Constant Killing
Despite Blood on Its Hands, The Pentagon Once Again Fails to Make Amends
BY NICK TURSE, Tom Dispatch 27 May 24
For hundreds of years, the U.S. military has been killing people. It’s been a constant of our history. Another constant has been American military personnel killing civilians, whether Native Americans, Filipinos, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and on and on. And there’s something else that’s gone along with those killings: a lack of accountability for them.
Late last month, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its congressionally mandated annual accounting of civilian casualties caused by U.S. military operations globally. The report is due every May 1st and, in the latest case, the Pentagon even beat that deadline by a week. There was only one small problem: it was the 2022 report. You know, the one that was supposed to be made public on May 1, 2023. And not only was that report a year late, but the 2023 edition, due May 1, 2024, has yet to be seen.
Whether that 2023 report, when it finally arrives, will say much of substance is also doubtful. In the 2022 edition, the Pentagon exonerated itself of harming noncombatants. “DoD has assessed that U.S. military operations in 2022 resulted in no civilian casualties,” reads the 12-page document. It follows hundreds of years of silence about, denials of, and willful disregard toward civilians slain purposely or accidentally by the U.S. military and a long history of failures to make amends in the rare cases where the Pentagon has admitted to killing innocents.
Moral Imperatives
“The Department recognizes that our efforts to mitigate and respond to civilian harm respond to both strategic and moral imperatives,” reads the Pentagon’s new 2022 civilian casualty report.
And its latest response to those “moral imperatives” was typical. The Defense Department reported that it had made no ex gratia payments — amends offered to civilians harmed in its operations — during 2022. That follows exactly one payment made in 2021 and zero in 2020
Whether any payments were made in 2023 is still, of course, a mystery. I asked Lisa Lawrence, the Pentagon spokesperson who handles civilian harm issues, why the 2023 report was late and when to expect it. A return receipt shows that she read my email, but she failed to offer an answer.
Her reaction is typical of the Pentagon on the subject.
A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that most went uninvestigated. When they did come under official scrutiny, American military witnesses were interviewed while civilians — victims, survivors, family members — were almost totally ignored, “severely compromising the effectiveness of investigations,” according to that report.
In the wake of such persistent failings, investigative reporters and human rights groups have increasingly documented America’s killing of civilians, its underreporting of noncombatant casualties, and its failures of accountability in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.
During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes across seven major conflict zones and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis by Airwars, a U.K.-based air-strike monitoring group.
Between 2013 and 2020, for example, the U.S. carried out seven separate attacks in Yemen — six drone strikes and one raid — that killed 36 members of the intermarried Al Ameri and Al Taisy families. A quarter of them were children between the ages of three months and 14 years old. The survivors have been waiting for years for an explanation as to why they were repeatedly targeted………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Getting to “Yes”
While the U.S. military has long been killing civilians — in massacres by ground troops, air strikes and even, in August 1945, nuclear attacks — compensating those harmed has never been a serious priority.
General John “Black Jack” Pershing did push to adopt a system to pay claims by French civilians during World War I and the military in World War II found that paying compensation for harm to civilians “had a pronounced stabilizing effect.” The modern military reparations system, however, dates only to the 1960s.
During the Vietnam War, providing “solatia” was a way for the military to offer reparations for civilian injuries or deaths caused by U.S. operations without having to admit any guilt. In 1968, the going rate for an adult life was $33. Children merited just half that.
In 1973, a B-52 Stratofortress dropped 30 tons of bombs on the Cambodian town of Neak Luong, killing hundreds of civilians and wounding hundreds more. The next of kin of those killed, according to press reports, were promised about $400 each. Considering that, in many cases, a family’s primary breadwinner had been lost, the sum was low. It was only the equivalent of about four years of earnings for a rural Cambodian. By comparison, a one-plane sortie, like the one that devastated Neak Luong, cost about $48,000. And that B-52 bomber itself then cost about $8 million. Worse yet, a recent investigation found that the survivors did not actually receive the promised $400. In the end, the value American forces placed on the dead of Neak Luong came to just $218 each.
Back then, the United States kept its low-ball payouts in Cambodia a secret. Decades later, the U.S. continues to thwart transparency and accountability when it comes to civilian lives………………………………………………………………….
Late last year, the Defense Department also issued its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” which established the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm.” The document, mandated under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, and approved by Austin, directs the military to “acknowledge civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations and respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations,” including “expressing condolences” and providing ex gratia payments to next of kin.
But despite $15 million allocated by Congress since 2020 to provide just such payments and despite members of Congress repeatedly calling on the Pentagon to make amends for civilian harm, it has announced just one such payment in the years since.
Nick Turse, The Pentagon’s .00035% Problem
POSTED ON MAY 23, 2024
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: You know that I just can’t help it. Once again, I’m pleading with this site’s faithful readers to consider going to our donation page and giving us a boost so that we can keep covering subjects — like Nick Turse’s latest striking report on the killing of civilians in America’s never-ending war on terror — that the mainstream media tends to avoid so much of the time. Take a moment, if you can, to keep this website going in 2024. (And there’s no way I can thank you enough for doing so!) Note as well that TomDispatch will be off-duty on the Memorial Day weekend. The next piece will appear on Tuesday. Tom]
Yes, the number of deaths in Gaza in the last seven months is staggering. At least, 35,000 Gazans have reportedly perished, including significant numbers of children (and that’s without even counting the possibly 10,000 unidentified bodies still buried under the rubble that now litters that 25-mile-long stretch of land). But shocking as that might be (and it is shocking!), it begins to look almost modest when compared to the numbers of civilians slaughtered in America’s never-ending Global War on Terror that began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and, as Nick Turse has reported in his coverage of Africa, never really ended.
In fact, the invaluable Costs of War project put the direct civilian death toll in those wars at 186,694 to 210,038 in Iraq, 46,319 in Afghanistan, 24,099 in Pakistan, and 12,690 in Yemen, among other places. And don’t forget, as that project also reports, that there could have been an estimated 3.6 to 3.8 million (yes, million!) “indirect deaths” resulting from the devastation caused by those wars, which lasted endless years — 20 alone for the Afghan one — in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Today, Nick Turse reports on how the Pentagon has largely avoided significant responsibility for civilian deaths from its never-ending air wars, not to speak of failing to compensate the innocent victims of those strikes. The civilian death toll in this country’s twenty-first-century conflicts is, in fact, a subject he’s long focused on at TomDispatch in a devastating fashion. In 2007, he was already reporting on how the U.S. military was quite literally discussing “hunting” the “enemy.” (“From the commander-in-chief to low-ranking snipers, a language of dehumanization that includes the idea of hunting humans as if they were animals has crept into our world — unnoticed and unnoted in the mainstream media.”) And when it comes to the subject of killing civilians without any significant acknowledgment or ever having to say you’re sorry, he’s never stopped. Tom
Constant Killing
Despite Blood on Its Hands, The Pentagon Once Again Fails to Make Amends
BY NICK TURSE
There are constants in this world — occurrences you can count on. Sunrises and sunsets. The tides. That, day by day, people will be born and others will die.
Some of them will die in peace, but others, of course, in violence and agony.
For hundreds of years, the U.S. military has been killing people. It’s been a constant of our history. Another constant has been American military personnel killing civilians, whether Native Americans, Filipinos, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and on and on. And there’s something else that’s gone along with those killings: a lack of accountability for them.
Late last month, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its congressionally mandated annual accounting of civilian casualties caused by U.S. military operations globally. The report is due every May 1st and, in the latest case, the Pentagon even beat that deadline by a week. There was only one small problem: it was the 2022 report. You know, the one that was supposed to be made public on May 1, 2023. And not only was that report a year late, but the 2023 edition, due May 1, 2024, has yet to be seen.
Whether that 2023 report, when it finally arrives, will say much of substance is also doubtful. In the 2022 edition, the Pentagon exonerated itself of harming noncombatants. “DoD has assessed that U.S. military operations in 2022 resulted in no civilian casualties,” reads the 12-page document. It follows hundreds of years of silence about, denials of, and willful disregard toward civilians slain purposely or accidentally by the U.S. military and a long history of failures to make amends in the rare cases where the Pentagon has admitted to killing innocents.
Moral Imperatives
“The Department recognizes that our efforts to mitigate and respond to civilian harm respond to both strategic and moral imperatives,” reads the Pentagon’s new 2022 civilian casualty report.
And its latest response to those “moral imperatives” was typical. The Defense Department reported that it had made no ex gratia payments — amends offered to civilians harmed in its operations — during 2022. That follows exactly one payment made in 2021 and zero in 2020.
Whether any payments were made in 2023 is still, of course, a mystery. I asked Lisa Lawrence, the Pentagon spokesperson who handles civilian harm issues, why the 2023 report was late and when to expect it. A return receipt shows that she read my email, but she failed to offer an answer.
Her reaction is typical of the Pentagon on the subject.
A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that most went uninvestigated. When they did come under official scrutiny, American military witnesses were interviewed while civilians — victims, survivors, family members — were almost totally ignored, “severely compromising the effectiveness of investigations,” according to that report.
In the wake of such persistent failings, investigative reporters and human rights groups have increasingly documented America’s killing of civilians, its underreporting of noncombatant casualties, and its failures of accountability in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.
During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes across seven major conflict zones and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis by Airwars, a U.K.-based air-strike monitoring group.
Between 2013 and 2020, for example, the U.S. carried out seven separate attacks in Yemen — six drone strikes and one raid — that killed 36 members of the intermarried Al Ameri and Al Taisy families. A quarter of them were children between the ages of three months and 14 years old. The survivors have been waiting for years for an explanation as to why they were repeatedly targeted.
In 2018, Adel Al Manthari, a civil servant in the Yemeni government, and four of his cousins — all civilians — were traveling by truck when an American missile slammed into their vehicle. Three of the men were killed instantly. Another died days later in a local hospital. Al Manthari was critically injured. Complications resulting from his injuries nearly killed him in 2022. He beseeched the U.S. government to dip into the millions of dollars appropriated by Congress to compensate victims of American attacks, but they ignored his pleas. His limbs and life were eventually saved by the kindness of strangers via a crowdsourced GoFundMe campaign.
The same year that Al Manthari was maimed in Yemen, a U.S. drone strike in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. The next year, a U.S. military investigation acknowledged that a woman and child were killed in that attack but concluded that their identities might never be known. Last year, I traveled to Somalia and spoke with their relatives. For six years, the family has tried to contact the American government, including through U.S. Africa Command’s online civilian casualty reporting portal without ever receiving a reply.
In December 2023, following an investigation by The Intercept, two dozen human rights organizations — 14 Somali and 10 international groups — called on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate Luul and Mariam’s family for their deaths. This year, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representatives Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) have also called on the Defense Department to make amends.
A 2021 investigation by New York Times reporter Azmat Khan revealed that the American air war in Iraq and Syria was marked by flawed intelligence and inaccurate targeting, resulting in the deaths of many innocents. Out of 1,311 military reports analyzed by Khan, only one cited a “possible violation” of the rules of engagement. None included a finding of wrongdoing or suggested a need for disciplinary action, while fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made. The U.S.-led coalition eventually admitted to killing 1,410 civilians during the war in Iraq and Syria. Airwars, however, puts the number at 2,024.
Several of the attacks detailed by Khan were brought to the Defense Department’s attention in 2022 but, according to their new report, the Pentagon failed to take action. Joanna Naples-Mitchell, director of the nonprofit Zomia Center’s Redress Program, which helps survivors of American air strikes submit requests for compensation, and Annie Shiel, U.S. advocacy director with the Center for Civilians in Conflict, highlighted several of these cases in a recent Just Security article.
In June 2022, for instance, the Redress Program submitted requests for amends from the Pentagon on behalf of two families in Mosul, Iraq, harmed in an April 29, 2016, air strike reportedly targeting an Islamic State militant who was unharmed in the attack. Khan reported that, instead, Ziad Kallaf Awad, a college professor, was killed and Hassan Aleiwi Muhammad Sultan, then 10 years old, was left wheelchair-bound. The Pentagon had indeed admitted that civilian casualties resulted from the strike in a 2016 press release.
In September 2022, the Redress Program also submitted ex gratia requests on behalf of six families in Mosul, all of them harmed by a June 15, 2016, air strike also investigated by Khan. Naples-Mitchel and Shiel note that Iliyas Ali Abd Ali, then running a fruit stand near the site of the attack, lost his right leg and hearing in one ear. Two brothers working in an ice cream shop were also injured, while a man standing near that shop was killed. That same year, the Pentagon did confirm that the strike had resulted in civilian casualties.
However, almost eight years after acknowledging civilian harm in those Mosul cases and almost two years after the Redress Program submitted the claims to the Defense Department, the Pentagon has yet to offer amends.
Getting to “Yes”
While the U.S. military has long been killing civilians — in massacres by ground troops, air strikes and even, in August 1945, nuclear attacks — compensating those harmed has never been a serious priority.
General John “Black Jack” Pershing did push to adopt a system to pay claims by French civilians during World War I and the military in World War II found that paying compensation for harm to civilians “had a pronounced stabilizing effect.” The modern military reparations system, however, dates only to the 1960s.
During the Vietnam War, providing “solatia” was a way for the military to offer reparations for civilian injuries or deaths caused by U.S. operations without having to admit any guilt. In 1968, the going rate for an adult life was $33. Children merited just half that.
In 1973, a B-52 Stratofortress dropped 30 tons of bombs on the Cambodian town of Neak Luong, killing hundreds of civilians and wounding hundreds more. The next of kin of those killed, according to press reports, were promised about $400 each. Considering that, in many cases, a family’s primary breadwinner had been lost, the sum was low. It was only the equivalent of about four years of earnings for a rural Cambodian. By comparison, a one-plane sortie, like the one that devastated Neak Luong, cost about $48,000. And that B-52 bomber itself then cost about $8 million. Worse yet, a recent investigation found that the survivors did not actually receive the promised $400. In the end, the value American forces placed on the dead of Neak Luong came to just $218 each.
Back then, the United States kept its low-ball payouts in Cambodia a secret. Decades later, the U.S. continues to thwart transparency and accountability when it comes to civilian lives.
In June 2023, I asked Africa Command to answer detailed questions about its law-of-war and civilian-casualty policies and requested interviews with officials versed in such matters. Despite multiple follow-ups, Courtney Dock, the command’s deputy director of public affairs, has yet to respond. This year-long silence stands in stark contrast to the Defense Department’s trumpeting of new policies and initiatives for responding to civilian harm and making amends.
In 2022, the Pentagon issued a 36-page Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, written at the direction of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The plan provides a blueprint for improving how the Pentagon addresses the subject. The plan requires military personnel to consider potential harm to civilians in any air strike, ground raid, or other type of combat.
Late last year, the Defense Department also issued its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” which established the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm.” The document, mandated under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, and approved by Austin, directs the military to “acknowledge civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations and respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations,” including “expressing condolences” and providing ex gratia payments to next of kin.
But despite $15 million allocated by Congress since 2020 to provide just such payments and despite members of Congress repeatedly calling on the Pentagon to make amends for civilian harm, it has announced just one such payment in the years since.
Naples-Mitchel and Shiel point out that the Defense Department has a projected budget of $849.8 billion for fiscal year 2025 and the $3 million set aside annually to pay for civilian casualty claims is just 0.00035% of that sum. “Yet for the civilians who have waited years for acknowledgment of the most painful day of their lives, it’s anything but small,” they write. “The military has what it needs to begin making payments and reckoning with past harms, from the policy commitment, to the funding, to the painstaking requests and documentation from civilian victims. All they have to do now is say yes.”
On May 10th, I asked Lisa Lawrence, the Pentagon spokesperson, if the U.S. would say “yes” and if not, why not.
“Thank you for reaching out,” she replied. “You can expect to hear from me as soon as I have more to offer.”
Lawrence has yet to “offer” anything. https://tomdispatch.com/constant-killing/
Gaza: After ICJ order to halt attacks on Rafah, Israel launches over 60 air raids on the city in 48 hours
Israel is continuing its crimes in defiance of the highest international justice body, which issued precautionary measures to prevent genocide on 26 January 2024 and additional precautionary measures on 28 March 2024, plus its latest precautionary measures, issued last Friday. Israel has been carrying out the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip continuously since 7 October 2023, with no real accountability for its crimes, amid the ongoing failure of the international community to protect the Palestinian people from this blatant genocide.
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6348 26 May 24
Palestinian Territory – Israel continues to ignore orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), including the Court’s most recent ruling. This ruling requires Israel to halt its military assault on the Rafah Governorate in the southern Gaza Strip and reopen the Rafah border crossing to facilitate the movement of people and humanitarian aid. In the 48 hours that followed the ICJ’s ruling on Friday 24 May, however, Israel conducted more than 60 air raids on Rafah.
Furthermore, dozens of artillery shells and constant gunfire were fired in areas of Rafah where the Israeli military was encroaching. Israel’s ground incursion began at dawn on 7 May and has since spread to the west and central parts of the city, mostly along the border strip. It has already impacted a significant portion of the city.
Thirteen Palestinians were killed in the 48 hours following the Court’s ruling, including six members of the Qishta family, an elderly mother and three of her children—two girls and one boy —and an adult son and his two children. The victims were killed when Israeli planes bombed their home on Saturday 25 May in Khirbet Al-Adas, north of Rafah, an area not included in the Israeli evacuation orders.
Three distinct air raids were also carried out on the same day (25 May) targeting the city’s Al-Shaboura Camp and Awni Dhair Street, resulting in the killing of five civilians.
A Palestinian was also killed and others were injured on Sunday afternoon when Israeli aircraft bombed the Rasras family’s house in the centre of Rafah city, while another Palestinian was killed and others were injured on the day of the Court session.
During the Court session to decide on South Africa’s request, the Israeli army increased its intense bombing of central Rafah, including the Shaboura camp. It destroyed numerous homes and streets, and later claimed that the incident was connected to an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate a leader in a Palestinian faction. As a result, civilians continue pay a heavy price for Israeli military attacks that flagrantly transgress international humanitarian law, particularly the principles of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity, i.e. taking appropriate precautions to avoid civilian deaths. It is important to note that these attacks are classified as war crimes under the Rome Statute.
Israel did not hold back in publicly rejecting the Court’s ruling. The bombing, killing, and destruction intensified immediately after the session ended. The Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, swiftly denounced the Court’s decision and attacked it, citing religious statements that denigrate non-Jews. Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir responded, “Our future does not depend on what the gentiles say, but rather on what we Jews do.”
According to Israeli Channel 12, Netanyahu stated that “occupying Rafah and increasing military pressure on Hamas” is the proper response to the Court’s decision, which he called “antisemitic”.
The victims of the Israeli army’s bombing are still lying in the streets and under the debris of destroyed homes, particularly in the eastern and central parts of the city, as rescue workers and medical teams are unable to remove them from those areas, according to the Euro-Med Monitor field team.
In addition to the hundreds of housing units destroyed since the beginning of the most recent attack on Rafah, during which entire neighbourhoods were destroyed and reduced to rubble, the Euro-Med Monitor team had also previously received information about the destruction of approximately 170 housing units.
Meanwhile, the World Food Programme warehouse and the UNRWA distribution centre in Rafah remain inaccessible due to the ongoing Israeli military attack.
Since taking control of the Rafah border crossing on 7 May, Israeli forces have prevented the entry of humanitarian aid through it (beginning the day before, on 6 May) and have continued to keep it closed to sick and injured people seeking to receive medical treatment abroad.
Discussions about reaching a deal to allow aid trucks to pass through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which Israel closed on 5 May, do not address the root causes of the issue, nor do they provide for the 2.3 million people living in the Strip. These individuals are victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide and once more face the threat of starvation, as eight months have passed since the start of the Israeli aggression.
According to UNRWA, the current Israeli military operation in Rafah is directly impacting the ability of aid agencies to bring critical humanitarian supplies into the Strip, as well as the ability to rotate critical humanitarian staff. From 1–20 May, according to OCHA, 14 missions which were heading to Kerem Shalom to collect aid supplies encountered delays due to traffic congestions blocking the road and delayed clearance by Israeli authorities, resulting in six missions being aborted. During this reporting period (20–22 May), the border crossings were only opened for one day, and only 39 trucks entered the Strip via the Kerem Shalom and Rafah land crossings. Only 143 trucks have entered the Gaza strip via the Karem Abu Salem crossing since 6–20 May.
Israel is continuing its crimes in defiance of the highest international justice body, which issued precautionary measures to prevent genocide on 26 January 2024 and additional precautionary measures on 28 March 2024, plus its latest precautionary measures, issued last Friday. Israel has been carrying out the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip continuously since 7 October 2023, with no real accountability for its crimes, amid the ongoing failure of the international community to protect the Palestinian people from this blatant genocide.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reiterates its call on all nations to fulfil their international obligations and halt all military, political, and financial support for Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip. In particular, all arms transfers to Israel, including export permits and military assistance, must end immediately; otherwise, these nations will be considered complicit in Israeli crimes committed in the Strip, including genocide.
Furthermore, Euro-Med Monitor urges the International Criminal Court (ICC) to acknowledge and handle Israel’s crimes in the Gaza Strip as international crimes, as they fall under the Court’s jurisdiction. Additionally, Euro-Med Monitor asks the Court to expand its lists of arrest warrants to include more Israeli officials.
The United Nations must send fact-finding and investigative committees to the Gaza Strip, defy Israel’s decision to forbid such committees from entering the Strip, and make clear, public declarations whenever Israel denies these committees entry or refuses to work with them in any manner.
International investigations must be conducted into the widespread violations that have been documented since Israel started its military attacks on the Gaza Strip, all evidence must be preserved, and all international institutions must unite in their efforts to end Israel’s impunity. Those who have committed crimes in the Strip, whether by issuing orders or carrying them out, must be held accountable and brought to justice.
Euro-Med Monitor warns that, should the Security Council be approached to pass a resolution requiring Israel to cease operations in the Rafah Governorate in the event that Israel does not abide by the recent ruling of the International Court of Justice, any use of the veto to prevent this resolution from being passed and enforced would mean that the objecting state—which has previously been the United States in multiple similar situations—will be complicit in the genocide committed by Israel throughout the Gaza Strip. This complicity in Israeli crimes includes crimes in Rafah Governorate, where the Court confirmed that Israel’s US-backed military operation poses a serious and additional threat to the Palestinian people’s right to be protected from the crime of genocide.
Blinken lobbying for strikes on Russia – NYT
23 May 2024 , https://www.sott.net/article/491680-Blinken-lobbying-for-strikes-on-Russia-NYT
The top US diplomat wants Ukraine to be given permission to use American weapons beyond its borders
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is pushing the administration of President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to attack targets deep inside Russia with American weapons, the New York Times reported on Thursday, referring to unnamed US officials.
The ban, according to the White House, was imposed out of concern that if US arms were used inside what Washington acknowledges as Russian territory it would trigger an escalation and potentially World War III. Blinken has been advocating for scrapping the restriction after making a “sobering” visit to Kiev earlier this month, the newspaper said, citing insider sources.
Ukrainian officials have claimed that being unable to target Russian forces across the border with American weapons led to the failure of its troops to prevent the recent Russian advances in Kharkov Region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the offensive is a response to months of Ukrainian artillery and drone attacks in Russia’s Belgorod Region and that a buffer zone is required to deprive Kiev of the capability to make such strikes. The Times said that Ukrainian weapons “don’t pack the power and speed of the American weapons.”
Kiev has launched a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill to pressure the White House over the issue and has some allies among lawmakers. A group of representatives signed a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Monday calling for the Ukrainian request to be granted.
During a hearing in Congress on Tuesday, Senator Michael McCaul displayed a map showing the strike range of ATACMS missiles – a weapon the US has donated to Ukraine – if Kiev were allowed to use them inside Russia. He called the outlined territory a “sanctuary zone” for Russian troops and accused the Biden administration of tying the hands of the Ukrainians behind their backs.
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has urged increased NATO involvement in the conflict and has argued that the West should not fear Russia’s reaction. Moscow believes that Zelensky’s goal is to trigger an escalation to maintain his position.
Russia is currently conducting a military drill to test its capability to use non-strategic nuclear weapons, which Putin ordered in response to hostile rhetoric by Western officials. One such remark identified by Moscow came from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who said earlier this month that Kiev “has the right” to use weapons donated by his nation to attack targets inside Russia.
Comment:
1) The above news was published the same day as Boris Johnson and British MPs met with representatives of the Azov Brigade. See Russia reacts to UK MPs applauding Ukrainian neo-Nazis On the occasion, Johnson gave a speech in which he made recommendation similar to those promoted by Anthony Blinken:
2) Regarding: “British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who said earlier this month that Kiev “has the right” to use weapons donated by his nation to attack targets inside Russia.”
“Nuclear War: A Scenario”: An Absolute Must-Read
Jonathon Porritt, 24 May 24
Every single person of influence here in the UK (and globally) absolutely
ought to read Annie Jacobsen’s “Nuclear War: A Scenario”. We somehow
seem to have forgotten that we’re still living in a world which could be
entirely destroyed (by design or by accident) by a nuclear war. At any
point.
Even Putin’s occasional flourish of his “big nuclear stick”
seems to stir few fears – outside of a group of extraordinarily
well-informed security and defence experts. I suspect that may have been
Annie Jacobson’s motivation in writing “Nuclear War: A Scenario”.
How have we become so complacent? Why is nuclear disarmament the poor cousin of
any international security gathering – a ghost at every G20/G7 Summit?
Why will nuclear disarmament barely feature in the manifestos of the major
parties in the UK General Election – and, so much more importantly, in
the presidential campaigns of either Biden or Trump?
Jonathon Porritt 24th May 2024
Israel will not stop ‘this madness’ until we make it stop: UN rapporteur
May 25, 2024 more https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240525-israel-will-not-stop-this-madness-until-we-make-it-stop-un-rapporteur/
The UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine on Saturday urged member states to impose sanctions on Israel along with an arms embargo until it stops “this madness,” Anadolu reports.
“Let’s be clear. As the ICJ orders Israel to stop its offensive in Rafah, Israel intensifies its attacks on it,” Francesca Albanese said on X.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its latest ruling ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians had sought refuge.
“The news I am receiving from the people trapped therein are terrifying,” she said.
“Be sure: Israel will not stop this madness until WE make it stop,” she added.
Albanese urged all UN member states to “impose #sanctions, arms embargo and suspend diplo/political relations with Israel till it ceases its assault.”
On Friday, the ICJ reaffirmed its previous orders and indicated further measures including, keeping the Rafah border crossing open and allowing access for investigators to the blockaded enclave.
Over 35,800 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the vast majority being women and children, and nearly 80,300 others injured since October following an attack by Hamas.
More than seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Ukraine war briefing: France flies nuclear-capable missile as Russia holds drills
Guardian, Warren Murray and agencies, Thu 23 May
- France has carried out its first test firing of an updated nuclear-capable missile, the ASMPA-R, designed to be launched by a Rafale fighter jet, according to the French defence minister, Sebastien Lecornu. It came a day after Russia said it began nuclear drills in its southern military district, which stretches from Russia into occupied Ukrainian territory. The announcement of Russian drills is partly directed at France after its president, Emmanuel Macron, said he would not rule out sending in troops on Ukraine’s side.
- Lecornu said the missile was fired without a warhead by a plane in an exercise “above national territory … at the end of a flight representing a nuclear air raid”. He congratulated “all the forces, [defence] ministry teams and industrial partners involved” in a “long-planned” operation. France plans to spend about 13% of its military budget over the coming years on its independent nuclear capability, including upgrading to next-generation air-launched missiles by 2035. ……………………………………..
- Russia said there were Ukrainian attacks on its Belgorod region across the border from Ukraine, and in the occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, killing up to three people.
- The Swedish government has announced additional military support to Ukraine totalling 75 billion crowns (US$7bn) over three years. Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said Swedish-made weapons had “already proven themselves on the battlefield … Archers and CV-90s help Ukrainian defenders drive the enemy out of our land.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/23/ukraine-war-briefing-france-flies-nuclear-capable-missile-as-russia-holds-drills
In 1939 the Soviet Union ‘planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact’
Nick Holdsworth in Moscow, The Telegraph, Sat, 18 Oct 2008 https://www.sott.net/article/491642-Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact
Stalin was ‘prepared to move more than a million Soviet troops to the German border to deter Hitler’s aggression just before the Second World War’
Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance.
Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler’s pact with Stalin which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany’s other neighbours.
The offer of a military force to help contain Hitler was made by a senior Soviet military delegation at a Kremlin meeting with senior British and French officers, two weeks before war broke out in 1939.
The new documents, copies of which have been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, show the vast numbers of infantry, artillery and airborne forces which Stalin’s generals said could be dispatched, if Polish objections to the Red Army crossing its territory could first be overcome.
But the British and French side – briefed by their governments to talk, but not authorised to commit to binding deals – did not respond to the Soviet offer, made on August 15, 1939. Instead, Stalin turned to Germany, signing the notorious non-aggression treaty with Hitler barely a week later.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign secretaries of the two countries, came on August 23 – just a week before Nazi Germany attacked Poland, thereby sparking the outbreak of the war. But it would never have happened if Stalin’s offer of a western alliance had been accepted, according to retired Russian foreign intelligence service Major General Lev Sotskov, who sorted the 700 pages of declassified documents.
“This was the final chance to slay the wolf, even after [British Conservative prime minister Neville] Chamberlain and the French had given up Czechoslovakia to German aggression the previous year in the Munich Agreement,” said Gen Sotskov, 75.
The Soviet offer – made by war minister Marshall Klementi Voroshilov and Red Army chief of general staff Boris Shaposhnikov – would have put up to 120 infantry divisions (each with some 19,000 troops), 16 cavalry divisions, 5,000 heavy artillery pieces, 9,500 tanks and up to 5,500 fighter aircraft and bombers on Germany’s borders in the event of war in the west, declassified minutes of the meeting show.
But Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, who lead the British delegation, told his Soviet counterparts that he authorised only to talk, not to make deals.
“Had the British, French and their European ally Poland, taken this offer seriously then together we could have put some 300 or more divisions into the field on two fronts against Germany – double the number Hitler had at the time,” said Gen Sotskov, who joined the Soviet intelligence service in 1956. “This was a chance to save the world or at least stop the wolf in its tracks.”
When asked what forces Britain itself could deploy in the west against possible Nazi aggression, Admiral Drax said there were just 16 combat ready divisions, leaving the Soviets bewildered by Britain’s lack of preparation for the looming conflict.
The Soviet attempt to secure an anti-Nazi alliance involving the British and the French is well known. But the extent to which Moscow was prepared to go has never before been revealed.
Simon Sebag Montefiore, best selling author of Young Stalin and Stalin: The Court of The Red Tsar, said it was apparent there were details in the declassified documents that were not known to western historians.
“The detail of Stalin’s offer underlines what is known; that the British and French may have lost a colossal opportunity in 1939 to prevent the German aggression which unleashed the Second World War. It shows that Stalin may have been more serious than we realised in offering this alliance.”
Professor Donald Cameron Watt, author of How War Came – widely seen as the definitive account of the last 12 months before war began – said the details were new, but said he was sceptical about the claim that they were spelled out during the meetings.
“There was no mention of this in any of the three contemporaneous diaries, two British and one French – including that of Drax,” he said. “I don’t myself believe the Russians were serious.”
The declassified archives – which cover the period from early 1938 until the outbreak of war in September 1939 – reveal that the Kremlin had known of the unprecedented pressure Britain and France put on Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler by surrendering the ethnic German Sudetenland region in 1938.
“At every stage of the appeasement process, from the earliest top secret meetings between the British and French, we understood exactly and in detail what was going on,” Gen Sotskov said.
“It was clear that appeasement would not stop with Czechoslovakia’s surrender of the Sudetenland and that neither the British nor the French would lift a finger when Hitler dismembered the rest of the country.”
Stalin’s sources, Gen Sotskov says, were Soviet foreign intelligence agents in Europe, but not London. “The documents do not reveal precisely who the agents were, but they were probably in Paris or Rome.”
Shortly before the notorious Munich Agreement of 1938 – in which Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, effectively gave Hitler the go-ahead to annexe the Sudetenland – Czechoslovakia’s President Eduard Benes was told in no uncertain terms not to invoke his country’s military treaty with the Soviet Union in the face of further German aggression.
“Chamberlain knew that Czechoslovakia had been given up for lost the day he returned from Munich in September 1938 waving a piece of paper with Hitler’s signature on it,” Gen Sotksov said.
The top secret discussions between the Anglo-French military delegation and the Soviets in August 1939 – five months after the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia – suggest both desperation and impotence of the western powers in the face of Nazi aggression.
Poland, whose territory the vast Russian army would have had to cross to confront Germany, was firmly against such an alliance. Britain was doubtful about the efficacy of any Soviet forces because only the previous year, Stalin had purged thousands of top Red Army commanders.
The documents will be used by Russian historians to help explain and justify Stalin’s controversial pact with Hitler, which remains infamous as an example of diplomatic expediency.
“It was clear that the Soviet Union stood alone and had to turn to Germany and sign a non-aggression pact to gain some time to prepare ourselves for the conflict that was clearly coming,” said Gen Sotskov.
A desperate attempt by the French on August 21 to revive the talks was rebuffed, as secret Soviet-Nazi talks were already well advanced.
It was only two years later, following Hitler’s Blitzkreig attack on Russia in June 1941, that the alliance with the West which Stalin had sought finally came about – by which time France, Poland and much of the rest of Europe were already under German occupation.
Blinken Pushing To Let Ukraine Hit Russian Territory With US Weapons
Many members of Congress are also calling for President Biden to lift the ban, which risks a major escalation
by Dave DeCamp https://news.antiwar.com/2024/05/23/blinken-pushing-to-let-ukraine-hit-russian-territory-with-us-weapons/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is leading a push within the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to use US-provided missile systems and other weapons to hit Russian territory, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The report said there is a “vigorous debate” within the administration in the wake of Russia’s new offensive in Kharkiv, which was launched from over the border in Russia’s Belgorod oblast.
It’s unclear how many other high-level officials agree with Blinken, but the pressure is growing on President Biden to lift the prohibition on Ukraine using US weapons on Russian territory, a ban that, according to the Times, is designed to “avoid World War III.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and many other members of Congress are also calling to lift the ban. Ultra-hawk Victoria Nuland, who left the State Department in March, appeared on ABC News this week to make the pitch for Ukraine to extend its use of US weapons to Russian territory.
“I think there’s also a question of whether we, the United States and our allies, ought to give them more help in hitting Russian bases, which heretofore we have not been willing to do,” Nuland said.
“I think if the attacks are coming directly from over the line in Russia, that those bases ought to be fair game, whether they are where missiles are being launched from or where they are where troops are being supplied from,” she added.
Moscow recently warned the UK that if Ukraine used British weapons on Russian territory, Russian forces would target UK military sites in Ukraine “and beyond.” The warning came after British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Ukraine had the “right” to use British arms in attacks on Russia.
Russia is currently conducting tactical nuclear drills that it launched in response to provocative rhetoric from Western officials about sending troops to Ukraine. The Times report said that the US was also considering deploying troops for training, although Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown said there were “no plans” to do so at the moment.
Ukrainian missiles hit Crimea as Russia launches nuclear drills in area
By Alessio Dell’Anna with AP, 24/05/2024 , https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/05/24/ukrainian-missiles-hit-crimea-as-russia-launches-nuclear-drills-in-area
The exercise in the Southern Military District, which includes the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, involves tactical nuclear weapons which can be used on a battlefield even in proximity of allied forces.
Ukraine struck two Crimean targets late on Thursday, the Russian head of the annexed peninsula said.
Two people were killed in a missile attack near Simferopol, Crimea’s main administrative centre. They also hit a building near Alushta, on Crimea’s Black Sea coast.
Moscow said the facility was empty, while Ukraine’s resistance group in Crimea Atesh has reported multiple casualties.
The attack comes as Russia gets underway drills in its Southern Military District, which also includes the occupied peninsula of Crimea.
The exercise involves tactical nuclear weapons, such as air bombs, warheads for short-range missiles and artillery munitions.
Tactical nuclear weapons are less powerful than conventional strategic nuclear weapons, but they can be employed on the battlefield, even with friendly forces nearby.
Russia regularly holds exercises involving tactical nuclear weapons. However, this is reportedly the first time the Kremlin has publicly announced it.
The announcement came after French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated that he doesn’t exclude sending troops to Ukraine, and UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Kyiv’s forces will be able to use British long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
The Kremlin branded those comments as dangerous, further inflaming tensions between Russia and NATO.
The longer-term consequences of nuclear war
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists OCTOBER 20, 2022, By François Diaz-Maurin [Excellent simulations and graphics]
In recent years, in some US military and policy circles, there has been a growing perception that a limited nuclear war can be fought and won. Many experts believe, however, that a limited nuclear war is unlikely to remain limited. What starts with one tactical nuclear strike or a tit-for-tat nuclear exchange between two countries could escalate to an all-out nuclear war ending with the immediate and utter destruction of both countries.
But the catastrophe will not be limited to those two belligerents and their allies.
The long-term regional and global effects of nuclear explosions have been overshadowed in public discussions by the horrific, obvious, local consequences of nuclear explosions. Military planners have also focused on the short-term effects of nuclear explosions because they are tasked with estimating the capabilities of nuclear forces on civilian and military targets. Blast, local radiation fallout, and electromagnetic pulse (an intense burst of radio waves that can damage electronic equipment) are all desired outcomes of the use of nuclear weapons—from a military perspective.
But widespread fires and other global climatic changes resulting from many nuclear explosions may not be accounted for in war plans and nuclear doctrines. These collateral effects are difficult to predict; assessing them requires scientific knowledge that most military planners don’t possess or take into account. Yet, in the few years following a nuclear war, such collateral damage may be responsible for the death of more than half of the human population on Earth.
Global climatic changes
Since the 1980s, as the threat of nuclear war reached new heights, scientists have investigated the long-term, widespread effects of nuclear war on Earth systems. Using a radiative-convective climate model that simulates the vertical profile of atmospheric temperatures, American scientists first showed that a nuclear winter could occur from the smoke produced by the massive forest fires ignited by nuclear weapons after a nuclear war. Two Russian scientists later conducted the first three-dimensional climate modeling showing that global temperatures would drop lower on land than on oceans, potentially causing an agricultural collapse worldwide. Initially contested for its imprecise results due to uncertainties in the scenarios and physical parameters involved, nuclear winter theory is now supported by more sophisticated climate models. While the basic mechanisms of nuclear winter described in the early studies still hold today, most recent calculations have shown that the effects of nuclear war would be more long-lasting and worse than previously thought.
Stratospheric soot injection
The heat and blast from a thermonuclear explosion are so powerful they can initiate large-scale fires in both urban and rural settings. A 300-kiloton detonation in a city like New York or Washington DC could cause a mass fire with a radius of at least 5.6 kilometers (3.5 miles), not altered by any weather conditions. Air in that area would be turned into dust, fire, and smoke.
But a nuclear war will set not just one city on fire, but hundreds of them, all but simultaneously. Even a regional nuclear war—say between India and Pakistan—could lead to widespread firestorms in cities and industrial areas that would have the potential to cause global climatic change, disrupting every form of life on Earth for decades.
Smoke from mass fires after a nuclear war could inject massive amounts of soot into the stratosphere, the Earth’s upper atmosphere. An all-out nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with both countries launching a total of 100 nuclear warheads of an average yield of 15 kilotons, could produce a stratospheric loading of some 5 million tons (or teragrams, Tg) of soot. This is about the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza, pulverized and turned into superheated dust.
But these lower-end estimates date back to the late 2000s. Since then, India and Pakistan have significantly expanded their nuclear arsenals, both in the number of nuclear warheads and yield. By 2025, India and Pakistan could have up to 250 nuclear weapons each, with yields of 12 kilotons on the low end, up to a few hundred kilotons. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan with such arsenals could send up to 47 Tg of soot into the stratosphere.
For comparison, the recent catastrophic forest fires in Canada in 2017 and Australia in 2019 and 2020 produced 0.3 Tg and 1 Tg of smoke respectively. Chemical analysis showed, however, that only a small percentage of the smoke from these fires was pure soot—0.006 and 0.02 Tg respectively. This is because only wood was burning. Urban fires following a nuclear war would produce more smoke, and a higher fraction would be soot. But these two episodes of massive forest fires demonstrated that when smoke is injected into the lower stratosphere, it is heated by sunlight and lofted at high altitudes—10 to 20 kilometers (33,000 to 66,000 feet)—prolonging the time it stays in the stratosphere. This is precisely the mechanism that now allows scientists to better simulate the long-term impacts of nuclear war. With their models, researchers were able to accurately simulate the smoke from these large forest fires, further supporting the mechanisms that cause nuclear winter.
The climatic response from volcanic eruptions also continues to serve as a basis for understanding the long-term impacts of nuclear war. Volcanic blasts typically send ash and dust up into the stratosphere where it reflects sunlight back into space, resulting in the temporary cooling of the Earth’s surface. Likewise, in the theory of nuclear winter, the climatic effects of a massive injection of soot aerosols into the stratosphere from fires following a nuclear war would lead to the heating of the stratosphere, ozone depletion, and cooling at the surface under this cloud. Volcanic eruptions are also useful because their magnitude can match—or even surpass—the level of nuclear explosions. For instance, the 2022 Hunga Tonga’s underwater volcano released an explosive energy of 61 megatons of TNT equivalent—more than the Tsar Bomba, the largest human-made explosion in history with 50 Mt. Its plume reached altitudes up to about 56 kilometers (35 miles), injecting well over 50 Tg—even up to 146 Tg—of water vapor into the stratosphere where it will stay for years. Such a massive injection of stratospheric water could temporarily impact the climate—although differently than soot.
Since Russia’s war in Ukraine started, President Putin and other Russian officials have made repeated nuclear threats, in an apparent attempt to deter Western countries from any direct military intervention. If Russia were to ever start—voluntarily or accidentally—nuclear war with the United States and other NATO countries, the number of devastating nuclear explosions involved in a full exchange could waft more than 150 Tg of soot into the stratosphere, leading to a nuclear winter that would disrupt virtually all forms of life on Earth over several decades.
Stratospheric soot injections associated with different nuclear war scenarios would lead to a wide variety of major climatic and biogeochemical changes, including transformations of the atmosphere, oceans, and land. Such global climate changes will be more long-lasting than previously thought because models of the 1980s did not adequately represent the stratospheric plume rise. It is now understood that soot from nuclear firestorms would rise much higher into the stratosphere than once imagined, where soot removal mechanisms in the form of “black rains” are slow. Once the smoke is heated by sunlight it can self-loft to altitudes as high as 80 kilometers (50 miles), penetrating the mesosphere.
Changes in the atmosphere
After soot is injected into the upper atmosphere, it can stay there for months to years, blocking some direct sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface and decreasing temperatures. At high altitudes—20 kilometers (12 miles) and above near the equator and 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) at the poles—the smoke injected by nuclear firestorms would also absorb more radiation from the sun, heating the stratosphere and perturbing stratospheric circulation.
In the stratosphere, the presence of highly absorptive black carbon aerosols would result in considerably enhanced stratospheric temperatures. For instance, in a regional nuclear war scenario that leads to a 5-Tg injection of soot, stratospheric temperatures would remain elevated by 30 degrees Celsius after four years.
The extreme heating observed in the stratosphere would increase the global average loss of the ozone layer—which protects humans and other life on Earth from the severe health and environmental effects of ultraviolet radiation—for the first few years after a nuclear war. Simulations have shown that a regional nuclear war that lasted three days and injected 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere would reduce the ozone layer by 25 percent globally; recovery would take 12 years. A global nuclear war injecting 150 Tg of stratospheric smoke would cause a 75 percent global ozone loss, with the depletion lasting 15 years.
Changes on land
Soot injection in the stratosphere will lead to changes on the Earth’s surface, including the amount of solar radiation that is received, air temperature, and precipitation.
The loss of the Earth’s protective ozone layer would result in several years of extremely high ultraviolet (UV) light at the surface, a hazard to human health and food production. Most recent estimates indicate that the ozone loss after a global nuclear war would lead to a tropical UV index above 35, starting three years after the war and lasting for four years. The US Environmental Protection Agency considers a UV index of 11 to pose an “extreme” danger; 15 minutes of exposure to a UV index of 12 causes unprotected human skin to experience sunburn. Globally, the average sunlight in the UV-B range would increase by 20 percent. High levels of UV-B radiation are known to cause sunburn, photoaging, skin cancer, and cataracts in humans. They also inhibit the photolysis reaction required for leaf expansion and plant growth.
Smoke lofted into the stratosphere would reduce the amount of solar radiation making it to Earth’s surface, reducing global surface temperatures and precipitation dramatically.
Even a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan—causing a relatively modest stratospheric loading of 5 Tg of soot—could produce the lowest temperatures on Earth in the past 1,000 years—temperatures below the post-medieval Little Ice Age. A regional nuclear war with 5-Tg stratospheric soot injection would have the potential to make global average temperatures drop by 1 degree Celsius.
Even though their nuclear arsenals have been cut in size and average yield since the end of the Cold War, a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia would still likely initiate a much more severe nuclear winter, with much of the northern hemisphere facing below-freezing temperatures even during the summer. A global nuclear war that injected 150 Tg of soot into the stratosphere could make temperatures drop by 8 degrees Celsius—3 degrees lower than Ice Age values.
In any nuclear war scenario, the temperature changes would have their greatest effect on mid- and high-latitude agriculture, by reducing the length of the crop season and the temperature even during that season. Below-freezing temperatures could also lead to a significant expansion of sea ice and terrestrial snowpack, causing food shortages and affecting shipping to crucial ports where sea ice is not now a factor.
Global average precipitation after a nuclear war would also drop significantly because the lower amounts of solar radiation reaching the surface would reduce temperatures and water evaporation rates. The precipitation decrease would be the greatest in the tropics. For instance, even a 5-Tg soot injection would lead to a 40 percent precipitation decrease in the Asian monsoon region. South America and Africa would also experience large drops in rainfall.
Changes in the ocean
The longest-lasting consequences of any nuclear war would involve oceans. Regardless of the location and magnitude of a nuclear war, the smoke from the resulting firestorms would quickly reach the stratosphere and be dispersed globally, where it would absorb sunlight and reduce the solar radiation to the ocean surface. The ocean surface would respond more slowly to changes in radiation than the atmosphere and land due to its higher specific heat capacity (i.e., the quantity of heat needed to raise the temperature per unit of mass).
Global ocean temperature decrease will be the greatest starting three to four years after a nuclear war, dropping by approximately 3.5 degrees Celsius for an India-Pakistan war (that injected 47 Tg of smoke into the stratosphere) and six degrees Celsius for a global US-Russia war (150 Tg). Once cooled, the ocean will take even more time to return to its pre-war temperatures, even after the soot has disappeared from the stratosphere and solar radiation returns to normal levels. The delay and duration of the changes will increase linearly with depth. Abnormally low temperatures are likely to persist for decades near the surface, and hundreds of years or longer at depth. For a global nuclear war (150 Tg), changes in ocean temperature to the Arctic sea-ice are likely to last thousands of years—so long that researchers talk of a “nuclear Little Ice Age.”
Because of the dropping solar radiation and temperature on the ocean surface, marine ecosystems would be highly disrupted both by the initial perturbation and by the new, long-lasting ocean state. This will result in global impacts on ecosystem services, such as fisheries. For instance, the marine net primary production (a measure of the new growth of marine algae, which makes up the base of the marine food web) would decline sharply after any nuclear war. In a US-Russia scenario (150 Tg), the global marine net primary production would be cut almost by half in the months after the war and would remain reduced by 20 to 40 percent for over 4 years, with the largest decreases being in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.
Impacts on food production
Changes in the atmosphere, surface, and oceans following a nuclear war will have massive and long-term consequences on global agricultural production and food availability. Agriculture responds to the length of growing seasons, the temperature during the growing season, light levels, precipitation, and other factors. A nuclear war will significantly alter all of those factors, on a global scale for years to decades.
Using new climate, crop, and fishery models, researchers have now demonstrated that soot injections larger than 5 Tg would lead to mass food shortages in almost all countries, although some will be at greater risk of famine than others. Globally, livestock production and fishing would be unable to compensate for reduced crop output. After a nuclear war, and after stored food is consumed, the total food calories available in each nation will drop dramatically, putting millions at risk of starvation or undernourishment. Mitigation measures—shifts in production and consumption of livestock food and crops, for example—would not be sufficient to compensate for the global loss of available calories.
The aforementioned food production impacts do not account for the long-term direct impacts of radioactivity on humans or the widespread radioactive contamination of food that could follow a nuclear war. International trade of food products could be greatly reduced or halted as countries hoard domestic supplies. But even assuming a heroic action of altruism by countries whose food systems are less affected, trade could be disrupted by another effect of the war: sea ice.
Cooling of the ocean’s surface would lead to an expansion of sea ice in the first years after a nuclear war, when food shortages would be highest. This expansion would affect shipping into crucial ports in regions where sea ice is not currently experienced, such as the Yellow Sea.
Post-nuclear famine
Number of people and percentage of the population who could die from starvation two years after a nuclear war. Regional nuclear war scenario corresponds to 5Tg of soot produced by 100 15-kiloton nuclear weapons launched between India and Pakistan. Large-scale nuclear war scenario corresponds to 150Tg of soot produced by 4,400 100-kiloton nuclear weapons launched between Russia and the United States. (Source: Xia et al. Nature Food 3, no. 8 (2022): 586-596.)
Nowhere to hide
The impacts of nuclear war on agricultural food systems would have dire consequences for most humans who survive the war and its immediate effects.
The overall global consequences of nuclear war—including both short-term and long-term impacts—would be even more horrific causing hundreds of millions—even billions—of people to starve to death……………………………… more https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/nowhere-to-hide-how-a-nuclear-war-would-kill-you-and-almost-everyone-else/#post-heading
Why US Opposes Efforts to Keep Space Weapons-Free
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240521/why-us-opposes-efforts-to-keep-space-weapons-free-1118569943.html
The United Nations Security Council failed to adopt a resolution drafted by Russia on prevention of weapon deployment in space this week, with seven countries – including the United States and Britain – voting against it.
The United States and Britain’s move to block a Russian draft resolution in the UN Security Council aimed at preventing an arms race in space stem from the US’ unwillingness to let Russian and Chinese initiatives to ban space weapons succeed, Dmitry Stefanovich from the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences says.
While Russia and China, as well as a number of other countries, insist on adopting a legally binding document that would ban the very concept of stationing weapon systems in space, Western powers such as the US want the situation where anyone can deploy anything they want in space as long as their behavior is deemed correct, he explains.
Therefore, the West is promoting the concept of restricting what spacecraft can do in space whereas the Russo-Chinese approach is to prohibit sending weapons into space, Stefanovich surmises.
Regarding speculation about the possible deployment of nuclear weapons in Earth’s orbit, Stefanovich points out that the United States currently enjoys a distinct advantage in the “dual-use space infrastructure,” i.e. spacecraft and satellites that can be used for both commercial/scientific and military purposes.
Since destroying large satellite constellations through conventional means, one by one, would seem a daunting task, it begets concerns that nuclear weapons might be used to accomplish such tasks, he explains.
Stefanovich also lamentas that any progress in resolving concerns about weapon deployment in space that was made in the past few years was essentially undone amid the ongoing conflict between the West and Russia, as well as the confrontation between the United States and China.
“Currently, everyone is looking for a way to weaken their adversary rather than for some kind of mutually acceptable solution,” he says.
US military aid to Ukraine is ‘grift’ – Blackwater founder to Tucker Carlson
The equipment Washington sends to Kiev will never change the tide of battle, Eric Prince has said
https://www.rt.com/news/598015-us-military-aid-ukraine-blackwater/ 22 May 24
US weapons shipments to Ukraine are senseless since they are not capable of changing the course of the conflict, Eric Prince, the founder of private American military contractor Blackwater, told journalist Tucker Carlson in an interview published on Tuesday.
The military aid to Ukraine is nothing but a “massive grift paid by the Pentagon,” Prince stated, adding that the latest major aid package worth $61 billion approved by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will end up lining the coffers of US defense industry giants. Prince, himself a former Navy SEAL officer, resigned and divested from his company after the 2007 Iraqi massacre scandal.
“Most of that money goes to five major defense contractors to replace at five times the cost the weapons that we have already sent the Ukrainians,” the Blackwater founder said, adding that “it does not change the outcome of the battle.”
“The Biden administration believed that all this American weaponry would have saved the day. It has not,” Prince said.
The Russian military has published photos and videos of damaged and destroyed Western-made military equipment in Ukraine, including US-supplied Abrams tanks. One of them ended up at a trophy exhibition in Moscow, alongside a German-made Leopard main battle tank and dozens of other pieces.
Kiev’s forces are already spread “very thin” and are about to face an “ugly summer,” according to Prince. “All the defenses that were supposed to be built by Ukrainians are much smaller or non-existent,” he said, mostly due to “corruption issues.”
Moscow’s forces are “going to have a very good summer” and will seek to “absolutely humiliate the West and make sure they never have a problem with Ukraine again,” the Blackwater founder believes.
The interview comes amid Russian offensives in Donbass and Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkov Region, where Moscow’s forces have been steadily gaining ground. Last month, Russia’s former defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, said Moscow’s forces had seized the initiative and “dispelled the myth of the superiority of Western weapons.”
Prince went on to say that he never believed Ukraine could push Russia out of Donbass and Crimea. “The war should never have [been] started.”
The only thing Washington and its allies will achieve in Ukraine is “facilitating the demise of the Ukrainian men” and “destroying” this nation “for future generations,” the Blackwater founder said.
Moscow has warned that Western arms shipments to Ukraine will only prolong the conflict without changing the outcome. It has also accused the West of forcing Kiev to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” In early May, Shoigu said that Kiev has lost more than 111,000 troops this year alone.
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all weapons shipments to Israel
The national organization Veterans For Peace is demanding that the Biden administration abide by U.S. law regarding the illegal possession of unregulated nuclear weapons and halt all military aid to Israel.
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all military aid to Israel because it possesses nuclear weapons in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel does not admit it possesses nuclear weapons, has not signed the NPT, and does not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal.
The letter lists multiple credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the NPT, the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid.
The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors.
The president may not waive the cutoff of the aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the president to waive some or all of these sanctions.
“The law is quite simple,” said VFP National Director Mike Ferner. “Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘Will you obey the law or continue to let the Madmen Arsonists run America?’”
The well-referenced 11-page letter was researched and written by VFP member Terry Lodge, an activist lawyer who specializes in nuclear issues. It makes for a fascinating read, detailing Israel’s many illegal actions to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and Henry Kissinger’s approval of Israel’s “strategic ambiguity.” Israel has never officially admitted it possesses nuclear weapons, but “everybody knows.” In November, an Israeli cabinet member actually suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
The letter also references former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s hacked email (“The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands.’’). Colin Powell’s assertion that Iran’s capital Tehran has long been targeted by Israel’s nuclear weapons is especially chilling at this moment, when Israel has provoked an armed conflict with Iran and may be trying to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East. Would Israel attack Iran with nuclear weapons?
All U.S. Military Aid to Israel Must Be Ended Immediately
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all military aid to Israel because it possesses nuclear weapons in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel does not admit it possesses nuclear weapons, has not signed the NPT, and does not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal.
The letter lists multiple credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the NPT, the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid.
The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors.
The president may not waive the cutoff of the aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the president to waive some or all of these sanctions.
“The law is quite simple,” said VFP National Director Mike Ferner. “Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘Will you obey the law or continue to let the Madmen Arsonists run America?’”
The well-referenced 11-page letter was researched and written by VFP member Terry Lodge, an activist lawyer who specializes in nuclear issues. It makes for a fascinating read, detailing Israel’s many illegal actions to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and Henry Kissinger’s approval of Israel’s “strategic ambiguity.” Israel has never officially admitted it possesses nuclear weapons, but “everybody knows.” In November, an Israeli cabinet member actually suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
The letter also references former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s hacked email (“The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands.’’). Colin Powell’s assertion that Iran’s capital Tehran has long been targeted by Israel’s nuclear weapons is especially chilling at this moment, when Israel has provoked an armed conflict with Iran and may be trying to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East. Would Israel attack Iran with nuclear weapons?
All U.S. Military Aid to Israel Must Be Ended Immediately
Israel’s provocative approach to foreign relations before and since commencing the genocidal invasion of Gaza suggests that nuclear weapons might be used against both real and perceived existential threats to Israel. In May 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assessed that Israel’s security problems come from Iran, and then in September, he insisted at the United Nations that “[A]bove all, Iran must face a credible nuclear threat.”
Presently, Israel has at least 90 warheads, and possibly as many as 200.Israel’s bombs are deliverable via aircraft, land-based ballistic missiles, and submarine-based cruise missiles. Israel’s Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missiles are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead from 4,000 miles away, which means that Iran, Pakistan (another NPT scofflaw non-weapons state believed to have nuclear weapons), and all of Russia west of the Urals—including Moscow—are within range of Israeli nuclear targeting, should Israel resort to The Bomb.
Israel is conducting an ongoing genocidal military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Palestinian civilians and the Hamas government, even as it bombs and fires artillery and rockets into Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors. Given the overwhelming evidence that Israel has received many nuclear weapons from its military branch and has maintained that offensive nuclear capability for decades, federal law compels President Biden to immediately terminate all military assistance to Israel.
Nuclear War Will Only Kill People Already Impacted By Nuclear Weapons. That’s Everyone.
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 18, 2024,
World BEYOND War Board Member and Treasurer John Reuwer, a physician, supports downwinders impacted by nuclear weapons testing, demanding restitution from the U.S. government that has experimented on and lied to people for decades. John commented:
“I often think the two reasons most otherwise good people support war is they don’t count all the costs, and they don’t know the alternatives to protecting freedom and self determination. Here are indigenous peoples from numerous states across the country whose families and communities where seriously harmed by the Manhattan project and subsequent arms race, begging us to consider the cost imposed on them. These leaders have devoted their lives to educating America and Congress about the harm (an uncounted cost of the arms race) and asking for expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. It was an honor to support them. I recommend this movie they made to understand some of their situation: First We Bombed New Mexico.”
Another movie that many will find enlightening is SILENT FALLOUT. Beginning in 1951, the U.S. government used numerous nuclear weapons on Nevada, and told everyone it was safe, including all the people in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and the rest of the United States and world — the places reached by the fallout. Tourists went to Las Vegas for the fun of watching mushroom clouds. And cancer spread. People developed cancer at very high rates.
It’s not in this film, but a film crew shooting a Hollywood movie glorifying war, died off in high percentage from cancer after filming in the heavy fallout area. One of the dead was John Wayne.
Enormous craters remain in the desert — and in our knowledge. The U.S. government knew at least by 1952 that radioactive material was reaching every corner of the mainland United States, but who knows that in 2024?
Louise Reiss, a physician in Saint Louis, led a group of scientists who collected baby teeth — and accusations from Congress of being “communists” — and showed the extent of the fallout, influencing President John Kennedy to make an agreement with the Soviet Union to end atmospheric tests by both nations. Women went on strike from housework in 60 cities, which may have helped tip the balance.
More recent tests of honey show that radioactive material is still present across the United States, but most of it not from tests in Nevada, most of it from larger U.S. and UK tests in the Pacific and from Russian tests in Russia.
The U.S. and Russian and other governments have already nuked the United States and the world. Probably nobody is free of nuclear weapons radiation — or plastics or PFOA. Who knows, perhaps someday some scientists will figure out a link between what all these poisons do to the brains of Congress Members and the policies that have allowed the poisoning to contiinue.
But the damage done by nuclear weapons tests is nothing compared to the damage that would be done within minutes of someone starting a nuclear war. Annie Jcobsen’s new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, has a few glaring doozies scattered through it, from a false and dangerous opening quote by Winston Churchill to falsely claiming that nuclear weapons ended World War II, to explaining that “deterrence” involves nations vowing “never to use nuclear weapons unless they are forced to use them” — which relevant nations, the United States and Russia, have actually never vowed. It also fantasizes North Korea starting a nuclear war, which may be the least likely scenario. But what it does usefully is lay out a timeline in seconds and minutes of how anyone using one nuclear weapon would within about half an hour or so doom most or all human life and most other life on Earth.
Reading through that timeline, one is struck by how seriously the lunatic nuclear machine takes itself (and how different it looks in that truest documentary Dr. Strangelove), how many billions of dollars are endlessly and immorally wasted on each gear in the machine, and how at no point in time does it every make the slightest sense to launch more nuclear weapons — not when you’re suspecting someone else has launched them and not when you’re sure. Launching them doesn’t stand a chance of deterring some future war by proving you meant your threats. There is no future war. There is no future anything. The choices with nuclear weapons are a never-use-them policy or lunacy.
We can also observe, as instiutional lunacy gasps its last and we with it, that the mountain bunkers to keep government officials alive are — at most — for fewer people than you can count on one hand, and how nuclear energy facilities serve as self-facing weapons.
There’s also a new series on Netflix called Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War, which may be so bad that it does more harm than good, even though it has many good moments, including those with Daniel Ellsberg speaking — whose book The Doomsday Machine is probably the single best one to read on the nuclear threat. I also think it important to read a book on the multitude of near misses — the many times we’ve already almost all died: Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.
In general I think the proliferation of even deeply flawed books and movies is all to the good. Different people will read different books. Most people, who read nothing, will hear from a friend whose cousin saw an interview of an author on Youtube. Slowly, perhaps, people will grasp that the cold war never ended, that the danger is greater than ever before, and that there is no such thing as using one nuclear weapon and not using them all.
What can be done? Get rid of the underground bunkers and deal with the fact that we’re all in this together. Get rid of the policy of “launch on warning” as promised and reneged on by Bush, Obama, and Biden. Get rid of land-based ICBMs as redundant on lunacy’s own lunatic terms, and dangerous as hell over here in reality. Get the U.S. nukes out of Europe, as they serve — in both realty and in Jacobsen’s scenario — exclusively to make Europe a target. And — perhaps most importantly — stop believing absurd war lies, especially about Ukraine but also every other war, lies that blame only one side, depict it as subhuman, and pretend nonviolent solutions are not readily available for every crisis from Congress Members insulting each others’ faces to militaries invading and occupying nations.
North Korea says it forced to take measures to increase nuclear deterrence
20 May 2024, By Alimat Aliyeva, https://www.azernews.az/region/226324.html
The subcritical nuclear test conducted by the United States at the Nevada test site leads to an escalation of the global nuclear arms race, and Pyongyang is forced to take the necessary measures in this regard, Azernews reports.
It notes that the test “creates new tensions in the military confrontation between nuclear states and accelerates the global nuclear arms race.”
“In no case should the influence of this nuclear test on the military security situation in the region of the Korean Peninsula be allowed. In order to prepare for the strategic instability that is being created in the region and globally due to the unilateral action of the United States, we are forced to take the necessary measures to increase universal readiness for nuclear deterrence within the framework of our sovereign right and possible options,” the representative of the department added.
It is not said exactly what measures can be taken, but it is noted that the DPRK will “consistently protect the security, rights and interests of the state “by these actions, as well as “prevent the creation of a strategic imbalance and a security vacuum in the region of the Korean Peninsula.”
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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