nuclear-news

USA Mayors’ unanimous call to redirect nuclear weapons spending to social benefit

Mayors for Peace is an international organization of cities, dedicated for the promotion of peace that was established in 1982.

In 2004, 2006 and each year since, the USCM has “adopted increasingly stronger resolutions calling on the president to commence negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020, as urged by Mayors for Peace, an international association headed by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” reports the Baltimore Sun.

“This year’s Mayors for Peace resolution calls on Congress to slash nuclear weapons spending and to redirect those funds to meet the urgent needs of cities,” the Sun says. “The resolution was adopted unanimously, without debate.”

June 26, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Obama’s offensive first nuclear strike policy

Obama Prepares to Wage Offensive, First-strike Strategic Nuclear Warfare against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Syria http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-prepares-to-wage-offensive-first-strike-strategic-nuclear-warfare-against-russia-china-iran-north-korea-and-syria/5340299 By Francis A. Boyle Global Research, June 24, 2013   I  have now had the chance to read Obama’s recently released Report on Nuclear Employment Strategy of the United States, (June 21, 2013).  The critical passage can be found on page 5:

  “The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review established the Administration’s goal to set conditions that would allow the United States to safely adopt a policy of making deterrence of nuclear attack the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons. Although we cannot  adopt such a policy today, the new guidance re-iterates the intention to work towards that goal over time.”

In other words, “nuclear deterrence” is not now and has not been the policy of the Obama administration going back to and including  their 2010 Nuclear Posture Review as well. Since “nuclear deterrence” is not now and has never been the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons  policy from the get-go, then by default this means that offensive first-strike  strategic  nuclear war  fighting is now and has always been the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons policy.

This policy will also be pursued and augmented by means of “integrated non-nuclear strike options.” (Ibid).

Therefore the entire 2013 NPR and Obama’s recent nuclear arms “reduction”  proposals must be understood within this context of the United States pursuing an offensive, strategic first-strike  nuclear war-fighting capability as augmented by non-nuclear strike forces: Continue reading →

June 25, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Congressmen in the dark about USA’s nuclear weapons tally

VIDEO  How Many Nuclear Weapons Does the US Have? Don’t Ask a Congressman By Chris Good Jun 21, 2013 As it turns out, some members of Congress don’t know how many nuclear weapons the United States has.

Nukes are back in the news this week after President Obama renewed his call to significantly cut the U.S. arsenal, telling a crowd in Berlin Wednesday that he wants to reduce deployed U.S. and Russian nukes by one-third.

Global Zero, a group that promotes eliminating all nuclear weapons, asked a few lawmakers how many nukes are in the U.S. stockpile. Some said they didn’t know; others gave inaccurate numbers.

The above video includes interviews with Republican Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri; Phil Gingrey of  Georgia; Morgan Griffith of Virginia; Steve Womack of Arkansas; Rob Wittman of Virginia; Tom McClintock of California; Duncan Hunter of California; Mark Amodei of Nevada; Bill Flores of Texas; Democratic Reps. Donald Payne Jr. of New Jersey and John Garamendi of California; and New Progressive Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi.

Global Zero says the United States has 7,700 nuclear warheads, citing a Federation of American Scientists report. The Department of Defense disclosed in 2012 that “as of September 30, 2009, the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons consisted of 5,113 warheads.”

June 22, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The USA’s nuclear triad bombers, ICBMs, and ballistic missile submarines.

Triad And True…Time, By Mark Thompson _ June 21, 2013 How much could be saved by trimming the U.S. nuclear triad…and at what cost to U.S. security?  President Obama’s call this week to cut the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by one-third has a certain symmetry to it, given the fact that if war broke out between them, the U.S. would use three different kinds of weapons to rain atomic fire down on the Russians: bombers, land-based missiles, and submarine-launched missiles.

More than 20 years after the Cold War, that’s the way it’s going to stay, according to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. “The United States will pursue negotiated reductions with Russia,” Hagel said Wednesday in a speech at the University of Nebraska – his alma mater – in Omaha, also the home of the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the nation’s strategic nuclear forces. “As we pursue these reductions, let me emphasize three things — three things that will not change. First, the U.S. will maintain a ready and credible deterrent. Second, we will retain a triad of bombers, ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), and ballistic missile submarines. Third, we will make sure that our nuclear weapons remain safe, secure, ready and effective.”

We will retain a triad of bombers, ICBMs, and ballistic missile submarines.

Why?

The nuclear triad is a creation of the Cold War, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were busy building nuclear bombs to destroy one another. Each concluded that having three separate systems to deliver those weapons was key to deterrence. It meant that a surprise attack on the other side’s nuclear forces would be complicated to the point of futility.

But the Cold War is over, and debate over the U.S. triad has heated up because all three of its legs need to be modernized: new bombers and submarines costing perhaps $100 billion or more are on the drawing boards, and the Air Force is spending $7 billion to update its Minuteman missiles, with plans to replace them after 2030. And just what potential foe out there has the means – never mind the desire — to wipe out even a single leg of the U.S. nuclear force?

With the Pentagon budget in decline, amputating a leg of the triad would surely save money. But the dollars are tough to nail down, and spread among hundreds of U.S. government accounts. Figuring out precisely how much might be saved is challenging: triad boosters tend to minimize the cost ($10 billion annually to operate!), while those eager to jettison nuclear weapons tend to maximize them (more like $56 billion when you include the cost of replacing the aging systems used to actually deliver them!). It’s a safe bet the truth is somewhere in-between. … http://nation.time.com/2013/06/21/triad-and-true/#ixzz2WyxyT6RD

June 22, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

USA’s B61 bomb – useless and a waste of money

The nuclear bomb we don’t need, L A Times, By Steve Andersen June 6, 2013 The American B61 is a massively expensive investment that provides no real military capability and no real deterrence in today’s Europe………s President Obama prepares to unveil a nuclear weapons policy initiative for his second term, no one is suggesting that the United States should slash defense spending to Russian levels. Defense cuts of that size would be inconsistent with the national interests of America and its allies. But policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic ought to be more inclined than they have been to trim defense programs tailored for a Cold War that has been over for two decades, in particular during an era of sequestration in Washington and austerity in Europe.

Enter the American B61 nuclear bomb …… Throughout the Cold War, thousands of tactical nuclear weapons — short-range nuclear artillery shells, missiles and bombs — were deployed by the United States to deter the Soviets from exploiting their advantages in Europe to mount a lightning attack.

It worked. After the Soviet Union collapsed, President George H. W. Bush ordered the return of almost all U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, leaving only a few hundred air-delivered gravity bombs — the B61 — in European bunkers.

Over the last 20 years, the military rationale for continuing these deployments has evaporated. …..When allocating limited defense resources against real defense priorities, including Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, Syria, nuclear proliferation, terrorism — today’s “guns versus guns” measurements — the B61 simply doesn’t pass muster……   If Americans understood that their government plans to spend about the same amount of money this year, $537 million, on the B61 bomb as it will spend on Alzheimer’s research, while financing nearly three-quarters of NATO’s military spending, the B61 would deservedly become a dead man walking.

So who will make this case? Four American statesmen — George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn — who in a landmark 2007 Op-Ed article called for “eliminating short-range nuclear weapons designed to be forward deployed” — laid the foundation. Since then, a number of European senior statesmen — including defense and foreign secretaries across the political spectrum — have echoed their call.

Obama should connect the dots as part of an initiative to implement the ambitious agenda for nuclear threat reduction he laid out in Prague four years ago, which was endorsed by NATO. Or even better, maybe it will be a European leader who has the iron to seize the initiative and call attention to the obvious: In today’s Europe, tactical nuclear weapons make no sense. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-andreasen-nuclear-bomb-20130606,0,4306971.story

June 8, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

America did more nuclear weapons tests than all other countries put together

America Leads the World in Nuclear Tests The Diplomat By Zachary Keck June 6, 2013 The United States has conducted more nuclear weapon tests than the rest of the world combined, according to a new analysis published on Real Clear Science.

Real Clear Science compiled a list counting the number of tests each country that is known have conducted nuclear tests has carried out since the dawn of the nuclear era.

The United States leads the pack with 1,032 nuclear weapons tests, with Russia (including the Soviet Union) coming in at a distant second with 715 tests. France has conducted the third most with 198 tests, while China and the United Kingdom have both carried out 45 of them.

After that the numbers drop off even more substantially with India having carried out three confirmed tests and six claimed ones, North Korea’s three tests since 2009, and Pakistan having carried out two confirmed tests and six claimed ones, according to Real Clear Science. Although not included on the list, Israel is widely believed to have carried out a covert nuclear test off the coast of South Africa in 1979, which was captured by the U.S. Vela satellite.

Counting Israel’s test and India and Pakistan’s confirmed tests, the world excluding U.S. has carried out 1,012 tests. If India and Pakistan’s non-confirmed tests are included, that number rises to 1,019.

Thus the U.S. has carried out either twenty or thirteen more nuclear tests than the rest of the world combined, according to the Real Clear Science data….. http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/06/06/america-leads-the-world-in-nuclear-tests/

June 6, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment