ukraine. Ukraine needs upward of half a million new recruits, but hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men have already fled the country. The average Ukrainian soldier is roughly 43 years old, and many soldiers have already served two years at the front with few, if any, opportunities to stop fighting. After two years of conflict, there are some villages with almost no men left. The Ukrainian military has resorted to coercing men into service, and women have staged protests to demand the return of their husbands and fathers after long years of service at the front. This newspaper reported one instance in which the Ukrainian military attempted to conscript a man with a diagnosed mental disability.
Many in Washington seem to think that hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians have gone to war with a song in their heart and are happy to label any thought to the contrary Russian propaganda. But major newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic are reporting that the situation on the ground in Ukraine is grim.
These basic mathematical realities were true, but contestable, at the outset of the war. They were obvious and incontestable a year ago, when American leadership worked closely with Mr. Zelensky to undertake a disastrous counteroffensive. The bad news is that accepting brute reality would have been most useful last spring, before the Ukrainians launched that extremely costly and unsuccessful military campaign. The good news is that even now, a defensive strategy can work. Digging in with old-fashioned ditches, cement and land mines are what enabled Russia to weather Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. Our allies in Europe could better support such a strategy, as well. While some European countries have provided considerable resources, the burden of military support has thus far fallen heaviest on the United States.
By committing to a defensive strategy, Ukraine can preserve its precious military manpower, stop the bleeding and provide time for negotiations to commence. But this would require both the American and Ukrainian leadership to accept that Mr. Zelensky’s stated goal for the war — a return to 1991 boundaries — is fantastical.
The White House has said time and again that it can’t negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.
Annie Jacobsen: ‘What if we had a nuclear war?’
The author and Pulitzer prize finalist, who has written the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, Nuclear War: A scenario, on the “shocking truths” about a nuclear attack
By Annie Jacobsen, 12 April 2024, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2426579-annie-jacobsen-what-if-we-had-a-nuclear-war/
Not long after the last world war, the historian William L. Shirer had this to say about the next world war. It “will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquers and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet.”
As an investigative journalist, I write about war, weapons, national security and government secrets. I’ve previously written six books about US military and intelligence programmes – at the CIA, The Pentagon, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency– all designed to prevent, or deter, nuclear world war III. In the course of my work, countless people in the upper echelons of US government have told me, proudly, that they’ve dedicated their lives to making sure the US never has a nuclear war. But what if it did?
“Every capability in the [Department of Defense] is underpinned by the fact that strategic deterrence will hold,” US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which is responsible for nuclear deterrence, insists publicly. Until the autumn of 2022, this promise was pinned on STRATCOM’s public Twitter feed. But to a private audience at Sandia National Laboratories later that same year, STRATCOM’s Thomas Bussiere admitted the existential danger inherent to deterrence. “Everything unravels itself if those things are not true.”
If deterrence fails – what exactly would that unravelling look like? To write Nuclear War: A scenario, I put this question to scores of former nuclear command and control authorities. To the military and civilian experts who’ve built the weapon systems, been privy to the response plans and been responsible for advising the US president on nuclear counterstrike decisions should they have to be made. What I learned terrified me. Here are just a few of the shocking truths about nuclear war.
The US maintains a nuclear launch policy called Launch on Warning. This means that if a military satellite indicates the nation is under nuclear attack and a second early-warning radar confirms that information, the president launches nuclear missiles in response. Former secretary of defense William Perry told me: “Once we are warned of a nuclear attack, we prepare to launch. This is policy. We do not wait.”
The US president has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. He asks permission of no one. Not the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the joint chief of staff, not the US Congress. “The authority is inherent in his role as commander in chief,” the Congressional Research Service confirms. The president “does not need the concurrence of either his [or her] military advisors or the US Congress to order the launch of nuclear weapons”.
When the president learns he must respond to a nuclear attack, he has just 6 minutes to do so. Six minutes is an irrational amount of time to “decide whether to release Armageddon”, President Ronald Reagan lamented in his memoirs. “Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope… How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?” And yet, the president must respond. This is because it takes roughly just 30 minutes for an intercontinental ballistic missile to get from a launch pad in Russia, North Korea or China to any city in the US, and vice versa. Nuclear-armed submarines can cut that launch-to-target time to 10 minutes, or less.
Today, there are nine nuclear powers, with a combined total of more than 12,500 nuclear weapons ready to be used. The US and Russia each have some 1700 nuclear weapons deployed – weapons that can be launched in seconds or minutes after their respective president gives the command. This is what Shirer meant when he said: “Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it.”
Nuclear war is the only scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end civilisation in a matter of hours. The soot from burning cities and forests will blot out the sun and cause nuclear winter. Agriculture will fail. Some 5 billion people will die. In the words of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, “the survivors will envy the dead”.
I wrote Nuclear War: A scenario to demonstrate – in appalling, minute-by-minute detail – just how horrifying a nuclear war would be. “Humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” UN secretary-general António Guterres warned the world in 2022. “This is madness. We must reverse course.”
How true.
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, published by Torva (£20.00), is available now. It is the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club: sign up here to read along with our members
Amid Serious Iran-Israel Tension, The Nuclear Elephant Is In The Room
Tuesday, 04/09/2024, Shahram Kholdi, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202404097226
April 7 marked the sixth month of Hamas-Israel open conflict. Six days before this semi-anniversary, Israel’s April 1 strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus punctuated an alarming turning point.
Israel’s action did not only corner Hezbollah, Iran’s primary quasi-state proxy on the bloody chessboard of their ongoing conflict but have also eliminated key military leaders. Amid various pundits attempting to predict Iran’s next move, many are acknowledging the significant factor of Iran’s nuclear program lurking in the background.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s “fatwa” and opinion on the prohibition of producing nuclear weapons “may change tomorrow,” Mahmoud-Reza Aghamiri, the president of Tehran’s Beheshti University and a pro-regime professor of nuclear physics, told Iran’s state TV this week. Aghamiri says Iran currently has the technology and capability to develop a nuclear bomb, and under such circumstances, developing it is easier than not making it.
The punditry and analyses on a possible “direct” clash between Iran and Israel is indeed all over the map. Some, whilst citing “warnings from unnamed Israeli officials behind the scenes” wonder whether or not Iran will strike Israel back from its own territory. Others probe whether it will have its proxies to escalate their asymmetrical strikes against Israel. And last but not least, a handful quibble over whether Israel’s strike would give President Joe Biden the occasion to proclaim support for Israel against Iran but further pressure Israel to heed the US’ demands on the conclusion of the war in Gaza and negotiations with Hamas for the release of the hostages.
On this very outlet, in an article published four days after Hamas attack on October 11, 2023, Benjamin Weinthal covered various sides of a debate on the (unlikely) possibility of a joint US-Israeli attack against Iran as a state sponsor of Hamas.
On the conventional front, The gravity of Israel’s situation cannot be exaggerated. The Hezbollah of Lebanon is armed with thousands of conventional rockets and cruise missiles that can potentially swarm and overwhelm the Israeli Air Defense Shield and Iron Dome and the analyses of Israel’s ability to take all Hezbollah’s arsenal preemptively has been the subject of much debate.
What most observers do not take into account is the possibility that the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus may trigger a rude awakening amongst the IRGC top brass and Khamenei. It might prompt them to hasten the development of their nuclear deterrence capabilities. Despite the regime’s longstanding vow to eliminate Israel, dating back to before 1979, the tensions between Iran and Israel are mutual and deep-rooted.
Israel is presently wary of the Iranian ability to deploy a handful of nuclear warheads and the IDF has been preparing itself for a decisive strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities for quite some time before the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel. Israel, as is discussed below, has been acutely aware of Iran’s ever growing weaponization capacity as early as 2018.
Yet Israel’s collective sense of insecurity is not simply rooted in its fear of its enemies or the deep-seated collective trauma of the Holocaust. Israel’s primary source of insecurity is rooted in its historical roller coaster experience of its alliances. The Soviet de jure recognition of Israel and support for its war of independence against the Arab nations was short-lived and inadequate. France was Israel’s major military supplier for much of the 1950s to the mid-1960s, and upon her aid Israel developed its conventional and unconventional nuclear programs.
But France proved unreliable when President De Gaulle sought a rapprochement with Israel’s Arab enemies and abandoned Israel in the mid-1960s. From the mid-1960s, the United States became Israel’s sole guarantor and ally in all aspects of economy and military from research and development, joint aeronautical and space projects to the development of the sophisticated air-defense systems, namely, “the Iron-Dome”, and the latest sophisticated UAVs.
The United States itself has wavered in its “unequivocal support” for Israel at least on three different occasions. First, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to support Israel in its collusion with the Anglo-French powers during the 1956 Suez Crisis. In fact, Eisenhower turned his back on Israel as he feared escalation with the Soviet Union. Incidentally, there are commentators who believe that President Biden should treat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a similar set of measures that Eisenhower imposed on Israel in 1956.
There are indeed those in the US who believe Johnson failed to act to prevent Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and this is a legacy from which Biden must take harsh lessons and act accordingly. Finally, President Barack Obama’s administration sidelined Israel’s Netanyahu to cajole Tehran’s ruling mullahs into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) over their nuclear program causing Israel to distance itself ever farther from the Euro-American alliance. Israel has been less than forthcoming about sharing the details of its assassination and sabotage operations with its Euro-American allies ever since. According to some reports, “the CIA does not know” if Israel plans to bomb Iran.”
Today, Israel and Netanyahu are almost identical in their shared sense of insecurities. Even though a majority of Israelis may not vote him to office if elections were held today, they share the same sense of insecurity that has been the compass of his five mandates over the past thirty years. At the core of this sense of insecurity lies Iran’s nuclear program. Since 2018, Israel has taken possession of thousands of documents that lay bear all the militaristic directions of the Iranian nuclear program (Revealed: Emptying of the Iranian “Atomic Warehouse” at Turquz Abad). Over nearly 15 years, Israel is alleged to have succeeded in sabotaging many critical sites of the Iranian nuclear industrial complex. Moreover, Israel is accused of having masterminded the operations that eliminated Iranian nuclear scientists in the same period. Nonetheless, since Donald Trump left the JCPOA, the Iranian regime has progressively accelerated its uranium enrichment and proved Israel’s, read Netanyahu’s, worst fears. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is effectively and totally is in the dark per the latest reports of IAEA and its dire warnings about the exact state of the Iranian nuclear program. In view of the above, it appears that Israel’s assassination and sabotage operations against the Iranian scientists and nuclear sites have effectively failed.
Israeli-American air forces joint drills for long range operations in the summer of 2023 revealed how alarmed both US and Israel were about the Iranian nuclear program. It was speculated at the time that such drills were to prepare both air forces for a joint operation on the Iranian nuclear facilities. Meanwhile, the Americans were in the midst of secret negotiation with the Iranians to reach an “informal nuclear agreement”.
However, joint exercises of such magnitude with any ally are always planned long in advance and are indicative of longstanding concerns. Accordingly, the joint US-Israeli hint at the fact that the Biden administration did neither have any confidence in the success of those secret negotiations with Iran, nor was it assured of the Iranian side’s honoring any such accord. Three weeks before Hamas attack on Israel, a most telling paragraph in the IDF statement on Israeli and Hellenic air forces’ joint drills for long range operations reads as follows: “The exercise is part of a series of exercises and models carried out by the IAF in the past year and their purpose is to improve operational and mental competence for long-range flights, refueling, attacks in the depth [of enemy territory] and achieving air superiority.”
Khamenei, per his religious edict, fatwa, has stated time and again that the manufacturing and usage of nuclear weapons is forbidden. However, Israel’s elimination of two high-ranking IRGC general inside the Iranian embassy’s compound in Damascus has established that there is no red line that it will not cross to maximize its security and minimize all risks. Such an escalating assault may cause the Iranian ruling clerics and the IRGC to wonder if their nuclear facilities will be next on Israel’s target list and they may consider attaining a deterrence greater than a conventional one. Khamenei may indeed invoke the principle of expediency to overrule his own “anti-Nuclear” fatwa. The principle of expediency, as decreed by the regime’s founder Ayatollah Khomeini in January 1988, stipulates that the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic may even violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith in order to preserve “the Islamic Regime” as the preservation of the Islamic Regime supersedes all else.
Thus, if Israel continues to expand its unrelenting attacks on IRGC top brass and Iranian military and diplomatic facilities in the region, and the Iranian regime continues to plunge into the depths of a maelstrom of economic troubles, will Khamenei perceive such an assault as compromising the survival of the regime? And if so what will he do? Will he invoke the principle of expediency and order the rapid manufacturing of nuclear devices and their deployment in the form of a dozen or so warheads? Or will he be resigned to Israel’s overwhelming assault on its proxies and, like his predecessor, will drink from the poisonous chalice of surrender?
What’s Inside the President’s Nuclear Football
the creation of the Football, the president’s emergency satchel. But what about the nuclear war plans inside? And what about the Black Book? As surprising as this now seems, until 1960, several of the U.S. military branches had their own individual plans for nuclear war. What this meant was that the Army, Navy, and Air Force chiefs each had authority over a uniquely designated stockpile of nuclear weapons—including the delivery systems for those weapons and lists of targets to strike—for them to use at their own discretion in the event of nuclear war. When incoming Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara learned about these multiple, competing nuclear war plans, he ordered them integrated into a single plan. This is how the Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP, got its name.
What began as the Single Integrated Operational Plan is now the Operational Plan, or OPLAN.
The Operation Plan for nuclear war is a colossal and cumbersome set of documents, too large to be carried around in the Football. Parsed down to a more manageable size, the plans become nuclear strike options as delineated in the Black Book.
plan for “mass extermination.” “evil beyond any human project ever,” “the destruction of most cities and people in the northern hemisphere.”
BY ANNIE JACOBSEN, APRIL 11, 2024 https://time.com/6965539/u-s-presidents-nuclear-footb
Jacobsen’s new book is Nuclear War: A Scenario
Nuclear threats have reemerged on the world stage. Frequently, Vladimir Putin warns the West that Russia is ready for nuclear war. “Weapons exits in order to use them,” Putin says. North Korea accuses the U.S. of having, “a sinister intention to provoke a nuclear war.” Entwined with the rising rhetoric, one physical object stands alone—the president’s emergency satchel, also known as the nuclear Football.
This bulging leather briefcase remains with the president at all times, carried by a military aide, and never more than an arm’s length away. It’s an iconic reminder of preeminent power and national mystery. A “nominally secret command-and-control system used to assure presidential control of nuclear use decisions,” historian William Burr says of the Football. Items located inside the president’s emergency satchel confirm his identity and connect him, as commander in chief, to the National Military Command Center, a nuclear bunker located beneath the Pentagon.
Also inside the Football is the Black Book. This cryptic set of documents, parsed down from a much larger operational plan for nuclear war, provides the commander in chief with nuclear launch options should policy dictate the president needs to act. This includes which targets to strike, which delivery systems to use, and the timing of action. “It’s called the Black Book because it involves so much death,” says Dr. Glen McDuff, a nuclear weapons engineer who served as the classified museum historian at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The Football is with the president at all times. The first publicly-released photograph of the Football is from May 1963, at the Kennedy Family Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. It can be seen swinging from the military aide’s hand as he walks directly behind the president. The Football accompanied President Regan to the Red Square in Moscow, in 1988. When President George H.W. Bush was photographed out on jog, his military aide—also in running shorts and sneakers—can be seen just a few steps behind, carrying the iconic briefcase in her left hand.
The Football is always within a few feet of the president of the U.S. Once, when President Clinton was visiting Syria, President Hafez al-Assad’s handlers tried to prevent Clinton’s military aide from riding in an elevator with him. “We could not let that happen, and did not let that happen,” former Secret Service director Lewis Merletti says. Merletti was the special agent in charge of President Clinton’s detail at that time. “The Football must always be with the president,” he asserts. “There are no exceptions.” How the Football came to be has long been shrouded in mystery. “Its origins remain highly classified,” journalist Michael Dobbs wrote in Smithsonian Magazine in 2014. And then, just a few months ago, Los Alamos National Laboratory finally declassified the Football’s origin story. It goes like this.
One day in December 1959, a small group of officials from the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy visited a NATO base in Europe to examine joint-custody nuclear bomb protocols. The NATO pilots stationed there flew Republic F84F jets, the first U.S. Air Force fighter-bomber aircraft designed to carry nuclear bombs. Operation Reflex Action was in effect, air crews were trained and ready to strike predetermined targets in the Soviet Union in less than fifteen minutes from the call to nuclear war. One of the men on this visit was Harold Agnew, a Los Alamos scientist with a unique history.
Agnew was one of the three physicists assigned to fly on the Hiroshima bombing mission as a scientific observer. He carried a movie camera with him and took the only existing film footage of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as seen from the air. Now, in 1959, Agnew was at Los Alamos overseeing thermonuclear bomb tests; he later became the lab’s director. During the trip to the NATO base, Agnew noticed something that made him wary. “I observed four F84F aircraft . . . sitting on the end of a runway, each was carrying two MK 7 [nuclear] gravity bombs,” he wrote in a document declassified in 2023. What this meant was that “custody of the MK 7s was under the watchful eye of one very young U.S. Army private armed with a M1 rifle with 8 rounds of ammunition.” Agnew told his colleagues: “The only safeguard against unauthorized use of an atomic bomb was this single G.I. surrounded by a large number of foreign troops on foreign territory with thousands of Soviet troops just miles away.”
Back in the U.S., Agnew contacted a project engineer at Sandia Laboratories named Don Cotter and asked “if we could insert an electronic ‘lock’ in the [bomb’s] firing circuit that could prevent just any passerby from arming the MK 7.” Cotter got to work. He put together a demonstration of a device, a lock and coded switch, that functioned as follows: “[a] 3-digit code would be entered, a switch was thrown, the green light extinguished, and the red light illuminated indicating the arming circuit was live.”
Agnew and Cotter went to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate this locking device—first to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, then to the president’s top science advisor and finally to the president himself. “We presented it to President Kennedy, who ordered it be done,” Agnew recalled. The military objected. The man in charge of nuclear weapons at the time, General Alfred D. Starbird, opposed the idea. Glen McDuff, who coauthored (with Agnew) the now declassified paper on the subject, summed up the general’s documented concerns. “How is a pilot, U.S. or foreign, somewhere around the world, going to get a code from the President of the United States to arm a nuclear weapon before being overrun by a massively superior number of Soviet troops?” For the U.S. military, the locking device issue opened Pandora’s box. “If gravity bombs were coded,” McDuff explains, “why not all nuclear weapons including missile warheads, atomic demolition munitions, torpedoes, all of them.” The president decided they needed to be.
The answer came in the creation of the Football, the president’s emergency satchel. But what about the nuclear war plans inside? And what about the Black Book? As surprising as this now seems, until 1960, several of the U.S. military branches had their own individual plans for nuclear war. What this meant was that the Army, Navy, and Air Force chiefs each had authority over a uniquely designated stockpile of nuclear weapons—including the delivery systems for those weapons and lists of targets to strike—for them to use at their own discretion in the event of nuclear war. When incoming Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara learned about these multiple, competing nuclear war plans, he ordered them integrated into a single plan. This is how the Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP, got its name.
Starting in December 1960, for the first time in the nuclear age, the SIOP gave the president, not the military, control of America’s nuclear arsenal. This new locking device designed by Agnew and Cotter, called a Permissive Action Link, or PAL, became an integral part of this new system. Only with the invention of the Football would the order to launch nuclear weapons—and the ability to physically arm them—come from the president alone. “This is how the president got the Football,” writes Agnew.
Over the years, the name for the nuclear war plan has changed. What began as the Single Integrated Operational Plan is now the Operational Plan, or OPLAN. For the Nuclear Information Project, in consort with the Federation of American Scientists, project director Hans Kristensen and senior researcher Matt Korda have identified the current Operational Plan as OPLAN 8010-12. It consists of “‘a family of plans’ directed against four identified adversaries: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran,” the authors write. The Operation Plan for nuclear war is a colossal and cumbersome set of documents, too large to be carried around in the Football. Parsed down to a more manageable size, the plans become nuclear strike options as delineated in the Black Book.
The number of individuals who have written out their first-hand impressions of the SIOP is extremely limited. John Rubel, an avionics expert who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President Kennedy, wrote about the SIOP in his 2008 memoir, Doomsday Delayed. He liked it to a plan for “mass extermination.” Daniel Ellsberg reflected on the SIOP in his 2017 memoir, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. “It depicted evil beyond any human project ever,” Ellsberg wrote. A plan that calls for “the destruction of most cities and people in the northern hemisphere.”
As for the Black Book, few details exist on the public record. In 2015, U.S. Strategic Command battle watch commander Colonel Carolyn Bird shared with CNN previously unreported details. An identical Football resides inside the Stratcom nuclear bunker, viewers learned, locked in a safe beneath Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. “The [Black Book inside the] president’s football and our black book are duplicates,” Bird told CNN. “They contain the same information in the same way so that we are talking off the same documents when we are discussing nuclear options.”
In an interview with the History Channel, President Clinton’s former military aide, a colonel named Robert “Buzz” Patterson, likened the Black Book to a “Denny’s breakfast menu.” He made the analogy that choosing retaliatory targets from a predetermined nuclear strike list was as simple as deciding on a combination of food items at a restaurant. “It’s like picking one out of Column A and two out of Column B,” Patterson said.
Dr. Theodore Postol has seen the contents of the Black Book. His thoughts provide unsettling context to Patterson’s observations. From 1982 to 1984 Postol served as the assistant for weapons technology to the chief of naval operations. In this capacity, he worked on technical details regarding submarine launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs. “Nitty gritty features,” Postol generalizes.
“Seeing the contents of the Black Book,” he recalls, “I was freaked out beyond belief.” Not for reasons he expected; as a weapons technologist Postol was familiar with the mass carnage involved. Instead of being confronted with a succinct summary of these horrifying facts—the targeting of cities, the death tolls in the millions—
Postol found the contents of the Black Book to be an obfuscation of the facts. The nuclear launch plans, he says, “had been sterilized down to military terminology designed to remove you from the reality of what would be happening.” An attempt at sanitizing nuclear war into a seemingly more palatable event. “My first thought,” Postol remembers, was “how would a president understand what these attack options actually mean?” This censoring of grim truths about nuclear war extends to the public as well, Postal contends. “You don’t want your population to know you’re planning genocide.”
What, if any, is the solution to this madness? Between the saber rattling and the secrecy, nuclear matters can present themselves as intractable. And yet, in reporting this story I witnessed a change in attitude from an unlikely source: the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a federal government organization that I’ve covered as a reporter for fifteen years.
“It’s the Oppenheimer effect,” Dr. Glen McDuff told me of this new attitude, “as in Oppenheimer the film.” Ever since the release of Christopher Nolan’s 2023 feature film, “the lab has been inundated with public curiosity about the bomb,” McDuff clarifies. “With requests about nuclear weapons.” And, he says, the lab has done its best to respond. The popularity of the film has renewed dialogue about the existential dangers nuclear weapons pose. And it led to the declassification (at this reporter’s behest) to one of the laboratory’s long-held secrets—the origin story of the Football.
Were the President of the United States to be called upon to open the Football, the situation that would follow would almost certainly spiral out of control. “The world could end in the next couple of hours,” former Stratcom commander General C. Robert Kehler (ret) says of nuclear war.
Nuclear war is the only scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end civilization in a matter hours. The soot from burning cities and forests will blot out the sun and cause a nuclear winter. State-of the art climate modeling predicts five billion humans will die. In the words of Nikita Khrushchev, “the survivors will envy the dead.”
And yet, threats abound. Vladimir Putin insists he is “not bluffing” about the possibility of using weapons of mass destruction. North Korea has test launched more than 100 missiles since January 2022, including nuclear-capable weapons that can hit the U.S. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warns the world, “Humanity is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.” The world balances on the razor’s edge. “This is madness,” Guterres says, “we must reverse course.” Change is possible. Help reverse course. “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev cautioned the world in a joint statement in 1985. Conversations between these two leaders led to the reduction in nuclear weapons from an all-time high of 70,481 warheads, to some 12,500 today. Dialogue matters. Join the conversation about nuclear weapons now, while we are all still able to have one.
BUSINESS AS USUAL FOR BRITAIN’S WEAPONS EXPORTS
WEAPONS MADE ON MY DOORSTEP ARE HELPING TO KILL PEOPLE IN GAZA
British voters want to stop arming Israel, so why are spineless politicians ignoring them, asks Amy Hall.
This week, Foreign Secretary David Cameron confirmed that the UK government will not join the handful of Western countries that have stopped sending arms to Israel. Weapons exports from the UK will continue. The majority of voters are in favour of a ban and three British aid workers were among the seven killed by an Israeli air strike last week. But for Cameron and his cronies, it’s business as usual.
Britain has a long-standing commitment to arming the violence of the Israeli state and its occupation of Palestine. According to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, Britain licensed around $556 million worth of arms to Israel between 2015 and 2022.
Those of us in Britain who are devastated and incensed by the endless death and destruction in Gaza are apparently to take reassurance from Cameron’s insistence that government ministers have ‘grave concerns around the humanitarian access issue’ there.
But these concerns appear not to be grave enough to challenge Britain’s own arms industry and its role in Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign on Gaza. The weapons manufacturing taking place in my city assures me of that.
NO BOMBS FROM BRIGHTON’
Just a few kilometres from where I live in Brighton & Hove, on the South Coast of England, locals have set up a protest camp near to a factory that has been oiling the global war machine for many years. L3Harris makes bomb release mechanisms for F35 and F16 fighter jets, used by government armies including the Israeli Defence Forces.
Since 15 March, Brighton Peace Camp has been welcoming visitors, hosting everything from storytelling for kids to workshops on topics ranging from local antifascist history to Dabke, a Palestinian folk dance. The camp has also hosted an Iftar/Shabbat meal organized by Brighton and Hove Jews Against the Occupation.
‘We need to take every action in our power to stop the genocide in Gaza,’ said Sarah, from the group Brighton Against the Arms Trade. ‘We need to look at where the weapons are produced and disrupt the production and supply chain. L3Harris in Brighton is a critical part of that.
‘We demand a just transition towards the development of renewables, which must and can start now. Production at the factory must stop immediately and all components must be decommissioned.’
Local people have been campaigning against L3 Harris (formerly EDO MBM Technology Ltd) for decades. The company is now seeking to further solidify its mark on the city by making permanent an extension to its factory that was built in 2018. But thanks to intense opposition from local people, including some members of Parliament and city councillors, Brighton & Hove City Council (BHCC) has been under pressure not to grant planning permission. Nearly 650 objections were submitted to the application.
The local campaign against the arms factory, StopL3Harris, is asking people to call on their political representatives to join the calls to refuse the planning request. It was due before BHCC’s planning committee in March but was delayed as the Council seeks legal advice. Two out three of the city’s MPs: the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas and Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle have submitted objections. The third MP, Labour representative Peter Kyle, has not.
Brighton is not the only British city where this kind of manufacturing is taking place. CAAT estimates that British industry makes 15 per cent of every F35 combat aircraft that Israel uses in its assault on Gaza. The campaign has mapped UK companies involved in manufacturing components for the F35 and estimates that the value of Britain’s supplies to be worth at least $422 million since 2016.
EXPORTS TO ISRAEL CAN BE STOPPED
In response to growing pressure, a number of countries have already stopped sending arms to Israel. ‘Denmark and Canada have both recently ruled to halt arms sales to Israel – so why not the UK?’ said Marnie, a Brighton & Hove resident who is taking part in the Peace Camp.
In February, a court of appeal in the Netherlands ordered the Dutch government to stop arms exports to Israel within the F35 programme, stating that it would violate the EU Common Rules for Arms Exports and the UN Arms Trade Treaty.
The UN welcomed the decision and called for arms exports to Israel to ‘stop immediately’, as any transfer of weapons or ammunition that would be used in Gaza is likely to violate international humanitarian law.
More than 600 lawyers have also warned the British government that arms exports to Israel risk legal violations. A senior MP for the leading Conservative party has said that the government has kept under wraps advice from its own lawyers that Israel has broken international law.
Too many of our elected representatives seem to be living in a parallel universe, dismissive of international law and apparently unperturbed by the suffering of the Palestinian people. Yet those of us who support a weapons ban, continue to watch in horror the endless stream of videos of crying children carrying their dead siblings, images of skeletal children starved to death, and the massacres of civilians and aid workers in the simple act of delivering food.
Cameron should be more than ‘concerned’ about the six children killed each day during the current offensive in Gaza. If our politicians were serious about the humanitarian situation, our politicians would be pushing for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, an end to the blockade of the Gaza strip, and an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Until then, as the money keeps flowing and the bombs keep dropping, we will continue to march, boycott, protest, donate, camp and cry until Palestine is free.
Ukraine fatigue: Kiev and the West are tiring of war and each other
The idea of some form of compromise solution to Kiev-Moscow conflict is creeping up on foreign hawks and on more and more locals
Tarik Cyril Amar, https://www.sott.net/article/490581-Ukraine-fatigue-Kiev-and-the-West-are-tiring-of-war-and-each-other 12 Apr 24
What a small band of objective-though-long-disparaged observers in the West have long warned about is now happening: Ukraine and the West are losing their war against Russia. The strategy of using Ukraine to either isolate and slowly suffocate Russia or to defeat and degrade it in a proxy war is coming to its predictable catastrophic end.
This reality is now being acknowledged even by key media and high officials that used to be uncompromising about pursuing the extremely ill-advised aim of military victory over Russia. A Washington Post article has explained that with ”no way out of a worsening war,”
Ukrainian President Zelensky’s options ”look bad or worse.” NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has discovered the option of ending wars by concessions – Ukraine’s concessions, that is. The sturdy old hardliner Edward Luttwak warns of a ”catastrophic defeat” – for the West and Ukraine. True, Luttwak is still spreading desperate illusions about a direct NATO deployment to avert the worst. In reality, it would, of course, only make things much, much worse again, as in World War III worse. But his fear, not to say panic, is palpable.
The fast-approaching outcome will be a disaster for Ukraine, even if Moscow should be generous regarding the terms of a postwar settlement (not a given, after the costs that Russia has incurred). Ukraine has already been ruined in terms of its demography, territory, economy, and, last but not least, political future. The damage incurred cannot simply be undone and will have long-lasting consequences.
For the West, this war will also mark a dismal turning point, in four main ways that can only be sketched here:
First, the US will have to absorb its worst defeat since Vietnam. Arguably, this latest fiasco is even worse because, even during the Vietnam War, America did not try to attack Russia (then, of course, leading the Soviet Union) as head-on as it does now. Washington’s most over-confident attempt ever to take Moscow off the “grand chessboard” once and for all has backfired perfectly. In general, that will diminish America’s capacity to impress and cajole globally. In particular, the goal of preventing the rise of regional hegemons in Eurasia, the holy grail of US geopolitics, is even farther out of reach than before. The “unipolar” moment and its illusions were passing anyhow, but the US leadership has added a textbook illustration of the West’s limits.
Second, the EU and its individual members – especially myopic warmongers such as Germany, Poland, and France – are far worse off again: Their foolish abandoning of geopolitically imperative caution and balancing (remember: location, location, location) will cost them dearly.
Third, in their own, different ways, cases such as Britain (not even an EU member anymore) and the Baltics (very exposed and very bellicose, a shortsighted combination) are in a class of their own: damage there will be galore. Damage control? The options are paltry.
And, finally, there is, of course, NATO: Over-extended, self-depleted, and having gratuitously exposed itself as much weaker than it would like to seem. Its defeat by Russia in Ukraine will trigger centrifugal tendencies and blame games. Not to speak of the special potential for tension between the US and its clients/vassals in Europe, especially if Donald Trump wins the presidency again, as is likely. And, by the way, he can only thank NATO for proving his point about what a dubious proposition it has become. If you believe that having added more territory on the map (Sweden and Finland) was a “win,” just remember what has happened to the mistaken celebrations of Ukraine’s territorial advances in 2022. Territory may be a price; it is not a reliable indicator of strength.
Yet what about Ukrainians? They have been used as pawns by their Western friends from hell. They are still living under a regime that has just decided to mobilize even more of them for a hopeless meatgrinder, while Zelensky is admitting that Ukraine is on the verge of defeat.
Some Western media are still telling a simplistic and false story about Ukrainians’ unflagging and united will to hold out for victory, as if every single one owed the West to play a Marvel hero to the bitter end. But in reality Ukraine is a normal, if badly misled country. Many of its citizens have long shown what they really think about dying for a toxic combination of Western geopolitics and the narcissism of a megalomanic comedian: by evading the draft, either by hiding in Ukraine or fleeing abroad. In addition, a recent poll shows that almost 54 percent of Ukrainians find the motives of the draft dodgers at least understandable. Kiev’s push for increased mobilization will not go smoothly.
But there is more evidence of the fact that Ukraine’s society is not united behind a Kamikaze strategy of “no compromise.” Indeed, under the title “The Line of Compromise,” Strana.ua, one of Ukraine’s most important and popular news sites, has just published a long, detailed article about three recent and methodologically sound polls.
They all bear on Ukrainians’ evolving attitudes to the war and in particular the question of seeking a compromise peace. In addition, Strana offers a rich sample of comments by Ukrainian sociologists and political scientists. It is no exaggeration to say that the mere appearance of this article is a sign that the times are changing: Under the subtitle “How and why attitudes to the war differ in the East and the West of Ukraine,” it even highlights “substantial” regional differences and, really, suppressed divisions. If you know anything about the extreme political – even historical – sensitivity of such divergences in Ukraine, then you will agree that this framing alone is a small sensation.
But that is not all. The article, in effect, dwells on ending the war by concessions – because that is what any compromise necessarily will take. Readers learn, for instance, that, according to the ‘Reiting’ agency polling on commission of Ukraine’s Veterans’ Affairs Ministry, in Ukraine’s West, farthest removed from the current front lines, 50% of poll respondents are against any compromise, while no less than 42% are in favor of compromise solutions as long as other countries (other than Ukraine and Russia, that is) are involved in finding them. For a region that, traditionally, has been the center of Ukrainian nationalism, that is, actually, a remarkably high share of those siding with compromise.
If you move east and south over the map, the compromise faction gets stronger. In the East, the proportions are almost exactly reversed: 41% against compromise and 51% in favor. In the South, it’s a perfect tie: 47% for both sides.
On the whole, Ukrainian sociologists are finding a “gradual increase” of those supporting a “compromise peace” in “one form or the other.” Even if, as one researcher plausibly cautions, this increase displays different rates in different regions, it still adds up to the national trend. One of its causes is “disappointment,” the loss of faith in victory, as the political scientist Ruslan Bortnik observes. In other words, the Zelensky regime is losing the information war on the home front. Notwithstanding its mix of censorship and showmanship.
The compromises imagined by Ukrainians include all conceivable solutions that do not foresee a return to the 1991 borders. In other words, there are ever more Ukrainians who are ready to trade territory for peace. How much territory, that is, of course, a different question. But it is clear that the maximalist and counter-productive aim of “getting everything back,” the all-or-nothing delusion, imposed for so long on Ukrainian society, is losing its grip.
The agency Socis, for instance, counts a total of almost 45% of respondents ready for compromise, while only 33% want to continue the war until the 1991 borders are re-established. But there are also 11% who still favor fighting on until all territories lost after February 2022 are recovered. That, as well, is now an unrealistic aim. It may have been closer to reality when Kiev dismissed an almost finished peace deal in the spring of 2022, on awful Western advice. That ship has sailed.
Polling results, it is important to note, do not all point in the same direction. The KMIS agency has produced results that show 58% of respondents who want to continue the war “under any circumstances” and only 32% who would prefer a “freeze,” if Western security guarantees are given. Such a freeze, while a favorite pipedream of some Western commentators, is unlikely to be an option now, if it ever was. Why should Moscow agree? But that is less relevant here than the fact that KMIS, for one, seems to have found a massive bedrock of pro-war sentiment.
And yet, even here, the picture is more complicated once we look closer. For one thing, the KMIS poll is comparatively old, conducted in November and December of last year. Given how quickly things have been developing on the battlefield since then – the key town and fortress of Avdeevka, for instance, finally fell only in February 2024 – that makes its data very dated.
KMIS also had interesting comments to offer: The agency notes that respondents’ proximity to the front lines plays an “important role” in shaping their opinions about the war. In other words, when the fighting gets close enough to hear the artillery boom, it concentrates the mind on finding a way to end it, even by concessions. As one Ukrainian sociologist has put it, “in the East and South … one of people’s main concerns is that the war must not reach their own home, their own home town.”
In addition, the executive director of KMIS has observed that the number of compromise advocates also grows when Western aid declines.
It remains difficult to draw robust conclusions from these trends, for several reasons: First, as some Ukrainian observers point out, the number of compromise supporters may be even higher – personally, I am sure it is – because the Zelensky regime has stigmatized any appeal to diplomacy and negotiations as “treason” for so long. Many Ukrainians are virtually certain to be afraid to speak their mind on this issue.
Second, what exactly the compromise camp understands by compromise is bound to be diverse. This camp may still include quite a few citizens who harbor illusions about what kind of compromise is available at this point.
Third, the current regime – which is de-facto authoritarian – is not answerable to society, at least not in a way that would make it easy to predict how shifts in the national mood translate into regime policies, or not.
And yet: There is no doubt that there is a groundswell in favor of ending the war even at the cost of concessions. Add the clear evidence of Western Ukraine fatigue – even a growing readiness to cut Ukraine loose – and the facts that the Russian military is creating on the ground, and it becomes hard to see how this basal shift in the Ukrainian mood could not become an important factor of Ukrainian – and international – politics
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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