Nuclear weapons offer an illusion of security. By allowing the U.S. nuclear posture to shift from deterrence to employment, there will be a scenario where the U.S. will use nuclear weapons. And then it’s lights out.
A front view of four nuclear free-fall B61s on a bomb rack at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, 1986. (DoD, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
Successive U.S. administrations have eschewed arms control in favor of maintaining American strategic advantage over real and/or imagined adversaries.
This is accomplished by embracing nuclear weapons employment strategies that deviate from simple deterrence into war-fighting at every level of conflict, including scenarios that don’t involve a nuclear threat.
At a time when the U.S. advocates policies exacerbating already high levels of tension with nuclear-armed adversaries Russia and China, the Biden administration has signed off on a new nuclear employment plan that increases, rather that decreases, the probability of nuclear conflict.
Left unchecked, this policy can have only one possible outcome — total nuclear annihilation of humanity and the world we live in.
By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News
An interesting thing happened on the road to Armageddon.
In January 2017, then-Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warned about the dangers inherent in expanding funding for, and by extension increasing the importance of, nuclear weapons.
“If future budgets reverse the choices we’ve made, and pour additional money into a nuclear buildup,” said Biden — referring to Obama administration policies that included secured the New START Treaty limiting the size of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals — “it hearkens back to the Cold War and will do nothing to increase the day-to-day security of the United States or our allies.”
Later, in 2019, Biden, now a candidate for president, commented on the decision made by President Donald Trump to deploy two missile systems — a cruise missile still under development, and the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile deployed onboard the U.S. Navy’s Ohio-class submarines —armed with a new low-yield nuclear warhead.
“The United States does not need new nuclear weapons,” Biden declared in a written answer to questions posed by the Council for a Livable World. “Our current arsenal of weapons…is sufficient to meet our deterrence and alliance requirements.”
In an article published in the March/April 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs, candidate Biden vowed to “renew our commitment to arms control for a new era,” including a pledge to “pursue an extension of the New START treaty, an anchor of strategic stability between the United States and Russia, and use that as a foundation for new arms control arrangements.”
Biden went on to declare that “that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack. As president, I will work to put that belief into practice, in consultation with the U.S. military and U.S. allies.”
Biden prevailed over Trump in the 2020 Presidential election, and on Jan. 21, 2021, was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.
And then…nothing.
Copying Trump’s Pre-Emptive Strike
Aerial view of Pentagon at night. (Joe Lauria)
In March 2022, after much speculation about whether or not Biden would follow through with his pledge to implement a “sole purpose” nuclear policy, the Biden administration published the 2022 edition of the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a Congressionally-mandated document which describes United States nuclear strategy, policy, posture, and forces in support of the National Security Strategy (NSS) and National Defense Strategy (NDS).
It was a near carbon-copy of the February 2018 NPR published by the Trump administration, including language which enshrined as doctrine the U.S. ability to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively, even in scenarios that did not involve a nuclear threat.
In December 2022, during a reunion of personnel involved in the negotiation and implementation of the landmark 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, a senior Biden administration arms control official was asked by a veteran arms controller why Biden had backed away from his pledge regarding the “sole purpose” doctrine.
“The inter-agency wasn’t ready for it,” this official replied.
The “inter-agency” the official was referring to is the amalgam of departments and agencies, staffed by unelected career civil servants and military professionals who serve as the executioners of policy regarding America’s nuclear enterprise.
It was a surprising, and extremely disappointing, admission on the part of an official whose oath of office bound him or her to the bedrock constitutional principle of executive authority and civilian control of the military.
Biden had, even before being sworn in, received push-back regarding any alterations in the nuclear doctrine of the United States.
In September 2020, Admiral Charle Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, responsible for America’s nuclear arsenal, warned that, “We are on a trajectory, for the first time in our nation’s history, to face two peer nuclear-capable competitors.” Richard was referring to the nuclear arsenals of Russia and China.
Once he became president, Biden was immediately confronted with two major challenges for which he was ill-equipped to handle — the Russian-Ukraine crisis, and China’s assertion of its national interests over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Both involved the potential of military escalation leading up to direct force-on-force conflict between the U.S. military and their Russian and Chinese counterparts, both of which included the possibility of nuclear war.
The Russian initiation of its “Special Military Operation” against Ukraine, in February 2022, brought with it the inherent risk of escalation with NATO, leading to Russian threats about the potential for nuclear weapons use if NATO decided to directly intervene in Ukraine.
And a November 2022 Pentagon report forecast that China would increase its nuclear arsenal from around 400 weapons to more than 1,500 by 2035.
The New START treaty limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 each for the U.S. and Russia. The treaty was negotiated on the principle of bilateral reciprocity.
With the U.S. facing a potential Chinese nuclear arsenal of 1,500 weapons, and the existing Russian arsenal of around the same, it was clear that, left unchecked, the U.S. was going to find itself in a disadvantageous position when it came to its strategic nuclear forces.
While the NPR provides a general policy statement regarding the U.S. nuclear arsenal, there are two more documents — the President’s Nuclear Employment Guidance and the Secretary of Defense’s Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning and Posture Guidance — that direct planning for actual employment of nuclear weapons consistent with national policy.
The last Nuclear Employment Guidance document, published in 2019, was responsive to the 2018 NPR. This guidance fully incorporated the new low-yield W-76-2 nuclear warhead into the nuclear employment plans of the United States. It did the same for the new generation of B-61 gravity bombs that constitute NATO’s nuclear deterrence force.
The employment plans, which were based upon the concept of “escalate to de-escalate” (i.e. by using a small nuclear weapon, the U.S. and NATO would deter Russia from escalating out of fear of bringing on a general nuclear exchange.)
In short, America’s nuclear war plans were front loaded for the localized employment of nuclear weapons against both a Russian and Chinese threat.
This U.S. nuclear war plan was premised on the ability to deter Russian nuclear escalation and deter or defeat China’s nuclear force using the number of nuclear warheads permitted under the caps implemented by the New START treaty.
Facing a Stronger Nuclear China
However, the Biden administration is now confronted with the possibility and or probability of a much larger, capable Chinese strategic nuclear force capable of surviving a limited U.S. first-strike and delivering a nation-killing nuclear payload to U.S. soil in retaliation.
To adjust to this new reality, the U.S. would need to allocate nuclear warheads currently targeted against Russia onto China. This would require that the U.S. not only develop revised target lists for both Russia and China, but also rethink targeting strategies in general, looking to maximum physical destruction over political impact.
More dangerously, the U.S. would have to look at employment strategies that maximized the element of surprise to ensure all targets were hit by their designated weapons. This would require a change in the readiness posture and operational deployment areas of U.S. nuclear forces.
With increased readiness comes the need for vigilance against any preemption efforts by a potential nuclear adversary, meaning that U.S. nuclear forces will be placed on a higher alert status.
In short, the risk of nuclear war, inadvertent or otherwise, has become exponentially greater.
In March the Biden administration reportedly issued a new Nuclear Employment Guidance document reflecting this reality.
Nowhere in this guidance is there consideration for using arms control as a means of managing the nuclear equation, either by extending the New START treaty, or working with China to prevent a Chinese nuclear breakout.
Instead, the U.S. appears to be concerned about the erosion of nuclear deterrence that will be brought about by diverting weapons dedicated to non-Chinese contingencies. When seen in this light, the answer to the problem is more, not fewer, nuclear weapons.
This is why the U.S. is going to let the New START treaty lapse in February 2026 — once the treaty goes away, so, too, does the cap on the number of deployed warheads, and the U.S. nuclear establishment will be able to build up the U.S. operational nuclear arsenal so that there are enough weapons for every designated target.
The world is becoming a very dangerous place.
Nuclear weapons offer the illusion of security.
By allowing the U.S. nuclear posture to shift away from deterrence toward warfighting, all we guarantee is that eventually there will be a warfighting scenario where the U.S. will end up using nuclear weapons.
And then we all die.
We are, literally, on a Highway to Hell.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Scott,
I sent Nima of Dialogue Works a message/request to have him ask his military experts — Cols. Wilkerson and Macgregor and you — to address the issue of Israel’s nuclear inventory and “doctrine”, and in particular Russia’s likely defensive contingency plan aimed at dealing with — that is defending against — any Israeli nuclear threat directed at Russia. It seems to me likely that Russia would be a target of Israel’s nuclear arsenal we’re Israel to reach the “Sampson Option” stage.
Part of the discussion would need to address the heretofore undiscussed diversity of nuclear weapons: strategic multi-kiloton weapons, tactical nuclear weapons, enhanced radiation weapons ie “neutron bombs”, and emp weapons, lately referred to as “ E-bombs”.
I’m sure you’re aware of Pepe Escobar’s report of an Israeli E-bomb attack aimed at Iran in response to the 13 April Iranian missile attack on Israel.
(I realize that Pepe’s report was received with skepticism and has subsequently “disappeared” from the news feed. In my view however, the character of such an E-bomb attack — a nearly invisible high-altitude detonation, without blast or radiation damage or human injury at ground level, with the instantaneous, almost “mysterious” disruption of electronic equipment and infrastructure — combined with the Israeli policy of punitive disproportionate response, lends substantial credibility to Pepe’s report. )
As I said to Nima in my message, when a nation develops a nuclear capability, those nations who see themselves as potential targets will be compelled to develop a plan of defense.
I’d very much like to hear you and Colonel Macgregor and Colonel Wilkerson discuss this as-yet-undiscussed issue.
Respectfully, Jeff Davis
It seriously makes me wonder about the mental stability of the ‘powers that be’ … seriously!!!
You only have to know a bit of history to understand what is inevitable. We are an extremely aggressive, violent and destructive species. So, it will only take one incident, one accident, one misunderstanding, or one lunatic to destroy us all.
With the high level of belligerence on the part of the US political classes and military, no amount of restraint from Russia or China can prevent the inevitable nuclear confrontation. Some of these lunatics are not afraid to reveal their desire for escalation to this level, not caring and certainly not understanding exactly what it would mean for the world.
And then the lights will go out permanently.
So, let’s imagine a world where China is no more, Russia is no more, Europe is no more and the ME is no more. But, America survives, albeit decimated (literally). The rest of the world is ‘hot’, maybe for decades.
Raw materials, food, luxuries all reduced or no more. No one to fight with apart from yourselves.
Does that sound like heaven or hell ?
Now that preemptive war against countries with WMD’s is on the table then preemptive first nuclear strikes by all nuclear powers is possible at any time. That is a balance of paranoia that is a total imbalance of rational human civilization.
It appears that that a NATO military powers complex has taken over western civilization seeking total dominance of world culture. .
Worth mentioning that we don’t know if the Pentagon report about China’s nuclear weapons is accurate, or if it is more “missile gap” propaganda a la the Cold War. Also worth mentioning, the very logical reasons behind China’s own buildup: US abandoning nuclear treaties in Europe and expanding its own military containment buildup, with nuclear weapons, in the Pacific aimed at China. Ultimately, the US is responding to threats it created by it’s own aggressive posture and abandonment of arms control treaties.
I can’t know institutional imperatives or culture, but I keep asking: Why not just NOT encircle China with troops, missiles, subs and nuclear weapons? Why not just NOT try to bring Ukraine into NATO and place more nuclear weapons in Germany? And why not use international treaties to control the global nuclear threat and limit the possibility of nuclear exchange?
Even a successful “limited” First Strike would be a crime against humanity, and possibly doom the entire planet to nuclear winter. In greater likelihood, all hell breaks loose and everyone is destroyed. Why would anyone work towards this end, and not the polar opposite? It seems like the Pentagon, State Department really, REALLY want the ability to destroy whole continents with no retaliatory threat, or to hold the whole planet hostage Doctor Evil-style and are willing to gamble all of our fates on that. Why would anyone want that, and not the alternative?
Amidst the other insights here, I am particularly fascinated to find that “the inter-agency” has a name. The syntax here is surprisingly revealing.
It has been obvious enough for ages that someone was pulling Joe Biden’s strings and making his mouth move. And we all lean more or less on concept-categories like “deep state” and “shadow government” or generic groupings like “alpha-agencies.” This apparently refers to the same things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, but differently.
To use this coinage naturally, the relative insiders involved conceptualize “the inter-agency” in certain ways:
a) Singular, and so sufficiently homogenous to be identified as such
b) Involving multiple agencies
c) Not within or wholly within one agency
d) Confidently correcting candidates’ policies, including for nuclear war
I don’t mean to imply that the hierarchy of such things is clean or unquestioned. I have never known human interactions to work that way. But here we have an entity that presidents consult for policy, for permission or some sort of relative permission. That leaves a lot of questions, but it makes a good working assumption.
I don’t know much about “game theory” and I have to admit I don’t know much more about nuclear weapons.
What I do know is that the use of nuclear weapons in a global conflict will have no winners.
I believe both presidential candidates need to answer this question, ” why would you involve the U.S. in a nuclear conflict when you know it is not best for the citizens”, you know “We the People”?
I’d say with Netenyahoo at the helm in Israel, he presents the best chance for any leader going nuclear.
MADD – Mutually Assured Destruction. Brought to us by evil doer’s in our own government. People I believe who knew all too well that JFK intended to make strong attempts to limit proliferation of nuclear weapons. What Kennedy likely didn’t know that CIA was not at all behind him.
Micheal McNulty’s comment reaches to make a point. A mischaracterization, in my opinion, which fails to accurately reveal JFK as a nuclear hawk. The history is clear on this issue.
A couple of other things are clear also, James Jesus Angleton was the head of counter intelligence when the Diversions took place from the NUMEC facility ran by Zalmon Shapiro. The CIA played a pivotal role and Zionists were involved also.
I am more than sure a great number folks disagree with my take here on NUMEC and Reagan so be it. I’ve provided more than enough links and other info including the location of documents enough times anyone who desired to educate themselves on these topics could have.
Truth is these issues are clearly understandable. The two issues that has never been exposed to the Sun Light of Truth. One the murder of JFK and the true story of who ordered and carried out the Diversion from NUMEC to Israel.
History is abundantly clear about something else also. Regan’s star wars and his reintroduction of processing enriched U -235 and reprocessing spent fuel to acquire Plutonium was a fiasco. He could claim he beat the Russians by bankrupting them. In the process his actions provided much motivation for the Chinese to, North Koreans, as if the Israelis having the bomb didn’t destabilize the planet enough.
These people are power hungry greed heads who are insane. Now ask yourself who killed JFK and who benefited from his death the most.
#1 Those responsible acted out of hatred and the fear of being exposed – let us remember JFK intended to reorganize CIA after he dismantled it limb from limb.
#2 Israel still hadn’t produced a number of warheads 1963. You see they jumped a step of sorts. If everyone here knew more about the history of the development of the thermonuclear weapon. The hydrogen This development gave Israel a big boost and Edward Teller was behind that development.
But you best read a couple of historically accurate books because SWAGGING it (taking scientific wild ass guesses and reading history propaganda in the form of rewritten, revised history will not get you the truth.
The diversion hung CIA out to dry if JFK lived and outed J.J. Angleton. He had to die, CIA had no other viable option. What they did have was Motive, Means and Opportunity. I believe Angleton spied for Israel he was the Israeli desk at CIA during his career there and came close to brings the agency down but Congress flinched, and didn’t have the guts to hold CIA accountable. I believe this closer to the real story than most want to believe.
The bunch of son’s a bitches responsible of killing Kennedy all had plenty of motive to kill him. Including a rather powerful group at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. A group who worshiped Teller in my opinion. Hell, what could go wrong? Well kiddies we know now don’t we.
And Israel? The Israeli’s, due to our governments failure to control CIA got the thermonuclear weapon. The Monster of all Monsters . How is all that going for everyone currently? Yah, I thought so!
Let me add a footnote to Mr. Ritter’s excellent account.
In 2011, I was a part of a ‘citizen lobbying’ effort in DC by a group called Americans for Nuclear Accountability (IIRC). The Tea Party had just gained power in the 1st Obama mid-term elections. The ANA had been organizing this lobbying for awhile, setting up times for visits to Congressional offices while trying to encourage volunteers to come. So, it was pure coincidence that this effort happened right in the middle of the Tea Party’s first government shutdown created crisis.
So, there I was walking around with folders prepared by the ANA’s staff of how America could save $billions by cutting funding for nukes, right in the middle of a budget fight where the two sides were struggling to come to an agreement on what America could afford. Fat lot of good that did, of course.
Two of my meetings were with local Democrats who pretended to be Progressive. Of course, seeing the Congressperson was out of the question, but we got to talk to a 20 year old staffer, out in the friggin hallway, about our concerns. Yep, there was great importance to our meeting. He delivered the message to us that Obama was pro-nuke and that of course the Democrats would support both his nuclear power money and his nuclear weapon modernization programs.
It was rather interesting, but the Tea Party people were more receptive. The one conversation I got with an actual elected congressperson was with a newly elected Tea Party politician. A very good talk, back and forth, with him listening to what we said. We were scheduled for 10 minutes, but he spent half an hour with us before his staff finally pulled him out. To be honest, when I left, I figured “well, he’s new. He doesn’t know better, yet”. Never went back to DC again to see if that proved out or not.
But we of course got very little support for our no-nuke positions, despite being able to show how they would save $billions in a budget crisis. Welcome to America.
A very basic problem in America is that America and Americans believe their own propaganda. It was decades ago under Cheney/Bush that Karl Rove said “we don’t worry about reality. we create reality.” And it is quite clear that they still believe this and still operate in this fashion. And this entire election says the voters go along with it.
Lets go to a very basic question. Is America at war?
Yes, and No, well, maybe. Under the Constitution, the answer is a clear No, as that set of Rules lays out a precise procedure by which the nation goes to war. In the media, with the politicians, it depends on the moment. When they want to take away human and civil rights, then by gawd we are at war. When they want all the money to go to the military, then of course it must be so because we are at war. But, they don’t want to alarm people and get them to vote against a war they don’t want, so at other times America is not at war. Whenever America is voting, we don’t want war to be on the ballot. But we want the policies of war to be approved. America has been at war for 23 straight years, but yet America is not at war. Is everything quite clear?
This is life in a world where the elites have decided that reality does not matter, and that they get to shape reality to whatever suits their purpose at the moment. We are at war. We are not at war.
Except …. there are two sides in any war. What if the other side does not agree with the Americans that they are not at war. That could get to be rather dangerous. You are in a fight, but you don’t realize it. A very dangerous place to be. America is not at war. America is at war. America is not at war. America is at war. America is not at war. America is at war. America is not at war, etc.
This is likely to have two long term effects. Your life gets worse and worse and harder and harder as more and more resources go to the military and the war which does and does not exist. And, someday, the building you are in might blow up and you won’t have any idea why. We aren’t at war? Are we?
Great comment. Unfortunately, the implication is that anywhere on Earth the US doesn’t get absolutely everything it desires, we ARE at war. Insubordination to the empire is an act of war, and the US is at war with most of the world. But because this is defined as normalcy, it’s not war, and as escalation creeps up, nobody in the media or political class feel it worth mentioning until there is a need to feed greater escalation.
an awful lot of rationalization of an aggressors pre-meditated choices, imo. at the (one sided) end of the cold war, when russians (again) suggested joining nato, there was a tremendous opportunity to shut all nukes back into pandora’s box. ‘smart’ people decided against it and started working toward where we are now.
The BAS’ Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight in 1991. It turns out between Bush and Clinton, the Peace Dividend was not on the ballot. Just another American election. America was embarking on a search for a new enemy.
Dr. King tried to steer us to a different path, but America answered him with a bullet in 1968.
“Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. ”
— “Beyond Vietnam”, Dr. M.L.King, Jr. April 4th, 1967
Some years ago I read a declassified transcript of a phone conversation between JFK and Khrushchev from the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It shows America’s attitude towards bigger bombs or more of them, even from Kennedy. I can’t remember the words verbatim but part of the conversation basically went:
Kennedy. “How many nuclear bombs does Russia have?”
Khrushchev. “We have enough nuclear bombs to destroy every one of your major cities.”
Kennedy. “We have enough to destroy your major cities several times over.”
Khrushchev. “We only need to destroy your cities once.”
Those nuclear bomb plants were run by major corporations who got 1$ a year for doing so. Well, one dollar a year, plus expenses.
Ever had an expense account with no limits and where you could claim ‘national security’ and that the work you were doing was the most important thing in the nation? I haven’t, but I can imagine. I have a good imagination. Of course, we can expect that the patriots at America’s big corporations that had such an expense account never took any advantage of it. Just saying that there appears to be a obvious motive for at least a group of people (stockholders) for building the bombs to go from destroying the Soviet cities say 4 times up to 5 times …. plus expenses.
“Plenty of good money, to be made, supplying the Army with the tools of the trade” … “Vietnam Rag”, Country Joe McDonald.
Yes, that’s a good point. I forgot about the money and just thought about the aggression. Perhaps we both have a point?
George this is an old phrase but I’m thinking you may be familiar with it, “Cost Plus”.
Leslie Groves was a talented manger and did a stellar job of organizing the Manhattan Project. When you have the luxury of charging everything physical, construction costs , to the government then charging for the contractor costs, with the allowed profit agreed to be paid to the company calling the shots, things tend to get done. Which is how the U.S. Government completed the Bomb Project for 2 million dollars spent the first two years.
Have your ever read the Making of The Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes? I have a couple of times in fact. I also read the Army’s version, Manhattan : The Army and the Atomic Bomb.
The one over riding concept I learned and from my point of view, was the way America worked with respect to the mechanics of the economy, for the funding and contracting that occurred during the “Project” changed the way Washington, private companies and military contracting was conducted changed the face of American business forever. Especially the involvement of the Congressional and Commercial interests. Rickover’s nuclear Navy is another example of some of the best and some of worst that happens when so much money is circulated through the U.S. Government, it’s military and “Big” money from the private sector. Lots of palms to be crossed with silver and gold!
Not only you have some great comments, so does bardamu! Whose ” the inter agency ” concept is great stuff.
Think about this. What was born of the failures of 911? In my opinion the opportunity for the U.S. Government to mount the largest power grab from ” We the People ” ever. And it was maximized.
Ole” “Shrubs” “You are either with us or against us”‘ should have been a warning heeded by all. Never bite on a policy of “No Tolerance” or you will find yourself trapped.
That said I will say this again, I own not one Israeli or Palestinian one damned thing, non of what happened there happened because of me. I do however know damned well the difference between right and wrong.
OK, so since no one else brought it up, I will mention the obvious fact that negotiations don’t involve large military contracts. They don’t make anyone any money. In the US, nothing gets done unless it makes money. The more money you can make, the more pressure there is to do something, no matter how foolish that is otherwise. I have never heard of any weapon modernization program that runs into the trillions of dollars of taxpayer’s money. Sure, hundreds of billions here or there, but never trillions. The estimated cost of the upgrade (in publicly available documents which are not ever going to reflect final costs) the DoD is asking for 1.5 trillion dollars. With the normal markups after finding out that there are “cost overruns” you will get to somewhere between 2 and 3 trillion in the end. That would be 3000 billion dollars. What war profiteer could resist that??
Give them time, and I’m sure they’ll come up with a program that costs “trillions.”
There was certainly a point in American history where the exact same phrase could include “billions”. There’s a trivia question to pass the time as we watch the final clicks on the Doomsday Clock …. in what year did the War Department or Defense Department budget first exceed $1 billion? Or maybe $10 billions since we were talking billions in the plural.
All it takes is for a group of lobbyists to get drunk with some sex workers, then start talking big and loud about such a program in the $trillions, and then they’ll never get the fantasy out of their minds until they reach their new goal … and charge us for the party as expenses for ‘concept development’.
In 1956 we had the Suez crisis with the invasion by the Israeli’s and the British. I was assigned to Bergstrom AF Base and witnessed how well trained our military is and how willingly they carry out orders. Bergstrom was a Strategic Air Command base. Purely by chance I was the Duty NCO when the alert came down, a S/Sgt. The Officer of the day was a young Lt. He put the response procedure in to effect immediately. All of our planes were soon in the air and on station for the final order to go. Everything was going just as everyone had trained for, there was no hesitancy, no wringing of hands.
Had the next step been taken our planes would have left on the missions assigned. As an activist for peace I have never forgotten that I also carried out my duties without hesitation and without any thought of the consequences. As Scott Ritter describes it nothing will stop the end of it all. Someone will give the order and it will be carried out. The war to end all wars.
The ‘rock and a hard place’ simile is utterly insufficient! With the ‘rock’ of environmental degradation as a terminating condition only decades in the future; with every historically relevant political solution denied by the certainty of ecological failures without massive changes in the human use of the earth’s resources (historical ‘solutions’ to serious policy/political differences: revolutions and wars), then there is the ‘hard place’ of total exasperation and the use of our most extreme tools, nuclear weapons. Going on as we are is simply the 95% probability of not going on at all…. But, going on in ways that could improve our (and that of the living world generally) chances to re-engage some relationship with reality may be just ‘not worth it’ to give up present beliefs and expectations: that would be the final expression of MAD-ness.
Re.
“the U.S. nuclear establishment will be able to build up the U.S. operational nuclear arsenal so that there are enough weapons for every designated target.”
The USA apparently has over 1,500 deployed nukes with nearly 2,000 undeployed. So that is enough for over 500 targets in each country of america’s perceived enemies. And each Nuke is more powerful than the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Really !!
If anyone wanted a definition of madness, there it is. The world is run by psycopathic morons.
US General Turgidson recommending Nuclear War, “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.” Quote from the movie Dr. Strangelove.
Than you Scott.
Even those who in their delusion think they have bunkers to enter into and hide will not have another day to live.
This is it.
We can study how the Gorby and Gipper accomplished the impossible- they did it beyond the critics expectations.
Ken Kragen: “the impossible is easier to than the ordinary.”
He accomplished a lot of impossible odds – studying from those who accomplished, not those who give into
never trying.
The important thing is not to expect a result, but, to keep
improving.
Keep trying, we don’t have anything to lose but everything to lose.
I don’t think that Gorby and the Gipper ever
thought they would arrive where they finally had …
there were many failed tea talks and successes:
the Berlin Wall fell. Billy Graham never thought that communism would ever fall as quickly as it did back then in the Eastern Bloc.
T.y for the spine that you have given others to develop one and to give to others – a God given gift.
Be careful Scott. Their politeness can be contrived.
The great Daniel Ellsberg, after the Pentagon Papers, devoted the rest of his life to the prevention of nuclear war, in which he became a profound expert. I recall an interview in which he said that the detonation of 100 modern nukes was more than enough to bring about global nuclear winter.
The USA, hellbent on nuclear “supremacy”, is the only country with a first strike doctrine. If they hit China with 1000 nukes pre-emptively and even if there was no retaliation, all Americans, indeed all humanity, would perish in the ensuing decades long nuclear winter when no plants could grow.
This is how insane the USA is.
Seems there’s only one way out – massive civil war in the US to pauperize it sufficient to completely change the way it operates. A revolution in thinking would arise.
Thank you Scott Ritter and CN, for this analysis.
The US concept of increasing warheads to confront both Russia and China is foolish and illusory. If there were twenty superpowers, each with 1500 nuclear weapons, no one would attack any of them. Any such attack would ruin the world. These threats are directed against the US people by the US government, to tyrannize them to subsidize the wars demanded by those who bribe the political parties: the MIC, the anti-socialists, and the zionists.
No responsible democracy would even consider nuclear weapons as more than a deterrent, unless under overwhelming conventional attack, and no country is even remotely able to mount such an attack on the US. Only Europe would warrant such protection by the US, and no such attack upon Europe is even remotely likely.
The USG has proven since the fall of the USSR that it is still searching for monsters to destroy, to get bribes from the MIC, anti-socialists, and zionists for wars of aggression. NATO had only a minor role after 1991, but the US madly expanded NATO to threaten Russia, which in no way threatened the West, and deliberately caused the Ukraine crisis.
The US refusal to accommodate China relative to Taiwan also proves its aggression. The whole South China Sea is the size of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, and the US has for centuries demanded dominance there: China’s local dominance in no way threatens the US. The US makes no effort to relocate the few million nationalist Taiwanese.
We do not have a democracy, we have a tyranny of money power masked by marketing scams throughout the government, political parties, and mass media. That is the sole cause of US government demands for militarization.
Considering both antagonistic relationships were totally avoidable, and the case of China is bizarre in the extreme as they threaten nobody and are our major source of imports, the whole thing is completely insane. There is zero reason for military confrontation with either country, let alone planet threatening nuclear escalation.
His changing stance shows how little he has been in control. POTUS are figureheads for empire