weapons and war « nuclear-news

USA’s planned nuclear weapons spending at a cost of $1.2 trillion

As nuclear weapons risk escalates, debate grows about ‘vintage’ US arsenal, By Hollie McKay | Fox News, 24 May 19, The threat of a nuclear weapon being used is higher now than at any point since the conclusion the World War ll, a top United Nations security expert cautioned this week, calling the matter an “urgent” one that requires global attention.

Renata Dwan, director of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research warned in Geneva that the heightened risk comes in large part as a result of disarmament negotiations that have chilled during a two-decade stalemate. But Dwan says the threat is also amplified by the increasing competition between nuclear-armed U.S. and China and other nuke-capable nations issuing plans for modernization.

But how does the arsenal of American — the only country to use a nuke against an enemy — compare to those other states?

“Other nuclear-armed states, notably Russia and China, are upgrading their arsenals and have tested, produced and deployed more brand-new weapons than the United States over the past decade,” Kingston Reif, Director of Disarmament and Threat Reduction Policy at the Arms Control Association, told Fox News. “But this does not mean the U.S. has fallen behind. The U.S. military has refurbished and improved nearly all of its existing strategic and tactical delivery systems and many of the warheads they carry, too, last well beyond their planned service life.”

As it stands, nine countries are known to possess nuclear weapons: the U.S., China, Russia, U.K, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, and murkily, North Korea. However, only the first three countries are believed to possess what is known as the “nuclear triad,” a three-pronged structure that consists of missiles that can be launched from land, air and sea.

Harry Kazianis, a senior director at the Center for National Interest, stressed that while many parts of America’s nuclear arsenal are quite old and were designed decades ago, the U.S. “clearly possesses the most advanced and sophisticated atomic arsenal on the planet.”

“Washington’s nuclear weapons arsenal is so powerful it could bring to an end any nation on the planet in less than 60 minutes if it wanted to—and kill billions of people in the process,” he acknowledged. “That amount of power is almost impossible for the mind to fathom, but it is a reality.”

Nonetheless, others painted a far more dire picture of America’s capabilities……..

The Trump administration, however, is proposing to broaden the circumstances under which the United States would consider the first use of nuclear weapons, develop two new sea-based, low-yield nuclear options — and laying the groundwork to grow the size of the arsenal, Reif pointed out.

In addition, the administration has announced the United States will leave the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in August 2019 and expressed hostility towards extending the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,” Reif said. “In short, the administration is preparing to compete in a new nuclear arms race while simultaneously increasing the likelihood of such a contest.”

But the biggest issue Washington has to contend with when it comes to nuclear upgrade ambitions — bigger than Russia, China or North Korea — is cost.

Mark Olson, a defense consultant and former Lieutenant Commander, Combat Systems Officer, and Missile Defense Expert with extensive experience in European Ballistic Missile Defense, noted that the Congressional Budget Office estimates nuclear weapons spending will cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars between fiscal years 2017-2046, or 6 percent of national defense spending.

“Proposals are underway to modernize the U.S. arsenal over the next twenty years; however, cost remains a critical obstacle and one which appears destined to compel budgeteers to hack at innovation in other, arguably more critical, areas,” Olson said…….. https://www.foxnews.com/us/nuclear-weapons-risk-escalating-debate-over-vintage-u-s-arsenal

May 25, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Design problems delay development of Russia’s High-Tech Nuclear Submarine

Russia’s High-Tech Nuclear Submarine Delayed By Design Flaws

The auxiliary systems onboard the Yasen-M class submarine “Kazan” do not meet the Defense Ministry’s requirements. Moscow Times, 24 May 19, By The Barents Observer

The delivery of Russia’s most expensive and technically advanced nuclear submarine to the Russian Navy is being delayed by design flaws, Russian media have reported.

“Kazan” (K-561) is the first modernized multipurpose submarine of the Yasen-M class after “Severodvinsk” was handed over to the Northern Fleet in 2013. There are considerable changes in the auxiliary systems on “Kazan” compared with “Severodvinsk.” While construction on “Severodvinsk” started just after the breakup of the U.S.S.R. in 1993, “Kazan” was laid down 16 years later, in 2009.

Serious technical challenges will need to be fixed before the Sevmash yard in Arkhangelsk region can hand the submarine over for active duty, several Russian media have reported.

“According to the results of mooring tests, as well as the test sailings during the winter, it was concluded that a number of auxiliary parts and assemblies of the vessel do not meet the tactical and technical requirements set by the Defense Ministry,” a source in the defense industry was quoted by the state-run TASS news agency as saying……..

When completed, the Yasen-M class submarines will be able to carry the advanced sea versions of the Kalibr and Onyz cruise missiles, in addition to mines and torpedoes. Some of these weapons can be armed with nuclear warheads. ….

Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports the cost of Yasen-M class to exceed 200 billion rubles (2.76 billion euros).https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/05/24/russias-high-tech-nuclear-submarine-delayed-by-design-flaws-a65739

May 25, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Despite misogyny, women continue to fight the reckless spending on nuclear weapons

Women Fighting Nuclear Arms, NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/opinion/letters/women-nuclear-arms.html, 24 May 19,

The founder of a women’s peace group recalls being dismissed by male nuclear experts in the 1980s.

May 24, 2019 To the Editor:

Thank you, Carol Giacomo, for your support for female experts on nuclear weapons (“The Nuclear Weapons Sisterhood,” Editorial Observer, May 19).

Let someone try starting a women’s antinuclear weapons group, as I did with Dr. Helen Caldicott in the 1980s. The insults we took from male experts were legion, but we persisted and are still strong today, fighting enormous sums pledged to our defense budget for recklessly dangerous “smaller, more usable” new nuclear weapons.

As women we learn the facts and send our members out to challenge the so-called experts.

Sayre Sheldon
Washington
The writer is the founding president of WAND, a national women’s peace group.

May 25, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, USA, weapons and war, Women | Leave a comment

Washington now a great place for warmongers

Donald Trump needs to reclaim control over his policy toward Iran. National Interest, by Paul R. Pillar 22 May 19, The current crisis atmosphere in U.S.-Iranian relations, in which the risk of open warfare appears greater than it has been in years, is solely, unequivocally due to the policies and actions of the Trump administration. To point this out does not mean that actions of the Iranian regime have not come to be part of the crisis atmosphere as well. It instead means that such an atmosphere would never have existed in the first place if the administration had not turned its obsession with Iran into the relentless campaign of stoking hostility and tension that has become one of the single most prominent threads of the administration’s foreign policy.Without that campaign, and without the administration’s assault on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the agreement that restricts Iran’s nuclear program—Iran would continue to comply with its obligations under the JCPOA and all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon would remain closed.

The channels of communication established during negotiation of the JCPOA would continue to be available to address other issues and to defuse any incidents that threatened to escalate into war (as was done during the previous U.S. administration). Whatever Iran has been doing for years in the Middle East, such as assisting Iraq in defeating the Islamic State and assisting its longtime ally in Syria, it would continue to do. In short, there would be no new threat and no crisis.

Some of the current discourse about Iran nonetheless makes it sound not only as if there is something new and threatening but that the Iranian regime is the initiator of the threat. At least seven reasons account for this misconception.

One is the demonization of Iran that is rooted in genuinely nefarious things the Iranian regime did in the past and dates back to when Ted Koppel was talking to Americans every weeknight about U.S. diplomats held hostage in Tehran. Over the years other factors have contributed to the demonization, including domestic American political pressures connected to certain regional rivals of Iran that want to keep it weak and isolated. The result is lasting and pervasive suspicion that colors American perceptions of everything involving Iran, regardless of the facts of whatever is the issue at hand………. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/washington-has-become-warmongers-paradise-58832

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Hibakusha: Nagasaki activist, 79, looks to entrust nuclear movement to next generation

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190522/p2a/00m/0na/013000c

May 22, 2019 (Mainichi Japan) NAGASAKI — On May 9, there was a sit-in hibakusha gathering in front of the Peace Statue at Nagasaki Peace Park. The meeting takes place on the ninth of every month, marking the Aug. 9, 1945, U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. This month’s congregation marked the 444th time for such an event.

Koichi Kawano, 79, took to the microphone to speak about the stand-off between the United States and Iran. “This is a crisis,” he said to the around 100 people in attendance, continuing, “Our hearts are one when wishing for the abolition of nuclear weapons.”

Born in North Pyongan Province on the Korean Peninsula, now part of North Korea, Kawano was brought back to his parents’ hometown Nagasaki as a child. Aged 5 in August 1945, he was around 3.1 kilometers away from the atomic bomb’s hypocenter. Now a resident of the nearby town of Nagayo, he has been an activist for the end of nuclear weaponry in roles including his long tenure as chairman of the Hibakusha Liaison Council of the Nagasaki Prefectural Peace Movement Center.

“While enduring untold misery, we have won our rights with our own strength,” he says, looking back on the messages their hibakusha meetings have sent against the government’s constitutional amendment policies and security legislation designed to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense in a limited manner.

“Perseverance is power” has been Kawano’s guiding motto in engaging in the movement’s activities, but this spring he faced a difficult reality. Masanori Nakashima, president of the Nagasaki Prefecture A-bomb Health Handbook Friendship Society, died aged 89 on March 15. The two men were allies in peace activism. Representatives of five local hibakusha groups, including Nakashima and Kawano, announced a joint statement on peace issues and handed a written request to the prime minister on Aug. 9.

Of the five hibakusha group representatives who were alive in 2015 on the 70th anniversary of the bombing, three including Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council chair Sumiteru Taniguchi have passed away. Taniguchi died in 2017 at 88 years of age. “Even with his limp, he dragged himself to that office to hear other hibakusha speak,” Kawano reminisced, while looking ahead to an uncertain future, saying, “What will happen to these groups after we die?”

Kawano himself underwent surgery for esophageal cancer in 2017. Due to ill health he was forced to pull out of a survey of hibakusha in North Korea as a member of the Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs in fall 2018. Despite setbacks, his drive for peace remains unchanged. Kawano confronted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over the Japanese government’s disinclination to sign and ratify the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in a face-to-face meeting in 2017, asking, “What country’s prime minister are you?”

As time marches on from the events of August 1945, Kawano is putting his faith in the next generation. “The increasingly quiet voices of the hibakusha must not be drowned out,” he says. At the monthly sit-ins in Nagasaki Peace Park, the number of high school age attendees has increased. As he welcomes the last summer of his 70s, Kawano’s resolve remains strong. “Peace activism is powered by people. I want the movement to continue, to carry on the wish never to see another generation of hibakusha in this world.”

(Japanese original by Yuki Imano, Nagasaki Bureau)

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nothing to stop angry, entitled Donald Trump, from making a nuclear attack

There Is No Check on Trump’s Rage Going Nuclear An angry, entitled man has total control over devastating weapons. Foreign Policy, BY ANNE HARRINGTON, CHERYL ROFER, MAY 22, 2019, DONALD TRUMP IS TAKING THE UNITED STATES BACK TO AN EARLIER TIME – ONE MOST PEOPLE THOUGHT HAD BEEN LEFT BEHIND. HIS AGGRESSIVE BOORISHNESS, ENTITLEMENT, AND BELIEF THAT HE CAN DO WHATEVER HE WANTS ARE QUALITIES FROM AN AGE WHEN MEN’S CONTROL WAS ASSUMED, AND OTHERS STAYED SILENT. AND NOWHERE IS HIS RETROGRADE MASCULINITY MORE DANGEROUS THAN IN HIS CONTROL OF THE NUCLEAR BUTTON.

As president of the United States, Trump has absolute authority to launch nuclear weapons – without anyone else’s consent. In the past, it was taken for granted that the president would follow an established protocol that included consultation with the military, his cabinet, and others before taking such a grave step, but Trump is not legally bound to these procedures. Presidential launch authority is a matter of directive and precedent rather than specific law.

Trump’s bravado, penchant for inflated rhetoric, and impulsive decision-making style—including catching his leadership off guard by informing them of policy directives via tweet—have stoked old fears about placing the authority to launch in the wrong hands. So has his constant violation of once cherished presidential norms, including refusing to make public his tax returns and failing to read his daily intelligence brief.

Debates about launch authority have always been intimately bound up with whether we consider nukes’ function to be primarily military or political. Nuclear weapons are so destructive that, since the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even the explicit threat of their use has been sparing. They have been used as political deterrents and levers, instead of direct weapons of war.

Reserving launch authority for the president was a key way to emphasize the political nature of the nuclear mission.

Historians trace the precedent of presidential launch authority to President Harry Truman’s decision to check his generals’ use of nuclear weapons.

After destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they planned to bomb a third Japanese city, but Truman forbade them to carry out the attack without his express consent and ultimately decided against it. According to Truman’s commerce secretary, Henry Wallace, the president thought killing “another 100,000 people was too horrible.” By assuming personal responsibility for the launch order, Truman started a tradition of differentiating this new technology from conventional weapons.

Reserving launch authority for the president not only underscored the special status of nuclear weapons as a political asset, but it also took them out of the hands of the generals—men like Gen. Curtis LeMay. LeMay was a laconic man’s man, known for his ruthlessness and impolitic statements. During World War II, he directed the firebombing of 63 Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of people. It was LeMay who relayed the orders for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and later, as the head of Strategic Air Command (SAC), oversaw the war plans for an all-out nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. LeMay had no patience for subordinating operational effectiveness to moral concerns, or what he referred to as an American “phobia” against the use of nuclear weapons.

LeMay resented the fact that SAC was subject to presidential launch authority. According to the historian Richard Rhodes, he had his own launch plans, ignoring national policy. While LeMay continued to believe that the United States could obliterate the Soviet Union while minimizing its own losses, in the civilian world ideas about the use of nuclear weapons were evolving. A new breed of defense intellectual was pushing the idea that the primary purpose of nuclear weapons was not to decimate U.S. adversaries but to prevent such weapons being used at all. Anchored in a game theoretic approach, these intellectuals assumed that the holders of nuclear weapons would be rational and that what each side believed about the other—credibility—was central to deterring nuclear use.

Robert McNamara, who served as President John F. Kennedy’s defense secretary, was emblematic of this new approach and responsible for introducing this new breed of defense intellectual into the Pentagon. …….

Where LeMay’s approach openly celebrated slaughter, McNamara’s bloodlessness could lead to just as much destruction. The fact that teams of scientists provided mathematical justifications for the Cold War buildup in nuclear arms did not make the possibility of their use any less brutal……….

McNamara’s approach prevailed—not only politically but culturally. The 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove rejected LeMay’s approach to nuclear weapons. The cigar-chomping Gen. Jack D. Ripper is portrayed as insane, his paranoia leading him to release an airborne nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Maj. T.J. “King” Kong rides the bomb down, brandishing his cowboy hat.

LeMay and McNamara not only represent two different approaches to nuclear strategy but two different ideals of masculinity. The election of Trump has reversed the usual stereotypes of generals and civilians. In the Trump White House, generals like H.R. McMaster and James Mattis inspired confidence in their respect for social norms and display of restraint, while Trump represents the rejected LeMay model of masculinity—without the virtues of actual service and endurance that LeMay also exemplified.

Trump’s personal manner is like LeMay’s—belligerent, inarticulate, refusing meaningful discussion, and deflecting criticism. And, like LeMay, his statements about nuclear weapons prioritize use over doctrine………

Trump’s focus on the individual, the leader is not just narcissistic but also deeply patriarchal. For Trump’s supporters, it is precisely the hope that Trump might “make America great again” by restoring their social world to its “natural” order, one in which the (white) man’s home is once again his castle. His masculine bravado and willingness to eschew social norms in favor of social aggression and emotional combativeness are his attractive qualities, but it is precisely these characteristics that lead to senseless and irrational conflicts—conflicts that could quickly become global catastrophes in the nuclear era. These days Trump not only brags about grabbing women by the pussy but also boasts about how his nuclear button is bigger than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s………..

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Would Trump be willing to use nuclear weapons? That’s unknowable—but he certainly doesn’t need your, or anyone else’s, consent to do it.

Anne Harrington is a Lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University.

Cheryl Rofer writes scientific and political commentary. She was a chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 35 years. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/22/theres-no-check-on-trumps-rage-going-nuclear/

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UN arms research c hief warns that nuclear war risk is at highest since WWII

Nuclear war risk highest since WWII, UN arms research chief warns https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/nuclear-war-risk-highest-wwii-arms-research-chief-warns-190522010914869.html 22 May 19,

Senior UN security expert says all states with nuclear weapons have nuclear modernisation programmes under way. A top security expert at the United Nations has warned that the risk that nuclear weapons could be used is at its highest since World War II, calling it an “urgent” issue that the world should take more seriously.

Speaking to reporters in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday, Renata Dwan, director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), said the arms-control landscape was changing – partly due to strategic competition between the United States and China – and noted that all states with nuclear weapons have nuclear modernisation programmes under way.

Traditional arms-control arrangements were also being eroded by the emergence of new types of war, with an increasing prevalence of armed groups and private sector forces and new technologies that blurred the line between offence and defence, Dwan said.

With disarmament talks at a stalemate for the past two decades, 122 countries have signed a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, partly out of frustration and partly out of a recognition of the risks, she said.

“I think that it’s genuinely a call to recognise – and this has been somewhat missing in the media coverage of the issues – that the risks of nuclear war are particularly high now, and the risks of the use of nuclear weapons, for some of the factors I pointed out, are higher now than at any time since World War II”.

The nuclear ban treaty, officially called the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, was backed by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

The treaty has so far gathered 23 of the 50 ratifications that it needs to come into force, including from South Africa, Austria, Thailand, Vietnam and Mexico. It is strongly opposed by the US, Russia and other states with nuclear arms.

Cuba also ratified the treaty in 2018, 56 years after the Cuban missile crisis, a 13-day Cold War face-off between Moscow and Washington that marked the closest the world had ever come to nuclear war.

Dwan said the world should not ignore the danger of nuclear weapons.

“How we think about that, and how we act on that risk and the management of that risk, seems to me a pretty significant and urgent question that isn’t reflected fully in the (UN) Security Council,” she said.

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Illness and death legacy of employment in America’s nuclear weapons business

Government workers were kept in the dark about their toxic workplace
As US modernizes its nuclear weapons, NCR looks at the legacy of one Cold War-era plant, National Catholic Reporter, May 20, 2019 by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy

Editor’s note: As the government invests in the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while weakening environmental regulations and federal laws protecting worker safety, National Catholic Reporter looks at the toxic legacy of one shuttered weapons plant in Kansas City, Missouri.

In a three-part series about the Kansas City Plant on Bannister Road and its successor 8 miles south, NCR reviews hundreds of pages of government reports and environmental summaries, and interviews more than two dozen sources, including five plant workers and their families, three former federal employees who worked nearby, nuclear industry and government officials, health experts, business sources, state environmental regulators and a former city councilman.

This is Part 1.

“………… Debbie blames Bob’s painful and untimely passing on his worksite. For 27 years, he worked as an engineer at the Kansas City nuclear bomb components plant, a proud and dedicated employee of what is now Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies LLC. Sworn to secrecy, Bob never discussed his work assignments with his wife. And she never asked. She is now convinced that whatever he did out there probably killed him.

During the decades of the Cold War, the Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies employed hundreds of thousands of Americans in more than 350 secretive, hazardous worksites across the country, according to federal records. Scientists, engineers, machinists and laborers were hired to design, test and construct a stockpile of 70,000 nuclear warheads. Inadequately protected from carcinogens and toxins and often exposed without their knowledge, many nuclear workers became ill and died. They devolved into early dementia, endured high rates of miscarriages, suffered nerve disorders, and succumbed to a host of debilitating respiratory illnesses and cancers.

How many Americans died producing nuclear weapons is not a statistic the government tracks. “Irradiated,” a 2015 investigative series by McClatchy DC, the Washington bureau of the media chain that owns The Kansas City Star, put the total at 33,480, four times the number of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. In its interpretation of the McClatchy DC data, the Columbia Journalism Review notes 33,480 is the number of American nuclear workers compensated by a government program who have died. “The government has acknowledged 15,000 of those deaths were due to work-related illnesses,” the magazine writes. “The rest only had illnesses linked to their nuclear work and may have died of old age or unrelated causes.”

Wayne Knox, a former industrial hygienist for DOE, thinks the death toll is “much, much higher” than 33,480.

The tally represents a price paid in American lives for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Cities and communities that hosted weapons plants saw other costs: sick workers and their families who felt betrayed by the industry’s indifference, and persistent environmental contamination.

As the government invests in the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while weakening environmental regulations and federal laws protecting worker safety, National Catholic Reporter looks at the toxic legacy of one shuttered weapons plant in Kansas City, Missouri. Continue reading →

May 21, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | employment, health, Reference, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Danger of war – Israel vs Russia – could lead to nuclear war

Israel vs. Russia: The Middle East War That Could Become a Nuclear Train Wreck
Yes, this could happen. The National Interest, by Michael Peck 20 May 19, As always with the Arab-Israeli (or Iranian-Israeli) conflict, the real danger isn’t the regional conflict, but how it might escalate. In the 1973 war, the Soviets threatened to send troops to Egypt unless Israel agreed to a cease-fire. The United States responded by going on nuclear alert.

Could Israeli air strikes in Syria trigger war between Israel and Russia?

Israel remains determined to continue pounding Iranian forces in Syria in a bid to keep Tehran’s forces away from Israel’s northern border. At the same time, Russia has thousands of troops in Syria that could be caught in the crossfire—or even become belligerents if Moscow tires of its Syrian ally being pummeled.

And if Israel and Russia come to blows, would Israel’s big brother—the United States—feel compelled to intervene?

Not that Jerusalem or Moscow are eager for such a fight. “Neither of us desire a military confrontation,” a senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official told me during a recent interview in Jerusalem. “It would be detrimental to both sides.”

Yet Israel’s policy boils down to this: it will do whatever it sees as necessary to eject Iranian forces from Syria. And if Russia doesn’t like it, then that’s just the price of ensuring that Syria doesn’t become another Iranian rocket base on Israel’s border…….

Just how easily Israeli military operations can trigger an incident became evident during a September 2018 strike on ammunition depots in western Syria. Anti-aircraft missiles launched by Syrian gunners accidentally shot down a Russian Il-20 surveillance aircraft, killing fifteen people. Israel denies Russian accusations that it deliberately used the Russian plane as cover, or failed to give Moscow sufficient warning of the raid. Yet Russia still blamed Israel for the mishap and retaliated by supplying advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria. ……

Can Israel target Iran in Syria without triggering a clash with Russia?

There are deconfliction mechanisms in place, including a hotline between the Israeli and Russian militaries. “We are very strict about informing the Russians about our activities and that their operational picture is up to date,” said the IDF official. Yet those procedures were not sufficient to avoid a downing of a Russian plane………

As always with the Arab-Israeli (or Iranian-Israeli) conflict, the real danger isn’t the regional conflict, but how it might escalate. In the 1973 war, the Soviets threatened to send troops to Egypt unless Israel agreed to a cease-fire. The United States responded by going on nuclear alert.

Were the Israelis and Russians to come to blows, or if Moscow were to seriously threaten military force against Israel, could the United States risk a grave loss of prestige by not intervening to back its longtime ally? Could Russia—whose Syrian intervention is a proud symbol of its reborn military muscle and great power status—not retaliate for another downed Russian plane or a dead Russian soldier?

Which leads to the ultimate question: could tensions between Israel and Russia lead to a clash between American and Russian troops?

In the end, somebody will have to back down. But Iran isn’t about to give up its outpost on Israel’s border, and Russia probably can’t force them to. Then there is Israel, which is grimly determined to stop Iran. …… https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/israel-vs-russia-middle-east-war-could-become-nuclear-train-wreck-58482

May 21, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics international, weapons and war | 2 Comments

Donald Trump says he would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons

Trump warns Iran it will never be allowed to build nuclear arsenal, US president insists he wants to avoid Tehran conflict after weeks of escalating tensions, Ft.com 20 May 19

Donald Trump said he would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, while insisting he wanted to avoid war with the Islamic republic after weeks of escalating tensions. The US president has kept Tehran on edge by mixing threats with statements playing down the odds of a conflict, as foreign policy analysts speculate that Mr Trump is less keen on military conflict than some of his hawkish advisers.

“I don’t want to fight. But you do have situations like Iran, you can’t let them have nuclear weapons — you just can’t let that happen,” Mr Trump said in an interview with Fox News. He had earlier warned Tehran to stop threatening America, and suggested that the US would destroy Iran if there was a military conflict. “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!” he tweeted.

Tensions have risen sharply in recent few weeks, with Iran saying it will no longer comply with elements of the 2015 nuclear accord it signed with world powers, including the US, and Washington deploying an aircraft carrier strike group to the region. …….

Mr Trump’s key foreign policy advisers, national security adviser John Bolton and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, have referred to unspecified “escalatory action” from Tehran, fuelling speculation that the hawkish pair are trying to convince the president to go to war with Iran.

This has led some lawmakers to grow concerned that the administration is seeking to enter into a conflict without congressional approval. Several senators were last week given details of the administration’s intelligence on Iran, with more lawmaker briefings expected this week. …… https://www.ft.com/content/0192edae-7b0a-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560

May 21, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | North Korea, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Warning to U.S. govt to pull U.S. nuclear weapons out of Turkey

Washington must pull U.S. nuclear weapons out of Turkey – analyst https://ahvalnews.com/us-turkey/washington-must-pull-us-nuclear-weapons-out-turkey-analyst# 19 May 19,

The United States must quickly reconsider storing nuclear weapons in Turkey and giving Ankara a shared finger on the nuclear trigger under the NATO nuclear sharing programme, wrote Harvey M. Sapolsky, Professor Emeritus at MIT and the former Director of the MIT Security Studies Program, for Defense One website.

The NATO nuclear sharing programme keeps American nuclear bombs in five NATO countries, namely Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey, while training host air forces to use them, Sapolsky highlighted.

As tensions continue to rise between Washington and Ankara over an array of issues, including war-torn Syria and Turkey’s planned purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system, the United States must make changes to current arrangements with its NATO ally, it said.

Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, located 100 miles from the Syrian border, stores 20 to 80 B61 U.S. nuclear weapons for delivery by Turkish or American aircraft, the article highlighted, noting that is time for Washington to bring them home.

Nuclear sharing began in the 1960s as a way to assure European members of NATO of America’s commitment to their defense, and to ward off any temptation to acquire nuclear weapons of their own,’’ the article highlighted, adding however that decades later much has changed globally.

Nuclear weapons aren’t the temptation they once were for Europeans, it noted, and sharing of the weapons’ delivery would give these countries a direct role in the nuclear enterprise without requiring them to actually build weapons.

Particularly a Turkey that is flirting with Russia and has list of issues with the United States

May 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S Air Force is not Testing an ‘Earth-Penetrating’ Nuclear Bomb

Is the Air Force Really Testing an ‘Earth-Penetrating’ Nuclear Bomb? Nope. And here is why. National Interest

by Aaron Miles 19 May 19, In a recent article, Eryn Macdonald repeated the stubbornly persistent misconception that the Air Force is developing a new earth-penetrating nuclear bomb. Similar analysis last summer followed a drop test of the B61-12 nuclear bomb—or “mod 12,” meaning twelfth modification or variant—from a stealth bomber. Drop tests verify the operation of various weapon subsystems, but do not include the nuclear components. The Defense and Energy Departments are developing the B61-12 to replace several old B61 variants that are slated for retirement, but the new weapon is not an earth penetrator.

Currently, the United States deploys four B61 variants. The B61-7 is considered a strategic weapon because it is carried by the B-2 bomber and can, therefore, travel intercontinental distances. Two nonstrategic variants are carried by shorter-range fighter aircraft and are deployed in Europe as part of the U.S. security commitment to NATO. The fourth existing variant, the B61-11, does actually possess an earth-penetration capability, and in this respect is unique within America’s nuclear deterrent force. …………..

s both the Obama and Trump administrations have explained, the B61-12 is necessary to sustain a gravity bomb in the U.S. nuclear deterrent force. However, the new variant is not an earth penetrator and therefore cannot deliver all the capability that existing variants afford. Sustaining such a capability benefits deterrence, but relying on other means of holding hard and deeply buried targets at risk might nonetheless be preferable. If America would be better off without an earth-penetrating nuclear bomb, then the B61-12 is not the problem. If earth penetration capability is worth retaining, then the upgrade now underway is not the solution. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/air-force-really-testing-%E2%80%98earth-penetrating%E2%80%99-nuclear-bomb-58002

May 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S. national security adviser, John Bolton and his quest for war against Iran

picture is from Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/d35f0566-787b-11e9-be7d-6d846537acab

John Bolton Has Wanted War With Iran Since Before You Were Born

“I actually temper John,” Trump said, “which is pretty amazing.” Mother Jones, DAN SPINELLI, 18 May 19, Fourteen months into his tenure as national security adviser, John Bolton has become a central figure in the run-up to what could be the most extensive American military offensive since the invasion of Iraq. Tensions between Iran and the United States have been high for weeks, beginning with a menacing video Bolton released in February targeting the Iranian supreme leader and reached a boil last week when, according the New York Times, he ordered the Pentagon to prepare to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter Iran. ……

What’s also pretty amazing is how frequently Bolton has argued in favor of regime change in Iran, an enemy he has been fixated on for decades. As early as May 2002, Bolton considered Iran’s “ongoing interest in nuclear weapons” a threat to the United States on par with North Korea and Iraq. Then the top arms control official in the State Department, Bolton continued to emphasize the threat of Iran to American security and the security of Israel, even during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. ……

In an appearance on Fox News in 2008, Bolton argued in favor of bombing Iranian camps that the US said were training insurgentsto oppose American troops in Iraq…….

For Bolton, diplomacy with Iran has never been a realistic option. Last year, he argued that “America’s declared policy should be ending Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary.”……

Last year, his efforts to persuade Trump to leave the nuclear deal finally succeeded, although several European allies remained in it. He warned Iran of “hell to pay” if it crosses the US, and proclaimed that an American military presence would remain in Syria indefinitely until “Iranian proxies and militias” left the country. Even though Trump ignored that last promise when he announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria in December, Bolton kept pursuing military solutions to challenge Iran.

“I am convinced that John Bolton has calculated that he has about 18 months to start a war with Iran or he’ll miss his chance,” says Joe Cirincione, an expert on nuclear weapons policy and the president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. “They want Iran to be like Japan at the end of World War II.”

Bolton reportedly asked the Pentagon in September for options to strike Iran after a Tehran-linked group fired mortar shells toward the American embassy in Baghdad, which “landed in an open lot and harmed no one,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Bolton’s request concerned US officials who spoke with the Journal………

Now the US is considering another series of military options despite Trump’s apparent opposition. The New York Times reported Tuesday that “Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons.” Trump denied the story and said, if military action were taken against Iran, “we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”

The newspaper said the plans were ordered by “John R. Bolton.” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/05/john-bolton-has-wanted-war-with-iran-since-before-you-were-born/

May 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The escalating danger and unpredictability of nuclear weapons

Nuclear Weapons Are Getting Less Predictable, and More Dangerous Defense One, BY PATRICK TUCKER, TECHNOLOGY EDITOR MAY 16, 2019 Facing steerable ICBMs and smaller warheads, the Pentagon seeks better tracking as the White House pursues an unlikely arms-control treaty.

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to discuss, among many things, the prospect of a new, comprehensive nuclear-weapons treaty with Russia and China. At the same time, the Pentagon is developing a new generation of nuclear weapons to keep up with cutting-edge missiles and warheads coming out of Moscow. If the administration fails in its ambitious renegotiation, the world is headed toward a new era of heightened nuclear tension not seen in decades.

That’s because these new weapons are eroding the idea of nuclear predictability.

Since the dawn of the nuclear era, the concept of the nuclear triad — bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles — created a shared set of expectations around what the start of a nuclear war would look like. If you were in NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado and you saw ICBMs headed toward the United States, you knew that a nuclear first strike was underway. The Soviets had a similar set of expectations, and this shared understanding created the delicate balance of deterrence — a balance that is becoming unsettled.

Start with Russia’s plans for new, more-maneuverable ICBMs. Such weapons have loosely been dubbed “hypersonic weapons” — something of a misnomer because all intercontinental ballistic missiles travel at hypersonic speeds of five or more times the speed of sound — and they create new problems for America’s defenders. …….

The United States is starting to build a new generation of smaller nukes of its own. The reasoning was laid out in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, and the weapons have been rolling off the assembly line since January……

But Selva also noted that low-yield weapons present the same sort of ambiguity as hypersonic weapons.

“We don’t know what they launched at us until it explodes,” he said.

The U.S. military has responded to Russian weapons development with several other key moves: building a next-generation air-launched cruise missile, hiring Northrop Grumman to build a new penetrating bomber, lowering the nuclear yield on some sub-launched ballistic missiles, and exploring bringing back a sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM, that could have a nuclear tip……

Lynn Rusten, vice president of the Global Nuclear Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said that the ambiguity problem would apply to the SLCMs effort as well. “We use conventional SLCMs a lot in our normal warfare. If you start having nuclear SLCMs deployed as well, there will be a real discrimination in terms of when one of those things is launched, what is that thing coming at you? Where is it going?”……..

Many arms control experts say the first and most important step that the U.S. could take in navigating this far more unpredictable future is to extend New START. Even Selva, who declined to offer a public recommendation about such an extension, said that the United States benefits in multiple ways from the treaty’s mechanisms for keeping track of the parties’ strategic arsenals. ……

A collapse of New START might also cause China to embrace a more aggressive nuclear stance to hedge against rising unpredictability…….

As uncertainty increases, misperceptions become more dangerous. And there is reason to believe the United States is already looking at the situation through various imperfect lenses. One is the belief that China has any interest in trilateral arms control. Another is “escalate to de-escalate.” Some Russia experts, such as Olga Oliker, the Europe and Central Asia director at the International Crisis Group, call it a fiction dreamed up in the West after a misreading of a Russia’s 2017 Naval Doctrine.

“Moscow continues to believe, and Russian generals in private conversations emphasize, that any conventional conflict with NATO risks rapid escalation without ‘de-escalation’ — into all-destroying nuclear war. It must therefore be avoided at all costs,” she wrote in February.

“If anything, U.S. emphasis on new lower-yield capabilities — effectively an ‘escalate to de-escalate’ strategy of the sort many attribute to Russia — would undermine the deterrent balance, potentially triggering the very sorts of crises low-yield proponents hope to avert.”

Michael Kofman, a senior research scientist at CNA, says the “escalate to de-escalate” debate obscures a more fundamental truth about Russian strategic doctrine. “Russia has never accepted the proposition that a war with the United States could be conventional only. Hence, Russian nuclear strategy has a firm place for scalable employment of nuclear weapons, for demonstration, escalation management, warfighting, and war termination if need be,” he told Defense One. “The gist of the problem is that the Pentagon believes that nuclear weapons are some kind of gimmick that can be deterred in conventional war, but actually the prospect for conventional-only war with Russia is somewhat limited from the outset.”

Bottom line: the U.S., Russia, and China, may be entering into a high-stakes discussion on nuclear arms with each suffering from severe misconceptions about the others’ intent. The price of failure of the new negotiation effort, if New START is not re-affirmed, would be a new period of heightened nuclear tensions and less predictability.

Rusten believes the arms race has already begun.

“We don’t want to be where that trajectory will take us five years from now,” she said.https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/05/everyones-nuclear-weapons-are-getting-less-predictable-and-more-dangerous/157052/

May 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

With belligerent John Bolton as National Security, Trump could take USA to the brink of war with Iran

With Bolton whispering in Trump’s ear, war with Iran is no longer unthinkable, Guardian, Owen Jones 16 May 19, Antiwar activists must do everything they can to prevent it, and that includes pressuring US allies

It was a deception that would lead to millions of civilian deaths, and the deaths of nearly 60,000 US soldiers. In August 1964 President Lyndon B Johnson solemnly declared that, after two apparent North Vietnamese attacks on US navy destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, military action would take place.

Four years later, Senator Albert Gore – father of Bill Clinton’s future vice-president – warned in a closed Foreign Relations Committee session that, “If this country has been misled … the consequences are very great.” His suspicions were correct. The second Gulf of Tonkin attack might never have happened – and perhaps neither did. Communications to make it look like the attack occurred had been falsified. But US policy was already set on a dramatic escalation of the Vietnam war: and here was the perfect pretext.

This week it emerged that the US government is discussing sending up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East for possible military action against Iran. “We’ll see what happens with Iran,” declared President Trump. “If they do anything, it will be a bad mistake.” The principal driving force behind this is Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, a man who thinks there is no problem to which the answer isn’t war: in the Bush era, his militarism was too much for the commander-in-chief who laid waste to Iraq. You can see them scrabbling for excuses already: the Trump administration says Iran-backed proxy groups are preparing attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria, a claim forcefully denied this week by British major-general Christopher Ghika, the deputy commander of counter-terror operations in both countries. The US has blamed Iran, without evidence, for damage to Saudi oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Could an Iranian Gulf of Tonkin be looming?

It is easy to dismiss these fears as alarmist. Is Trump not the man who confounded his critics by seeking peace on the Korean peninsula? Trump boasts that he “actually tempers” Bolton; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, states: “There won’t be any war.” As Sanam Vakil, a research fellow at Chatham House, tells me: “Both sides are posturing, sending [threats] back and forth, and I don’t think heading for any direct military interventions.” Bolton, she reassures me, is just one of many voices in the room, and US secretary of state Mike Pompeo himself says that the US is not seeking war……..

A senior Senate aide tells me that the triumph of Bolton’s plans is all too conceivable: Bolton could exploit Trump’s ignorance of policy, an area in which he excels. While any war would not be popular with Trump’s base he could be convinced by Bolton that it is possible to escalate up to a point, then pull back at the brink: but by then it may be impossible to do so. Rightwing thinktanks and broadcasters are already hyping up links between Iran and al-Qaida.

The consequences of an Iranian conflagration should horrify us. Dan Plesch – a specialist at Soas University of London’s Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy – details the US air and naval power potentially ranged against Iran: it’s what one of his colleagues describes as “a tsunami of precision-guided molten metal”. The “lethality of US force”, says Plesch, “to very rapidly destroy military, civil, political and economic infrastructure is hugely underestimated” – and is far greater than in 2003. The US would seek to impose a government-in-exile with no roots in the country; a bloody balkanisation could follow. Iran would mobilise its regional influence – dramatically increased by the Iraq catastrophe – raising the prospect of wider regional conflict.

The risk is already too real for us to wait and see before acting. Pressure must be exerted by the public on US allies to declare their total opposition to any war with Iran, including not permitting their military bases to be used. The mass protests that will greet Trump’s visit in three weeks’ time must include demands that no British support for such a bloody adventure be offered. Feeling blasé about the danger? Well, consider this: all that stands between Bolton’s violent fantasy being executed is Donald Trump himself. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/15/war-with-iran-john-bolton-donald-trump-usa?CMP=share_btn_tw

May 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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