Like President Donald Trump, the Pentagon’s new nuclear policy document sees a dark and threatening world. It argues that potential U.S. adversaries such as China, North Korea, and Russia are rapidly improving their nuclear capabilities and gaining an edge over the United States. But rather than laying out a plan to halt this slide into a more dangerous world and working to decrease reliance on nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) hastens its rise by accepting the reasoning of U.S. adversaries and affirmatively embracing nuclear competition.
The central claim of the Nuclear Posture Review is that the United States must expand its reliance on nuclear weapons to protect the country and its allies—a complete reversal of the Obama administration’s effort to reduce reliance. To this end, the NPR proposes not only replacing an aging nuclear arsenal but further “supplement[ing]” it with two new missiles. It expands the circumstances in which the United States would consider employing nuclear weapons to include the ambiguously termed “non-nuclear strategic attacks” against infrastructure.
The review also includes a litany of other measures that could usher in a future in which nuclear competition is commonplace: increasing capacity to produce plutonium pits in case the United States urgently needs to expand its arsenal dramatically; training conventional forces to fight alongside nuclear ones; improving the readiness of the 150 or so nuclear weapons stationed in Europe for what had been symbolic reasons; and a new distrust of arms control measures, to name a few.
Uncharacteristically, the review contains several clumsy, contradictory, and misleading statements. For example, it gives opposing standards for deciding when the 1970s-era B83 1.2 megaton gravity bomb should be retired. Even prior to the review’s release, there were concerns that Trump’s retaliatory stance would raise the possibility of a disproportionate use of nuclear force, such as against a cyberattack. General Paul J. Selva, the nation’s second-ranking military officer, was forced to deny such claims as “fundamentally untrue.” (However, in expanding the nuclear mission to include the poorly defined category of “non-nuclear strategic attacks,” the document invites such an interpretation.) This kind of confusion surrounding the issuance of nuclear threats is frankly unacceptable, especially for an administration that also sends careless statements about its nuclear posture over Twitter.
One chart is so anxious to show that U.S. adversaries are advancing faster than the United States that it lumps together a range of dissimilar systems from the large Russian arsenal, the small Chinese arsenal, and the tiny North Korean arsenal. It lists highly advanced systems together with ones that have been indefinitely delayed, and even includes North Korea’s unproven missiles. When it comes to the United States, the chart omits myriad ongoing programs that have sustained and improved the world’s most capable nuclear force, as well as all of the upcoming programs to replace these systems with new ones.
On top of a pledge to carry out the Obama administration’s plans to “sustain and replace” nearly every system in the nuclear arsenal, the review calls for two “supplements”: a new option for a low-yield sea-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) and a new sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) in lieu of the missiles removed from the fleet in the 1990s. Both are necessary, the NPR argues, because they “will help counter any mistaken perception of an exploitable ‘gap’ in U.S. regional deterrence capabilities.” Yet the review validates this perception by scrambling to fill that gap, stating that new flexible low-yield options are “important for the preservation of credible deterrence against regional aggression.” The statement weakens the credibility of U.S. strategic forces and signals to China, North Korea, and Russia that they should expect a low-yield strike to be met with a reciprocal and limited response (which they could consider an advantageous exchange).
Moreover, by taking this position, the NPR implicitly accepts the Russian belief that the lower yield of these weapons makes them more credible and more acceptable to use in regional wars. This is wrong for three reasons: first, even “low-yield” nuclear weapons are thousands of times more destructive than the largest conventional ones and risk contaminating huge swaths of allied or enemy territory; second, it is not at all clear that an adversary would be able to quickly ascertain that a nuclear detonation was a “low-yield” strike; and third, even if it could, it may not obligingly limit its response. Under such a theory, if Russia were reckless enough to carry out a small nuclear attack, the United States would have to shock it into restraint through nuclear retaliation. In relying on nonstrategic weapons for deterrence, the NPR exhibits the same mistaken logic that it worries is taking hold in Moscow.
The review neglects to make a compelling case for the necessity of its proposed systems. The claim that deploying a new SLCM could prompt Russia to retire its banned ground-launched cruise missiles is laughable. In general, generic language about “mistaken perceptions” is a thin justification for an expensive and potentially destabilizing new system. Just as the Air Force has struggled to make the case for why a new air-launched cruise missile is needed, the NPR fails to demonstrate that there are missions that cannot be performed by the existing systems and thus, that there is a need for new ones.
The review self-consciously insists that it “is not intended to, nor does it enable, ‘nuclear war-fighting.’ ” Yet the arguments about nonstrategic weapons and the capabilities of the proposed “supplements” enable the use of nuclear weapons in a limited regional war. The low-yield SLBM is apparently designed to promptly strike small and mobile targets such as an enemy’s mobile missile launcher or forward command post. If used this way, ballistic missile submarines, which were previously used for strategic deterrence, would also be able to perform battlefield missions.
Overall, the NPR reflects an outdated and simplistic view of deterrence. It argues that nuclear weapons provide unrivaled deterrent effects, so more options mean more deterrence. Today’s military planners, however, have a far more complex and nuanced understanding of deterrence. They plan to employ a range of capabilities across different domains to create a strategic effect appropriate to the specific threat. In some circumstances, issuing a nuclear threat may be necessary to deter an attack. Yet in other situations, it may be more credible and more compelling to threaten to defend against an attack or to impose unacceptable costs in the cyber-domain, in space, with sanctions, or with conventional weapons. No matter their yield or delivery method, nuclear weapons will never be seen as a credible deterrence to the kind of low-level aggression at which Russia and North Korea have proven adept.
This is part of the reason why the Obama administration sought to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons: if an objective can be met with conventional weapons it will be a more credible threat than a nuclear one. Yet the 2018 NPR explicitly says that “non-nuclear forces…do not provide comparable deterrence effects.” This says to our allies, “Don’t be assured by our conventional cooperation; demand nuclear commitments.” And it says to our adversaries, “Don’t be deterred by our conventional posturing; we are serious only when we make a nuclear threat.”
The tension between conventional and nuclear force also arises in the review’s approach toward funding the arsenal. Top defense officials have stated frankly that the Pentagon does not have a plan to pay the expected $1.7 trillion to update and operate the arsenal over the next 30 years. That figure will create serious tensions in a Pentagon wrestling with a dizzying array of other priorities: raising the readiness of U.S. forces, building new fleets of aircraft carriers, fighters, and attack submarines, and investing more funds in future research. Yet rather than attempting to solve the problem with cost the NPR dismisses it, declaring that nuclear weapons are “an affordable priority” comprising “a small fraction” of the defense budget. The fact remains that every dollar spent on a nuclear “supplement” is one that cannot be devoted to strengthening the service members who provide essential deterrence deployed around the world every day.
Each of the NPR’s failings derives in part from the structure of the review process itself, which considers nuclear weapons in isolation from other elements of American power. As a result, the document reads less like a strategy of how best to deter threats to the United States and its allies and more like a piece of advocacy for nuclear weapons—a self-conscious defense of their utility, affordability, and an effort to expand their mission. It is less a Pentagon policy document than a memo from a powerful lobby.
Future administrations would be better served by conducting a “deterrence posture review,” to explicitly consider the cost implications of its recommendations and to develop a strategy that uses all effective capabilities to deter aggression. This effort would encourage planners to integrate different levers of American power in their deterrence planning rather than to privilege one over others.
Yet the most significant problem with Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review is the slanted view it holds of the world and the obsolete theory of deterrence and war fighting that it promotes, which is so poorly suited to today’s threats. Rather than working to reduce nuclear dangers, the nation’s nuclear policy now reflects the reasoning of U.S. adversaries and readily follows them into a more dangerous world.
Buried In Trump’s Nuclear Report: A Russian Doomsday Weapon, NPR , February 2, 2018 GEOFF BRUMFIELToday, the Trump administration released a report on the state of America’s nuclear weaponry. The assessment, known as a Nuclear Posture Review, mainly concerns U.S. nukes and missiles.
But buried in the plan is a mention of a mysterious Russian weapon called “Status-6.” On paper, at least, Status-6 appears to be a kind of doomsday device. The report refers to it as “a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo.”
“The radius of total or near-total destruction is the size of a pretty large metropolitan area, actually,” says Edward Geist, a Russia specialist at the RAND Corporation who has spent time looking at the weapon. “It’s difficult to imagine in normal terms.”……
Status-6 looks like a giant torpedo about a third the length of a big Russian submarine. According to the slide, it is nuclear-powered, meaning it can roam for months and even possibly years beneath the ocean without surfacing. Its payload is a nuclear warhead “many tens of megatons in yield,” Geist says.
That’s thousands of times more powerful than the bombs dropped at the end of World War II and more powerful than anything currently in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.
Status-6 would launch from beneath a Russian submarine. It would shoot at a depth too deep to be intercepted, and travel for thousands of miles. Upon reaching its target along the U.S. coastline, it would detonate, swallowing up whatever city happened to be nearby.
“The only possible U.S. targets are large port cities,” says Mark Schneider, a senior analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy wrote in an e-mail. “The detonation of Status-6 in any of them would essentially wipe out their population into the far suburbs.”
“The detonation would cause a very large amount of radioactive fallout,” adds Pavel Podvig, an arms control expert who runs a blog called Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. Podvig believes the weapon could potentially bathe the entire Northeast Corridor in radioactive soot.
Status-6 would probably be used as a “third-strike” weapon of last resort. If Russia fell under attack from the U.S. and couldn’t retaliate with its missiles, it might trigger Status-6: A doomsday machine. Or at least a doomsday-ish machine.
Then again, the whole thing might be a fake.
“The drawing of this drone looks more like an enlarged drawing of a smaller torpedo,” says Podvig. In other words, it looks like the Russians may have just taken some torpedo clip-art, blown it up to terrifying size and then broadcast it on state television.
Why?
“It’s a way to get our attention,” says Geist.
Geist says that the “leak” of Status-6 was deliberate. Russia worries that U.S. missile defenses might be able to shoot down its missiles in a nuclear war. By showing a plan for Status-6, Russia is warning the U.S. that if it continues to build such defensive systems, then Russia will find another way to strike: one that can’t be intercepted.
“My read of the whole Status-6 slide leak is that the Russians were trying to send us a message,” Geist says.
Podvig agrees that the leak of Status-6 is probably just a warning shot. But the fact it appeared in the Pentagon’s newest report on nuclear weapons shows that some war planners are taking the idea seriously.
There may be some politics involved in that decision as well, says Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. The Trump administration is pushing hard for upgrades to America’s nuclear arsenal. In his State of the Union address, the president called for making the arsenal “so strong and so powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression by any other nation or anyone else.”
Citing Status-6 helps to build the case that upgrades to American nukes are needed, Kristensen says.
Report Urges Long-Term Power Agreements for SMRs at Federal Sites , Nuclear Energy InstituteFeb. 1, 2018—A new study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy recommends that federal agencies (such as DOE and the Defense Department) be allowed to enter into 30-year power purchase agreements with utility operators of small modular reactors (SMRs).
Typically defined as reactors having a generating capacity smaller than 300 megawatts-electric, SMRs are a good fit for sites like DOE’s 17 national laboratories, the study says.
For example, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the largest consumer of electricity among the agency’s sites and is engaged in several critical, round-the-clock defense and research-related activities………
“Leveraging the federal government’s strong credit standing as a purchaser of the power and its continual need for baseload power is important in the development of SMRs. Federal agency purchasers can help to set the market and offer more certainty to other initial buyers,” the study says.
“By creating an authority that permits federal agencies to purchase power for up to 30 years, SMR developers will be able to use traditional financing to repay a project financed project or a long-term bond over an up to 30-year term, making the financing more affordable.”
Currently, only the Department of Defense has the authority to enter into power purchase agreements of 30 years in duration, in certain circumstances.
The study urges moving the pilot project at Clinch River forward to completion……..
Another example of collaboration between a small modular reactor developer and a national laboratory is NuScale Power, of which the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) is planning to build up to 12 at the Idaho National Laboratory. Under this project, DOE or other federal entities could enter into power purchase agreements with UAMPS or its associated utilities. ……
Another example of collaboration between a small modular reactor developer and a national laboratory is NuScale Power, of which the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) is planning to build up to 12 at the Idaho National Laboratory. Under this project, DOE or other federal entities could enter into power purchase agreements with UAMPS or its associated utilities. ……
Oslo, Norway—From the indigenous communities exposed by remote nuclear tests, to activists living in bustling cities across the globe—a new resistance is growing. Peace Organizations worldwide have joined together to stand up to the nine nuclear-armed states in the form of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, known commonly as ICAN. While many have hailed them for revitalizing the nuclear-disarmament movement, their greatest achievement to date is their influence on the creation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This bold new step in disarmament stands out from previous anti-nuclear movements, because it went after a comprehensive ban. While it won’t as of yet directly eliminate a single nuclear weapon, as none of the current signatories have them, many believe it will significantly alter the nuclear-weapons industry.
The world’s powers remain at a crossroads. According to a recent Pew Poll, one of the few things Americans agree on today is that the nuclear threat coming from North Korea is real and should be taken seriously. On the other hand, the United Nations overwhelmingly voted to adopt a treaty that will prohibit nuclear weapons, and the disarmament movement, it seems, has never been more democratized. That is, ordinary people have never seemed to have such an impact on global affairs. So how can a campaign be awarded for its role in ridding the world of nuclear weapons when nuclear war seems so near?
The Norwegian Nobel Committee acknowledged ICAN’s role in the negotiations as the key factor for awarding it the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017. At this year’s ceremony, Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairman of the Nobel Committee, addressed critics of this movement: “Many people think that the vision of a nuclear weapons free world, global zero, is utopic, or even irresponsible. Similar arguments were once used to oppose treaties banning biological weapons, chemical weapons, cluster munitions and land mines. Nevertheless, the prohibitions became a reality and most of these weapons are far less prevalent as a result. Using them is a taboo.”
The Nobel chairwoman later invoked the words of Ronald Regan, saying, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value for our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will be never used, but then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”
While many groups have come before them, ICAN is a unique coalition of people and organizations who have influenced governments to fill the crucial legal gap to nuclear disarmament, one they believe will help stigmatize and delegitimize these weapons as a valuable tool in global politics.
This global coalition has taken the reins of the disarmament movement that has been active since the 1940s. Its approach has engaged activists and diplomats in the global south, from countries that have been exposed to nuclear weapons and rejected them. ICAN democratized nuclear disarmament as an issue for anyone to take part in.
There are too many people in ICAN to profile in one article, so I dug through to find different representatives from different corners of the earth. Each brought their own backgrounds, medical, legal, social, and all came together over a decade ago to lobby for the ban.
In Australia, ICAN began with Felicity Ruby, Dimity Hawkins, Dr. Bill Williams, Dr. Tilman Ruff, and others who launched the global effort with a strong medical and scientific perspective. According to Dr. Kathleen Sullivan, a disarmament educator in the United States, and one of the campaign’s earlier members, “the initial thinking revolved around horror, humor, and hope—to amplify the need for a louder nuclear taboo, to educate the public, reignite the movement fueled more by what we love than what we fear.”
Ray Acheson, director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), was at the launch of ICAN in 2007 in Vienna, at a side event on the margins of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee. “Originally the goal was to pursue a multilateral disarmament treaty with the nuclear-armed states’ support,” she explained, “but after these governments failed to implement their disarmament commitments and continued investing billions into nuclear-weapon modernization, our thinking shifted to go after a ban treaty instead.” While the nine nuclear-armed states and the NATO alliance show no signs of support for the treaty, ICAN helped design a treaty that didn’t need them, at least not at first. When Acheson appeared on Democracy Now!, the longtime member of ICAN’s International Steering Group said, “The treaty is actually designed not to include them necessarily. It would have been great if they had have come along, and it would have looked like a very different treaty. But given that they weren’t engaged in the negotiations and that they aren’t interested currently in disarmament, we needed to create something that could attack the system of nuclear weapons indirectly, getting around different economic, political, legal structures of nuclear weapons that keep the practices and policies of nuclear deterrence going currently.”
Tim Wright, director of ICAN Australia, was the very first volunteer back in 2006. Tim has advocated for ICAN in the Asia-Pacific region, and around the globe. According to Acheson, “He personally sat on the phone in New York and Australia and called individual countries to persuade them to join the humanitarian pledge against nuclear weapons, and will now do so for the treaty.” Wright, alongside a team of volunteers, also maintains the digital voice of ICAN, and constantly works to keep campaigners around the world informed and engaged with videos and social-media posts.
ICAN has inspired thousands of people around the world whose countries do not maintain nuclear arsenals to join the struggle for a nuclear-free world. Members like Drs. Peter Mburu and Kelvin Kibet of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) have been moved by the devastating effects nuclear war would have on the planet, including in their hometown of Nairobi, Kenya. Mburu admits, “It is true we have bigger problems—extreme poverty, corruption, youth unemployment, but there is a question of justice. A few countries can form a cabal hoarding power under pretenses of global security. The effects of nuclear weapons are well-documented, and even a small detonation would indiscriminately affect far too many people, including people in my part of the world, albeit indirectly. That is unacceptable.”
The crater-scarred landscape of the Nevada Test Site. Most subsidences leave saucer-shaped craters are varying in diameter. 1995. This is the north end of Yucca Flat. Most tests have been conducted in this valley. From 1951 until 1958 119 atmospheric tests were conducted and from 1962 until 1992 more than 1,000 underground tests. Nye County, Nevada, USA. (PHoto by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)
Donald Trump Is Playing a Dangerous Game of Nuclear Poker , TIME, By W.J. HENNIGAN , 2 Feb 18 At a vast tract of uninhabited desert in southern Nevada, hundreds of moonlike craters dimple the wasteland, remnants of Cold War nuclear explosions that melted the bedrock and fused the sand to ensure that America could take part in the unthinkable: global thermonuclear war. The crowds of scientists and generals are long gone–the U.S. hasn’t tested a nuke since 1992, when then President George H.W. Bush declared a self-imposed testing moratorium. But the Nevada National Security test site is not completely abandoned. A skeleton crew of custodians oversees the long dormant facility, less than 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, standing by to turn the lights back on if the day ever comes.
It may come sooner than many thought.
Since 1993, the Department of Energy has had to be ready to conduct a nuclear test within two to three years if ordered by the President. Late last year, the Trump Administration ordered the department to be ready, for the first time, to conduct a short-notice nuclear test in as little as six months.
That is not enough time to install the warhead in shafts as deep as 4,000 ft. and affix all the proper technical instrumentation and diagnostics equipment. But the purpose of such a detonation, which the Administration labels “a simple test, with waivers and simplified processes,” would not be to ensure that the nation’s most powerful weapons were in operational order, or to check whether a new type of warhead worked, a TIME review of nuclear-policy documents has found. Rather, a National Nuclear Security Administration official tells TIME, such a test would be “conducted for political purposes.”
The point, this and other sources say, would be to show Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Iran’s Ayatullah Ali Khamenei and other adversaries what they are up against.
President Trump has not ordered such a test, but even the consideration of a show of force–by the nation that announced the atomic age by dropping nuclear weapons on Japanese cities in August 1945–marks a provocative shift from the sober, almost mournful restraint that has characterized the U.S. posture toward the weapons for decades. To prevent nuclear war and the spread of weapons to non-nuclear states, the strategy of Republican and Democratic Commanders in Chief alike has been to reduce nuclear arsenals and forge new arms-control agreements.
The Trump Administration, by contrast, is convinced that the best way to limit the spreading nuclear danger is to expand and advertise its ability to annihilate its enemies. In addition to putting the Nevada testing ground on notice, he has signed off on a $1.2 trillion plan to overhaul the entire nuclear-weapons complex. Trump has authorized a new nuclear warhead, the first in 34 years. He is funding research and development on a mobile medium-range missile. The new weapon, if tested or deployed, would be prohibited by a 30-year-old Cold War nuclear-forces agreement with Russia (which has already violated the agreement). And for the first time, the U.S. is expanding the scenarios under which the President would consider going nuclear to “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks,” including major cyberattacks………….
Rather than dissuading such efforts, arms-control experts from both political parties say, Trump’s moves will accelerate them. A new nuclear-arms race would not be limited to two superpowers seeking strategic balance in a Cold War but would include many nations, including foes in regions where hot wars are a regular occurrence. ………
Trump’s new plan also expands the President’s “first use” of nuclear weapons to circumstances that include “non-nuclear strategic attacks” against the U.S. or its allies. That could mean cyberattacks on nuclear command and control systems or civilian infrastructure, like the electricity grid or air-traffic-control system, arms-control experts have concluded. Previous Administrations limited the threat of a nuclear response to mass-casualty events, like chemical- and biological-weapon attacks. Stephen Schwartz, a nuclear weapons policy expert, said the key concern is the expansion of the nuclear umbrella to “include these new and not extreme possibilities, thus dramatically lowering the threshold for nuclear use.”
The Trump plan also takes a new, skeptical approach to nuclear arms-control agreements.
………. If Trump undoes the nuclear deal with Iran, analysts fear that Tehran will sprint for a weapon. Its regional rival Saudi Arabia could then develop its own atomic weapon, or import one from close ally Pakistan, which has its own fast-growing nuclear arsenal to counter arch-rival India’s. (Pakistan is building up its stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons.) China now has a nuclear-powered submarine, known as the Jin-class, that gives its military the ability to launch ICBMs from the sea……….. http://time.com/5128394/donald-trump-nuclear-poker/
North Korea: Trump administration’s ‘sloppy work’ in Nuclear Posture Review AT FIRST glance you might not see what’s wrong with this map used in Donald Trump’s nuclear review. But it has left some experts baffled. news.com.au , Debra Killalea, 1 Feb 18,
A DRAFT report of the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) has been slammed as embarrassing after featuring a graphic showing Debra Killaleaa very different looking North Korea.
The draft report, leaked two weeks ago, omits South Korea and instead shows the whole peninsula represented by the North’s flag.
Experts slammed the “sloppy work” in the report and said they hoped it would be corrected ahead of its final release tomorrow, US time.
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, raised concerns about the map, tweeting the authors actually want to strengthen tailored deterrence.
The concerns over the graphic were echoed by Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress, who said the Pentagon could not release a policy document that failed to recognise South Korea.
He also slammed it as embarrassing and unforgivable, adding it was the latest in a series of “avoidable offences”.
South Korea is a major US ally with the two countries forging strong military and economic ties.
Two weeks ago, Mr Mount said the leaked review translates Mr Trump’s impulses into an order for new, more usable nuclear options. He also called it “strategically risky”.
The NPR is used to determine the role of nuclear weapons in the security strategy of the US.
‘EMBARRASSING’ ERROR
John Blaxland, Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies and director of ANU’s Southeast Asia Institute, said the mistake was embarrassing but wasn’t worth reading too much into………
“There is a growing consensus among academic institutions and civil society organisations that the efficacy of nuclear weapons as a deterrent of state-on-state war has waned, if it ever worked effectively in the first place,” he said.
Prof Blaxland said some people argued it wasn’t the atomic weapons dropped on Japan in 1945 that led to Japan’s surrender but rather Russia’s declaration of war.
He also said the steps being proposed by the US today are likely to be extremely expensive and of dubious additional benefit…….
NO GOOD NUKE’
Critics are already warning the NPR could trigger another arms race and raise the risk of miscalculations that might spark an atomic conflict.
Beatrice Fihn, executive director of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said the Trump review raised some serious concerns.
“The risk of use for nuclear weapons has always been unacceptably high,” she said.
“The new Trump nuclear doctrine is to deliberately increase that risk. It is an all-out attempt to take nuclear weapons out of the silos and onto the battlefield.
“This policy is a shift from one where the use of nuclear weapons is possible to one where the use of nuclear weapons is likely.”
She also said there was no such thing as a good nuclear weapon.
CONCERNS GROW
The Union of Concerned Scientists has also raised some concerns about the review and has said the gap between China and the US is too wide to argue Washington is lagging behind in a significant way.
While acknowledging Beijing has made significant advances in its nuclear capabilities, it said China’s arsenal is smaller than the US had in 1950.
In a White Paper released last month, they also argue there’s little evidence China is pursuing “entirely new” nuclear capabilities.
The People for Nuclear Disarmament said the leaked NPR made global thermonuclear war more, not less, likely and global nuclear arms racing more probable.
Nuclear disarmament campaigner John Hallam said Mr Trump was looking for ways in which he could differentiate himself from, and take credit for, the immense expansion of US nuclear infrastructure initiated by former president Obama.
Mr Hallam said there is considerable continuity between the Obama and the Trump approach but there was a key difference.
“The only important difference — and it certainly is important — is that while under Obama, the direction of the US nuclear arsenal was officially down it is not officially up,” he said.
“Trump makes no bones about wanting to expand US nuclear capabilities. Never mind if they don’t need them. Never mind if it initiates an arms race or never mind if it makes an apocalypse more likely.
On 17 December 2017 Mexico became the fourth country to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
This comes at a time where the World Economic Forum has recently disclosed that fear of a nuclear attack is one of the top things people all over the world fear most at the beginning of 2018.
This is a legitimate fear. With North Korea and the USA using threatening rhetoric about the size of their nuclear arsenals and stating that the nuclear option is on the table, who would have thought that the world would return to nuclear attack being a primary concern for so many people.
Now, more than ever, is the time to rally governments to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
This treaty makes the production, transfer and selling of nuclear weapons illegal and if we had created and ratified this early, North Korea would not have been able to develop their nuclear weapons. But it is still not too late, over 50 states have already signed the treaty, the next step is for each state to ratify it, making it part of their national law. Once 50 states send the official letter saying they have ratified the treaty (known as an instrument of ratification) to the UN headquarters in New York, the treaty becomes law and every country in the world has to respect it, including North Korea.
North Korea is already facing crippling sanctions from the USA which will hinder it from its economic growth plans. Banning these weapons means that it will not be able to continue developing its nuclear weapons programme. Of course the other side of the coin is that USA, UK, India, Israel and Russia will also have to freeze their production and focus on creating a plan to denuclearize their arsenals. That would mean all states would essentially be getting rid of their nuclear capabilities together.
China needs more nuclear warheads to deter US threat, military says, Commentary says the existing stockpile is big enough to prevent ‘bullying’ but should be expanded as Washington changes strategy, SCMP, Minnie Chan, 30 January, 2018 China must expand its nuclear stockpile so it can better deter and hit back at an enemy strike as geopolitical uncertainties mount and the US appears bent on a nuclear build-up, according to the Chinese military’s mouthpiece.
In the PLA Daily on Tuesday, a commentary said China had enough nuclear weapons to prevent “bullying” by other nuclear powers but still needed to respond to changes in US strategy.
“To enhance China’s strategic counterbalance in the region and maintain China’s status as a great power, and protect national security, China has to beef up and develop a reliable nuclear deterrence capability,” it said.
It also said China would still stick to the “no first use” doctrine, meaning there were no circumstances in which it would be the first to use nuclear weapons.
The commentary comes as the administration of US President Donald Trump is expected to unveil its new military weapons policy later this week.
A leaked draft of the document says Washington will ramp up new nuclear projects and deploy more “low yield” nuclear bombs, according to the Huffington Post.
Military analysts said China was poised to increase its own arsenal of nuclear warheads but there were no plans to rival the United States.
Beijing-based military analyst Zhou Chenming said China only needed to add about 100 warheads to its stockpile to counter threats from the US and India.
“Nuclear weapons are hugely expensive to maintain and China is very pragmatic. Beijing will not spend too much money on an arms race,” Zhou said.
Richard A. Clarke, chairman of Good Harbor Security Risk Management, was special adviser to the president for cybersecurity in the George W. Bush administration. Steve Andreasen was the National Security Council’s staff director for defense policy and arms control from 1993 to 2001 and teaches at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
A dangerous disconnect is emerging between the horrific impacts of even the limited use of nuclear weapons, and leaders and policymakers who seem intent on threatening nuclear use in an ever-expanding range of scenarios. If this continues, the risk that a nuclear weapon will be used for the first time in more than 70 years — deliberately or otherwise — will grow. We must return to a more sober dialogue and approach to policy.
The Trump administration appears poised to expand the circumstances under which the United States might use nuclear weapons, including in response to a cyberattack.
The time when leaders and policymakers in the United States, Russia and other countries had anything close to a personal connection with the effects of even a single nuclear weapon is becoming more distant. Memories of a smoldering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the stark fear generated by the Cuban missile crisis or the massive protests sparked in the early 1980s by the deployment of U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe no longer drive or even inform policy. As former secretary of state George P. Shultz told Congress last week, “I fear people have lost that sense of dread.”
When nuclear theory or war-gaming moved from the Pentagon to the White House during the Cold War, it was more often than not met by a skeptical president and civilian leadership, who rightly recoiled from risking nuclear catastrophe. That is not the case now.
Five years ago, the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board published a report equating the impact of Chinese and Russian capabilities to launch an “existential cyber attack” against the United States with the impact of a nuclear attack — and recommended that the United States be prepared to threaten the use of nuclear weapons to deter cyberattacks. When the board’s recommendation was exposed to the light of day by the two of us and others in 2013, it was publicly rebuked and, as a matter of policy, quietly discarded.
But just last month, the board’s proposal became U.S. policy. In December, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy quietly expanded the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense plans, stating they are “essential” to prevent “non-nuclear strategic attacks” — i.e., cyberattacks.
This week, the Trump administration is expected to release its “Nuclear Posture Review.” A leaked pre-decisional draft reaffirms the policy of threatening nuclear use to prevent cyberattacks, but goes even further — expanding the role of U.S. forward-deployed nuclear weapons in NATO’s European defenses.
For decades, the United States has been moving to reduce the relevance of forward-deployed nuclear weapons in Europe, and for good reason: U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe have virtually no military utility, and their storage at bases in multiple countries presents a serious security risk. Removing them would reduce the risk of terrorism and instability, and would free up resources across NATO for other urgent defense tasks.
Moreover, as NATO has repeatedly stated, “The supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies is provided by the strategic forces of the Alliance.” With three nuclearized member states — the United States, Britain and France — NATO has a robust nuclear deterrent capable of being employed anywhere in defense of NATO interests.
The Trump Nuclear Posture Review not only rejects this logic, it ties our forward-deployed forces to NATO’s strategic forces as part of the bloc’s “supreme guarantee.” So rather than move in the direction of reducing nuclear risks by removing nuclear weapons from vulnerable sites, we will instead further cement them in place — when there is ample evidence of terrorist interest in nuclear facilities and, as is presently true in Turkey, evidence that the security of U.S. nuclear weapons reportedly stored there can change literally overnight.
Raising the profile of nuclear weapons in our defense plans comes at a time when the disastrous consequences of even limited nuclear use is becoming even more apparent. Alan Robock and his colleagues at Rutgers University — using newly updated climate models and the much greater computing power now available — have concluded that even a limited nuclear exchange (50 to 100 weapons) could create a “mini-nuclear winter” whose effects could last two to three years and create tens of millions of deaths from starvation because of the collapse of grain crops brought on by climate change.
Nuclear weapons present a unique threat of national devastation and global extinction. They are good for only one purpose: deterring nuclear attacks. Policies equating cyberthreats to nuclear threats, or raising the profile of nuclear weapons in our conventional defenses, undermine the credibility of nuclear deterrence by threatening use for lesser contingencies and makes nuclear use more likely.
Former nuclear power Kazakhstan shares lessons for North Korea, Nikkei Asian Review, January 30, 2018 UN ambassador highlights benefits of denuclearization, harm suffered by testing, ARIANA KING, UNITED NATIONS –– Few nuclear powers have ever volunteered to dismantle their arsenals, but Kazakhstan’s U.N. ambassador makes the case that a country stands only to gain by such a dramatic gesture.
Kazakhstan, which once held the fourth-largest nuclear stockpile with over 1,400 warheads, relinquished all of these Soviet-era weapons by April 1995.
“With the time passing, we more and more are convinced that that was a very right decision at the right moment,” Kairat Umarov, the ambassador and current president of the Security Council, told the Nikkei Asian Review in a recent interview. “And today we are very much proud of this decision,” he said, because Kazakhstan “gained a lot from this step.”……….
“The nuclear-free status of Kazakhstan may serve as an example and as practical guidance for other countries,” Nazarbayev said at that meeting, noting the “high international standing” his country gained by renouncing nuclear weapons. “We call upon all other states to follow our example. We called upon Iran to do so. Now we call upon North Korea to do so.”
“One thing we know for sure: Nuclear capability is not a good defense,” Umarov told The Nikkei. “It’s not a good way to protect a country.”
Possessing such weapons makes a country a target for other nuclear-armed nations, the ambassador added. “So that’s our experience, and we think that anything can be avoided if there is enough political will,” he said.
Umarov said attempts to persuade his North Korean counterparts of the merits of denuclearization have not been fruitful. “But at the end of the day, we think that it is political courage of leaders which really makes things different,” he said. A decision by North Korea to denuclearize would be “received with applause in the international community.”
For Kazakhstan, however, the voices of the victims of nuclear testing at the Semipalatinsk site also led Nazarbayev to dismantle the country’s nuclear program, Umarov said. Though decades have passed since the former Soviet republic closed Semipalatinsk, the legacy of nuclear testing continues.
“We right now have 1.5 million people who are suffering from the nuclear testing site,” Umarov said, citing genetic deformities that have plagued the population and continue to affect newborn children — three generations later.
“It is a very acute, sensitive issue for us,” Umarov asserted, recalling his work for a nongovernmental group in which he fought to shut Semipalatinsk. “So it’s not just we are playing with the politics, or trying to show that we are so principled because of political reasons. It is a very real thing with our population, with our people, and we are reflecting here the will of the people on that issue.”……….https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/Former-nuclear-power-Kazakhstan-shares-lessons-for-North-Korea
North Korea and Donald Trump may be a recipe for accidental nuclear war — here’s how it could happen, Business Insider, DAVE MOSHER, JAN 29, 2018
North Korea likely has missile-ready nuclear weapons.
An expert in East-Asian nuclear policy says there is now an increased risk for nuclear miscalculation on the Korean Peninsula.
He believes President Donald Trump’s bellicose behaviour raises the chance that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will mistake US military exercises as an invasion.
Kim’s logic in such a scenario may be similar to that of Japan’s in its preemptive attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.
An isolated conflict between North Korea, South Korea, and the US could kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds on Thursday, pushing humanity’s proximity to disaster at a symbolic and alarming two minutes to midnight.
The organisation has adjusted the Doomsday Clock yearly since 1947. Though the Bulletin bases its clock’s position on multiple global threats, this year it highlighted the bellicose behaviour of President Donald Trump toward North Korea and his administration’s nuclear weapons posturing.
“To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger, and its immediacy,” Rachel Bronson, the president and CEO of the Bulletin, said during a press briefing on Thursday. It’s “the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday,” she added. “As close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.”
One of the Bulletin’s major concerns is about an “oops” moment of nuclear proportions involving the evolving nuclear arsenal of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un……..
The dangerous and fuzzy maths of miscalculation………
“It’s called miscalculation, where one side makes a calculation that war is inevitable,” Lewis said. “They don’t think that they’re starting a war, they just think they’re getting a jump on the other.”…….
How to step back from the brinkLawrence Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University and a Bulletin chair member, said Thursday that there is still time to turn back the clock.
“It is not yet midnight and we have moved back from the brink in the past,” Krauss said.
The Bulletin makes a few recommendations to ease tensions with North Korea and avert a nuclear disaster:
First and foremost, it said: “US President Donald Trump should refrain from provocative rhetoric regarding North Korea, recognising the impossibility of predicting North Korean reactions.”
Second, the US should preemptively open military and diplomatic lines of communication with North Korea – not to signal weakness, but to show “that while Washington fully intends to defend itself and its allies from any attack with a devastating retaliatory response, it does not otherwise intend to attack North Korea or pursue regime change.”
And finally: “The world community should pursue, as a short-term goal, the cessation of North Korea’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests. North Korea is the only country to violate the norm against nuclear testing in 20 years. Over time, the United States should seek North Korea’s signature on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty – and then, along with China, at long last also ratify the treaty.”
Pentagon Wins as Trump Readies a $716 Billion Budget Request,Bloomberg, By
Anthony Capaccio and Erik Wasson
Big increase for Pentagon would deepen the U.S. deficit
Mattis has raised alarm over U.S. ‘competitive edge’ eroding
President Donald Trump will propose $716 billion in defense spending in his fiscal 2019 budget request, a 7.2 percent from his request for this year that backs the Pentagon’s push for a major buildup, a U.S. official said.
The funding would include $597 billion for the Defense Department’s base budget, with the rest going for its war-fighting account and to other government programs such as the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the release of Trump’s second proposed budget next month.
The amount is a sharp increase from the $668 billion total Trump proposed last year for fiscal 2018 and also offered as a placeholder for fiscal 2019. Currently, the Pentagon is operating under stopgap funding at fiscal 2017 levels, which totaled $634 billion. The plan, reported earlier Friday by the Washington Post, represents a victory of defense hawks over those trying to constrain deficit spending.
The U.S. official confirmed Trump’s next proposed budget will include major increases on procurement spending over the $124 billion sought this year.
Mattis’s Push
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has pushed for a jump in defense spending to match the breadth of the new National Defense Strategy he released this month……….
Ultimately, Trump’s proposal will be measured by the amount it exceeds the caps in the Budget Control Act of 2011.Unless Congress waives the budget limits, as it’s done three times in the past, the cap for fiscal 2019, which begins Oct. 1, is $563 billion for defense-related spending, including $534 billion for the base defense budget.
War-Fighting Fund
The official said more than $90 billion of Trump’s budget proposal would come from the war-fighting fund — known as Overseas Contingency Operations — that’s exempt from caps. While the fund is supposedly for pressing war needs, it’s often used as a tool to bulk up overall defense funding. Trump’s war-fighting budget for the current year includes $10 billion for weapons acquisition……..https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/trump-is-said-to-seek-716-billion-for-defense-in-2019-budget
Reading the summary is illuminating, to say the least, and somewhat disturbing, as it focuses very little on actual defense of the realm and relates much more to offensive military action that might be employed to further certain debatable national interests. Occasionally, it is actually delusional, as when it refers to consolidating “gains we have made in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.”
At times Mattis’ supplementary “remarks” were more bombastic than reassuring, as when he warned
“…those who would threaten America’s experiment in democracy: if you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day.”
He did not exactly go into what the military response to hacking a politician’s emails might be and one can only speculate, which is precisely the problem.
One of the most bizarre aspects of the report is its breathtaking assumption that “competitors” should be subjected to a potential military response if it is determined that they are in conflict with the strategic goals of the U.S. government. It is far removed from the old-fashioned Constitutional concept that one has armed forces to defend the country against an actual threat involving an attack by hostile forces and instead embraces preventive war, which is clearly an excuse for serial interventions overseas.
Some of the remarks by Mattis relate to China and Russia. He said that
“We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models – pursuing veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.”
There is, however, no evidence that either country is exporting “authoritarian models,” nor are they vetoing anything that they do not perceive as direct and immediate threats frequently orchestrated by Washington, which is intervening in local quarrels thousands of miles away from the U.S. borders. And when it comes to exporting models, who does it more persistently than Washington?
The report goes on to state that Russia and China and rogue regimes like Iran have “…increased efforts short of armed conflict by expanding coercion to new fronts, violating principle of sovereignty, exploiting ambiguity, and deliberately blurring the lines between civil and military goals.” As confusing civil and military is what the United States itself has been doing in Libya, Iraq and, currently, Syria, the allegation might be considered ironic.
he scariest assertion in the summary is the following:
“Nuclear forces – Modernization of the nuclear force includes developing options to counter competitors’ coercive strategies, predicated on the threatened use of nuclear or strategic non-nuclear attacks.”
That means that the White House and Pentagon are reserving the option to use nuclear weapons even when there is no imminent or existential threat as long as there is a “strategic” reason for doing so. Strategic would be defined by the president and Mattis, while the War Powers Act allows Donald Trump to legally initiate a nuclear attack.
What might that mean in practice? Back in 2005,Vice President Dick Cheney had requested “a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States… [including] a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons … not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.”
Possible employment of “weapons of mass destruction” responded to intelligence suggesting that conventional weapons would be unable to penetrate the underground hardened sites where Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons facilities were reportedly located. But as it turned out, Iran had no nuclear weapons program and attacking it would have been totally gratuitous. Some other neocon inspired plans to attack Iran also included a nuclear option if Iran actually had the temerity to resist American force majeure.
Pentagon planners clearly anticipate another year of playing at defense by keeping the offense on the field. An impetuous and poorly informed president is a danger to all of us, particularly as he is surrounded by general-advisers who see a military solution to every problem. Hopefully wiser counsel will prevail.
Philip Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
US-South Korean war games will go on after Olympics, Pentagon says , By KIM GAMEL | STARS AND STRIPES, January 26, 2018SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. military exercises with South Korea will be held after the Olympics as planned despite a demand for a complete suspension from the North, the Pentagon said.
The planned war games cast a shadow over hopes that the recent détente between the two Koreas may lead to a broader dialogue with the United States after months of saber rattling over the North’s nuclear weapons program.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reiterated that military options remain at the ready to make sure diplomats have leverage in pressuring Pyongyang to denuclearize…….
Washington agreed to delay them until after the Olympics, which will be held on Feb. 9-25 in the South Korean alpine town of Pyeongchang. Mattis has said they would resume after the March 8-18 Paralympics.
But North Korea, which agreed to participate in the Winter Games as part of rare talks with the South, demanded a complete suspension……..
North Korea has frequently responded to the exercises — and similar drills held by the allies in the fall — with missile tests and a stream of bellicose rhetoric…….
Morning Star 27th Jan 2018, Fury as scandal-hit nuclear agency demands 23-fold radiation emissions
increase. CAMPAIGNERS have gone nuclear after the Atomic Weapons
Establishment (AWE) applied this week to increase radiation output from its
Berkshire site by over 2,000 per cent.
AWE, which produces Trident nuclear warheads, had two sites placed in renewed special measures last August over
safety concerns. Now the company is asking the Environment Agency to raise
the 4.4 megabecquerel radiation limit to 100MBq for tests it claims will
help counter nuclear terrorism.
But the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(CND) said it was nuclear proliferation that increases chances of dangerous
material falling into hostile hands. The group also sounded the alarm over
the risk to public health. CND radiation expert Ian Fairlie said: “While
radiation amounts appear relatively low in the application, they represent
a 23-fold increase. If radiation is released into the water supply in
spikes, this could present a danger.”
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
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