The symposium, organized by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development got underway as tensions escalated between the US and North Korea.
It saw the participation of eleven Nobel peace laureates, top United Nations and NATO officials, leading experts, heads of major foundations and of civil society organizations, as well representatives of bishops conferences, Christian denominations and other faiths. Pope Francisaddressed the gathering on Friday.
Wrapping up the symposium on Saturday, Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, read out the following preliminary conclusions:
The Dicastery brought together religious leaders and representatives of civil society, officials of States and international organizations, noted academics and Nobel Laureates and students, to illuminate the connections between integral disarmament and integral development, and to explore the links among development, disarmament and peace. As our Holy Father, Pope Francis, repeatedly reminds us, “everything is connected.”
The existence of nuclear weapons creates a false sense of security that holds international relations hostage and stifles peaceful coexistence, Pope Francis said.
“The threat of their use as well as their very possession is to be firmly condemned,” the pope told participants at a conference on nuclear disarmament hosted by the Vatican.
For years, popes and Catholic leaders had said the policy of nuclear deterrence could be morally acceptable as long as real work was underway on a complete ban of the weapons. In condemning possession of the weapons, Pope Francis seemed to indicate that deterrence is no longer acceptable.
Nuclear weapons “exist in the service of a mentality of fear that affects not only the parties in conflict but the entire human race,” he said.
The conference, sponsored by the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, brought together 11 Nobel laureates, top officials from the United Nations and NATO, diplomats from around the world and experts in nuclear weapons and the disarmament process. They were joined by scholars, activists and representatives of bishops’ conferences, including Stephen Colecchi, director of the U.S. bishops’ Office of International Justice and Peace.
Several speakers, including Masako Wada, one of the last survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, were to discuss the suffering wrought by nuclear arms.
Pope Francis told the group that the “essential” witness of survivors of the bombings in Japan as well as those suffering the effects of nuclear weapons testing are prophetic voices that serve “as a warning, above all for coming generations.”
In his speech, the pope said that when it comes to the ideal of a nuclear-free world, a “certain pessimism” exists and brings with it “considerable expense” as nations modernize their nuclear arsenals.
“As a result, the real priorities facing our human family, such as the fight against poverty, the promotion of peace, the undertaking of educational, ecological and health care projects, and the development of human rights, are relegated to second place,” he said.
Pope Francis said the existence of weapons whose use would result in the destruction of humanity “are senseless even from a tactical standpoint.”
What is more, he said, there is the growing danger that the weapons or weapon technology could fall into the wrong hands.
“The resulting scenarios are deeply disturbing if we consider the challenges of contemporary geopolitics, like terrorism or asymmetric warfare,” he said.
With the ongoing tensions surrounding North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the Vatican conference came at a time Pope Francis described as one of “instability and conflict.”
But despite the troubling global scenario, he continued, initiatives such as the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, provide a dose of “healthy realism” that “continues to shine a light of hope in our unruly world.”
The treaty, which would enter into force 90 days after at least 50 countries both sign and ratify it, bans efforts to develop, produce, test, manufacture, acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
Although as of Sept. 20 the treaty had been signed by more than 40 countries, including the Holy See, the United States and other countries possessing nuclear weapons did not take part in the negotiations and do not plan to sign it.
Nevertheless, Pope Francis urged the international community “to reject the culture of waste” and place care for people suffering “painful disparities “over “selfish and contingent interests.”
Progress, he said, “that is both effective and inclusive can achieve the utopia of a world free of deadly instruments of aggression, contrary to the criticism of those who consider idealistic any process of dismantling arsenals.”
At a pre-conference event in Rome Nov. 9, Jesuit Father Drew Christiansen, professor of ethics and global human development at Georgetown University, and Carole Sargent, director of the university’s Office of Scholarly Publications, outlined what they saw as major progress in 2017 toward a ban on nuclear weapons.
The work of grass-roots movements and organizations, including the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace Prize, has been particularly important, Father Christiansen said. And not to be ignored are hundreds of Catholic women religious who have engaged in major protests, but also dedicated lobbying efforts. Sargent has been researching the grassroots involvement of women religious, especially in Japan, the United States and Great Britain.
The Vatican conference, Father Christiansen said, could be a major push in getting the new U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons “supported around the world.”
Speaking to journalists before the start of the conference, Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel laureate and former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, commented on tensions between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and the threat of nuclear war.
In August, Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” in response to North Korea’s announcement that it had created a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile. Kim responded to Trump’s “fire and fury” talk by saying his country was preparing to fire missiles into the waters around Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific Ocean with two military bases.
When asked for his response on the possibility of a U.S.-North Korea nuclear conflict, ElBaradei had few words.
The Real Nuclear Triad: Energy, Weapons and Waste byJAMES HEDDLE , COUNTERPUNCH, NOVEMBER 7, 2017 “……..“Hidden Subsidy” for Nuclear Weapons
In their report, entitled Some Queries over Neglected Strategic Factors in Public Accounting for UK Nuclear Power: evidence to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee Inquiry on Hinkley Point C (HPC), Stirling and Johnstone state that their “evidence submits that an undetermined part of the full costs of this expensive, controversial – but officially highly-prioritized – military infrastructure are in effect (without clear public acknowledgement or justification), being loaded into electricity prices. With costs of alternative large-scale domestic low-carbon energy resources like offshore wind power confirmed as significantly more favorable than HPC, it seems a hidden subsidy is being imposed on electricity consumers.”
They point out that, “If UK pursuit of uncompetitive nuclear power is partly justified as a means to sustain these shared civil-military specialized nuclear capacities, then availability of lower cost domestic low-carbon power means electricity prices are higher than would otherwise be the case…. It is this that would amount to an effective subsidy from electricity consumers to military nuclear infrastructures.”
They conclude, “Remarkably, this civil-military link is well documented in defense debates, but entirely neglected in energy policy discussion.” (emphasis added.)…..
North Korea threatens ‘barrage of concentrated nuclear strikes’ on US mainland
NORTH Korea has threatened to destroy the Unites States with a “barrage of concentrated strikes” in an astonishing rant in which they accuse Donald Trump of seeking to trigger World War 3. Express UK, By LAURA MOWAT North Korean newspaper, Rodung Sinmum, said Washington was trying to spark nuclear warfare by conducting military exercises on the doorstep of the rogue nation.
Tensions between the US and North Korea have reached boiling point in recent months and Pope Francis has stepped in to try and save the planet from nuclear war.
Ted Galen Carpenter, The United States and its allies continue to cajole and threaten North Korea to negotiate an agreement that would relinquish its growing nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. The latest verbal prodding came from President Trump during his joint press conference with South Korean president Moon Jae-in. Trumpurged Pyongyang to “come to the negotiating table,” and asserted that it “makes sense for North Korea to do the right thing.” The “right thing” Trump and his predecessors have always maintained, is for North Korea to become nonnuclear.
It is unlikely that the DPRK will ever return to nuclear virginity. Pyongyang has multiple reasons for retaining its nukes. For a country with an economy roughly the size of Paraguay’s, a bizarre political system that has no external appeal, and an increasingly antiquated conventional military force, a nuclear-weapons capability is the sole factor that provides prestige and a seat at the table of international affairs. There is one other crucial reason for the DPRK’s truculence, though. North Korean leaders simply do not trust the United States to honor any agreement that might be reached.
Unfortunately, there are ample reasons for such distrust. North Korean leaders have witnessed how the United States treats nonnuclear adversaries such asSerbia and Iraq. But it was the U.S.-led intervention in Libya in 2011 that underscored to Pyongyang why achieving and retaining a nuclear-weapons capability might be the only reliable way to prevent a regime-change war directed against the DPRK.
Partially in response to Washington’s war that ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, ostensibly because of a threat posed by Baghdad’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi seemed to capitulate regarding such matters. He signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in December of that year and agreed to abandon his country’s embryonic nuclear program. In exchange, the United States and its allies lifted economic sanctions and pledged that they no longer sought to isolate Libya. Qaddafi was welcomed back into the international community once he relinquished his nuclear ambitions.
That reconciliation lasted less than a decade. When one of the periodic domestic revolts against Qaddafi’s rule erupted again in 2011, Washington and its NATO partners argued that a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent (despite meager evidence of that scenario), and initiated a military intervention. It soon became apparent that the official justification to protect innocent civilians was a cynical pretext, and that another regime-change war was underway. The Western powers launched devastating air strikes and cruise-missile attacks against Libyan government forces. NATO also armed rebel units and assisted the insurgency in other ways.
Although all previous revolts had fizzled, extensive Western military involvement produced a very different result this time. The insurgents not only overthrew Qaddafi, they captured, tortured and executed him in an especially grisly fashion. Washington’s response was astonishingly flippant. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quipped: “We came, we saw, he died.”
The behavior of Washington and its allies in Libya certainly did not give any incentive to North Korea or other would-be nuclear powers to abandon such ambitions in exchange for U.S. paper promises for normal relations. Indeed, North Korea promptly cited the Libya episode as a reason why it needed a deterrent capability—a point that Pyongyang has reiterated several times in the years since Muammar el-Qaddafi ouster. There is little doubt that the West’s betrayal of Qaddafi has made an agreement with the DPRK to denuclearize even less attainable than it might have been otherwise. Even some U.S. officials concede that the Libya episode convinced North Korean leaders that nuclear weapons were necessary for regime survival.
The foundation for successful diplomacy is a country’s reputation for credibility and reliability. U.S. leaders fret that autocratic regimes—such as those in Iran and North Korea—might well violate agreements they sign. There are legitimate reasons for wariness, although in Iran’s case, the government appears to becomplying with its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Tehran signed with the United States and other major powers in 2015—despite allegations from U.S. hawks about violations.
When it comes to problems with credibility, though, U.S. leaders also need to look in the mirror. Washington’s conduct in Libya was a case of brazen duplicity. It is hardly a surprise if North Korea (or other countries) now regard the United States as an untrustworthy negotiating partner. Because of Pyongyang’s other reasons for wanting a nuclear capability, a denuclearization accord was always a long shot. But U.S. actions in Libya reduced prospects to the vanishing point. American leaders have only themselves to blame for that situation.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest, is the author or coauthor of ten books, including The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea. He also is the author of more than seven hundred articles and policy studies on international affairs.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., announced Wednesday that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing Nov. 14 to examine the president’s “authority to use nuclear weapons.”
Corker is one of Trump’s fiercest critics within his own party. The hearing represents a significant escalation of Corker’s concerns about the president’s temperament and fitness for office.
The hearing was announced less than a day after Trump delivered a speech in which he called the nuclear-armed North Korean dictatorship a “dark fantasy” and a “military cult.”
After months of questioning President Donald Trump’s temperament and fitness for office, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., announced Wednesday that he would convene a hearing to examine the president’s authority to use nuclear weapons.
The announcement of the Nov.14 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Corker chairs, amounts to a significant escalation of what has so far been a war of merely words between the powerful Republican and his party’s standard-bearer.
“A number of members both on and off our committee have raised questions about the authorities of the legislative and executive branches with respect to war making, the use of nuclear weapons, and conducting foreign policy overall,”Corker said in a statement Wednesday.
After months of questioning President Donald Trump’s temperament and fitness for office, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., announced Wednesday that he would convene a hearing to examine the president’s authority to use nuclear weapons.
The announcement of the Nov.14 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Corker chairs, amounts to a significant escalation of what has so far been a war of merely words between the powerful Republican and his party’s standard-bearer.
“A number of members both on and off our committee have raised questions about the authorities of the legislative and executive branches with respect to war making, the use of nuclear weapons, and conducting foreign policy overall,” Corker said in a statement Wednesday.
If President Trump were to order a nuclear strike, here’s what would happen
“This continues a series of hearings to examine those issues and will be the first time since 1976 that this committee or our House counterparts have looked specifically at the authority and process for using U.S. nuclear weapons. This discussion is long overdue, and we look forward to examining this critical issue,” Corker said.
The announcement came less than a day after Trump delivered a combative speech aimed at North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, in which the president called North Korea a “dark fantasy” and a “military cult.” Speaking in South Korea, Trump accused the hermit kingdom of being founded on “a deranged belief in the leader’s destiny to rule as parent-protector over a conquered Korean Peninsula and an enslaved Korean people.”
Trump’s insistence on engaging in brinkmanship with the nuclear-armed dictator has stunned many military and foreign policy professionals, who fear the president’s ego could lead the country down a path to war.
Some of those professionals are scheduled to testify at Tuesday’s hearing. One, Brian McKeon, is the former Acting Under Secretary for Policy at the Department of Defense under President Barack Obama, and a critic of Trump’s approach to nuclear-armed North Korea.
Another witness is retired Air Force General Robert Kehler, a former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command and an expert in nuclear weapons and the capabilities of America’s nuclear arsenal.
The third witness is Peter Feaver, a former director for Defense Policy and Arms Control at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration. In 2016, Feaver was one of nearly 50 Republican national security officials who signed a letter opposing Trump’s candidacy for president. Since then, Feaver has made no secret of the fact that he views Trump as a potential threat to national security.
“In a crisis, for instance with a nuclear-armed North Korea, Trump’s temperament could be problematic and could lead to dangerous escalation, whereas another President with better self-control might be able to manage it more safely,” Feaver told the Duke University Chronicle in August of last year.
A White House spokesman did not immediately respond late Wednesday to a request for comment on the hearing.
Feaver’s view is one that Corker has expressed repeatedly, not least when he called the White House “an adult day care center” last month in response to attacks from Trump.
As North Korean threat grows, Hawaii prepares for nuclear attack, LA Times ,Jaweed Kaleem Contact Reporter, 10 Nov 17, For decades, the wail of the nuclear bomb warning siren was ubiquitous in U.S. cities. Public service commercials drilled the “duck and cover” mantra into the minds of Americans, and the possibility of a Soviet attack was always around the corner.
But after the Cold War, most places abandoned their sirens. Fears of terrorism grew more urgent and, for many younger Americans, being on notice for nuclear war became a relic of the past.
That’s no longer the case in Hawaii.
Amid increasing North Korean threats against the U.S., Hawaii has launched the most aggressive effort in the country to prepare for attack. TV commercials warn the state’s 1.4 million residents to “get inside, stay inside” if a bomb drops. State officials are holding online forums and flying between islands for town halls to field questions from residents.
On Dec. 1, the nuclear attack warning siren will be heard in the state for the first time in more than three decades.
A North Korean bomb is “a major, major concern,” Vern Miyagi, the administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, said recently during a seminar he held for residents in a packed meeting room at the state’s Department of Defense offices in Honolulu. He painted a stark picture of what emergency officials expect if a nuclear missile was to reach Oahu.
“We are talking about 50,000 to 120,000 trauma and burn causalities together with nearly 18,000 fatalities,” Miyagi, the state’s chief expert on natural disasters and the North Korean threat, explained. The expected target: Pearl Harbor.
More accustomed to educating residents about hurricanes and tsunamis than atomic and hydrogen bombs, Miyagi displayed slides illustrating potential impact to the island from a 100-kiloton nuclear bomb detonated 1,000 feet above Honolulu. The explosion would hit an area about eight miles in diameter, he said. Ninety percent of people would survive the direct impact but could be hit by nuclear fallout and would have to navigate a crippled island…….. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hawaii-nuke-2017-story.html
Three reasons why Japan will likely continue to reject nuclear weapons, WP, By Mike MochizukiNovember 6 President Trump is visiting Tokyo on Monday at a time of renewed national security debates within Japan. North Korea’s recent missile launches and nuclear tests have again prompted discussion in Tokyo on Japan’s policy against becoming a nuclear state.
Although Japan has long had the technical ability to develop nuclear weapons — its “nuclear hedge” — it has refrained from doing so. Japan instead remains firmly committed to its 1967 Three Non-Nuclear Principles of not developing, not possessing and not introducing nuclear weapons.
This is not the first time that Japan has reexamined those principles. Similar debates transpired after China’s hydrogen bomb test in 1967, the Soviet Union’s deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles in Siberia during the 1980s and North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006.
Is this time different? Reacting to North Korea’s threatening behavior, former Japanese defense minister Shigeru Ishiba stated in September that Japan should at least debate the decision not to permit the introduction of nuclear weapons on Japanese territory. Ishiba implied that Tokyo should consider asking Washington to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Japan.
This latest debate is likely to end in the same way as previous debates, however. Japan will continue to adhere to its Three Non-Nuclear Principles and forswear nuclear weapons. Here are three reasons for that:
1) Staying non-nuclear is part of Japan’s national identity
The Three Non-Nuclear Principles are a clear part of Japan’s national identity, not simply a policy preference. Repeated polls indicate overwhelming popular support for the three principles in Japan. A 2014 Asahi newspaper poll revealed that support for the principles had risen to 82 percent, compared with 78 percent in a 1988 poll. Despite growing concerns about North Korea’s nuclear program and China’s military power during this period, Japanese support for remaining non-nuclear actually increased…….
2) Powerful players in Japanese politics can block nuclear acquisition
In addition to public opposition to nuclear weapons, Japan has significant “veto players” — crucial political or economic actors that are likely to block efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Japan has a robust nuclear energy industry. But public acceptance of nuclear energy in the 1950s resulted from a fundamental political bargain: nuclear energy, but no nuclear weapons……
3) Japan has good national security reasons to stay non-nuclear
There’s also a realist security calculation to consider. North Korean nuclearization is alarming, but it does not pose such an acute danger that Japanese leaders will be motivated to pay the high political costs necessary to weaken, much less revoke, the Three Non-Nuclear Principles.
North Korea acquiring the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon against the United States may weaken the protective U.S. nuclear umbrella somewhat, but U.S. nuclear and conventional military capabilities should be adequate to deter a North Korean nuclear attack on Japan……
Vatican to host nuclear disarmament conference, CNA, By Hannah Brockhaus, Vatican City, Nov 7, 2017 (CNA/EWTN News).– The Vatican is preparing for a conference on nuclear disarmament this week in the wake of an international effort to ban nuclear weapons.
Hosted by the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, the Nov. 10-11 conference will explore solutions and prospects for a world free of nuclear weapons and integral disarmament, in cohesion with Pope Francis’ emphasis on promoting peace.
In a Nov. 7 Vatican communique Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the dicastery, said the event “responds to the priorities of Pope Francis to take action for world peace and to use the resources of creation for a sustainable development and to improve the quality of life for all, individuals and countries, without discrimination.”
At the International Atomic Energy Agency conference in Vienna in September, department secretary Msgr. Bruno Marie Duffé also emphasized the importance of the “moral responsibility of the States” and the challenge of a “common strategy of dialogue” invoked by Pope Francis.
The international symposium represents “the first global gathering on Atomic Disarmament” after the approval of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was passed in New York July 7.
Until the treaty, nuclear weapons were the only weapons of mass destruction not explicitly banned by any international document.
The treaty passed with 122 votes in favor and one abstention, Singapore. However, 69 countries – all the nuclear weapon states and NATO members except the Netherlands – did not take part in the vote.
One of the conference’s speakers Saturday will be Masako Wada, one of the last survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear attack and an assistant secretary general of Nihon Hidankyo, a confederation of nuclear weapons and experiments victims.
US officials requested a detailed assessment of the consequences of a North Korean war
The assessment says an invasion is the only way to disarm North Korea with certainty
The statement says millions could die in days and that chemical weapons may be used
The Joint Chief of Staffs directly advise the US President on military matters
In a letter to the Pentagon, two House Democrats had asked about casualty assessments in a possible conflict with North Korea, and Rear Admiral Michael J Dumont of the Joint Staff responded on behalf of the Defence Department.
“It is our intent to have a full public accounting of the potential cost of war, so the American people understand the commitment we would be making as a nation if we were to pursue military action,” the representatives’ letter said.
“We have not heard detailed analysis of expected US or allied force casualties, expected civilian casualties, what plans exist for the aftermath of a strike — including continuity of the South Korean Government.”
In his response, Mr Dumont noted that the United States’ military and intelligence agencies are evaluating North Korea’s ability to target heavily populated areas of South Korea with long-range artillery, rockets and ballistic missiles.
“A classified briefing would be the best place to discuss in detail the capability of the US and its allies,” Mr Dumont’s letter said.
“[And] to discuss capabilities to counter North Korea’s ability to respond with a nuclear weapon and eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons located in deeply buried, underground facilities.”
In his response, Mr Dumont highlighted that Seoul, the South Korean capital with a population of 25 million, was just 55 kilometres from the demilitarised zone(DMZ) that separates the two Koreas. The amount of casualties would differ depending on the advance warning and the ability of US and South Korea forces to counter these attacks.
Mr Dumont also highlighted the possibility that chemical and biological weapons might be used by the North in case of a conflict.
In the US military the Joint Chiefs of Staff directly advise the President on military matters.
Responding in a joint statement, 15 Democratic officials and one Republican — all military veterans — called Mr Dumont’s assessment that a ground invasion would be required to destroy the North’s nuclear arsenal “chilling” and “deeply disturbing”.
“The Joint Chiefs of Staff has now confirmed that the only way to destroy North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is through a ground invasion,” the joint statement said. That is deeply disturbing and could result in hundreds of thousands, or even millions of deaths in just the first few days of fighting.
“Their assessment underscores what we’ve known all along: there are no good military options for North Korea.”
They also noted that the Trump administration “has failed to articulate any plans to prevent the military conflict from expanding beyond the Korean Peninsula and to manage what happens after the conflict is over”.
“With that in mind, the thought of sending troops into harm’s way and expending resources on another potentially unwinnable war is chilling,” they said.
“The President needs to stop making provocative statements that hinder diplomatic options and put American troops further at risk.”
Speaking to CNN overnight, Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the assessment “bleak”, but added that she was pleased that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was accompanying President Donald Trump during his trip to Asia, where North Korea is the main issue on the agenda.
“I think if he will stay the course and use diplomacy the way diplomacy can be used, then it might be possible to work something out,” Ms Feinstein said.
“The worst alternative is a war which could become nuclear.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance on a nuclear weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang September 3, 2017. KCNA via REUTERS
NORTH Korea says there will be no more talking. Instead, Kim Jong-un has sent an ominous warning to Donald Trump.news.com.au, Star writers, AFP, AP, 4 Nov 17 NORTH Korea ruled out talks and threatened to increase its nuclear arsenal in a fresh warning to Donald Trump’s administration as the US President set off on a tour of Asia.
Trump departed for his first presidential trip to Asia Friday, with tensions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats looming large. He is due to arrive in South Korea Tuesday, after first visiting Japan.
The North’s state-run KCNA news agency said in a commentary that the US should be disabused of the “absurd idea” that Pyongyang would succumb to international sanctions and give up its nuclear weapons, adding that it is in “the final stage for completing nuclear deterrence”.
“It had better stop daydreaming of denuclearisation talks with us”, said the commentary titled “Stop dreaming a daydream”.
“Our self-defensive nuclear treasure sword will be sharpened evermore unless the US hostile policy toward the DPRK is abolished once and for all”, it said, using an acronym for the official name of North Korea.
The White House said Trump will deliver a speech at South Korea’s National Assembly and urge “common resolve in the face of shared threat”.
But there is widespread concern in South Korea that the US president’s visit might worsen the situation if Trump fails to rein in his fierce rhetoric.
Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-un have traded insults and threats of war in recent months.
“Because of his tendency to veer off the script, many Koreans are worried that he may let loose”, Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies told AFP.
A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate puts the bill for modernization of the nuclear weapons complex and arsenal at $1.2 trillion over 30 years. This new estimate—a significant increase over previous suggestions of the cost for rebuilding the US triad of land, submarine, and bomber-based nuclear forces—has drawn much comment. But the CBO estimate avoids including funds for environmental restoration and waste management of the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons complex—funding that is also in the Congressional Atomic Defense Activities Account that supports the department’s nuclear weapons activities. If these legacy costs are included, then the total price tag goes to $1.74 trillion over three decades. (See figure 1.)
Figure 1
An analysis of the annual costs for nuclear warhead services and systems from fiscal years 2003 2018 (in 2017 dollars) shows that over the past 15 years, the United States has spent nearly $33 billion a year on a dwindling nuclear stockpile. Even though the U.S. Nuclear weapons stockpile has shrunk by 60 percent since 2003, the annual per-warhead cost has increased by about 422 percent. (See figure 2.)
Figure 2
These estimated costs for environmental cleanup are likely on the lower end of the eventual tab, because the Energy Department’s large infrastructure of abandoned facilities has been ignored for decades. Abandoned and antiquated structures constitute a fast-growing overhead expense for the weapons complex, which must pay for building collapses, flooding, and fires, and for preventive work that, for example, keeps roofs on vacant buildings from falling in. In 2015, the Energy Department inspector general warned that, “delays in the cleanup and disposition of contaminated excess facilities expose the department, its employees and the public to ever-increasing levels of risk [and] lead to escalating disposition costs.”
For instance, the Y-12 nuclear weapons site Oak Ridge,Tenn., has abandoned contaminated structures, mostly built in the 1940’s, that inhabit a footprint 2.5 times larger than the Pentagon building. In December 2016, the cost to get rid of 2,349 Energy Department abandoned facilities over the next 10 years was roughly estimated at $32 billion.The Energy Department reports that among those buildings are 203 unattended “high risk” facilities, estimated to cost $11.6 billion to deal with. And sometimes the risk becomes reality, the most recent example being the collapse of the PUREX Tunnel at the Hanford Site in Washington State; the tunnel holds an enormous amount of radioactive waste, and its collapse forced workers to seek cover at at the Hanford site. The Energy Department estimates that another 1,000 abandoned facilities will be added to the list of those needing cleanup over the coming decade. Disposition costs for the large amounts of hazardous wastes in the abandoned structures are not included in the department’s 2016 estimate and are likely to add several billion dollars more to the ultimate bill.
To be sure, these legacy costs are not specifically related to nuclear modernization. But so long as the United States continues to support and, perhaps, rebuild a large nuclear weapons complex, the costs of the complex as a whole will continue—and continue to increase. Decisions on modernization need to take these legacy costs into account because they will inevitably affect the amount of money available to the US defense effort, and, very importantly, to the protection of the health and safety of workers in the weapons complex, and the American public.
Last month, the Norwegian Nobel Committee handed a group dedicated to abolishing nuclear weapons its Peace Prize. Now, the Swedish government is looking into expanding its existing network of nuclear fallout shelters, according to news website the Local. A first proposal was included in a report released several weeks ago and followed a review of existing shelters this year, Swedish officials confirmed Friday, saying that the proposed changes were still under consideration by the government.
Sweden has 65,000 shelters, which would provide space for up to 7 million people, but that leaves an estimated 3 million inhabitants without protection.
At least one European country takes the risk of a nuclear war even more seriously: Switzerland may have fewer people than Sweden, but it has built about four times as many nuclear shelters — easily enough for the country’s entire population and then some.
In Sweden and elsewhere, the nuclear shelters are also supposed to protect the population from other hazards, like a biological weapons attack or more-conventional warfare. Often located in publicly accessible buildings, such as schools or shopping centers, they can usually also be used as storage sites or garages and are funded with taxpayer money.
In contrast, in Switzerland all houses above a certain size must include shelters in the basement, putting the financial burden on citizens themselves. That rule was abolished in 2011 by the Swiss parliament, but reintroduced months later after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.
The accident brought back memories of Chernobyl in 1986, and led to a renewed public debate in Europe over the risk of radiation. In Germany — where public shelters are far less common than in Sweden or Switzerland — Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to abandon nuclear energy entirely, despite having championed it for decades. It was her biggest political U-turn in her now 12 years in office.
Such preparations and protective measures may appear strange to Americans. Public nuclear shelters are practically nonexistent in the United States, although there have been recent reports of an increase in demand.
Until recently, few Swedes knew the location of the closest nuclear shelter in their neighborhood. (The government now offers an online map.) Sweden stopped expanding its shelter network almost two decades ago, when nonproliferation supporters appeared to be on the winning side of history. Then came Iran’s nuclear program, the Fukushima accident, Russian military operations, North Korea’s missile tests — and President Trump.
Whereas confidence among Europeans that President Barack Obama would “do the right thing regarding world affairs” ranged between 70 and 90 percent in a number of surveyed nations during his term, those numbers plummeted after Trump’s inauguration and have only gone down since. Only 7 percent in Spain and 11 percent in Germany now say they have confidence in Trump. Top officials in Germany have also directly contradicted Trump’s North Korea policies, and have voiced concerns that the White House may overreact to nuclear provocations and escalate the war rhetoric being exchanged with North Korea.
Europeans are similarly worried that decades-long nonproliferation efforts could be dismantled virtually overnight, leading to a new arms race. In 2009, the Obama administration negotiated a treaty with Russia in which both countries agreed to cap the number of deployed warheads. Trump reportedly called the agreement a bad deal in his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year, although administration officials have since backtracked.
Sweden’s new shelter locations indicate that at least some of the concerns are connected to Russia. One of the regions where most new shelters are expected to be constructed in the coming years is the island of Gotland, where military defenses were recently expanded with the declared aim of stopping a possible Russian invasion.
To understand what drives America’s frighteningly militaristic stance and warmongering, follow the money. After the Cold War ended, US negotiators promised Mikhail Gorbachev that America would not enlarge NATO, and the world enjoyed a period of relative peace. But the United States reneged on its promise a few short years later: “No war” was bad for business! In 1997 Norman Augustine, the head of Lockheed Martin, traveled to Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the other newly liberated Eastern European countries and asked: Do you want to join NATO and be a democracy? (Joining NATO doesn’t make you a democracy.) But in order to join NATO, these small countries had to spend billions of dollars to buy weapons.
That’s the dynamic that instigated NATO’s expansion from the end of the Cold War to the present time — right up to the border of Russia.
Despite Donald Trump’s vows to seal the US border and eradicate ISIS, the real terrorists of the world today are the United States and Russia. They possess 94 percent of the nuclear weapons on the planet, and they hold the rest of the world hostage to their provocative and self-serving foreign policies and misadventures. As a result, we are closer to nuclear war now, at the start of the twenty-first century, than we’ve ever been before, even during the height of the Cold War.
While we must be concerned about global warming — the other existential threat to the planet — it is imperative that we do not take our eyes off the nuclear threat. To do so is to risk sleepwalking to Armageddon. Continue reading →
Defector: US strike would trigger automatic North Korea retaliation, Miltary Times, By: Matthew Pennington, The Associated Press WASHINGTON 2 Nov 17 — A high-ranking North Korean defector told a congressional hearing Wednesday that a pre-emptive U.S. military strike on the country would trigger automatic retaliation, with the North unleashing artillery and short-range missile fire on South Korea.
The testimony from Thae Yong Ho, former deputy chief of mission at the North Korean Embassy in London, underscored the high risk in using military force against North Korea. The Trump administration has said this is among its options in stopping leader Kim Jong Un from perfecting a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the United States.
Thae, the highest-level North Korean defector in two decades, appeared to confirm what has long been suspected but rarely articulated by U.S. officials — that even a selective American strike could rain a potentially devastating North Korean military response on the South Korean capital and its environs, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the heavily militarized frontier.
Thae, who is making his first visit to Washington since his defection last year, said the U.S. and allied South Korea would win a war after a preventive military strike on the North, but there would be a “human sacrifice” inflicted on the South from the “tens of thousands” of artillery guns and short-range missiles the North has at the frontier.
“North Korean officers are trained to press their button without any further instructions from the general command if anything happens on their side,” Thae told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, referring to a U.S. bombing or military strike. “We have to remember that tens of millions of South Korean population are living 70 to 80 kilometers away from this military demarcation line.”
He urged Washington to use “soft power” instead …….
Thae’s comments come ahead of President Donald Trump’s five-nation trip to Asia that will include a stop in South Korea. The U.S. administration says it seeks a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff but “all options” are on the table. Trump has threatened the total destruction of North Korea if the U.S. is forced to defend itself or its allies.
A Congressional Research Service report published last week said that conservative estimates anticipate that in the first hours of a conflict, North Korean artillery situated along the frontier could cause tens of thousands of casualties in South Korea, where at least 100,000 and possibly as many as 500,000 Americans live — including nearly 30,000 U.S. troops. It said a protracted conflict, particularly one in which North Korea uses its nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, could cause enormous casualties on a greater scale.
Some analysts contend the risk of Kim acquiring a nuclear weapon capable of targeting the U.S. homeland is greater than the risks associated with the outbreak of a regional war, the report said.
