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Latin American and Caribbean nations lead the way towards nuclear disarmament

Disarmament over deterrence: Nuclear lessons from Latin America, https://thebulletin.org/2018/08/disarmament-over-deterrence-nuclear-lessons-from-latin-america/ By Christopher Dunlap, August 1, 2018

In late May, the National Security Archive released newly declassified US documents from more than 50 years ago showing Mexico’s support for nuclear disarmament far beyond the boundaries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The documents reveal that Mexico’s ambassador to United Nations negotiations in Geneva sought to contribute unambiguous language on disarmament, peaceful nuclear use, and nuclear-weapon-free zones to the text of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), finalized in 1968. The NPT bears many of the same philosophical and legal imprints as the Treaty of Tlatelolco finalized the previous year, which banned nuclear weapons development, storage, or deployment south of the Rio Grande and in the Caribbean basin.

Today the world is closer to nuclear war than at any time since the 1960s. The deterioration of United States relations with at least three nuclear hotspots across the world – North Korea, Russia, and Iran – explains a great deal of the grave assessment that “major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race.”

The vast majority of the world’s nations, however, have renounced nuclear weapons. In 2017, 122 of the United Nations’ 193 member countries voted to approve the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which calls for complete global nuclear disarmament on humanitarian grounds. These countries believe that nuclear weapons, no matter which nations possess them, pose an unacceptable threat to human life and to an increasingly fragile planet. For them, security is disarmament. For political and military leaders in nuclear-armed countries, on the other hand, security is deterrence, in which the threat of destruction by nuclear weapons keeps the world’s strongest militaries from initiating war.

If these mutually exclusive languages of disarmament and deterrence can be translated into some common vocabulary, and if the politics of fear dissipate, a complete global ban on nuclear weapons has a chance to succeed. A half-century ago, a similarly ambitious plan faced long odds and a bumpy road from idea to reality.

Success story. The Treaty of Tlatelolco, finalized in February 1967, created a regional microcosm of a nuclear-weapon-free world. In addition to banning nuclear weapons, Latin American and Caribbean diplomats and heads of state obtained guarantees from the world’s nuclear-armed nations (and its lingering overseas empires, among them, Britain, France, and the Netherlands) to abide by the same rules. Remarkably, almost all of these guarantees in the treaty’s additional protocols – including those made by the United States and the Soviet Union – were ratified within 15 years, lightning speed in the world of nuclear diplomacy, and long before the treaty itself entered into force with Cuba’s accession in 2002.

It is no wonder, then, that Latin American and Caribbean nations dominate the list of the 58 early signatories of last year’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The region’s percentage of signatory nations (33 percent) is roughly double that of its share of total member countries of the United Nations (17 percent). The most likely explanation for such disarmament enthusiasm almost certainly centers on what happened at Tlatelolco. After Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev removed nuclear missiles from Cuba in 1962, Mexican diplomat Alfonso García Robles led a long and contentious negotiation process, concluding in 1967 with an agreement that stands today as both a landmark of nuclear nonproliferation and a model for global disarmament.

The Treaty of Tlatelolco served as both a call and a blueprint to create four additional nuclear-weapon-free zones in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Africa. Nearly three-fifths of the world’s countries now belong to these zones.

Different priorities. Disarmament ranked well above nonproliferation as the motive force for creating the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the world’s first nuclear weapons ban in a populated area. Appearing before any other specific legal provision in the treaty’s text, “general and complete disarmament under effective international control” stood as Tlatelolco’s ultimate goal. Secondarily, the treaty aimed to check the spread of nuclear weapons to countries not already possessing them. Lastly, the agreement’s preamble sought to preserve the uninhibited use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, defending Latin American and Caribbean nations’ “right to the greatest and most equitable possible access” to the atom’s immense potential for economic and social development.

The NPT’s Article VI, which calls for all parties “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” traces back to a more specifically worded draft proposal from Mexico, requiring nations with nuclear weapons to prohibit their testing, manufacturing, and storage “with all speed and perseverance,” and to work toward “the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles.” (Last year’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is in fact the fulfillment of the last clause of Article VI of the NPT, an agreement to pursue a “treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”)

But nuclear weapon states sought a role for continued deterrence in the NPT by inserting a division that the architects of Tlatelolco had rejected, parting the world into nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” with separate and unequal sets of rights and responsibilities. In the view of Argentine diplomat Julio César Carasales, the NPT represented the “disarmament of the disarmed,” conferring almost unlimited privileges on nuclear-armed powers while subjecting the rest of the world to onerous restrictions, even on peaceful technology. And while the NPT vaguely promised general and complete disarmament through Article VI, it did not mandate any timeline or procedure by which nuclear-armed countries would actually dismantle their weapons. From 1975, when the first NPT Review Conference took place among the treaty’s parties, until 2010, when the preparatory committee for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons began meeting, non-nuclear weapon states had only one shot every five years to try to hold weapon nations accountable to their promises of disarmament.

A 50-year-old road map. With the adoption of last year’s ban treaty, the 184 UN member countries and two observer states that do not possess nuclear weapons now have an agreement with the potential to gradually discredit nuclear weapons (and their role in deterrence) as illegitimate tools of global security. By following the lead of international treaties prohibiting other classes of weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical, land mines, and cluster munitions – the proponents of the 2017 agreement are hoping that, someday, the leaders of nuclear-armed states might agree that global security lies in disarmament instead of deterrence.

It certainly won’t be easy. Like the architects of the Tlatelolco agreement that entered into force 35 years after it was finalized, the UN diplomats and civil society organizations that hashed out the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons crafted an ambitious, audacious document that they may not live to see made into law. At least two prominent American nuclear policy and disarmament experts view the UN treaty as a series of lost opportunities to educate citizens of nuclear-armed nations about the threats posed by those arms of mass destruction. Worse, three historical allies among the world’s small club of nuclear-armed countries—the United States, France, and the United Kingdom—immediately rejected the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons for failing to “address the security concerns that continue to make nuclear deterrence necessary.”

Indeed, there is no reason to think that nine nuclear-armed nations will be persuaded anytime soon to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction that they rely on for deterrence. But a path to disarmament-based security is viable. Latin American and Caribbean visionaries gave us the road map at Tlatelolco a half-century ago. They were correct on at least two points: A world free of nuclear weapons is not only possible; it is fundamental to our long-term survival.

August 4, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | SOUTH AMERICA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Centre for Security Studies explains NATO Nuclear Sharing

NATO Nuclear Sharing, Centre for Security Studies, The CSS Blog Network, By Tim Street , 3 Aug 18

This primer explains the role US-owned B61 tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) play in Europe as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements. It considers these weapons in terms of their economic, political, diplomatic and security significance, including internal NATO dynamics, US-Russia relations and international arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament regimes.

Context Continue reading →

August 4, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Pentagon had a plan for “dirty nuclear bombs”

We Now Know the Army Tested Its Own Nuclear ‘Dirty Bombs’. This Is What Happened.Was it a waste of time? National Interest by Joseph Trevithick, 3 Aug 18

We don’t know how long the Army continued to work on these dirty bombs. The Pentagon only declassified these two reports in 2000 as part of larger project to determine how many servicemen and women might have been exposed to dangerous radiation in such experiments over the years. The information had been kept secret under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.

From television to Hollywood blockbusters, the “dirty bomb” – a device designed to spew radioactive material rather than set off a massive atomic explosion – has captured the public imagination as a potential terrorist weapon. But the U.S. Army once tried to make it into a real weapon of war.

In 1952, the ground combat branch conducted at least two live tests of prototype munitions at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The experimental E-83 “radiological bomb” consisted of more than 70 pounds of tantalum 181 pellets wrapped around a high explosive charge, as technicians explained in one report :

……….We don’t know how long the Army continued to work on these dirty bombs. The Pentagon only declassified these two reports in 2000 as part of larger project to determine how many servicemen and women might have been exposed to dangerous radiation in such experiments over the years. The information had been kept secret under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.

But the Pentagon seems to have quickly passed over the radiological weapons for increasingly powerful nuclear bombs. By the 1960s, American and foreign scientists had discovered how to produce similar “enhanced radiation” effects with small hydrogen bombs, more commonly known as neutron bombs.

Like a dirty bomb, the neutron bomb uses lethal doses of radiation to kill or otherwise incapacitate people. With these designs available, it’s unlikely — as far as we know — that the Pentagon would ever return to experimenting on cruder radiological weapons. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/we-now-know-army-tested-its-own-nuclear-%E2%80%98dirty-bombs%E2%80%99-what-happened-27762

August 4, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nato Nuclear Sharing – modernisation and the politics of this

NATO Nuclear Sharing, Centre for Security Studies, The CSS Blog Network, By Tim Street , 3 Aug 18

“……….What modernisation is planned?

Despite former President Obama’s much-publicised rhetoric on the need for concrete action towards a nuclear weapons free world, work on the modernisation of US B61 bombs began under his administration and is receiving continued support from President Trump. In addition, NATO has embarked on improvements to its security and infrastructure, which alliance members will pay for. These are taking place at the USAF base at Incirlik, in Turkey and at the USAF base at Aviano, Italy.

The B61 bomb modernisation programme is being driven by the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which aims to upgrade and expand the lives of about 400 of the 520 B61 bombs in its inventory for approximately twenty years, through a Life Extension Program (LEP). More precisely, the NNSA plans to consolidate the four existing types or ‘MODs’ of the B61 bombs into one MOD—the B61-12. Key results of the planned modernisation will be to: make the existing ‘dumb’ bombs three times more accurate by adding a new tail kit and internal guidance system; allow the use of the weapons for both tactical and strategic missions; and for delivery by both fighter jets and long-range bombers. Completion of the first new B61-12 bomb is set for 2020, with work on the remaining bombs planned for 2024.

Such improvements, which, NATO argues, have been made to decrease the risk of radioactive fallout and result in fewer civilian casualties, have led to critics arguing that these weapons could be seen as more usable. Analysts such as Hans Kristensen have therefore concluded that the increased military capabilities provided by the new B61 bombs will signal to Russia that “it is acceptable for it to enhance its non-strategic nuclear posture in Europe as well”. Russia could do this by deploying its own TNW closer to NATO’s eastern border as well as keeping nuclear capabilities, which are, the US argues, in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Critics have also pointed to the major costs involved in the LEP, estimates for which range up to $25 million per bomb. Some also argue that the programme is unnecessary given the capabilities of the existing arsenal, simpler options for life extension and the possibility that the weapons could soon be withdrawn from service.

Controversy has also dogged the replacement of nuclear host countries’ nuclear-capable aircraft, which are all set to retire in the 2020s. The Lockheed Martin F-35A is seen as particularly suitable for nuclear missions and can be modified to carry B61-bombs. However, whilst several NATO members, including Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, have committed to purchasing the F-35A, nuclear host nations Belgium and Germany have proved more reluctant, both for cost reasons and because of their interest in procuring alternative, European-made aircraft. Like the Greeks in 2001, failure to procure suitable new aircraft could lead to them ceasing to participate and host TNWs.

What are the political dynamics of NATO nuclear sharing?

As NATO’s Strategic Concept of 1999 explains, “the fundamental purpose of the nuclear forces of the Allies is political” since these weapons “provide an essential political and military link between the European and the North American members of the Alliance”. The two key aspects of this ‘link’ are that it is: i) hierarchical, with Washington leading; ii) legitimating, so that political elites in NATO member states visibly assent to the dominant US presence and role in Europe.

A common objection raised by those who argue that NATO nuclear weapons should be removed from the continent is that the alliance’s conventional superiority in relation to Russia means that there is no military need for these weapons. If these weapons no longer have a meaningful military role, it is argued, then they are no longer justifiable from a political perspective.

In response, the value of NATO TNW as a bargaining chip in arms control and disarmament negotiations with Russia is sometimes raised. Arguably, Moscow does not maintain its TNW in order to balance against NATO TNW, but because of the disparity it suffers in terms of conventional military forces in Europe. NATO’s unwillingness to scrap its TNW also tends to warrant Moscow’s inaction and opacity regarding its own TNW.

Various studies and opinion polls show that several alliance member governments as well as many experts, civil society groups and significant numbers of citizens want TNW removed from their countries. The Belgian, German and Dutch governments have all officially acknowledged that they favour the withdrawal of TNW from their territories. Yet they have qualified this position by stating that withdrawal can only take place if there is consensus on the move by all 28 NATO members. However, there is a range of different positions within NATO on nuclear matters, for example, on the value of deterrence and disarmament. Such dynamics help explain the alliance’s inherent caution and conservatism regarding nuclear decision-making.

Other areas of political controversy involve safety and security issues. For example, the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey led critics to question how secure nuclear weapons were at the Incirlik airbase, which is also close to the Syrian border. Another possibility is that the command and control protocols for the weapons preventing unauthorised use could be overridden. Such concerns have led opponents of the weapons, such as German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to describe them as ‘absolutely senseless’ and potential targets for terrorists.

Another notable dimension to nuclear sharing is that US allies in other regions—such as North East Asia—closely observe how Washington handles its extended deterrence relations with NATO. Some analysts have thus proposed that US nuclear sharing be extended to South Korea and/or Japan given current instability in the region. Again, the rationale of disincentivising these allies from independently developing nuclear weapons in response to nuclear-armed rivals (i.e. North Korea) has been advanced.

How does nuclear-sharing fit with arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament regimes?

A common view in Europe and beyond is that the continued deployment in Europe of US TNW is a contravention of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), which commits its members to “further diminish the role and significance of nuclear weapons in all military and security concepts, doctrines and policies”. Despite pressure within several nuclear sharing states for change, both the conventional and nuclear arms control and disarmament agenda are frozen. This is mainly due to the poor relations between the US and Russia, as well as the lack of political will in NATO governments to push these issues forward. Civil society groups have long called for the US to realise its NPT non-proliferation and disarmament obligations by repatriating its TNW to US soil prior to their dismantlement.

Russia has a far larger number of TNWs than the US (approximately 1,830) and Moscow insists upon the removal of US TNWs from Europe before it engages with Washington and NATO on accounting for and reducing these weapons. For its part, the US sees Russian TNW as threatening to its NATO allies, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Russian and US experts have proposed a series of measures that could overcome existing reluctance and allow TNW to be included in wider nuclear arms reduction talks. For example:

Former US Ambassador Steven Pifer has previously recommended that the two nations take: i) confidence-building and transparency measures; ii) parallel unilateral steps to freeze or reduce TNW stockpiles; and iii) begin negotiations aimed at a legally-binding TNW treaty with verification measures.
Nuclear experts Pavel Podvig and Javier Serrat have recently argued that TNW should continue not being deployed during peacetime and that this should be codified into a “legally-binding, verifiable arrangement” to reduce crisis escalation and the risks of nuclear war.
Other analysts such as Dr Andrew Futter have also highlighted the existence of other options, such as moving US TNW to bases in new countries or concentrating them in Italy and Turkey, but note that these ideas raise several problems.
Russian analysts, meanwhile, argue that conventional arms control—such as an updated Conventional Forces in Europe treaty—would need to be implemented if Moscow is to further reduce its TNW.

In March 2011, NATO created a new Committee on WMD Control and Disarmament to provide oversight and policy discussion in this area, but it is unclear what this body has hitherto accomplished.

About the Author

Tim Street is an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security Programme, specializing in nuclear security and disarmament issues.

For more information on issues and events that shape our world, please visit the CSS website. https://isnblog.ethz.ch/defense/nato-nuclear-sharing

August 4, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S. Navy’s $1 Billion Plan for Breaking Down Old Nuclear-Powered Carrier

US Navy Considered $1 Billion Plan for Breaking Down Old Nuclear-Powered Carrier https://sputniknews.com/military/201808031066935225-US-Navy-Considered-1-Billion-Plan-Breaking-Down-Nuclear-Powered-Carrier/
MILITARY & INTELLIGENCE 03.08.2018

The US Navy has yet to choose a way forward for dismantling the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. The delay has been motivated in part by the fact that disposing of the nuclear-powered craft could cost more than $1 billion ‒ a pill the Navy is loathe to swallow.

The Government Accountability Office published a report Thursday indicating that in 2013 “the Navy’s cost estimate for the shipyard” in Puget Sound, Washington, “to perform all [USS Enterprise] dismantlement and disposal activities increased — from a range of $500 million to $750 million — to well over $1 billion.”

As a result of this rather significant expense — about 25 percent of what it cost to build the ship in 1958 in inflation-adjusted terms — the Navy decided to ditch the plans. As the ship, built between 1958 and 1961, was the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the government wants to take special care in dismantling it and must comply with stringent guidelines set in place by nuclear regulation bodies separate from the Navy.

There is also a policy precedent to be set by how the carrier is deconstructed, in terms of “the processes, costs and oversight that may be used to dismantle and dispose of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the future.” Specifically, the manner in which the Enterprise is disposed of will set an example for how to do the same thing with the US Navy’s aging fleet of Nimitz-class carriers.

One of the thornier issues when it comes to disposal of the carrier is what to do with the nuclear waste produced by its propulsion generators. In 2016, the Navy thought it would have commercial contractors bid for contracts to break down the non-nuclear parts of the ship — everything except what’s referred to as the propulsion space section.

As GAO conducted its study, the Navy decided to ditch this plan. Instead, the Navy is now considering two options for the USS Enterprise, the watchdog noted. One route would be to do most of the deconstruction in Puget Sound, and then dump the nuclear waste at the US Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state. The other route is for commercial contractors to do all the dismantling. There is no estimate provided in GAO’s report for how much each of these routes would cost the US Navy, and by extension US taxpayers.

Under the 100 percent commercial dismantling route, the US Navy needs to coordinate with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has regulatory jurisdiction over the private nuclear industry, the GAO said. The Pentagon agreed with this recommendation, Stars and Stripes reported Friday.

August 4, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Japanese children will pass on the history of Nagasaki’s horror nuclear bombing on 9 Aug 1945

Mini-storytellers’: Japanese children pass on horror of Nagasaki bombings, As more and more survivors who directly witnessed the nuclear attack die, students are taking on responsibility for telling their stories, Guardian Daniel Hurst in Nagasaki, 2 August 18

The 500 students at Shiroyama Elementary School gather in the assembly hall on the ninth day of every month to sing a song. This is no ordinary school anthem, however.

Dear Children’s Souls deals with the most traumatic chapter in the school’s long history: the moment 1,400 students and 28 staff members died when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the southern Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the second world war.

Nearly 73 years have passed since the bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 – and Hiroshima three days earlier – but the school feels a special responsibility to keep the memories alive.

“Shiroyama Elementary School is situated closest to the ground zero of the A-bombing compared to other municipal elementary schools in Nagasaki,” explains the softly spoken principal, Hiroaki Takemura, adding that the hypo-centre was just 500m away.

“The feelings for peace are very strong here.”The task is becoming increasingly vital as more and more of the survivors who directly witnessed the events pass away. The ranks of these survivors, known as hibakusha, have halved over the past two decades and their average age is now 82. As they become less mobile, they find it more difficult to travel and give first-hand accounts of the horrors of nuclear war in the hope of preventing any repeat amid growing global tensions. Continue reading →

August 3, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Japan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Guam nuclear bomb test veteran continues fight for radiation compensation

Atomic veteran continues fight for radiation compensation, Meghan Swartz | The Guam Daily Post , 27 July 18

As one of a few islanders in his company within the U.S. Army, Robert Celestial jumped at the chance to help with post-World War II cleanup in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the late 1970s. He looked forward to six months of island living and was promised a monthly trip to Hawaii for some R&R.

Not long after, Celestial found himself draining water from a crater on Lojwa Island in the Enewetak Atoll, wearing shorts, boots and a dust mask. The crater was left over from a nuclear test explosion. While he knew they were dealing with nuclear waste during the deployment, he said he did not know that was what the crater was from.

“We were never told the extent of the 66 nuclear detonations,” he said. “The only thing that was serious was the Air Force was in charge of the Geiger counters … if you see an Air Force guy running, then you better run.”

Like any good soldier, he followed orders and didn’t ask questions. When a magazine came to report on the cleanup, some soldiers donned a full-body protective suit. Celestial said it was the only time he saw the suit used.

Celestial said he and fellow soldiers often caught fish, lobster and octopus to eat. They were not told that the seafood could be contaminated until months after arriving.

More than 70 years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Celestial’s past willingness to be exposed to that level of nuclear radiation is unthinkable.

But that was decades ago, at the dawn of the nuclear age. Few could be expected to predict the ramifications of their six-month cleanup tour.

An undetectable enemy

“We were all young. … We got to the Marshall Islands and it was beautiful,” he said. “You can’t see the danger, you can’t smell it, taste it. … We just did what they told us.”

Today, Celestial, who serves as president of the Guam-based Pacific Association for Radiation Survivors, says he is blessed: He hasn’t been diagnosed with cancer, unlike many of his fellow veterans, and was discharged from the Army with full disability.

Celestial said he deals with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis. In fact, he said, almost all atomic veterans suffer from brittle bones. Two decades ago, while living in San Diego, California, Celestial was told he had the liver of a 90-year-old and was given four years to live, but he ultimately recovered.

Others have not been as fortunate. One Enewetak veteran, who lives in Maine, has been diagnosed with six distinct cancers, Celestial said. Because he was diagnosed after his separation from the military, he does not receive any compensation for medical costs.

Without any major medical issues, some wonder why Celestial has spent the better part of the past two decades fighting for Guam and veterans who participated in the Enewetak Atoll cleanup to receive federal reimbursement for illnesses linked to radiation exposure.

Proposed amendment

Legislation has been introduced that would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The current law has distributed more than $2 billion to residents within Nevada, Utah and Arizona who suffer from radiation-related illnesses, but will end payments by 2022. The last year for people to apply for coverage is 2020.

The proposed amendment would extend RECA by 19 years and offer up to $150,000 in medical coverage to residents of Guam, Idaho, New Mexico and the Navajo Nation.

In late June, Celestial gave testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Toward the end of the hearing, he was asked if he had cancer.

“I told them no,” Celestial said with a laugh. “It made other people realize … what the hell is he doing it for? I’m not doing it for myself. I’m doing it for other people. I’m fighting for the people of Guam and the other states, and I’m also fighting for the Enewetak veterans who haven’t been rightly identified.”

He said his Senate testimony – given alongside downwinder allies from Idaho, New Mexico and Navajo Nation – was a new high in his decades-long fight.

“Now the Senate really believes our testimonies,” Celestial said. “They really understand this.”

But he refuses to make any promises about the future.

“What we’ve done in the Senate is the closest we’ve come,” he said. “Now we have to go to the House.”

……… Years ago, Celestial’s fight was bolstered by a report from the Board on Radiation Effects Research, which determined that Guam “did receive measurable fallout.”

Without this proof, Celestial said, he would not have continued his work on RECA.

‘Very, very wrong’

Lt. Charles Bert Schreiber, a chemical, biological and radiological officer with the U.S. Navy who served on Guam in 1952, gave testimony to the BRER, saying that just two days after a nuclear explosion in the Marshall Islands, radiation level readings were off the charts on Guam.

According to Schreiber’s testimony in 2001, he went straight to the admiral’s top aide to see what needed to be done. Minutes later, he was told to leave.

“I then knew something was very, very wrong,” Schreiber said in his testimony.

After giving this testimony, containing information that Celestial said was previously classified above the top-secret level, Schreiber revealed to Celestial that a burden had been lifted from him, as he was finally able to share what happened.

“The Guamanians, for the large part, had only rainwater for drinking … and they were drinking highly contaminated radioactive water and I could not tell them to stop. The Navy … did not provide any information to the military personnel, civilians or the natives about how to protect themselves.”

According to Post files, Schreiber called it quite simply “madness.” https://www.postguam.com/news/local/atomic-veteran-continues-fight-for-radiation-compensation/article_fa1b4024-931c-11e8-8401-87c44085fc5d.html

July 30, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Legal, PERSONAL STORIES, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel said to have 300 Nuclear Weapons. And Some Are in the ‘Ocean.

Israel Might Have as Many as 300 Nuclear Weapons. And Some Are in the ‘Ocean.’ National Interest
Thanks to Germany, by Sebastien Roblin, 24 July 18

Israel has never officially admitted to possessing nuclear weapons.

Unofficially, Tel Aviv wants everyone to know it has them, and doesn’t hesitate to make thinly-veiled references to its willingness to use them if confronted by an existential threat. Estimates on the size of Tel Aviv’s nuclear stockpile range from 80 to 300 nuclear weapons, the latter number exceeding China’s arsenal……..

Though Israel is the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, Tel Aviv is preoccupied by the fear that an adversary might one day attempt a first strike to destroy its nuclear missiles and strike planes on the ground before they can retaliate. Currently, the only hostile states likely to acquire such a capability are Iran or Syria.

To forestall such a strategy, Israeli has aggressively targeted missile and nuclear technology programs in Iraq, Syria and Iran with air raids, sabotage and assassination campaigns . However, it also has developed a second-strike capability—that is, a survivable weapon which promises certain nuclear retaliation no matter how effective an enemy’s first strike……….In the 1990s the United States declined to provide Israel with submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles due to the rules of the Missile Technology Control Regime prohibiting transfer of cruise missile with a range exceeding 300 miles.

Instead, Tel Aviv went ahead and developed their own. In 2000, U.S. Navy radars detected test launches of Israeli SLCMs in the Indian Ocean that struck a target 930 miles away. The weapon is generally believed to be the Popeye Turbo—an adaptation of a subsonic air-launched cruise missile that can allegedly carry a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead. However, the SLCM’s characteristics are veiled in secrecy and some sources suggest a different missile type entirely is used. An Israeli Dolphin submarine may have struck the Syrian port of Latakia with a conventional cruise missile in 2013 due to reports of a shipment of Russian P-800 anti-ship missiles. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/israel-might-have-many-300-nuclear-weapons-and-some-are-ocean-27011

July 30, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Tactical nuclear weapons for U.S. submarines: why this is a bad idea

U.S. Submarines Will Soon Carry Tactical Nuclear Weapons https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a22550758/us-submarines-will-soon-carry-tactical-nuclear-weapons/ By Kyle Mizokami Jul 26, 2018

The U.S. Navy’s fleet of ballistic missile submarines will soon carry tactical nuclear weapons, as Congress prepares to fund development of a new, low-yield nuclear warhead. The submarines, which form a functional invulnerable retaliatory force in case of surprise nuclear attack, will soon be able to launch missiles with less powerful tactical nuclear weapons. Not everyone is sold on the new weapon, which critics charge is unnecessary and could lower the threshold for nuclear war.

The U.S. Navy’s fourteen Ohio nuclear ballistic missile submarines provide a powerful deterrent to surprise nuclear attack. The submarines embark on lengthy deterrence patrols, hiding in the world’s oceans, effectively a moving cache of nuclear weapons that an adversary would find extremely difficult to destroy. As long as the subs are at sea, the U.S. maintains the ability to counter a surprise attack with a counterattack of its own.

Every four years, the sitting presidential administration conducts a review of U.S. nuclear forces. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, commissioned by President Trump, calls for replacing some of the existing nuclear warheads on the Ohio-class submarines with low-yield warheads. The goal is to have the ability to strike urgent, time sensitive targets virtually any place on Earth.

Each Ohio submarine carries twenty Trident D-5 missiles, and each missile is outfitted with an unknown number of W76-1 nuclear warheads. (The U.S. keeps the number of submarines at sea and warheads per submarine intentionally ambiguous, although we know Washington has pledged to never deploy more than 240 missiles at sea at any one time.) Now it appears at least some of those warheads will be replaced with the W76-2, which has a much smaller explosive yield.

The Administration argues that the U.S. may need to strike quickly strike targets with tactical nuclear weapons. An example might be a nuclear-armed missile sitting on a North Korean missile launch pad. Most tactical nukes are aircraft delivered bombs, and could take the better part of a day to ready and then reach their target. A tactical nuke delivered by a submarine-launched ballistic missile, on the other hand, could be delivered in less than an hour.

How small a warhead yield are we talking about? That’s a good question. The existing W76-1 warhead has an explosive yield of 100 kilotons (for reference, the Hiroshima bomb was 16 kilotons.) The B61-12 tactical nuclear gravity bomb has a “dial-a-yield” mechanism that allows for yields of .3 (or just 300 tons of TNT), 1.5, 10, and 50 kilotons. The W76-2 would likely have a yield similar to the B61-12’s low end.

Critics, on the other hand, believe the new warhead is unnecessary and dangerous. They believe that the W76-2 is a solution in search of a problem, noting that sudden “bolt from the blue” crisis that suddenly demands a tactical nuclear weapon placed on a target in less than an hour is very unlikely. They believe that existing tactical nuclear weapons would be forward deployed near a potential crisis, making them available more quickly than commonly believed.

The new weapon also comes under fire for being needlessly escalatory. The United States has an overwhelming amount of conventional firepower, which critics of the new weapon argue can just as effectively destroy a time-sensitive threat. Using a tactical nuclear weapon could be just plain unnecessary. Furthermore, unless nukes have already been used in the conflict, the use of the new warhead would cause the the United States to cross the nuclear threshold first, inviting adversaries to use their own nukes against U.S. and allied forces.

Congress is preparing to fund development of the W76-2, to a tune of $65 million. The process won’t involve building any new weapons–instead the government will convert existing W76-1 warheads into low yield versions. Meanwhile, the controversy as to whether the weapons are needed and ultimately dangerous to U.S. national security rages on.

July 27, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia’s new “doomsday” weapon works by dispersing killer nuclear radiation

Russia just showed off a potentially world-ending nuclear ‘doomsday’ torpedo https://www.businessinsider.com.au/russia-shows-off-a-nuclear-doomsday-torpedo-that-the-us-cant-stop-2018-7?r=US&IR=T, ALEX LOCKIE, JUL 24, 2018,

Russia’s Ministry of Defence released a video of one of the most inhumane and fearsome nuclear weapons ever created – and it’s purpose-built to avoid US defences.
The weapon, a high-speed nuclear-powered torpedo, isn’t like other nuclear weapons.
It’s designed to create a lasting cloud of nuclear fallout that could render thousands of miles of territory unlivable for decades.
But Russia may be bluffing about how far along the weapon actually is, a close viewing of the video shows.

Just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with President Donald Trump, Russia’s Ministry of Defence has released a video of one of its most inhumane and fearsome nuclear weapons ever created – and it’s purpose-built to avoid US defences.

The weapon, a high-speed nuclear-powered torpedo, isn’t like other nuclear weapons. While there’s a risk of radioactivity any time an atom is split, nuclear weapons have typically used nuclear detonations to create heat and pressure, with lingering radioactivity emerging only as a dangerous side effect.

But the new Russian torpedo uses radioactive waste to deter, scare, and potentially punish enemies for decades.

“Nuclear weapons only generate significant amounts of radioactive fallout when they are detonated at, near, or beneath ground level,” Stephen Schwartz, the author of “Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of US Nuclear Weapons Since 1940,” told Business Insider.These types of nuclear explosions “suck up dirt, or water, contaminates it with debris from the bomb, and then lofts it into the atmosphere,” leaving deadly radioactive fallout potentially strewn across thousands of miles, Schwartz said. What’s more, the bomb is rumoured to have its nuclear core coated in a metal that would make the fall out last for half a century.

“It’s an insane weapon in the sense that it’s probably as indiscriminate and lethal as you can make a nuclear weapon,” Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told Business Insider.

Russia hasn’t specified how big the nuclear warhead is, but Kristensen said reports indicated it’s “anything from a normal yield to up to 100 megatons,” making it potentially one of the biggest bombs ever built.

Russia has advertised a simple mission for the torpedo: “Going in and blowing up a harbour with the purpose of blanketing a coastal area with radiation to make it uninhabitable” in a “blatant violation on the international laws of war, which require them to avoid collateral damage,” Kristensen said.

Russia, which first leaked images of the weapon in 2015, released the video of the torpedo, called “Poseidon,” along with several other updates on new weapons programs. Putin announced all of the weapons in a March 1 speech in which he said they’d been designed to defeat all existing US defences.

The video of the Poseidon shows its stern suspended in a factory with engineers standing by. Lines across its hull indicate where its various components and chambers separate and indicate a large space for a warhead.

Analysis from H.I. Sutton shows that Russia augmented a test submarine to carry the Poseidon as far back as 2010, indicating a long testing period.

But Russia traffics in military propaganda frequently, and it may be bluffing on how far along its weapons are. The torpedo is shown only in a lab setting, and then the video cuts to a computer-generated simulation. The actual weapon shows its ability to steer in water, and doesn’t even show it can propel itself.

Additionally, the video demonstrates a new, only slightly less dangerous use for the weapon: Targeting US aircraft carriers and their strike groups. As it stands, the US doesn’t have a way to defend against fast-moving torpedoes like the Poseidon.

July 25, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | radiation, Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Catholic action against nuclear weapons

Justice Action Bulletin: Catholic worker among protestors breaching nuclear weapons bunker https://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/justice-action-bulletin-catholic-worker-among-protestors-breaching-nuclear-weapons, Jul 24, 2018, by Maria Benevento POULSBO, Washington — The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action is planning nearly a week of activities to commemorate the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and call attention to and oppose nuclear weapons today.

On July 31, a “peace fleet” will meet the Navy in Elliott Bay, Seattle. Protesters in boats and on shore plan to protest the glorification of weapons and the waste of taxpayer resources at the Seattle Seafair festival.

A group of Buddhist peace walkers will end a three week long walk at Ground Zero Aug. 4, the same day that activists in boats and kayaks will hold the third annual “Boats by Bangor” convoy that travels past the Bangor shore installations at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.

Ray McGovern, a peace activist and former CIA intelligence officer, and Bill Moyer, who runs the Backbone Campaign, which plans creative protests, are scheduled as keynote speakers on Aug. 5. Activists will also prepare for a vigil and action at the gates of the naval base on Aug. 6, when they plan to block roads to symbolically slow “business as usual.”

BÜCHEL, Germany — Eighteen activists from the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands and England were arrested and released without charges July 15 after they cut holes in fences and entered Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base, which houses 20 U.S. nuclear weapons.

The activists, who included Redwood City, California, Catholic Worker Susan Crane, entered in five small groups and walked around carrying banners. Some walked as far as the airbase runway while three people, including Crane, reached a high-security zone housing four nuclear weapons bunkers, climbed to the top of a bunker, and were not noticed until they unfurled a large banner an hour later.

In a July 19 piece in the Duluth Reader, one of the activists, John LaForge, said the group intended to demonstrate the inadequacy of protection systems for the weapons and to call for the removal of U.S. weapons from Germany. The planning process for the action was conducted in meetings that were open to the public.

LONDON, United Kingdom — People of faith including Pax Christi members, Catholic sisters, and representatives of the Christian Student Movement, London Catholic Worker, Christian CND, Quakers, Anglican Peace Fellowship and parish groups were among those who protested President Donald Trump’s visit to London July 13, Independent Catholic News reported July 15.

They joined an estimated 250,000 people who assembled outside the House of Parliament and All Souls Church for a Together Against Trump march and rally organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Protesters’ concerns included Trump’s anti-immigrant stance, the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border, the risk of nuclear war and the prioritization of gun rights over women’s rights.

PORTLAND, Maine — Jessica Stewart, a Catholic Worker and member of Moral Movement Maine, was arrested July 13 in Portland, Maine, along with Lucia McBee, during a visit by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to meet with members of local law enforcement and promote the prosecution of all opioid distribution cases as part of “Operation Synthetic Opiod.”

McBee and Stewart, who were part of a group of approximately 150 protesters, were arrested after they sat on the ground and blocked garage entry and exit lanes.

Stewart said in a July 19 question and answer with the Portland Phoenix that the protest was focused both on the criminalization of opioid addiction and Sessions’ immigration policies. “If there’s a crisis of any kind his solution is to lock people up,” she said. “We should be seeking dignified and humane solutions to these problems.”

[Maria Benevento is an NCR Bertelsen intern. Her email address is mbenevento@ncronline.org.]

July 25, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, Religion and ethics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The ultimate nightmare (but good for military profiteers) Trump’s plan for nuclear weapons in space

Star wars returns – Free speech tv. 1 of 3

Trump’s Space Force: Military Profiteering’s Final Frontier http://progressive.org/dispatches/trumps-space-force-military-profiteerings-final-frontier-180719/

“The heavens are going to be littered with radioactive debris.”

by Harvey Wasserman July 19, 2018

The Commander-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, has announced a new mission into the realm of martial excess. It is one is that will surely enrich the aerospace industry while spreading the global battlefield to a new dimension.

Trump is calling for the creation of a new Space Force as a sixth branch of the U.S. military, to militarize the heavens.

“It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space,” Trump told a meeting of the National Space Council in mid-June. “We must have American dominance in space.”

To this end, the President has taken a page from Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars playbook. Reagan’s scheme, according to a recent article by Karl Grossman, was built around “nuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons.”

Grossman, a journalism professor at State University of New York/College of New York and author of the book The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, has been reporting on the militarization of space for decades, says the move will likely spur a new international competition to weaponize space.

In an interview, Grossman told me that “the Russians and Chinese are hesitant because of the high cost. But if the Americans proceed with this, all bets are off. They’re not going to sit for it. They’re going to get up there before you know it.”

“It will all be nuclear,” Grossman adds. “It’s the ultimate nightmare.”

Trump’s move contradicts the letter and spirit of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which was won after years of epic negotiations, mostly during the Vietnam War. The landmark United Nations accord brought the Soviet Union, China, the United States, and 120 other nations together in a monumental agreement to designate space as a global commons, reserved for peaceful purposes.

“States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner,” the treaty states.

“The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.”

Now Trump has instructed the Pentagon “to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces; that is a big statement. We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal, it is going to be something.”

The proposal for a Space Corps as part of the Air Force could likely pass in the House but faces tougher going in the Senate.

“There’s a lot of resistance to this,” says Grossman, “because a lot of the current work is located in Colorado Springs, and in Huntsville, Alabama. So there’s geographical lobbying from the Pentagon because they thought a new Space Corps might be competition to some of the vested interest in those towns.”

“It’s hard to know how much this would cost,” says Grossman. An article in Roll Call has estimated “$500 billion or more in the coming decade.”

“The real cost will depend on how greedy the aerospace companies are,” Grossman says. “So much of space is now private business, with Elon Musk and Bezos and all kind of companies talking about making a buck out there.”

Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona, seems to agree, tellingRoll Call that “a big payday is coming for programs aimed at developing weapons that can be deployed in space.”

According to Franks, “It was a Democrat mindset that caused us to step back from space-based defense assets to ostensibly not ‘weaponize space,’ while our enemies proceeded to do just that, and now, we find ourselves in a grave deficit. In every area of warfare, within the Geneva Conventions, America should be second to none. That includes satellite warfare, if it’s necessary. We cannot be victims of our own decency here.”

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was the result of worldwide recognition that war is incredibly costly in terms of lives and resources—and that more needed to be done.

“The U.S. led the effort to de-weaponize space in the wake of Sputnik,” says Grossman. “I was told by Craig Eisendrath of the State Department that the U.S. feared the Soviet presence in space. As a model they used the Antarctic Treaty, which banned weapons down there.”

Since the mid-1980s, key players at the United Nations have tried to expand the ‘67 accord. The Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space Treaty, proposed in 1985, would have banned from space all weapons, nuclear and otherwise. Canada, Russia, and China pushed hard for its ratification. But no American president has been willing to sign it. The United Nations committee working on it was dissolved in 1994. In 2008, China and Russia submitted an updated draft to the U.N. General Assembly which the United States alone has continued to oppose (Israel has abstained). Even Putin, at their infamous Helsinki presser, chided Trump about it.

Now Trump is heading where no President since Reagan has gone before. “My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea,” he says.

“Trump’s plan, like Reagan’s, involves laser beams, particle beams and hypervelocity guns, all of which will have to involve nuclear power,” says Grossman. “If there’s a shooting war it will be Chernobyls and Fukushimas in the sky. Some of it will come down, which will be catastrophic. And some will take millennia to fall, which means the heavens are going to be littered with radioactive debris.”

As Grossman sees it, “Of all the many, many terrible things the Trump Administration is doing, opening space to war will be the most destructive.”

July 20, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

All about nuclear war

All you wanted to know about nuclear war but were too afraid to ask https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/16/nuclear-war-north-korea-russia-what-will-happen-how-likely-explainedThe use of a nuclear weapon is now more likely than any time since the cold war, but the probability of humanity being wiped out entirely has diminished, by Julian Borger and Ian Sample

Which countries have nuclear weapons?

There are nine countries that possess nuclear weapons. Five of these (the US, Russia, the UK, France and China) are members of the official owners club, who made their weapons early and had them legitimised in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signed in 1968, the key piece of international law governing nuclear weapons possession.

NPT has arguably been quite successful. In the 1960s it was widely anticipated that dozens of countries would get the bomb, as it appeared to be the fast track to clout and status on the world stage. But so far there have only been four rogue nuclear weapons states who ignored the NPT and made their own bombs. In order of acquisition, they are Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Has any country ever given up its nuclear weapons?

More countries have given up nuclear weapons programmes than have kept them, coming to believe they were more of a liability than an asset for national security.

The apartheid regime in South Africa secretly built six warheads, but dismantled the bombs and abandoned the whole programme in 1989 just before the system gave way to democracy.

Even Sweden had an advanced and ambitious plan based on heavy water reactors to build up to a hundred warheads, but gave up the project in the 1960s, preferring to spend defence funds on fighter planes.

The military juntas in both Argentina and Brazil pursued covert weapons programmes, although they stopped short of making a bomb, and the two countries gave up their programmes in the early nineties and joined the NPT.

Taiwan and South Korea began developing plutonium production programmes in the late sixties and early seventies before the US persuaded them to halt in the mid-seventies and rely on Washington for security. Japan is generally considered to have a “bomb in the basement”, in that it has all the materials and know-how to build a warhead quickly if it decided to follow that path and leave the NPT. At present that course seems unlikely.

Three successor countries to the Soviet Union – Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus – inherited nuclear weapons in 1991, and all three agreed to surrender them, in Ukraine’s case in return for sovereignty guarantees from Russia that ultimately proved worthless.

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein dismantled his rudimentary nuclear weapons programme after the first Gulf war in 1991, and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi handed over his nuclear weapons beginner’s set to the US in 2003. Their ultimate fate offers little incentive for future despots to give up their atomic dreams.

How do you make a bomb?

It is pretty difficult to make a nuclear weapon. If it was not we most likely would no longer be here. And it is difficult on two levels: making the fissile material and then constructing a device that will detonate it.

Uranium and plutonium are used for nuclear weapons, but only specific atomic configurations, or isotopes, of those elements are fissile. The fissile isotopes used in nuclear warheads are U-235 and Pu-239. The numbers refer to their atomic weights. The biggest single challenge in making a nuclear warhead is producing enough of these isotopes from the elements found in nature.

Following the uranium path to the bomb requires converting refined uranium into a gas and then spinning it at very high speed in centrifuges to separate out the U-235, which makes up less than 1% of naturally occurring uranium. This has to be done repeatedly through “cascades” of centrifuges. Low-enriched uranium, used in civilian nuclear power, is usually 3%-4% U-235. Weapons-grade uranium is 90% enriched or more. Building enough centrifuges, and getting them to spin fast enough in unison, is the greatest technical challenge along the uranium route

Plutonium Pu-239 is produced in significant quantities by extracting it from irradiated uranium fuel that has been through a reactor. Because it is more fissile, less plutonium is required for a weapon. A sophisticated modern warhead requires as little as 2kg of plutonium, or at least three times that much uranium.
Once you have enough fissile material, you have to make it go bang. And to achieve that you have to force the atoms close enough together to trigger a chain reaction. There are two ways of doing this, and therefore two basic bomb designs.

The most rudimentary is the gun-type warhead, which involves firing one chunk of fissile material into another at high speed with conventional explosives. The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a gun-type device using 64kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU).

A more sophisticated bomb type, which requires less fissile material and allows the use of plutonium (which does not work in a gun-type warhead) is the implosion device, in which a sphere of HEU or plutonium is surrounded by explosives rigged to go off at exactly the same time to violently compress the core. The Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki was an implosion device with about 6kg of plutonium.

What is a hydrogen bomb?

Hydrogen bomb is the colloquial term for a thermonuclear weapon, a second-generation bomb design with vastly more explosive power than a simple fission warhead.

It is a two-stage device – a primary fission bomb which detonates and compresses a secondary bomb filled with two heavy isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium (hence the name hydrogen bomb). They undergo a process of nuclear fusion, forcing the nuclei of atoms together and multiplying exponentially the amount of energy released by the device. All strategic weapons in modern arsenals are now thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bombs.

Whatever happened to nuclear disarmament?

The bargain at the heart of the NPT was that member states without nuclear weapons agreed not to acquire them, as long as the states with weapons reduced their obscenely large arsenals, capable of destroying the planet many times over. That has indeed happened, to an extent – at first as the result of arms control agreements, and then the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the cold war.

From a peak of 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world at the height of the cold war, in 1985, there are now about 14,000, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), still enough to end life on the planet. Then and now, the overwhelming majority (93% in 2018) of these warheads belong to the US and Russia, with between 6,000 and 7,000 apiece, although only about a quarter of those arsenals are deployed and ready for use. The rest are in reserve stockpiles or in the process of being retired and dismantled.

Of the second-tier nuclear weapons powers, again according to FAS estimates, France has 300 warheads, China 270, the UK 215, Pakistan 130-40, India 120-30, Israel 80, and North Korea between 10 and 20.

The last successful arms control agreement, the New Start treaty, was signed by Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, limiting the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads each. The hope at the time was that the two nuclear superpowers would pursue a follow-on treaty and at one point Obama suggested he might reduce the US arsenal unilaterally by another third. But that did not happen.

What are the chances of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of a terrorist group?

The terrorist nuclear weapon is one of the scariest scenarios the world faces. Unlike states, such groups cannot be deterred from using a weapon as the perpetrator could be very hard to identify in the wake of a blast, difficult to find, and ready to accept death as the price of inflicting devastating damage. Terrorist groups would not need expensive missiles to deliver their warheads. They could be sailed into a port in a shipping container or across land borders in the back of a truck.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US spent substantial resources on dismantling many of its weapons and production facilities as well as ensuring that its many nuclear scientists had alternative employment so as not to be tempted to sell their wares and expertise to the highest bidder. But serious concerns about nuclear weapons security remain. Pakistan in particular is a source of anxiety as its military and intelligence services have radicalised elements within them, with links to terror groups.

There are also fears that a cash-strapped or vengeful North Korea could sell one of its warheads for the right price. A more recent emerging threat is that a rogue group could hack into a nuclear power’s command and control computers, triggering a launch, or into an early warning system, giving the impression an enemy attack is imminent.

How likely is accidental nuclear war?

As the years have passed since the cold war, it has become increasingly clear that we had several lucky escapes from nuclear weapons use during that era as the result of miscalculation or technical glitches. For example, in 1979, when a US watch officer left training tapes in the early warning system when he finished his shift, those in the incoming shift saw their screens light up with the tracks of multiple incoming Soviet missiles. It was only good judgment of the duty officers that avoided a nuclear alert.

In such situations, if the glitch is not identified lower down the chain of command and passed upwards as a seemingly genuine alert, a national leader has only a few minutes to decide whether to launch his or her country’s missiles before the apparent incoming salvo destroys them. Nearly three decades after the cold war, the US and Russia still keep hundreds of missiles on hair-trigger alert, ready to launch within minutes, in anticipation of just an occasion.

In the US system, there is no institutional check or barrier to the president launching those missiles once he has identified himself to the Pentagon war room using his nuclear codes.

What next?

Arms control will be on the agenda when Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet in Helsinki on Monday. One option is that the two presidents could extend the New Start treaty by another five years, as allowed for in the agreement. The biggest barrier is Trump’s distaste for any arrangement inherited from Obama. It is more likely he would argue for a more ambitious arms control agreement he could put his own name to. But Putin will be hard to convince, without the US scaling back its missile defence system, and that is unlikely at the moment.

The threat of a conflict with North Korea has receded somewhat since the Singapore summit, but it is increasingly clear that Pyongyang has no intention of disarming any time soon. The big question is what will Trump do once that becomes apparent to him.

The chances of a nuclear standoff with Iran, meanwhile, are rising. In May, Trump walked out of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran, which curbed Iranian nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief. The US is now piling on sanctions and telling the world to stop buying Iranian oil. Sooner or later it is possible, likely even, that the Iranian government will stop abiding by the agreement and start stepping up its uranium enrichment and other activities. That is likely to raise tensions in the Gulf dramatically and make other regional players rethink whether to acquire nuclear weapons themselves.

Taking all these developments into consideration, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has decided to set its “doomsday clock” to two minutes to midnight, the closest to catastrophe it has been since 1953.

Nuclear weapons in popular culture

There are much darker works in the canon. On the Beach, in 1959, was the first major post-apocalyptic movie, in which survivors gather in Australia, the last continent left habitable. The Day After, in 1983, is even blacker. It starts with a nuclear blast obliterating a column of cars stuck on a highway as panicked people rush to try to evade the attack spreads.

More recent films, since the cold war, have dwelt on the threat of a single nuclear weapon detonated by terrorists or deranged geniuses or both. They include Broken Arrow (1996), The Peacemaker (1997) and The Sum of All Fears (2002), in which – because there is just one bomb involved – the detonation is no longer treated as an exctinction-level event. In that, art is following reality. The use of a nuclear weapon is now more likely than any time since the worst days of the cold war, but the probability of humanity being wiped out entirely by nuclear war is, for the time being, diminished.

July 18, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, Reference, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Nuclear weapons states and the policy of “No First Use” (NFU)- most of them permit it

Nearly all nuclear weapon states, as a matter of policy, remain ready to use their weapons without having first suffered a nuclear attack. Council on Foreign Relations,Backgrounder by Ankit Panda July 17, 2018

Introduction Most states with nuclear weapons maintain policies that would permit their first use in a conflict. Pledges to only use these weapons in retaliation for a nuclear attack—or a no-first-use (NFU) policy—are rare. Where these pledges have been made by nuclear states, their adversaries generally consider them not credible……….

What is an NFU pledge?

A so-called NFU pledge, first publicly made by China in 1964, refers to any authoritative statement by a nuclear weapon state to never be the first to use these weapons in a conflict, reserving them strictly to retaliate in the aftermath of a nuclear attack against its territory or military personnel. These pledges are a component of nuclear declaratory policies. As such, there can be no diplomatic arrangement to verify or enforce a declaratory NFU pledge, and such pledges alone do not affect capabilities. States with such pledges would be technically able to still use nuclear weapons first in a conflict, and their adversaries have generally not trusted NFU assurances. Today, China is the only nuclear weapon state to maintain an unconditional NFU pledge……….

What is the debate in the United States on NFU?

Though the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review did not include an NFU pledge, the Obama administration considered the idea during its second term. It ultimately left U.S. nuclear declaratory policy unchanged from its 2010 iteration, which stated that the United States reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to deter nonnuclear attacks while strengthening conventional capabilities to gradually reduce the role of nuclear weapons to that of solely deterring nuclear attacks. Nevertheless, the Obama administration’s final year in office saw animated debate among proponents and opponents of an NFU declaration.

Arguments in favor of a U.S. NFU pledge. Proponents of a U.S. NFU declarationhave arguedthat not only does the United States already maintain a de facto NFU policy but that U.S. superiority in conventional weapons is sufficient to deter significant nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional threats. Additionally, as Kingston Reif of the Arms Control Associationhas argued, “a clear U.S. no-first-use policy would reduce the risk of Russian or Chinese nuclear miscalculation during a crisis by alleviating concerns about a devastating U.S. nuclear first-strike.”

In nuclear strategy, a first strike refers to a nuclear attack that seeks to disarm a nuclear-armed enemy before it can employ its weapons.

Other proponents pointed to an NFU policy declaration being a necessary step on the road to global nuclear disarmament, an aspirational goal of the Obama administration and a requirement for all recognized nuclear weapon states under Article VI of the NPT. Proponents also argue that U.S. resistance to an NFU declaration has harmed U.S. nonproliferation efforts.

Arguments against a U.S. NFU pledge. Critics, meanwhile, have suggested that U.S. allies in East Asia and Europe alike would not accept a unilateral U.S. NFU declaration, because it could encourage adversaries to attack with conventional weapons or to use chemical, biological, or cyber weapons. Russian conventional military advantages over U.S. allies in Europe have amplified these concerns. Critics argue that such a declaration could undercut allied commitments and encourage U.S. allies to develop their own nuclear weapons.

Within the Obama administration in 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz opposed an NFU declaration, primarily along these lines. These officials shared the view of NFU skeptics that a U.S. declaration would embolden adversaries, weaken allied commitments, and invite brinkmanship.

How does the president’s authority to use nuclear weapons relate to questions of first use?

Since the Trump administration’s inauguration, the issue of presidential launch authorization has been of interest to lawmakers, precipitated by the president’s calls to expand the U.S. arsenal and threats against North Korea. In 2017, for the first time in forty-one years, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the president’s ability to use nuclear weapons. Also in 2017, Representative Ted W. Lieu of California and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, introduced bills to restrict the first use of nuclear weapons by the president without a congressional declaration of war, but some experts say this would not have meaningful effect on Trump’s ability to use nuclear weapons first.

What are the nuclear use policies of other nuclear weapon states?

Today, eight states acknowledge that nuclear weapons play a role in their national defense policies. Each of these states—China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—has conveyed through official statements and documents a certain declaratory nuclear policy, detailing the conditions under which they might use these weapons. Another state, Israel, has not publicly acknowledged that it possesses nuclear weapons but is widely considered a nuclear state.

Russia. In 1993, Russia released a military doctrine that formally abandoned a 1982 pledge by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev not to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict. This pledge was never seen as credible by NATO leaders in the final years of the Cold War. A French diplomat, writing in 1999, observed [PDF] that even after Brezhnev’s declaration, “military records of the Warsaw Pact that fell into German hands demonstrated beyond doubt that Russian operational plans called for the use of nuclear and chemical weapons in Germany at the onset of hostilities, even if NATO forces were using only conventional weapons.” The 1993 military doctrine said that the country’s nuclear weapons would never be used against nonnuclear states that were members of the NPT, except those that were allied with a nuclear state. Today, Russian’s military doctrine says [PDF] the country will use nuclear weapons against attacks by conventional forces that represent an existential threat to the country or in retaliation for a nuclear or WMD attack.

China. Under stated Chinese posture, the country would expect to first absorb a nuclear attack before using its own nuclear forces to retaliate. While this has held constant since China’s first nuclear test, there is a debate today in the country over the continuing advisability of an NFU posture. For decades, China sought to make its NFU pledge appear credible by separating its ballistic missile and warhead units; under these circumstances, China’s intention to use nuclear weapons before first suffering a nuclear attack would ostensibly be easily detectable. So far, there have been no public caveats to China’s NFU policy, but some U.S. and Indian strategists doubt the credibility of China’s pledge. China has been able to maintain its NFU pledge because it has invested so heavily in conventional military modernization, making it unlikely that it would consider nuclear escalation in a conventional war. China has publicly called on nuclear weapon states to create and join a multilateral NFU treaty—what it has called [PDF] a Treaty on Mutual No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons.

UK. The country maintains an ambiguous nuclear posture that does “not rule in or out the first use of nuclear weapons,” according to the UK Ministry of Defense’s 2010–2015 policy paper on the country’s nuclear deterrent. In 1978 and 1995, the UK reiterated a commitment to not use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states in the NPT.

France. France has maintained a first-use nuclear posture since it first developed and tested nuclear weapons during the Cold War. France’s posture emerged from its Cold War–era fears of abandonment by the United States, which led to the country’s withdrawal from NATO in 1966 to pursue an independent nuclear capability, giving France the sovereign ability to determine how and when it would use its nuclear weapons. France pioneered the concept of a prestrategic strike for a conventional invasion, threatening limited nuclear first use as a way to signal that it was contemplating escalation to the strategic nuclear level. France rejoined NATO in 2009but kept its nuclear forces outside of NATO’s defense coordination mechanisms. French forces today have inherited that legacy of independence and maintain a first-use posture to deter any type of attack on or invasion of France.

India. India maintains a declared NFU posture, with exceptions for chemical and biological weapons attacks. In its 1999 draft nuclear doctrine, India announced that it “will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail.” The public summary of India’s final nuclear doctrine, released in 2003, says that “in the event of a major attack against India, or Indian forces anywhere, by biological or chemical weapons, India will retain the option of retaliating with nuclear weapons.” Indian public statements on nuclear weapons continue to emphasize the NFU policy, without acknowledging the exceptions carved out explicitly in the official doctrine.

Pakistan. Pakistan has not ruled out nuclear first use to deter what it sees as an overwhelming Indian quantitative advantage in conventional forces. Islamabad has left the exact threshold for its nuclear use ambiguous. Pakistani officials and strategists have been consistent in their support of a first-use posture, with the exception of former President Asif Ali Zardari, who voiced support for an NFU posture early in his term, in 2008. Today, there is no serious push in Pakistan to reconsider the country’s first-use posture.

North Korea. North Korea has not ruled out nuclear first use to deter a preemptive strike or invasion by the United States and its allies. If the country were to detect an imminent U.S. or allied attack, it would use nuclear weapons on military installations in East Asia and in Guam. North Korea’s intercontinental-range ballistic missiles would not be used first but would deter retaliatory nuclear use or an invasion by the United States against its territory. The exception to this might be a scenario in which North Korea fears a first strike by the United States to eliminate the country’s leadership.

Israel. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its possession of nuclear weapons but is thought to have developed a limited arsenal more than fifty years ago, effectively becoming the world’s sixth nuclear weapon state. In line with this policy of nuclear opacity, Israel has made no authoritative declarations on how it would use nuclear weapons. In the late 1960s, Prime Minister Golda Meir and President Richard Nixon came to an understanding, with Meir offering assurances that Israel would “not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East” but that it would also “not be the second to introduce this weapon.” https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/no-first-use-and-nuclear-weapons

July 18, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia’s huge nuclear submarine on show in Finland as Trump arrives for summit with Putin

Putin to show off huge nuclear submarine just south of Helsinki as summit with Trump sails up Barents Observer The Oscar-II class vessel is similar to the Kursk that sank in the Barents Sea in 2000. By Thomas Nilsen, July 11, 2018

The Russian navy on Wednesday confirms the participation of “Orel” nuclear powered submarine sailing together with the convoy of Northern Fleet warships en route from Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula towards St. Petersburg.

“The first group includes the large anti-submarine ship “Severomorsk” and the nuclear submarine missile cruiser “Orel”, the press service of the Northern Fleet says in a noteposted on the Defense Ministry’s portal Wednesday evening.

Also, the recently modernized missile cruiser “Marshal Ustinov” and the brand new frigate “Admiral Gorshkov” are sailing in the same navy group, as previously reported by the Barents Observer.

The Russian warships are Wednesday evening in Skagerrak south of Norway and will during the next 24 hours pass through Storebælt in Denmark. The route continues south of Bornholm, then north along the east side of the Swedish island of Gotland before turning east into the Gulf of Finland.

Arrival in the Gulf of Finland is expected within a few days, the Northern Fleet writes.

This means Putin will have one of his navy’s largest nuclear-powered submarines sailing just south of Helsinki either a day or two before the summit, or about the same time as the historical meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump takes place on July 16th.

The ships are sailing towards Kronstadt outside St. Petersburg where they will participate in the annual Navy Parade taking place on July 29th…….. https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2018/07/large-russian-nuclear-submarine-sails-scandinavian-waters,

July 16, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | 1 Comment

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