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US formally withdraws from nuclear treaty with Russia and prepares to test new missile

US formally withdraws from nuclear treaty with Russia and prepares to test new missile

August 3, 2019 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

“No First Use” of nuclear weapons

What Exactly Is Nuclear ‘No First Use’? Jalopnik, Kyle Mizokami  2 Aug 19, During the Democratic presidential debates this week, candidates wrestledwith a particularly thorny national security issue: whether they would forsake the use of nuclear weapons first in a conflict. This policy, known as No First Use, is the policy of just a handful of the declared nuclear powers.

Those arguing for the policy say it would make accidental or impulsive nuclear war less likely. Those against say that, despite overwhelming U.S. conventional military capabilities, certain dire situations might call for the use of nukes and that a stance of ambiguity is the best deterrent. Let’s explore this debate a bit……..

The inherently extreme nature of nuclear weapons means that, unlike a machine gun or fighter jet, a country may not necessarily use them right away in a conflict. It also means that, if both sides involved in a war have pledged not to use nuclear weapons first and actually hold to that pledge, a war could remain non-nuclear. This is the concept behind No First Use.

The first country to adopt it was China in 1964. Since then India has adopted NFU, with the stated exemption that the gloves come off if Delhi is attacked with chemical or biological weapons. Other nuclear powers, however, including the United States, Russia, the UK, and Pakistan, all maintain a level of ambiguity about when they might use nuclear weapons in a conflict.

These countries argue, somewhat reasonably, that “maybe we’ll nuke you or maybe we won’t” is a deterrent to potential adversaries, heading off both conventional and nuclear war.

No First Use is an appealing policy because it takes the pressure off to rapidly respond to nuclear attack. China, unlike the United States and Russia, does not maintain an active nuclear alert force of missiles ready to launch in minutes. China intends to absorb an attack, evaluate the attack, and then launch a devastating nuclear counterblow that would probably include incinerating the attacker’s cities. In the Chinese view this is plenty enough to deter a surprise nuclear attack.

NFU is also seen as beneficial as it would prevent a crazy, impulsive, unpredictable leader (in the view of candidate Elizabeth Warren and others, President Trump himself) from suddenly ordering up a nuclear strike. It would also eliminate possibility of nuclear weapons launched on false warnings, such as the 1983 incident in which Soviet defenses warned that American ICBMs were headed towards the USSR. No First Use would build a useful delay into an American nuclear response while still ensuring the other side gets clobbered.

A pledge not to use nuclear weapons does not, readiness aside, mean the U.S. would let its nuclear guard down. The Pentagon would have just as many nuclear weapons as it had before. It could even have less: China has a reported 290 nuclear weapons to the 1,500 deployed weapons in American and Chinese arsenals. …

The idea of No First Use is a popular one in the United States, the only country to ever use nuclear weapons in war. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 67 percent of the American people supported the adoption of NFU in 2016……. https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/what-exactly-is-nuclear-no-first-use-1836867610

August 3, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

August 2- The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty expires- new arms race begins

Demise of US-Russian Nuclear Treaty Triggers Warnings, VOA News , By Charles Maynes, July 31, 2019  “………  “Gorbachev and Reagan had the goal of arms reduction and they did not allow themselves to be pushed off track,” Palazhchenko says.

 “[It was] definitely a huge step forward. Two great nations, two nuclear superpowers have finally been able to stop the arms race in at least two categories of nuclear weapons.”

With the agreement, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. formally renounced the development and deployment of ground-launched missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

Both sides were still armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy one another — and the rest of the planet. But George Shultz says the INF’s elimination of short- and medium-range arsenals made the world infinitely safer in one critical regard — time……….

the short-range weapons also magnified the risks of what some called a potential “Euroshima.”

Where once the Cold War threat consisted of missiles lobbed across oceans, the new quick delivery missiles incentivized a first strike and immediate response. There was little time to verify whether an attack was real — or a false alarm.

Fear of the superpowers stumbling into nuclear Armageddon gripped the European public. Thousands marched in opposition to the U.S. missiles — a factor that increasingly influenced Washington’s own decision-making.

“We were negotiating not only with the Soviets but the European public,” recalls Shultz. “Who would want a nuclear missile on their soil? It makes you a target.”

Indeed, public opposition in Europe — and a desire to grab the moral high ground — drove President Reagan to embrace a concept called the “Zero Option.”

The idea? That when it came to negotiating over intermediate and short-range nukes, Reagan wouldn’t just push for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to limit their arsenals. They’d demand both sides give up everything.

Russian proverb

Critical to selling the idea to skeptics were intensive inspections — with Reagan often citing an old Russian proverb: doverai no proverai. Trust but verify.

“The INF treaty contains in it the most clear verification provisions — onsite inspections!” Schultz says. “People said we could never get that but we did.”

Over the next three years, inspectors observed as both sides destroyed their arsenals — over 800 missiles by the U.S. and nearly double that from the Soviet side.

Viktor Litovkin, a military journalist who covered the events for the the Soviet daily Izvestia newspaper, remembers watching as Soviet engineers carried out the treaty’s provisions — destroying missile after missile with tears in the eyes.   ………

INF 1987-2019 (RIP)

Today, the Trump administration argues it is the INF Treaty that has now outlived its use.

Last October, President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, John Bolton, traveled to Moscow to deliver the news: The U.S. would leave the INF agreement amid long-standing U.S. accusations that Russia was violating the treaty………..

Russian President Vladimir Putin soon followed suit — announcing that Russia, too, was leaving the pact.

Barring a last-minute reprieve, the INF treaty expires Aug. 2. Both sides have vowed to develop weapons once banned under the INF. 

A new arms race?

All of this has left Europe, once again, the battleground in a potential new arms race — with tomorrow’s weapons promising shorter warning times….. https://www.voanews.com/usa/demise-us-russian-nuclear-treaty-triggers-warnings

August 1, 2019 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Elizabeth Warren proposed “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons

Warren, Bullock spar over ‘no first use’ nuclear policy, The Hill 

In defending the proposed policy, Warren argued for diplomatic and economic solutions to conflict, saying “we should not be asking our military to take on jobs that do not have a military solution.”

But Bullock opposed that proposal, saying, “I don’t want to turn around and say, ‘Well, Detroit has to be gone before we would ever use that.’”

Warren is the lead sponsor of the Senate version of a bill that would make it U.S. policy not to use nuclear weapons first.

It has long been the policy of the United States that the country reserves the right to launch a preemptive nuclear strike.

Backers of a no first use policy argue it would improve U.S. national security by reducing the risk of miscalculation while still allowing the United States to launch a nuclear strike in response to an attack.

During the debate, Warren argued such a policy would “make the world safer.”

“The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons preemptively, and we need to say so to the entire world,” she said. “It reduces the likelihood that someone miscalculates, someone misunderstands.”

Bullock argued he wouldn’t want to take the option off the table, but that there should be negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons……https://thehill.com/policy/defense/455472-warren-bullock-spar-over-no-first-use-nuclear-policy

August 1, 2019 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Samantha Smith – a 10 year old who acted to reduce nuclear weapons

Your voice matters in reducing nuclear weapons  https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/07/31/your-voice-matters-in-reducing-nuclear-weapons.html

August 1, 2019 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The horrors of nuclear weapons testing – 460,000 premature deaths

460,000 Premature Deaths: The Horror That Was Nuclear Weapons Testing  https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/460000-premature-deaths-horror-was-nuclear-weapons-testing-69512  As we mark the seventy-fourth anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in a handful of days, we will rightly remember the horrors of nuclear war.
by Zack Brown, Alex Spire 28 Jul 19,  For a brief fraction of a second on an early March morning in 1954, the United States summoned a second sun into existence above Bikini Atoll.

As the four-mile wide fireball bathed the Pacific seascape in its angry, white-red light, onlookers recognized something nearly divine—and unquestionably ominous. “It was a religious experience, a personal view of the apocalypse or transfiguration,” said one observer. Another remembered feeling “like you stepped into a blast furnace,” even though he was over thirty miles away.

This was the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test, one of several dozen nuclear detonations the United States carried out in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War. At 15 million tons of TNT—one thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima—it was the largest explosion ever set off by Americans.
It was also the dirtiest, as a new study published this month shows. Researchers from Columbia University, analyzing soil samples from several Marshall Island atolls, discovered widespread radioactivity. Bikini Island itself was declared unsafe for human habitation, while the three other atolls had significant radionuclide concentrations—mainly americium, cesium, and plutonium. In some cases, the level of radioactivity—more than sixty years since the last mushroom cloud loomed over Bikini’s azure lagoon—exceeded that found at Chernobyl or Fukushima.
The process that led to this long-standing radioactivity is relatively simple, even if it wasn’t fully understood as the Cold War heated up. As the Castle Bravo fireball ascended into the sky, it carried with it tons of vaporized coral, rock, and dirt. This debris intermingled with radioactive isotopes before settling back down to the ground as deadly fallout. In one case, ignorant of its lethal effects, children on a neighboring atoll played in the falling powder, believing it was snow.

But American nuclear testing didn’t just occur in the middle of the Pacific. Throughout the Cold War, the United States detonated hundredsof atomic bombs in Nevada at a test site just northwest of Las Vegas. Many of these tests were above-ground, exposing the continental United States to the same radioactive fallout that fell over those remote atolls.

As with the Marshall Islands, the radiological effects of this testing were widespread—and immense. A 2017 study from the University of Arizona suggested that the fallout generated by the Nevada nuclear explosions exposed millions of Americans to its lethal radiation.
The exposure mechanism wasn’t always direct, either. Once caught in high-altitude winds, fallout from these tests would travel for hundreds or even thousands of miles before settling back down over the vast fields of the American heartland. Unsuspecting cattle would graze on grass freshly laced with this fallout, including Iodine-131, a highly potent radionuclide that spews beta and gamma radiation.
The cows concentrated this iodine in their milk, which would then be quickly consumed by the local population through the dairy industry. Because they’re chemically indistinguishable, the human body can’t tell the difference between normal iodine and the radioactive variety, and so deposits both in the thyroid gland. Once securely lodged there, Iodine-131 bombards nearby tissue on a cellular level, damaging DNA strands and eventually causing cancer.

This was just one of the exposure mechanisms; there were many others. Taken together, the 2017 study suggested that fallout from the Nevada nuclear testing could have led to between 340,000 and 460,000 premature deaths, mostly Americans and mainly through cancer.

If that death toll seems unreal, consider the scale of the radiation involved. Using a figure of 81 million Curies for the radioactive material released at Chernobyl as a baseline, one estimate held that the Nevada-based nuclear testing emitted 12 billion Curies into the atmosphere between 1951 and 1963. That’s the equivalent of nearly 150 Chernobyl disasters—or one a month for more than a decade. If you added in the Marshall Islands nuclear tests over this same period, that figure would be even higher.

As we mark the seventy-fourth anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in a handful of days, we will rightly remember the horrors of nuclear war. But we should also recognize the deadly tests that followed. Because any nuclear explosion—even a “peacetime test” in a Pacific paradise or the dry desert of Nevada—can put human lives at risk.

Just ask the children who played in the snow.

July 29, 2019 Posted by | health, weapons and war | 2 Comments

Boris Johnson’s secret instructions on nuclear action

EXPLAINER: The Letters of Last Resort – Boris Johnson’s secret instructions on nuclear action,  There are, at most, nine countries on earth with nuclear weapons. Joe, 28 July 19

Before today, two of those arsenals were in the hands of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. As of today, they have been joined by Boris Johnson.

Among the very first things that will happen as Johnson begins is premiership, is a briefing from the Chief of the Defence Staff, who will tell him exactly the kind of devastation and death a nuclear Trident missile would cause. Johnson will then be tasked with composing the “letters of last resort.”

The letters of last resort are an almost mythical device, the kind of thing that would make more sense in a Tom Clancy novel than they do in real life. But they are real, and they are terrifying.

They are four letters, each one issued to the commanding officers of each of the United Kingdom’s four nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarines. They are only to be opened under one specific circumstance: the destruction of the government of Britain through a major, likely nuclear, bombing campaign.

The letters are only to be opened under the assumption that the Prime Minister and any designated deputies are dead, and that it is up to the UK’s military submarines to respond.

Typically, the UK has one of these submarines patrolling at any given time, armed with 40 of its 120 operational nuclear warheads. The other three subs are based in Faslane naval base in Scotland.

And right now, those letters are being written by Boris Johnson. Cool.

Four possible directives are known:

  • That the UK should retaliate.
  • That the UK should not retaliate, and should retreat to a commonwealth nation.
  • That the commanding officer should use their own judgment.
  • Place the submarines under the command of an allied country, such as the United States.

It is very possible, however, that a PM will be much more specific than this.

When quizzed on the matter of their own letters by the BBC, former Prime Ministers John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown all revealed that they had included a caveat that under no circumstances should civilians be targeted with nuclear weapons.

Nobody will ever know for sure though, since the letters are burned in their unopened state as soon as an outgoing premiership comes to a close……… https://www.joe.ie/life-style/boris-letters-of-last-resort-676243

July 29, 2019 Posted by | politics, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Heading for a Nuclear and Ballistic Missile Arms Race in the Middle East

Barreling Toward a Nuclear and Ballistic Missile Arms Race in the Middle East By Dr. James M. Dorsey BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,239, July 28, 2019 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Middle East is barreling toward a nuclear and ballistic missile arms race. That race is being aided and abetted by a US policy that views the region through the dual prism of the need to stop an aggressive, expansionary, and destabilizing Islamic Republic that seeks to dominate it, and the view of the region as a lucrative market for the US defense and nuclear industry.

US policy is not the only factor feeding the burgeoning nuclear and ballistic missile arms race in the Middle East. It is also being enabled by the inability or unwillingness of the other major powers – Europe, Russia, and China – to counter crippling US sanctions against Iran in ways that would ensure that Tehran maintains an interest in adhering to the 2015 international agreement that curbed its nuclear program despite last year’s US withdrawal from the deal.

With the Middle East teetering on the brink of a military confrontation, Iran has vowed to start breaching the agreement next month if the international community, and particularly Europe, fails to shield it from US sanctions.

Former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) deputy director general Olli Heinonen, a hardliner when it comes to Iran, asserted recently during a visit to Israel that Iran would need six to eight months to enrich uranium in the quantity and quality required to produce a nuclear bomb.

US and Chinese willingness to lower safeguards in their nuclear dealings with Saudi Arabia further fuels Iranian doubts about the value of the nuclear agreement and potentially opens the door to a nuclear arms race.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently visited Saudi Arabia and the UAE before joining President Trump for visits to India and South Korea and talks with world leaders at a G20 summit in Japan.

“We’ll be talking with them about how to make sure that we are all strategically aligned, and how we can build out a global coalition, a coalition not only throughout the Gulf states, but in Asia and in Europe…to push back against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror,” Pompeo said as he departed Washington.

Trump detailed the prism through which he approaches the Middle East in a wide-ranging interview with NBC News. He deflected calls for an FBI investigation into last October’s murder by Saudi government agents of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

“Iran’s killed many, many people a day. Other countries in the Middle East ― this is a hostile place. This is a vicious, hostile place. If you’re going to look at Saudi Arabia, look at Iran, look at other countries,” Trump said, suggesting that crimes by one country provide license to others…….. https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/middle-east-arms-race/

July 29, 2019 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, weapons and war | Leave a comment

International Symposium for Peace: The Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition

Individuals must get involved to help rid world of nuclear weapons, Asahi Shimbun , By ROY K. AKAGAWA/ AJW Staff Writer. July 28, 2019  HIROSHIMA--With a treaty to ban medium-range, ground-based nuclear missiles ending in less than a week, an international symposium here on July 27 addressed stopping a new Cold War from breaking out.

The International Symposium for Peace: The Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition was sponsored by the Hiroshima city government, the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation and The Asahi Shimbun. The theme for this year’s event was “Stop the New Cold War.”

In his keynote speech, Masaru Sato, an author and former Foreign Ministry intelligence analyst, said that the high level of nationalism and realism demonstrated by leaders around the world in terms of nuclear weapons and defense policy represented a risk that had to be changed.

He explained that history often swung like a pendulum between realism and idealism as well as between nationalism and international cooperation.

“Military escalation usually occurs when the pendulums swing in the direction of realism and nationalism,” Sato said. “But such escalation eventually spreads a sense of crisis among the leaders of those nations that have been building up their military arsenals and have led to courageous efforts to stop a nuclear disaster.”

He cited as an example the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty agreed to in 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to remove intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe. ……

“We as citizens must demand of our own leaders that they enter seriously into dialogue that leads to the abolition of nuclear weapons.”

Meanwhile, the other participants in the panel discussion touched upon the importance of moving toward actual implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which was passed in July 2017 with the approval of 122 nations, although none of the nuclear states as well as those protected by a nuclear umbrella, such as Japan, took part.

Bonnie Docherty, a lecturer at the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic who was actively involved in the TPNW, said the principles of humanitarian disarmament were the key in leading to the passage of the treaty after years of little, if any, progress on eliminating nuclear weapons.

“Emphasizing the humanitarian threat made nuclear weapons a matter of global concern and motivated countries to look beyond their national interests,” Docherty said about the treaty. “In so doing, it helped break down the barriers to diplomatic action that had stalled nuclear disarmament.”

She addressed the concerns of some that the TPNW appears to have provisions that do not make it compatible with other international obligations. In Japan’s case, that would be the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to which it is a party as well as the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States.

By joining the TPNW, Japan would comply more fully with the NPT’s Article VI obligation (to work toward reducing nuclear weapons) and advance that treaty’s purported goal of general and complete disarmament,” she said.

She added that the treaty does not prohibit the alliance Japan has with the United States and noted that the Security Treaty between the two nations makes no mention of nuclear weapons.

Moreover, she said, Japan joining the TPNW would have a huge symbolic effect and place Japan in a leadership role in nuclear disarmament because it is the only nation that has been hit in war by atomic bombs. She added that as a nuclear umbrella state, Japan joining the treaty could have a domino effect on other nations that are also currently under a similar umbrella……… http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201907280029.html

July 29, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

China absolutely clear on its policy of No First Use of Nuclear Weapons

July 25, 2019 Posted by | China, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Danger in Using Commercial Satellites To Control Nuclear Weapons

Using Commercial Satellites To Control Nuclear Weapons Is A Bad Idea — But
It’s Being Discussed Forbes, Loren Thompson 24 July 19, “……. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the appearance of new
threats, though, the sense of urgency about nuclear security has waned. The
infrastructure supporting nuclear deterrence has decayed to a point where all three
legs of the strategic “triad”—land-based missiles, sea-based missiles and long-range
bombers—need to be replaced. Meanwhile, the architecture used to command and
control nuclear forces has changed little since the Reagan era.
Against this backdrop, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force said something curious at a meeting of
the Mitchell Institute on June 26. The institute recently produced a report focused on the need to
modernize technology for nuclear command and control. General David Goldfein opined that ongoing
efforts to network the Air Force were as relevant to control of nuclear forces as conventional forces.
In particular, he mentioned the “rapid and exciting expansion of commercial space”
as a trend that might facilitate the creation of resilient links for communicating with
nuclear forces. I was unaware of the chief’s comments until I saw a story by Mandy
Mayfield of National Defense Magazine entitled, “Air Force Wants To Utilize
Commercial Satellites For Nuclear Command, Control.” The Air Force is responsible
for most of the 200 systems comprising the nuclear command and control system, so
General Goldfein’s thoughts have to be taken seriously even if they are just random
musings.
This particular idea is dangerous.
Commercial satellites lack virtually all of the security features that would be
necessary to assure control of the nuclear arsenal in a crisis. First of all, they are not
survivable against a wide array of threats that China and Russia have begun posing
to U.S. orbital assets, ranging from kinetic attacks to electronic jamming to
electromagnetic pulse. Second, they are susceptible to cyber intrusion via their
ground stations that could impede their performance. Third, they frequently contain
foreign components, including in-orbit propulsion technology made in Russia, which
might be manipulated in a crisis or simply become unavailable during wartime.
Air Force planners presumably know all this, so why would General Goldfein suggest
relying on commercial satellites to execute the military’s most fateful decisions?
Perhaps for the same reason that the Army is backing into reliance on commercial
satellites for its next-generation battlefield networks. There are so many commercial
constellations in operation that it seems unlikely America’s enemies could shut them
all down in wartime, and they are a lot cheaper to use than orbiting dedicated military
satcoms with the requisite capacity and redundancy.
“Resilience” has become the watchword for modernizing military space activities, and
one way of creating resilience is to proliferate the pathways available for vital
communications to a point where adversaries can’t keep up with all the possible

options available to U.S. commanders. The same logic is leading technologists to
propose large numbers of cheap satellites in low-earth orbit as an adjunct to existing
military satcoms.
These “cheapsats” wouldn’t be anywhere near as capable as the secure
communications assets that Washington has placed in geostationary orbits, but there
would be so many that links could be sustained even in highly stressed
circumstances, such as the “trans-attack” phase of a nuclear war.
Or at least, so the reasoning goes.
……But the idea of relying on commercial satellites for command and control of
nuclear forces takes this reasoning a step too far, because market forces preclude
any of the hardening and other protective features that might be required in dedicated
military birds
……… think of all the ways an adversary like China might seek to interfere with
commercial satellites through their ground stations and uplinks, such as insertion of
malware via hacking and jamming of signals. ……..

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2019/07/23/using-commercial-satellites-to-control-nuclear-
weapons-is-a-bad-idea-but-its-being-discussed/#2da6f0751dfa

July 25, 2019 Posted by | USA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

North Korea’s new submarine

North Korea just revealed one of its most potentially dangerous weapons yet

The revelation is clearly a message for Trump.

July 25, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

A dangerous idea to abandon nuclear arms treaties with Russia

Abandoning nuclear arms treaties with Russia is bad idea  https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/opinion/contributors/2019/07/22/op-ed-abandoning-nuclear-arms-treaties-russia-bad-idea/1795240001/

Ivo Daalder, Chicago Tribune  July 22, 2019  For more than 50 years, the United States and Russia have agreed that their own security required negotiating agreements limiting their nuclear weapons deployments and capabilities. In that time, the two countries have successfully concluded seven major agreements to reduce their nuclear arsenals. The last of these, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, was signed in 2010 and capped each side’s deployed warheads at 1,550.

Yet, the nuclear arms control edifice that was built up over half a century is in danger of coming apart. The Trump administration has decided to withdraw from one major agreement, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, citing Russian violations. And it has shown no interest in extending New START before it expires 18 months from now.

Behind both decisions is the idea that U.S.-Russian arms control has become an anachronism, and that future arms control efforts must now also include Chinese capabilities. While Russia’s apparent deployment of a banned ground-based nuclear missile provided the formal reason for abandoning the INF Treaty, President Donald Trump also cited China’s unconstrained deployment of intermediate-range missiles as a justification for ending the agreement. And rather than extending New START for five years, administration officials suggest that any future accord must also limit Chinese nuclear weapons.

After more than 50 years of U.S.-Russian arms control negotiations and agreements, there is scope for thinking anew about how best to reduce nuclear dangers. But abandoning long-standing agreements and conditioning any new negotiations on including China are not the best way to do that.

It took the United States and Soviet Union standing at the very brink of nuclear war, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, to understand the importance of managing their nuclear capabilities through negotiations.

After the crisis, both countries instituted a hotline so they could communicate to avert misunderstandings. They agreed to ban above-ground nuclear testing and negotiated a treaty to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. And they began the effort to limit and ultimately reduce the number and type of weapons each side could deploy. As important, both accepted intrusive inspection regimes designed not only to verify compliance with the terms of the agreements but to enhance mutual confidence that neither side was seeking a decisive nuclear advantage.

The true lesson of the Cuban missile crisis was that countries could miscalculate each other’s actions and intentions, raising the very real risk of nuclear confrontation. The commitment to dialogue, to engage in extensive talks on strategic stability and negotiate real limits on capabilities, and to open each country up to foreign inspectors, helped create confidence that for all the differences between them, the United States and Russia shared an overriding need to avoid a nuclear war.

That effort has proven exceedingly successful. Nuclear arsenals, though still far too large, have been sharply reduced. Nuclear crises like Cuba have been avoided. And while there have been questions about compliance, none of the violations ever constituted a threat so dire as to heighten the risk of nuclear confrontation.

U.S.-Russian arms control has worked in its most fundamental aim — to reduce the chance of war, especially nuclear war. That is why the decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty next month is a mistake. The new Russian missile deployment is a violation and has to be addressed, and the treaty contains procedures for doing so. If the violation persists, there are ways to punish Russia, through sanctions and other means. But withdrawing from a treaty that has served the United States and its European allies well for decades risks an arms race that is destabilizing and unwinnable.

The same is true for New START. Russia has indicated it is willing to extend its terms for five years. The United States has nothing to lose by agreeing to its extension, thus limiting Russian nuclear deployments and extending the highly intrusive inspection measures that provide real insight into Russian capabilities.

There is a case to be made for including China in future nuclear negotiations, though its nuclear deployments of some 200 weapons is but a small fraction of what the United States and Russia still possess. Russia, moreover, will no doubt also insist on including the similarly-sized French and British nuclear forces in such a multilateral negotiation, a prospect that neither Paris nor London is likely to welcome.

It will no doubt take time, and real effort, to decide on a new negotiating framework beyond the two major nuclear powers. Until such time, both Washington and Moscow will be much better off if the nuclear framework they have developed over the past 50 years remains in place.

— Ivo Daalder is the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO.

July 23, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

ACTIVISTS WALK “CEASE AND DESIST” ORDER INTO NUCLEAR WEAPONS BASE

ACTIVISTS WALK “CEASE AND DESIST” ORDER INTO NUCLEAR WEAPONS BASE  https://riseuptimes.org/2019/07/22/activists-walk-cease-and-desist-order-into-nuclear-weapons-base/ July 22, 2019 · by Rise Up Times 

BÜCHEL, Germany — Eleven international peace activists entered the Büchel Air Base southwest of Frankfurt early this morning to deliver what they called a “Treaty Enforcement Order” declaring that the sharing of US nuclear weapons at the base is a “criminal conspiracy to commit war crimes.”

Upon entering the base’s main gate with a printed “cease and desist order,” they insisted on seeing the base commander to deliver the order in person.

“We refuse to be complicit in this crime,” said Brian Terrell of Voices for Creative Nonviolence in Chicago, Illinois. “We call for the nuclear bombs to be returned to the US immediately. The Germans want these nuclear weapons out of Germany, and so do we.”

The group included people from Germany, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All eleven were detained by military and civilian authorities and were released after providing identification. This is the third year in a row that a delegation of US peace activists has joined Europeans and others in protesting the US nuclear weapons at Büchel. The local group Nonviolent Action for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (GAAA) convenes the International Action Week, demanding permanent ouster of the US nuclear weapons, cancellation of plans to replace today’s B61s with new hydrogen bombs, and Germany’s ratification of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

“Delivery of the ‘Cease and Desist Order’ is an act of crime prevention,” said John LaForge, of the US peace group Nukewatch and coordinator of the US delegation. “The authorities think the entry is a matter of trespass. But these nuclear bomb threats violate the UN Charter, the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.” he said, adding, “Interrupting government criminality is a duty of responsible citizenship.”The activists included: (from the United States) Susan Crane, Richard Bishop, Andrew Lanier, Jr., Brian Terrell, Ralph Hutchison, and Dennis DuVall; (from the UK) Richard Barnard; (from The Netherlands) Margriet Bos, and Susan van der Hijden; and (from Germany) Dietrich Gerstner, and Birke Kleinwächter.

Susan van der Hijden of Amsterdam, who is just back from the US where she visited the Kansas City, Kansas site of a factory working on parts of the new replacement bomb, known as the B61-12. “The planning and training to use the US H-bombs that goes on at Büchel cannot be legal, because organizing mass destruction has been a criminal act since the Nuremberg Trials after WWII,” van der Hijden said.

July 23, 2019 Posted by | Germany, opposition to nuclear, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Dangerous nuclear arms race to follow, if New Start Treaty is not renewed

Clock’s ticking on one of world’s most important nuclear treaties. A dangerous arms race may be next, By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN,  July 20, 2019 This week, senior American officials traveled to Switzerland to deliver President Donald Trump’s “vision for a new direction in nuclear arms control.” That vision is to strike a wide-ranging deal that would limit the arsenals of not only the US and Russia, but also China for the first time.

July 22, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment