Democrats to Keep Unconditional Military Aid to Israel in Party Platform

by Kyle Anzalone | Jul 10, 2024, https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/dems-to-keep-unconditional-military-aid-to-israel-in-party-platform/

A senior Joe Biden administration official explained that the Democratic party has no plans to alter its policy of unconditional arms support for Israel. President Biden has provided Israel with billions of dollars in weapons since October 7, including over ten thousand heavy bombs.

After an internal DNC debate over the party’s plank on arms shipments to Israel, an official explained that President Biden has no plans to change the policy that allows weapons to flow to Tel Aviv with no conditions on how they are used. “The platform will reflect the views of the president of the United States, and cutting aid to Israel is not President Biden’s policy,” the official said.

Over the past nine months, the White House has sent Israel over $6.5 billion in arms, including tens of thousands of bombs. Fourteen thousand of those munitions are massive one-tonne bombs. American-made bombs have contributed to the enormous death toll that has surpassed 38,000.

While American weapons have been documented to have been used in Israeli attacks on civilian targets in Gaza, the White House has maintained that Tel Aviv has not violated US laws. President Biden has no plans to curtail arms shipments except for one shipment of heavy bombs.

A growing number of Democratic voters have broken with the president over his unfettered support for the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. An April poll found about 40% of Democrats believe Biden has given Israel too much support.

Biden is a self-proclaimed Zionist and has been a vocal supporter of Israel for decades. Over his career, the president has frequently claimed that Israel is so vital to American security that if it did not exist, the US would have to create Israel.

However, the argument that Israel contributes to American security is rebuked by the head of the State Department Intelligence agency, Brett Holmgren. The Assistant Secretary of State explained that the Israeli war on Gaza is driving recruitment into jihadist organizations and inspiring lone-wolf terrorists.

July 17, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

North Korea tests new nuclear-capable underwater drone

Canberra Times, By Soo-Hyang Choi and Ju-Min Park, March 24 2023

North Korea has tested a new nuclear-capable underwater attack drone, as leader Kim Jong-un warned joint military drills by South Korea and the United States should stop.

The drone cruised underwater at a depth of 80 to 150 metres for more than 59 hours and detonated a non-nuclear payload in waters off its east coast on Thursday, North Korean state news agency KCNA said on Friday.

Analysts say North Korea is showing off its increasingly diverse nuclear threats to Washington and Seoul, though they are sceptical whether the underwater vehicle is ready for deployment.

North Korea intends to signal “to the United States and South Korea that in a war, the potential vectors of nuclear weapons delivery that the allies would have to worry about and target would be vast,” said Ankit Panda, senior fellow at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“There would be silos, railcars, submarines and road mobile missile launchers and now they’re adding this underwater torpedo to the mix,” he said………………………………………………………… more https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8134654/north-korea-tests-new-nuclear-capable-underwater-drone/—

July 17, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | North Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear War Is Imminent

Unless the U.S. Embraces Peace – and Soon!

by Gerry Condon, July 15, 2024, https://original.antiwar.com/Gerry_Condon/2024/07/14/nuclear-war-is-imminent/

The world is headed toward nuclear war. The horrific nightmare of global destruction that has haunted humanity ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki is nearly upon us. For decades, peace activists and nuclear experts have warned about the “growing danger of nuclear war.” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of their Doomsday Clock all the way to 90 seconds! How much closer can we get? Are these dire warnings being dismissed like the man with the sign shouting “The End Is Near?”

The original nuclear powers, the U.S., Russia, China, France and the UK – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – never followed the commitment they made when they signed and ratified the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which required them to “begin good-faith negotiations for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.” Instead they have poured billions of dollars into “modernizing” nuclear weapons. In the meantime, four more countries have joined the nuclear club – India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

After the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact military alliance of the Soviet Union, there was an opportunity for a broad peace in Europe. NATO, an anti-Soviet military alliance led by the U.S., should have disbanded at that point. Instead, it pursued an aggressive policy against a weakened Russia, surrounding it with hostile military forces, including nuclear weapons.

In 2002, President George W. Bush unilaterally removed the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, while placing a U.S. missile base in Romania. In 2019, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that had lowered nuclear tensions in Europe, while placing another U.S. missile base in Poland. What were the Russians to think? The U.S. is clearly seeking a dominant nuclear position.

Neoconservative war hawks – or “Neocons” – have captured the foreign policy machinery of Democratic and Republican administrations. Given the declining economic power of the U.S. vis-à-vis a rising China, the Neocons believe the U.S. must aggressively employ its military superiority to maintain global dominance. The U.S. maintains 850 foreign military bases in over 80 countries (compared to a handful each for Russia and China).

Western politicians and pundits frequently accuse Russian president Vladimir Putin of making “nuclear threats.” Indeed, Putin keeps reminding the world of Russia’s nuclear rules of engagement. Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first if it is attacked by the superior conventional forces of NATO. The U.S. has a similar nuclear posture – it will use nuclear weapons first, even against non-nuclear threats such as a cyber-attack. As Daniel Ellsberg reminded us, to possess nuclear weapons is to use them every day, like a gun pointed at someone’s head.

Apparently oblivious to the imminent threat of nuclear war, President Biden continues to pour billions of dollars of weapons into its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, while blocking peace negotiations. The Biden administration is simultaneously sending billions in weapons to Israel as it commits a horrific and ongoing genocide in Gaza. Israel threatens other Middle Eastern countries with its U.S.-backed military, including nuclear weapons. Can anybody now doubt that they would use them?

The Neocons are also actively preparing for a war against China. The U.S. is encouraging Taiwan’s independence from China, conducting provocative “freedom of navigation” operations in the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, and building anti-China military alliances throughout the Pacific. One of the few foreign policy debates in Congress is which war should take precedence – the war against Russia or the war against China. Both are nuclear powers. Then there is the joint US/South Korean military exercises aimed at the “decapitation” of the government of North Korea, another nuclear power. What could possibly go wrong?

The threat of nuclear war does not exist in a vacuum. It is directly related to aggressive military competition, much of it being driven by the U.S. Nuclear annihilation will come from a specific war, whether by miscalculation, accident or otherwise.

If we are serious about avoiding a nuclear war, we must demand that the U.S. stops sending weapons to Ukraine and Israel, and instead supports ceasefires and negotiations to stop the killing. We must call for an end to the reckless U.S. confrontation with China and North Korea. It is critically important that these conflicts are ended as soon as possible and replaced with negotiations for peaceful co-existence.

In the longer run, as detailed in the Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. must make a sea change in its foreign policy. We must stop intervening in other countries. We must stop playing “nuclear chicken.” We must demand a peaceful U.S. foreign policy that respects the sovereignty of all nations and the human rights of all people.

The U.S. should sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and reach out to the other nuclear powers, saying “let’s all get rid of our nuclear weapons together.” Let’s pursue the interests of all humanity by replacing competition with cooperation. Let’s stop spending precious resources on the military and take care of our peoples’ needs instead. Let’s work together to stop global warming, the other imminent existential threat. In order to avoid nuclear annihilation – and climate catastrophe too – we must abolish war once and for all.

Gerry Condon is a Vietnam-era veteran and war resister who serves on the Board of Directors of Veterans For Peace and coordinates its Nuclear Abolition Working Group.

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July 16, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Exposing the Myth of the ‘Good War’

BY NICKY REID, CounterPunch 12 July 24

America has a problem but don’t worry, because we can stop anytime we want. I speak of course of America’s bottomless appetite for warfare, the fact that we can’t seem to go fifteen minutes without lighting up a third world country like a fucking spliff. But this doesn’t make us addicts, we just like to fuck around and blow shit up once in a while to let off some steam after a long day. I mean, we quit Afghanistan after like twenty years and we kind of quit Iraq. We could totally go cold turkey and put America first if we wanted too.

But let’s just send a few more bombs to Ukraine first. And maybe just one more drone strike in Somalia, you know, for old times’ sake. And then maybe just a quick invasion of Haiti and another freedom of navigation drill in the South China Sea and a few more sanctions on North Korea and a couple more NATO members and another base in Okinawa and a quick quagmire in Yemen and a few more child soldiers in Rojava and just one goddamn holocaust in the Holy Land, maybe two, or three, or five, or fuck it, give us World War Three!

OK, so maybe America has a tiny little addiction. Oh, let’s just face it, we’re fucking war junkies, Sid and Nancy grade shit, sucking off Raytheon behind the missile silo for just one last fix. But as long as we’re having this moment of clarity here, why don’t we just put it all on the table right now. We may be an empire of fiends who crave war crimes like a baby craves tits, but this is far from a new condition, and we are all infected. Even your average marching pacifist in this country seems to view America’s appetite for destruction as little more than an aberration in an otherwise stoic national history and every so-called non-interventionist seems to carry room in their heart for at least one exception that proves the rule. That one good war, you know, the one where we played the good guys for real and saved the day for just one bright shining moment.

But this is all bullshit. Every single American war has been bullshit. They all come with different excuses and some of them are pretty goddamn convincing but every major conflict that this country has ever engaged in has been motivated by greed and power, and every single war we’ve fought has ended the exact same way, with piles of bodies, fewer civil rights, and a growing thirst for more.

Even our so-called Revolution, which so many otherwise peaceful libertarians hold in such high regard, was little more than another blood thirsty power grab. Let me be frank here, even I can get behind a good old-fashioned grass roots revolution as an act of societal self-defense, but the idea that you can have any kind of real revolution on illegally occupied territory is absurd. The American Revolution was really more of a colonial mutiny. A bunch of slave-trading Indian killers got tired of kicking up to the Crown and after catching wind that the British were making moves to curtail some of their slave trading and Indian killing, they went all Colonel Kurtz on their ass and declared their encampment to be a sovereign nation…………………………………………………………………………………………….

And then of course we have our sainted World Wars, where America the indispensable saved humanity from fascism in the name of world peace and global democracy. Yeah, sorry progressives, but that’s just more imperial bullshit. The First World War was a senseless imperial clusterfuck with a bunch of antiquated empires like France, Germany, Russia, and the UK clawing each other’s eyes out over their dwindling spheres of influence. After about three years of this shit, everybody involved was pretty much ready to call it quits and negotiate a settlement. Then Woodrow Wilson jumped into the mosh pit to keep the bloodbath running so he could achieve his dream of establishing America as a progressive global superpower and use his massive new war powers to reorganize the economy beneath a cartel of massive corporations while simultaneously reorganizing the Constitution beneath an engorged police state.

That white devil also set the stage for the next World War by putting all the debt from the first one on Germany with the Treaty of Versailles. But wasn’t America attacked at Pearl Harbor? Technically, yes, but FDR and his thugs went out of their way to make this attack inevitable, goading the Japanese with a crippling oil embargo, shaming their Diet when they visited Washington to negotiate, and placing the US Pacific Fleet on their doorstep by relocating it to the recently colonized territory of Hawaii. Germany never would have declared war on the US if it wasn’t for Pearl Harbor. Hitler had already basically lost the war in Stalingrad and was actually pretty committed to avoiding stretching himself any thinner in the Atlantic.

But the US wanted to finish what Wilson started. So, once again, we jumped into another imperial bloodbath between dueling monsters at the last minute to cravenly poach the spoils of war and we did so with a campaign of shocking terrorist attacks designed to send a message to the world that we were the Nazis now. Entire cities were torched to the ground in massive napalm attacks. 100,000 people in Tokyo, another 600,000 in Hamburg, Dresden, and Cologne. By 1945, Japan was begging for a peace deal, but we dropped two nuclear bombs on them anyway just to make sure that Stalin got the message.

Sound like a pretty good fucking war to you?

Over the decades, the battlefields and the boogeymen kept changing but the results were always the same. Another 4 million people burnt alive in Korea, another 5 million in Vietnam, dictators and death squads and mujahadeen armed to the teeth and trained in butchery, all in the name of fighting the evils of communism. But then communism falls, and we start more wars with those same dictators and death squads and mujahadeen. The so-called War on Terror creates another killing field for another 4.7 million bodies and America gets bigger, our corporations get richer, and our police state becomes more severe.

Enough! Enough bullshit wars already. America needs to end this demented addiction before it ends us all in a nuclear overdose. The first step isn’t just admitting that we have a problem. The first step is ripping up the toxic mythology of the good war and admitting that we’ve always had a fucking problem, that war itself is the problem. The only good excuse for violence is self-defense and you can’t defend yourself when you are constantly crashing someone else’s property. It’s time for a different kind of intervention. It’s time for dope-sick Americans to join the rest of the world in defending ourselves from the disease of American imperialism. And it all starts with us finally admitting that every American war is bullshit. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/12/exposing-the-myth-of-the-good-war/

July 16, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russian Officials Vow Response to US Missile Deployment to Germany

There’s no indication yet that the missiles will be armed with nuclear weapons, but the statement leaves open the possibility. The US already has nuclear bombs stationed in Germany as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing, but they are B61 gravity bombs that need to be dropped from aircraft.

Officials across the government reacted strongly to the news that the US is deploying previously banned missiles that could hit Russian territory

by Dave DeCamp July 11, 2024 , https://news.antiwar.com/2024/07/11/russian-officials-vow-response-to-us-missile-deployment-to-germany/

On Thursday, Russian officials reacted strongly and vowed to respond to the US announcing that it will deploy missile systems to Germany starting in 2026 that were previously banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

“Without nerves, without emotions, we will develop a military response, first of all, to this new game,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. He called the US decision “destructive to regional safety and strategic stability.”

Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador in Washington, said the deployment could lead to confrontation. “The Americans are increasing the risk of a missile arms race. Here, they forget that going the way of confrontation may set off an uncontrollable escalation amid the dangerous aggravation of tensions along the Russia-NATO track,” he said.

Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, warned of a strong response if the US goes through with the deployment. “I hope that it will not happen, because Russia’s response will be harsh and adequate. This is simply unacceptable,” she said.

The INF prohibited land-based missile systems with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles. The US and Germany said in a joint statement that the planned deployment includes a land-based version of nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles and are primarily used by US Navy ships and submarines.

The US and Germany also said that the deployment will include SM-6 missiles, which have a range of about 290 miles, and “developmental hypersonic weapons.” The statement said the missiles have “significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe.”

Before the INF was signed in 1987, the Soviet Union had land-based nuclear-armed missiles deployed in its western territory that could hit western Europe, and the US had similar systems deployed that could hit Soviet territory.

When the US withdrew from the INF treaty, it claimed Russia was violating the agreement by developing the ground-launched 9M729 cruise missile. Russian officials denied the missile was a violation, saying it had a maximum range of 298 miles.

Russia also said the US was violating the INF by establishing Aegis Ashore missile defense systems in Romania and Poland. The systems use Mk-41 vertical launchers, which can fit Tomahawk missiles. During the NATO summit, the US also announced that its Aegis system in Poland is now operational.

The US refused to negotiate with Russia on the INF issues, and the Trump administration tore up the treaty in August 2019 and began testing previously banned missile systems almost immediately after. It was clear the US exited the treaty so it could deploy intermediate-range missiles near China, leading Russia to propose a moratorium on the deployment of INF missiles in Europe. But the US never accepted the offer.

July 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The false equivalency of nuclear disarmament and nuclear abolition

The Bulletin, By Jasmine Owens | July 11, 2024

Jasmine Owens is a nuclear weapons abolitionist, writer, educator, and organizer. She has a master’s in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and has worked for Win Without War, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Outrider Foundation, Council on Strategic Risks, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and ReThink Media. Her work and her passions focus on centering humanity in the fight for a more just and equitable world, starting with the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Since the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, advocates for reducing the nuclear threat have fallen into three general categories: arms control, disarmament, and abolition. Over time, the boundaries between these very different approaches have become blurred. Even people within the nuclear community often use “nuclear disarmament” and “nuclear abolition” interchangeably. In some instances, arms control has also been lumped in with disarmament and abolition, because even it is deemed too radical for war hawks.

Nuclear abolitionists suffer disproportionately from this collapsing of categories. Nuclear abolition, in my view, is rooted in the traditions of slavery abolition. It is the most radical of the anti-nuclear paradigms, and the one most closely associated with other forms of abolitionist and social justice organizing. When abolition is lumped in with the narrower—but still crucial—paradigms of arms control and disarmament, it loses some of its power to connect across movements and hinders efforts by activists like Ray Acheson and Emma Pike, and organizations like the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), for example, to expand the reach of anti-nuclear weapons activism. Clear distinctions between disarmament and abolition are needed to better define abolitionists’ work and to allow for more visionary organizing.

Beyond disarmament. A nuclear disarmament framework seeks to eliminate all types of nuclear weapons and to establish monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure no state is secretly trying to (re)build a nuclear arsenal. A nuclear abolition framework goes beyond the audacious but narrow goal of eliminating nuclear weapons; it strives to upend the systems of oppression that support and are supported by nuclear weapons. Nuclear abolitionists understand nuclear weapons to be related to other oppressive systems—such as white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy—that reinforce each other at the expense of life on Earth, and that are all products of collective individual actions. Nuclear abolition calls for both self-transformation and the systemic transformation of society.

Abolition frameworks seek to address the roots of problems, not just the symptoms. The end of slavery, for example, happened because abolitionists fought tirelessly to show the world that a more equitable future was possible. The root of the problem was not just that enslaving people was bad, but that people did not value Black lives as humans, but rather as capital……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..more https://thebulletin.org/2024/07/the-false-equivalency-of-nuclear-disarmament-and-nuclear-abolition/

July 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Netanyahu Goes for Broke

If Netanyahu proceeds to provoke his many-front war, will the Biden regime or the administration that follows it continue to offer the “unconditional support” the U.S. has extended to Tel Aviv for many decades?

The Israeli prime minister has chosen this moment to mount a go-for-broke attempt to bring the U.S. into some kind of once-and-for-all conflict that would leave Israel supreme in the region

By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, 9 July, 24

It is a matter of record that the Zionist project has had extensive territorial designs on the lands known as Palestine since at least the early 20th century.

As others have argued, the Israelis’ openly racist assault on the Palestinians of Gaza is to be understood not as a sudden eruption of violence, a departure, but as an especially savage continuation of Zionist conduct for more than a century.

When history is brought to bear in this fashion, it becomes increasingly apparent that the invasion of Gaza since the events of last Oct. 7 ought not be seen in isolation. The more pathologically disturbed members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s freak-show regime — notably, but not only, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben–Givr, the finance and national security ministers — have never been shy on this point.

They are entirely dedicated to the restoration of Eretz Yisrael, the mystical Land of Israel, which, variously interpreted through the ages, could extend at the extreme from the Red Sea all the way to the Euphrates Valley.

But the crazed ultras to whom Netanyahu owes his political survival have not yet got far enough to turn their visions into articulated policy. Is this changing

This is our question, along with another: Is the Biden regime — or at this point its successor — prepared to “stand with Israel,” as American leaders like to put it, if extremist dreams of violent conquest turn into real, live political and military plans?I have been convinced for some time, as I gather that many Palestinians are, that when the Israel Occupation Forces are done in Gaza they will next turn to the West Bank. On this point I now correct myself: In my interpretation the IOF, in close collaboration with brutish Israeli settlers, has already begun its assault in the West Bank.

Attacking Hezbollah

Of late the Israelis have also been openly threatening to launch a full-scale attack on Hezbollah, the political and military movement that controls southern Lebanon. This, too, bears interpretation.
Douglas Macgregor, the retired colonel and now an energetic commentator on politico- military affairs, has no trouble putting together the 2–and–2 of this moment. Here he is last week on “Judging Freedom,” Andrew Napolitano’s webcast program:

“Whatever happened on the 7th of October, and I’m still not convinced that was not allowed to happen, … the decision then to attack had very little to do with what happened on the 7th of October and everything to do with a long-term strategic plan to begin the process of ethnically cleansing, expelling, or murdering, whatever you want to call it, the Arabs in Gaza and, ultimately, the Arabs on the West Bank.”

This seems right but short of the emerging reality. A few minutes later in his exchange with Macgregor, Napolitano played a clip of Netanyahu addressing a table of officials, at least some of whom are American, last Friday:

The first requirement is to cut that hand [he gestures as if to cut through his right forearm], Hamas. People who do these things to us are not going to be there. We will have a long battle, I don’t think it’s that long, but we’ll get rid of them. We also have to deter the other elements of the Iran terror axis. We have to deal with the axis.

“Iran is fighting us on a seven-front war. Obviously, Hamas and Hezbollah. The Houthis, militias in Iraq and Syria. Judea and Samaria on the West Bank. Iran itself.

They’d like to topple Jordan. Their goal is to have a combined ground offensive from their various fronts, coupled with combined missile bombardments. We’ve been given the opportunity to scuttle it. And we will.

The axis doesn’t threaten only us. It threatens you. It’s on the march to conquer the Middle East — conquer the Middle East — conquer. That means conquer Saudi Arabia, conquer the Arabian Peninsula, it’s just a question of time. And what’s standing in their way is a small Satan, that’s us, on the road to the middle-sized Satan, that’s the Europeans — they’re always offended when I tell them that — ‘You’re the great Satan!’ And we have to stop that.”

So far as I know — and more in this line may be said regularly in Netanyahu’s closed-door cabinet meetings — this is the Israeli prime minister’s most explicit statement to date of how apartheid Israel understands the Middle East and its place in it. The danger of this vision will be immediately obvious.

In perfectly clear language, the Netanyahu government has effectively announced that its policy is to widen what is now the assault on Gaza, the IOF’s escalating aggressions in the West Bank and Israel’s provocations along Lebanon’s southern border. However much these statements reflect political pressure the extremists in his cabinet are exerting on Netanyahu, official policy is moving in their direction.

We already see this pattern, as noted, in the West Bank territories. As The New York Times reported last week, illegal settlers, under IOF protection, have stolen more land from Palestinians so far this year, typically at gunpoint, than at any time since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. West Bank sources report that up to 9,000 Palestinians have been arrested since the events of last October — mostly boys and young men, those typically inclined to organize an armed resistance movement.

In my read this is the West Bank’s version of the assault on Gaza. No F–16s, tanks, or heavy artillery this time: Deploying these would risk serious international opprobrium. No, the West Bank campaign will be waged more or less invisibly — a farm or an olive grove, a village or a murdered teenager or a kilometer of road at a time.

The US & Israeli Supremacy

The larger war, the war beyond the West Bank, is of course another matter. Israel knows full well it is incapable of waging anything like a “seven-front war” on its own: It is failing in the Gaza Strip as we speak.

Netanyahu has chosen this moment to mount a go-for-broke attempt to bring the U.S. into some kind of once-for-all conflict that would leave Israel supreme in the region — and so would instantly threaten to be the world’s most dangerous war — since who knows when.

We come to the second of the questions noted earlier. If Netanyahu proceeds to provoke his many-front war, will the Biden regime or the administration that follows it continue to offer the “unconditional support” the U.S. has extended to Tel Aviv for many decades?

I wish this were a more interesting question than it actually is. If Donald Trump retakes the White House, whatever modest restraints Washington may now feel — as the barbarities in Gaza continue — will disappear. But what about Biden, on the very off chance he runs in November, and the very, very off chance he wins? What about a Democratic successor who defeats Trump?

There is the obnoxiously pronounced confidence Netanyahu displays when describing a wider war well beyond Israel’s capabilities. And there is the power the Israel lobby exerts in Washington, not least over Biden, who has received more funds from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC — more than $4 million during his Senate years alone — than anyone else holding elected office.

Late last month the U.S. Navy made one of those quiet logistical moves that sometimes seem to reveal more than intended. It sent an amphibious assault ship, the USS Wasp, into the waters of the eastern Mediterranean off the Lebanese coast. Among its other capabilities, the Wasp is designed to manage large-scale evacuations.

But an American official told The Associated Press, a little defensively I’d say, “It’s about deterrence,” implying the deployment is part of Washington’s diplomatic effort to prevent a dangerous war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Wait a minute. Just who is the Wasp intended to deter? Neither Hezbollah nor Iran wants a war with Israel any more than the U.S. wants to see one. No need of deterrence there.

And a ship off the Lebanese coast is not going to deter Israel: It stands unambiguously to encourage “the Jewish state” in its effort to bait the U.S. into the big war for which it spoils.

While one ship near Lebanese waters does not signal any grand new commitment to a grand new war — let us not over-interpret — the message seems clear: We don’t want a new war on our hands, Bibi, but if you provoke one, well, we’ll have to be there for you, “standing with Israel.”

I have written this previously but it bears repeating now: In Israel the U.S. has a Frankenstein’s monster on its hands, and there seems little prospect of anyone in Washington having the intelligence and courage to disconnect the electrodes.

However dangerous the Netanyahu regime makes the Middle East, will be precisely the danger in which the U.S. will find itself.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.

July 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Wall Street Journal finally admits high-tech Western weapons ‘useless’ in Ukraine conflict

https://www.rt.com/russia/600809-western-weapons-useless-ukraine/ 10 July 24

Satellite-guided shells are particularly vulnerable to Russian jamming technology, commanders in Kiev have told the newspaper.

Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities have rendered precision-guided Western munitions “useless” in the Ukraine conflict, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. With their guidance systems scrambled, some of these weapons have reportedly been retired within weeks of hitting the battlefield.

When the US announced the delivery of GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shells to Ukraine in 2022, pro-Kiev outlets predicted that the $100,000-per-shot projectiles would make “Ukrainian artillery a whole lot more accurate” and “cause Russia a world of pain.”

However, the Russian military adapted within weeks, Ukrainian commanders told the Wall Street Journal. Russian signal-jamming equipment was used to feed false coordinates to the shells and interfere with their fuses, causing them to veer off course or fall to the ground as duds.

“By the middle of last year, the M982 Excalibur munitions, developed by RTX and BAE Systems, became essentially useless and are no longer employed,” the newspaper stated, paraphrasing the Ukrainian commanders.

The Soviet Union invested heavily in electronic warfare (EW) during the 1980s, viewing jamming technology as a crucial bulwark against the guided missiles and shells that the US was beginning to develop at the time. While weapons such as the 1990s-era Excalibur shells were used by the US to devastating effect in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials and analysts in Washington have since concluded that they are far less effective against a peer-level opponent like Russia.

“The Russians have gotten really, really good” at interfering with guided munitions, US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante told the WSJ.

Retired US General Ben Hodges, who once predicted that Western weapons would help Ukraine seize Crimea by last winter, told the newspaper that “we probably made some bad assumptions because over the last 20 years we were launching precision weapons against people that could not do anything about it… and Russia and China do have these capabilities.”

Some of NATO’s most advanced weapons systems have met a similar fate in Ukraine. The newly-developed Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), a joint project of Boeing in the US and Saab in Sweden, was given to Ukraine earlier this year, with Kiev’s troops firing these GPS-guided munitions before their American counterparts. However, it has since been pulled from the battlefield after it proved completely ineffective against Russian EW.

Likewise, Russian EW has significantly blunted the accuracy of Ukraine’s Western-provided GMLRS missiles, which are fired from the HIMARS multiple-launch rocket system, Ukrainian soldiers told the WSJ. As with the Excalibur shells, GMLRS missiles were once described by pro-Kiev pundits and analysts as a “game changer” that would swing the conflict in Ukraine’s favor.

Russia has long insisted that no amount of Western weapons systems will prevent it from achieving victory. Supplying these weapons is a “futile project” that will only encourage Kiev to “commit new crimes,” Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, warned last week.

Comment: Russia has followed two tracks in its military development: cheap, mass-production of drones, armoured vehicles and tanks, and cutting-edge research in electronic warfare first deployed in Syria. The two combined make the outcome of the Ukraine conflict inevitable.

July 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Horrific Massacre’: Israel Bombs Gaza School Used as Refugee Camp, Killing Dozens.

“Schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery,” said UNRWA’s commissioner-general.

JAKE JOHNSON, Jul 10, 2024 https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/10/horrific-massacre-israel-bombs-gaza-school-used-as-refugee-camp-killing-dozens/

Israeli forces killed dozens of people Tuesday in an airstrike on a school-turned-refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, the fourth school Israel’s military has bombed in as many days as the country continues its massive assault on the enclave’s starving population.

At least 29 people were killed and dozens more were wounded in Tuesday’s attack, including women and children—who have made up roughly two-thirds of those killed in Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, which began following a Hamas-led attack in October. The death toll from Tuesday’s attack is expected to rise, as many of those injured were reportedly in critical condition and taken to the under-resourced and overwhelmed Nasser Hospital.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged carrying out the airstrike—which hit the entrance of the school—but claimed to be targeting a Hamas militant “adjacent” to the complex. The IDF, whose internal investigations rarely result in accountability for atrocities, said the “incident is under review.”

Video footage posted to social media shows displaced Palestinians playing in the schoolyard when the airstrike hit, sparking panic and chaos. [Video on original –Warning: The footage is graphic]

Citing witnesses, the BBC reported that “the area was teeming with displaced people at the time” of the airstrike, which “resulted in widespread destruction and the deaths of women and children.”

“Body parts were scattered across the site and many people staying in tents outside the school were also injured,” the British outlet reported. “Ayman Al-Dahma, 21, told the BBC there had been as many as 3,000 people packed into the area at the time, which he said housed a market and residential buildings. Describing the number of casualties as ‘unimaginable,’ he said he had seen people whose limbs had been severed by the blast.”

Tuesday’s attack marked the fourth time in four days that the IDF has attacked a school in the Gaza Strip, according to Agence France-Presse. Over the weekend, Israeli forces killed more than a dozen Palestinians in an attack on a United Nations-run school in central Gaza.

Most of Gaza’s education infrastructure has been damaged or completely destroyed by Israeli forces, and the schools still standing are being used to shelter those displaced by the IDF assault, which is now in its 10th month. The United Nations estimates that 90% of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced since October, with some displaced up to 10 times.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East called the IDF’s latest attack “a horrific massacre,” adding, “Annihilation is the point.”

“Nothing can justify Canada’s failure to act,” the group wrote on social media.

Canada is one of a number of major countries that have supplied weaponry to the Israeli government as it has carried out its utter devastation of the Gaza Strip, nearly all of which is now uninhabitable.

The United States and Germany together provided 99% of the arms Israel imported last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Germany’s Foreign Office called Wednesday’s attack “unacceptable” and demanded a swift investigation.

“People seeking shelter in schools getting killed is unacceptable. Civilians, especially children, must not get caught in the crossfire,” the foreign office said. “The repeated attacks on schools by the Israeli army must stop.”

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said Wednesday that “schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery.”

“Nine months in, under our watch, the relentless, endless killings, destruction, and despair continue. Gaza is no place for children,” he added. “The blatant disregard of international humanitarian law cannot become the new normal… Cease-fire now before we lose what is left of our common humanity.”

July 11, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Pentagon keeps commitment to Sentinel nuclear missile as costs balloon

Defense news, By Stephen Losey 8 July 24

The military will continue developing its new LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile but has told the U.S. Air Force to restructure the program to get its ballooning costs under control.

Even a “reasonably modified” version of the Northrop Grumman-made Sentinel will likely cost $140.9 billion, 81% more than the program’s original cost estimate of $77.7 billion, the Pentagon said in a statement. If Sentinel continues on its current path without being modified, the likely cost will be about $160 billion, it said.

And the military expects restructuring the program will delay it by several years.

“There are reasons for this cost growth, but there are also no excuses,” William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said in a conference call with reporters on Monday. “We fully appreciate the magnitude of the costs, but we also understand the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.”

The Sentinel is intended to replace the Air Force’s half-decade old Minuteman III nuclear missile, which is nearing the end of its life. In January, the Air Force announced Sentinel’s future costs were projected to run over budget severely enough to trigger a review process known as a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach.

Such a review can sometimes lead to a program being canceled. LaPlante said Monday he decided to proceed with Sentinel after concluding it met several criteria, including that it is essential to national security and there were no cheaper alternatives that would meet the military’s operational requirements.

Big changes are coming for Sentinel, however. LaPlante rescinded the program’s Milestone B approval, which in September 2020 authorized the program to move into its engineering and manufacturing development phase. He also ordered the Air Force to restructure the program to address the root causes of the cost overruns and make sure it has the right management structure to keep its future price down.

The per-unit total cost for Sentinel was originally $118 million in 2020, when its cost, schedule and performance goals were set. When the Nunn-McCurdy breach was announced in January, those per-unit costs had grown at least 37% to about $162 million.

Hunter said the per-unit cost for the revised Sentinel program — which include components in addition to its missiles — is estimated to be about $214 million……………………………. more https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/07/08/pentagon-keeps-commitment-to-sentinel-nuclear-missile-as-costs-balloon/—

July 10, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Lancet study estimates death toll in Gaza 186,000 or even more

Maktoob Staff, 8 July 24, https://maktoobmedia.com/gaza-genocide/the-lancet-study-estimates-death-toll-in-gaza-186000-or-even-more/

Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death reported in Gaza, a new study published respected medical journal The Lancet said it is “not implausible” to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the genocidal war in Gaza.

The paper titled ‘Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential’, published on 05 July, stated that using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, the estimated death toll would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the besieged enclave.

On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said that at least 38,153 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 07 while more than 87,828 have been wounded in the besieged enclave. 15,983 of them are children.

The study by Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, used the data from June 19, with the official death toll of 37, 396. The official record maintained by the Gaza Health Ministry doesn’t include over 10,000 people missing or buried under the rubbles.

“The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the Gaza Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35,091 deaths were unidentified,” observed the paper.

It also pointed out that armed conflicts have “indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence”.

“Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases,” the paper read.

A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28,000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024.

The interim measures set out by the International Court of Justice in January, require Israel to “take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of … the Genocide Convention”.

“An immediate and urgent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is essential, accompanied by measures to enable the distribution of medical supplies, food, clean water, and other resources for basic human needs,” the paper read.

July 9, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Gaza deal must allow Israel to keep fighting – Netanyahu

https://www.sott.net/article/492916-Gaza-deal-must-allow-Israel-to-keep-fighting-Netanyahu 8 July 24

The Israeli prime minister’s statement comes after Hamas accepted a key part of a ceasefire proposal

Any potential ceasefire deal in Gaza must allow Israel to resume fighting until all of its war objectives are met, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. One of the main goals repeatedly voiced by the PM is the complete elimination of the Hamas militant group.

Netanyahu’s statement comes after Hamas approved a US proposal for a phased ceasefire deal, dropping a key demand for Israel to first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the deal, according to a Reuters source.

Hamas expects to end hostilities through talks during the first six-week phase of the deal aimed at settling the conflict in Gaza, the outlet said.

However, the Palestinian militant group wants written guarantees from international mediators that Israel will continue to negotiate a permanent ceasefire when the first phase of the deal comes into effect. The hostage issue will also be addressed after the first phase is implemented.

Hamas officials have said they are awaiting Israel’s response to the latest proposal. Netanyahu insisted on Sunday, however, that any deal must “allow Israel to go back to fighting until all the goals of the war are achieved.”

According to media reports, Netanyahu was scheduled to hold consultations on the next steps, but his latest statement has hindered the deal’s momentum.

“The plan that has been agreed-to by Israel and which has been welcomed by President Biden will allow Israel to return hostages without infringing on the other objectives of the war,” Netanyahu insisted.

Talks mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US have so far failed to secure a truce in Gaza or the release of hostages since a weeklong ceasefire in November resulting in the freeing of 105 hostages from Gaza and 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel began its operation in Gaza in response to a cross-border incursion by Hamas last October in which at least 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Some 116 captives are believed to be still held in Gaza.

Over 38,000 people have been killed so far and more than 87,000 others have been wounded in Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Comment: What kind of ceasefire is this if it must “allow Israel to go back to fighting until all the goals of the war are achieved.”?!
See also: Best of the Web: The Lancet study estimates death toll in Gaza 186,000 or even more and the reflections in SOTT Focus: The Burqa Ban Question

July 9, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Civil War in Donbass 10 Years On

Zelensky did initially try to resolve the Donbass conflict through diplomatic means. In October 2019, he moved to hold a referendum on “special status” for the breakaway republics in a federalized Ukraine, while personally meeting with representatives of Azov Battalion, begging them to lay down their arms and accept the compromise. Mockingly rebuffed and threatened by the Neo-Nazi group’s leaders, while rocked by nationalist protests against the proposed plebiscite in Kiev, the plans were dropped. So then the President picked the “worst option”.

KIT KLARENBERG, JUL 08, 2024 https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/civil-war-in-donbass-10-years-on
July 1st marked the 10th anniversary of a brutal resumption of hostilities in the Donbass civil war. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it passed without comment in the Western media. 10 years earlier, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a ceasefire in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation”. Launched two months prior following vast protests, and violent clashes between Russian-speaking pro-federal activists and authorities throughout eastern Ukraine, the intended lightning strike routing of internal opposition to the Maidan government quickly became an unwinnable quagmire.

Ukrainian forces were consistently beaten back by well-organised and determined rebel forces, hailing from the breakaway “People’s Republics” in Donetsk and Lugansk. Resultantly, Poroshenko outlined a peace plan intended to compel the separatists to put down their arms. They refused to do so, prompting the President to order an even more savage crackdown. This too was a counterproductive failure, with the rebels inflicting a series of embarrassing defeats on Western-sponsored government forces. Kiev was ultimately forced to accept the terms of the first Minsk Accords.

This agreement, like its successor, did not provide for secession or independence for the breakaway republics, but their full autonomy within Ukraine. Russia was named as a mediator, not party, in the conflict. Kiev was to resolve its dispute with rebel leaders directly. Successive Ukrainian governments consistently refused to do so, however. Instead, officials endlessly stonewalled, while pressuring Moscow to formally designate itself a party to the civil war.

No wonder – had Russia accepted, Kiev’s claims that its savage assault on the civilian population of Donbass was in fact a response to invasion by its giant neighbour would’ve been legitimised. In turn, all-out Western proxy war in eastern Ukraine, of the kind that erupted in February 2022, could’ve been precipitated. Which, it is increasingly clear, was the plan all along.

‘Grassroots Movement’

In the days prior to the April 2014 launch of Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” in Donbass, notorious war hawk Samantha Power, now USAID chief, openly spoke on ABC of “tell-tale signs of Moscow’s involvement” in the unrest. “It’s professional, coordinated. Nothing grassroots about it,” she alleged. Such framing gave Ukrainian officials, their foreign backers, and the mainstream media licence to brand the brutal operation a legitimate response to a fully-fledged, if unacknowledged, “invasion” by Russia. It is referred to as such in many quarters today.

Yet, at every stage of the Donbass conflict, there were unambiguous indications that the Ukrainian government’s claims of widespread Russian involvement – endorsed by Western governments, militaries, intelligence agencies, pundits and journalists – were fraudulent. One need look no further than the findings of a 2019 report published by the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group (ICG), Rebels Without A Cause. Completely unremarked upon in the mainstream, its headline conclusions are stark:

“The conflict in eastern Ukraine started as a grassroots movement…Demonstrations were led by local citizens claiming to represent the region’s Russian-speaking majority.”

ICG noted that Russian leaders were from the start publicly and privately sympathetic to Russian-speakers in Donbass. Nonetheless, they issued no “clear guidance” to businessmen, government advisers or the domestic population on whether – and how – they would be officially supported by Moscow in their dispute with the Maidan government. Hence, many Russian irregulars, encouraged by “what they regarded as the government’s tacit approval, made their way to Ukraine.”

Per ICG, it was only after the conflict started that the Russian government formalised a relationship with the Donbass rebels, although the Kremlin quickly changed tack on what they should do. A Ukrainian fighter told the organisation that he “began hearing calls for restraint in rebel efforts to take control of eastern Ukrainian towns and cities” in late April 2014. However, “the separatist movement in Donbass was determined to move ahead.”

Due to this lack of control, and repeated calls for direct intervention in the conflict from the rebels, Russia replaced the Donetsk and Lugansk rebel leadership with hand-picked figures, who took an explicitly defensive posture. But the Kremlin was ultimately “beholden” to the breakaway republics, not vice versa. It could not even reliably order the rebels to stop fighting. A Lugansk paramilitary told ICG:

“What do you do with 40,000 people who believe that, once they put down their arms, they will all be shot or arrested? Of course, they are going to fight to the death.”

Elsewhere, the report cited data provided by “Ukrainian nationalist fighters”, which showed rebel casualties to date were “overwhelmingly” Ukrainian citizens. This was at odds with the pronouncements of government officials, who invariably referred to them as “Russian mercenaries” or “occupiers”. More widely, figures within far-right President Petro Poroshenko’s government had routinely claimed Donbass was wholly populated by Russians and Russia-sympathisers.

One Ukrainian minister was quoted in the report as saying he felt “absolutely no pity” about the extremely harsh conditions suffered by Donbass civilians, due to the “legal, political, economic and ideological barriers isolating Ukrainian citizens in rebel-held territories” constructed by Kiev. This included enforcing a crippling blockade on the region in 2017, which created a “humanitarian crisis”, and left the population unable to claim pensions and welfare payments, among other gruelling hardships.

Several Donbass inhabitants interviewed by ICG expressed nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Most felt “under attack” by Kiev. A pensioner in Lugansk, whose “non-combatant son” was killed by a Ukrainian sniper, asked how Poroshenko could claim the territory was “a crucial part” of Ukraine: “then why did they kill so many of us?”

‘Worst Option’

In conclusion, ICG declared the situation in Donbass “ought not to be narrowly defined as a matter of Russian occupation,” while criticising Kiev’s “tendency to conflate” the Kremlin with the rebels. The organisation expressed optimism newly-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky could “peacefully reunify with the rebel-held territories,” and “[engage] the alienated east.” Given present day events, its report’s conclusions were eerily prescient:

“For Zelensky, the worst option…would be to try to forcibly retake the territories, as an all-out offensive would likely provoke a military response from Moscow and a bloodbath in Donbass. It could even lead Moscow…to recognise the statelets’ independence. The large-scale military option is mainly advocated by nationalists, not members of Ukraine’s political establishment. But some prominent mainstream politicians refuse to rule it out.”

Zelensky did initially try to resolve the Donbass conflict through diplomatic means.

Continue reading →

July 8, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Philippines Says US Will Pull Out Controversial Mid-Range Missile System

The US deployed the Typhon missile system for annual military drills

by Dave DeCamp July 4, 2024 ore https://news.antiwar.com/2024/07/04/philippines-says-us-will-pull-out-controversial-mid-range-missile-system/

On Thursday, the Philippines said the US was pulling out a new missile system it deployed to the Southeast Asian country for annual military exercises.

The US sent the Typhon missile system for the Balikatan exercises, which were held in April and May. The Typhon is a controversial launcher since it would have been banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a treaty between the US and Russia that the Trump administration withdrew from in 2019.

The INF prohibited land-based missile systems with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles. The Typhon can launch nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles. It can also fire SM-6 missiles, which can hit targets up to 290 miles away.

Philippine Col. Louie Dema-ala told AFP that the US planned to withdraw the Typhon from the Philippines following the military exercises. “As per plan… it will be shipped out of the country in September or even earlier,” he said. “The US Army is currently shipping out their equipment that we used during Balikatan and Salaknib (exercises).”

China strongly condemned the deployment of the Typhon system, which US officials have acknowledged was developed to prepare for a future conflict with Beijing over Taiwan or the South China Sea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently mentioned the deployment. He made the comments when calling for Moscow to follow the US and develop missile systems previously banned by the INF.

“We need to start production of these strike systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where — if necessary to ensure our safety — to place them,” Putin said last week.

“Today it is known that the United States not only produces these missile systems, but has already brought them to Europe for exercises, to Denmark. Quite recently it was announced that they are in the Philippines,” the Russian leader added.

July 8, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Philippines, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump allies are peddling a catastrophic idea for U.S. nuclear weapon policy

Resuming live testing could spark an arms race and will reduce American security.

By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor, 6 July 24

Allies and former advisers to former President Donald Trump are arguing that the U.S., for the first time in decades, should resume nuclear testing. They say it’ll advance American safety by ensuring that the U.S. has a decisive military and technological advantage over other nuclear powers. In reality, the U.S. — and the world — would be made more dangerous by the kind of arms race this could spark. And it seems plausible that if Trump were to win the White House he could adopt the policy because of the manner in which it aligns with the unilateral militance of the “America First” worldview.

Influential figures in Trump’s orbit are pushing the idea of breaking long-held norms and resuming live nuclear testing. Former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien wrote in Foreign Affairs in June that “Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992” in order to maintain technical superiority over China and Russia. Christian Whiton, who served as a State Department adviser to President George W. Bush and Trump, told The New York Times that “it would be negligent to field nuclear weapons of novel designs that we have never tested in the real world.” And the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that’s backing Project 2025, widely considered a policy blueprint for Trump’s second term, is proposing that the federal government expand its capacity for immediate nuclear testing.

Since 1992, the U.S. has refrained from explosive nuclear testing and opted for other techniques, including expert appraisals and sophisticated modeling generated by supercomputers, to calculate the efficacy of its long-term stockpile and its newer weapons. That policy has helped nudge other countries away from pursuing live testing. Most countries don’t conduct live tests of nuclear warheads in adherence to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

Multiple nuclear proliferation experts say that if the U.S. resumes explosive testing, other countries will have more incentive to do so. “Resuming U.S. nuclear testing is technically and militarily unnecessary,” wrote Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball in response to O’Brien’s article. “Moreover, it would lead to a global chain reaction of nuclear testing, raise global tensions, and blow apart global nonproliferation efforts at a time of heightened nuclear danger.” Kimball’s argument is in line with President Joe Biden’s outlook. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden endorsed the U.S. continuing to abstain from explosive testing and said a resumption would be “as reckless as it is dangerous.” …………………………………………………………………………..more https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-nuclear-policy-election-rcna160459

July 8, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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