First Strike?!: Sorry seems to be an empty word

About a year ago, two professors of political science wrote an article in Foreign Affairs called "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy" ( see http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faes...ar-primacy.html ).

The summary reads as follows: “For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia's decays and China's stays small, the era of MAD is ending -- and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun.” The article states “It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces…. The ability to destroy all of an adversary's nuclear forces, eliminating the possibility of a retaliatory strike, is known as a first-strike capability, or nuclear primacy.”

Daniel Drezner ( http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002655.html ) called the article “provocative”. He quotes a former Russian Prime Minister: “Even Russian journalists and analysts not inclined to hysteria or anti-Americanism have viewed the article as an expression of the US official stance.”

Drezner goes on to say:

I'm pretty sure that if Lieber and Press were actually the official voice of the U.S. government, this essay would never have seen the light of day. That last thing the DoD would want would be to publicly advertise nuclear primacy… No, Lieber and Press are doing what academics are supposed to do: generating hypotheses, testing them, and publishing the results… And this implication is particularly disturbing…

It’s been argued that the substantial increase in the accuracy of the new sub-based Trident II D-5 missiles makes a first strike capability more certain. The likelihood of destroying a hardened Russian ICBM silo has improved dramatically, according to Lieber and Press, the authors of the article above, to 90-98%. It’s been argued that this certainty is, in and of itself, de-stabilizing – and invites a first-strike against the US.

Furthermore, US nuclear weapons are now forward-deployed. “CONPLAN 8022.., “a concept plan for the quick use of nuclear, conventional, or information warfare capabilities to destroy — preemptively, if necessary — ‘time-urgent targets’ anywhere in the world. . . . is now operational on long-range bombers, strategic submarines on deterrent patrol, and presumably intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).” [See http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...;articleId=1928 ]

It should be noted that the Lieber and Press article noted above has been countered; see those arguments here, along with the authors’ response. For example, one critic says that the U.S. nuclear arsenal has shrunk since the end of the Cold War. But the authors’ analysis shows that when one factors in U.S. force reductions, as well as upgrades to the remaining U.S. weapons, and steep cuts to the Russian arsenal, the result is a greatly enhanced U.S. first-strike capability.

Over the prior decade or so, Russia has hardened its own capabilities and conducted numerous nuclear war games. In 2000, a Russian defector testified to Congress of Russian first-strike planning and doctrine: Stanislav Lunev, the highest-ranking Soviet spy ever to defect, warned members of Congress that a pre-emptive nuclear strike by Russia on American soil was a real possibility. At a House Committee on Government Reform hearing, the one-time colonel in Soviet and then Russian Federation military intelligence, gave a chilling presentation of his country’s Cold War plans to defeat the United States.
See http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/1/25/70247.
See also http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1999/3/12/53227 .

But Lieber and Press say the Russian capability is weak:

Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal has sharply deteriorated. Russia has 39 percent fewer long-range bombers, 58 percent fewer ICBMs, and 80 percent fewer SSBNs than the Soviet Union fielded during its last days. The true extent of the Russian arsenal's decay, however, is much greater than these cuts suggest. What nuclear forces Russia retains are hardly ready for use. Russia's strategic bombers, now located at only two bases and thus vulnerable to a surprise attack, rarely conduct training exercises, and their warheads are stored off-base. Over 80 percent of Russia's silo-based ICBMs have exceeded their original service lives, and plans to replace them with new missiles have been stymied by failed tests and low rates of production. Russia's mobile ICBMs rarely patrol, and although they could fire their missiles from inside their bases if given sufficient warning of an attack, it appears unlikely that they would have the time to do so.

The third leg of Russia's nuclear triad has weakened the most. Since 2000, Russia's SSBNs have conducted approximately two patrols per year, down from 60 in 1990. (By contrast, the U.S. SSBN patrol rate today is about 40 per year.) Most of the time, all nine of Russia's ballistic missile submarines are sitting in port, where they make easy targets. Moreover, submarines require well-trained crews to be effective. Operating a ballistic missile submarine -- and silently coordinating its operations with surface ships and attack submarines to evade an enemy's forces -- is not simple. Without frequent patrols, the skills of Russian submariners, like the submarines themselves, are decaying. Revealingly, a 2004 test (attended by President Vladimir Putin) of several submarine-launched ballistic missiles was a total fiasco: all either failed to launch or veered off course. The fact that there were similar failures in the summer and fall of 2005 completes this unflattering picture of Russia's nuclear forces.

Compounding these problems, Russia's early warning system is a mess. Neither Soviet nor Russian satellites have ever been capable of reliably detecting missiles launched from U.S. submarines. (In a recent public statement, a top Russian general described his country's early warning satellite constellation as "hopelessly outdated.") Russian commanders instead rely on ground-based radar systems to detect incoming warheads from submarine-launched missiles. But the radar network has a gaping hole in its coverage that lies to the east of the country, toward the Pacific Ocean. If U.S. submarines were to fire missiles from areas in the Pacific, Russian leaders probably would not know of the attack until the warheads detonated. Russia's radar coverage of some areas in the North Atlantic is also spotty, providing only a few minutes of warning before the impact of submarine-launched warheads….

Russia has already extended the service life of its aging mobile ICBMs, something that it cannot do indefinitely, and its efforts to deploy new strategic weapons continue to flounder. The Russian navy's plan to launch a new class of ballistic missile submarines has fallen far behind schedule. It is now highly likely that not a single new submarine will be operational before 2008, and it is likely that none will be deployed until later.

See page 2 of the Lieber and Press article for a description of their computer modeling of a first-strike US attack on Russia. To be clear, this does not mean that a first strike by the United States would be guaranteed to work in reality; such an attack would entail many uncertainties. Nor, of course, does it mean that such a first strike is likely. But what our analysis suggests is profound: Russia's leaders can no longer count on a survivable nuclear deterrent. And unless they reverse course rapidly, Russia's vulnerability will only increase over time.

“China's nuclear arsenal is even more vulnerable to a U.S. attack.” (See page 3 of Lieber and Press for their reasoning.)

Here’s their conclusion:

Some may wonder whether U.S. nuclear modernization efforts are actually designed with terrorists or rogue states in mind. Given the United States' ongoing war on terror, and the continuing U.S. interest in destroying deeply buried bunkers (reflected in the Bush administration's efforts to develop new nuclear weapons to destroy underground targets), one might assume that the W-76 upgrades are designed to be used against targets such as rogue states' arsenals of weapons of mass destruction or terrorists holed up in caves. But this explanation does not add up. The United States already has more than a thousand nuclear warheads capable of attacking bunkers or caves. If the United States' nuclear modernization were really aimed at rogue states or terrorists, the country's nuclear force would not need the additional thousand ground-burst warheads it will gain from the W-76 modernization program. The current and future U.S. nuclear force, in other words, seems designed to carry out a preemptive disarming strike against Russia or China.

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An argument in support of the first-strike option can be found here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/...rt/1989/SRA.htm .
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“Stephen Hadley, Stephen Cambone, Robert Joseph, William Schneider Jr., J.D. Crouch II, Linton Brooks, and John Bolton are nuclear-weapons enthusiasts who advocate aggressive policies and occupy key positions in the top echelons of the Bush administration…. The Bush administration in its second term has deployed into key positions hardliners that have both expertise in nuclear weapons and a known history of advocating the aggressive use thereof…. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Robert Joseph [http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1235 ] "advocates the offensive use of nuclear weapons" and advocates placing "preemptive attacks and weapons of mass destruction at the center of U.S. national security strategy."

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8263

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Prior to 2000, what was Condoleeza Rice's area of expertise?
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See also: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...;articleId=2032
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Deterrence has worked so far because neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. is sure it could survive a retaliatory strike after launching a pre-emptive attack. That is, the sides cooperate -- threaten each other rather than attack pre-emptively -- because they're chicken; they fear the consequences of not cooperating. Their threats remain threats. The game tends toward what Brams calls a ''deterrence equilibrium.'' But the game goes haywire when a missile shield is added. Rather than shifting toward a deterrence equilibrium, the game tends toward a ''mutual pre-emption equilibrium,'' in which both sides believe it's better to launch a first strike than to deter each other with threats. The better the defense the more likely mutual pre-emption. And it doesn't matter whether both sides or only one side has the shield. ''The side having the perfect defense can strike with impunity because it can turn back everything in a retaliatory strike,'' says Brams. ''But the other side, knowing this, will pre-empt.'' So if and when the defensive shield becomes good enough, the U.S. might decide to pre-empt during a crisis rather than sit tight and wait for the U.S.S.R. to strike -- provided the Soviets don't push the button first. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...s_v8/ai_4745683

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John von Neumann, a leading mathematician and the founder of game theory, said,
"If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today?
If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=19773

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In “Three Nuclear Ironies” ( http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0629-22.htm ), Tad Daley, Peace and Disarmament Fellow for the Physicians For Social Responsibility, speaks of the Iran scenario:

“’With supreme irony,’ said historian James Harvey Robinson of the First World War, ‘the war to 'make the world safe for democracy' ended by leaving democracy more unsafe...’

With comparable irony, a nuclear war to make the world safe from nuclear peril could end by leaving America more exposed to nuclear annihilation than at any time since the dawn of the atomic age.…

Death penalty opponents often display an unanswerable bumper sticker: Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?

Similarly, one might ask in this context: How can we contemplate nuking people who might nuke people to show that nuking people is wrong?”

Daley points out that the logic of nuclear deterrence “doesn't apply to the non-state nuclear terrorist…. When a loosely affiliated global terror network does not actually control any dirt, deterrence becomes essentially meaningless, because there is no place or thing to threaten to retaliate against.”

“We are the ones who created these weapons in the past. We are the ones contemplating the use of these weapons in the present. We are the ones who vaingloriously insist that we -- but not others -- must perpetually possess these weapons into the future.

And now, we are the ones who may soon feel the wrath of these weapons brought down upon ourselves. We are the ones who may be the authors of our own annihilation. We are the ones, perhaps, who will be devoured by our own creation.”

In the end, that could turn out to be the greatest irony of all.”

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Towards the tail end of a recent Webster Tarpley radio broadcast (about 55 minutes in), (available here: http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=763 ) there is a brief description of recent Russian improvements made in the year since the Lieber/Press article was published: Their re-armanent program, from 2007 through 2015 will include dozens of new silo-based launchers, 50 new mobile Topol-M ICBM’s will be on alert, 50 refurbished planes (TU-160’s and TU-95’s), 8 new ballistic missile submarines, 31 new warships, and a totally-new ICBM called Bulova.

Tarpley notes that the Chinese response to Bush’s SOTU came the next day when they blew up one of their own satellites; he notes that China is developing (according to Michael Pillsbury of the Atlantic Council reporting to a Congressional committee) “new concept” Stars Wars technology, beamed weapons, particle-beam weapons et al under development in 2003 through 2006; there are 3,000 engineers involved in developing and testing excimer laser and plasma-based anti-satellite weaponry.

The major emphasis of that Tarpley webcast is devoted to a review of Putin’s recent speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 11th, 2007 (text of which is available here http://kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/02/11/...9_118135.shtml), which Tarpley describes as a phillipic, a warning about the approaching World War III and the expanding nuclear arms race).

Putin describes the threats of a unipolar world, “namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.”

Putin asks why the US is deploying ABM capability in Czeckslovakia and Poland and notes that “Iran is not threatening Europe”.

‘This is Cold War thinking…’

‘These things seriously change the balance of power and will evoke a response’.

“And if today the new American Defence Minister declares that the United States will not hide these superfluous weapons in warehouse or, as one might say, under a pillow or under the blanket, then I suggest that we all rise and greet this declaration standing. It would be a very important declaration…. It is obvious that in these conditions we must think about ensuring our own security.”

“… What do we know? That the United States is actively developing and already strengthening an anti-missile defence system. Today this system is ineffective but we do not know exactly whether it will one day be effective. But in theory it is being created for that purpose. So hypothetically we recognise that when this moment arrives, the possible threat from our nuclear forces will be completely neutralised. Russia’s present nuclear capabilities, that is. The balance of powers will be absolutely destroyed and one of the parties will benefit from the feeling of complete security. This means that its hands will be free not only in local but eventually also in global conflicts.”

"At the same time, it is impossible to sanction the appearance of new, destabilising high-tech weapons. Needless to say it refers to measures to prevent a new area of confrontation, especially in outer space. Star wars is no longer a fantasy – it is a reality. In the middle of the 1980s our American partners were already able to intercept their own satellite.”

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So, what’s going down? To go too much further in this discussion, one would have to be privy to inside-government thinking and planning. Should the subject and possibility of a US first-strike be publicly discussed? Lieber and Press think so.

“The changes in the nuclear balance that we describe are real, potentially destabilizing, and deserving of sustained discussion. In this context, we appreciate Alexei Arbatov's sober words. If Russian leaders were to heed his advice by publicly linking their cooperation on matters important to Washington to changes in U.S. nuclear strategy, a much-needed debate in the United States over the wisdom of continuing to pursue current policies might finally be sparked.” http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060901fare...r-exchange.html

So does George Quester, the author of Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo. The book is focused on “the political, psychological, and social aftermath of nuclear conflict”. See http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/8971.html. I haven’t read the book yet (I did just order it), but the promo speaks of “the careful consideration of possible nuclear deployment scenarios and their consequences”. And so does Jorge Hirsch ( http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8263 ): “… The use of nuclear weapons by the United States is a grave decision that affects every man, woman, and child in America (not to mention the rest of the world).”

Among the questions that might be asked:

1) Does first-strike thinking make sense at this time? At any time?

2) What is likely, predictable or unpredictable about the actions of other players in a Chinese/Russian/American nuclear war scenario? What will other nuclear powers do in the moment, or in the immediate aftermath? What will other non-nuclear powers do? What will small states, criminal cabals and penny-ante thugs do?

3) What is the likelihood that a counter-strike will be launched? What is the likelihood that it will be effective and reach its target(s)?

4) What are the likely chances of success in a first-strike scenario?

5) What are likely effects of success in a first-strike scenario?

6) What are the likely effects of failure in a first-strike scenario?

7) What are the acceptable negatives? How much loss are we willing to risk?

8) How will the rest of the world’s nations and peoples react after the radioactive dust settles?

9) Can the US military effectively execute the required planning, operations and execution necessary to pull off a first-strike attack with a minimum score of 98+% efficacy?

10)

• Is the Bush Administration engaging in brinksmanship?
• Are the recent military deployments theoretically aimed at or sending a message to Iran really aimed at or sending a message to Russia and/or China?
• If the Bush Administration is ‘cornered’ by forthcoming investigations, a failing war, declining national and world-wide popularity, increasing debt, a declining economy, et al, are they more likely to “roll the dice” on a first-strike scenario?
• How will we factor in “The Bush administration's willingness to use military power based on unconfirmed intelligence and defectors' fairy tales.” (Hirsch, as noted above).

11) As has been suggested by Sir B. H. Liddell Hart in his book Strategy (as well as others), don’t nuclear brinksmanship and ‘grand chessboard’ games actually create the climate for non-state terrorism and the search by minor states for WMD’s? (Isn’t it interesting that the current Plame case is about the ‘outing’ of an undercover operative looking into WMD proliferation?)

12) If one or more counter-strike nuclear weapons are detonated inside US borders, what will the non-obvious effects be?

• How will Homeland Security react? How effective can they be? Can America coalesce an effective response to that disaster?
• Given the significantly-improved destructive capabilities of modern-day weaponry, what should those plans consist of?
• How should the American people prepare for such a scenario?
• Do those preparations invite a first-strike?
• Do such plans and preparations exceed the Constitutional limitations on the role of the Chief Executive?

Afterwards:

• What will the American leaders then say to the American people?
• What will the American people then say to the American leaders?
• What will the American leaders say to the world?
• What will the American people say to the world?
• What will the American survivors say to those struggling at the fringes of the impact zone(s) and the families of those who have been vaporized?

-- --
… After all we’re only ordinary men, me and you.
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do.

And who knows which is which and who is who.
Up and down… but, in the end, its only round and round.
Havent you heard? It’s a battle of words.

I mean, they’re not gunna kill ya,
so if you give em a quick short, sharp, shock,
they wont do it again. dig it?
I mean he get off lightly, ‘cause I would’ve given him a thrashing - I only hit him once!
It was only a difference of opinion, but really...
I mean good manners don’t cost nothing do they, eh?

Out of the way, its a busy day
I’ve got things on my mind.

--

As Putin said in his Munich speech: ‘This is not a confrontation; this is an opportunity to think.’

As a follow-up to "First Strike?!", here's a video of a physician speaking...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...;articleId=4730

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The Vigilant Shield 07 War Games: Scenario opposing the US to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea
by William M. Arkin

Global Research, February 10, 2007
Washington Post Blog

Irmingham = Iran
Nemazee = North Korea
Ruebek = Russia
Churya = China

Russia Supports North Korea in Nuclear War

by William A Arkin

October 6, 2006

Codename of the Week: Vigilant Shield

When nuclear war breaks out in December between the United States, Russia and North Korea, American taxpayers should be furious.

The war is just another U.S. military exercise.

But this one is particularly childish, a massive waste of money and an insult to the country.

With North Korea and Iran teetering on the edge, amidst a war in Iraq that seems to have no end and no solution, with Afghanistan slipping away and with an ongoing global "war" against terrorism, the American military is preparing for its largest combined drill of the year in December and all it can come up with is -- all it can get excited about -- is nuclear war.

It would be bad enough if some U.S. nuclear command were running such an exercise as part of an American threat to Pyongyang at a time when nuclear testing is threatened.

But instead what we have is the routine annual "homeland defense" exercise of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which sponsors "Vigilant Shield 07."

One might think that NORTHCOM would be focused like a laser on preparing for another Sept. 11 or another Katrina, working through the details of just dealing with the obvious. Alas, some bomb going off somewhere, some natural disaster, doesn't justify missile defenses or other big ticket items like submarines, nor satellites and "early warning," nor the new tricks of cyber-warfare.

Want to know why the armed forces are hurting for soldiers and Marines? The few on the front lines defend the freedom of the extravagant in the Pentagon, the consulting world and defense industry to make billions.

Exercise Vigilant Shield 07, currently scheduled to culminate December 4-14, is described in this year's "Exercise Plan" (thanks PR for providing the documents) as an opportunity to "train and exercise" NORTHCOM and U.S.-Canadian NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) components in all aspects of homeland defense.

The exercise run concurrently with "Terminal Fury 07," a Pacific Command (PACOM) exercise focused on North Korea; "Global Lightning 07," a Strategic Command (STRATCOM) exercise focused on command and control of U.S. nuclear and conventional forces, and "Positive Response 07-1," a national-level continuity of operations exercise of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is also participating in the "maritime defense" portions of the exercise, and other U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Energy are involved in the nuclear weapons aspects.

I wrote last year about Vigilant Shield 06, which involved World War III with "Slomonia," a thinly veiled Russia adopted a more aggressive foreign policy towards the west and eventually attacked the United States.

This year's Vigilant Shield stars Nemazee, a thinly veiled North Korea; Irmingham, which is Iran; Ruebek, which is Russia; and Churya, which is China. According to briefing documents from the Vigilant Shield planning conference:

• "Nemazee continues to develop nuclear and missile capabilities
• Southwest Asian country of Irmingham intent on uranium enrichment program
• Western countries and United States seeking U.N. assistance to halt Irmingham’s enrichment program
• Eurasian country of Ruebek attempts to mediate Irmingham crisis by offering nuclear oversight while secretly supporting enrichment program
• Asian country of Churya will become concerned at increasing level of Ruebek-U.S. hostility"

Evidently endeavoring to be more "relevant" to the world scene, NORTHCOM focused this year's Vigilant Shield on continuing North Korean development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. There's nothing wrong with that.

But North Korea just isn't a big enough threat to justify the homeland security edifice back home, particularly not missile defense or other technological favorites.

According to the NORTHCOM exercise scenario (published separately), when it is all over, a "limited" nuclear war takes place between the United States and Russia. They fire first, hitting U.S. command centers and forces, we retaliate. As part of the concurrent Positive Response exercise of the JCS, a one kiloton "terrorist" nuclear weapon just happens to detonate at the Pentagon. Cheyenne Mountain and the underground Raven Rock bunker in Maryland are hit with Russian nuclear weapons, but no "cities" are hit and other than the attack on the Pentagon -- which briefing documents say only kills 6,000 -- the country survives.

With the Pentagon gone -- someone at least has a sense of humor -- the military can "practice" its alternate command structures, its truck mounted mobile command centers, and its redundant communications. "Consequence management" organizations can stage to pockets of great destruction, led still by a federal government that miraculously survives nuclear war. Officials who need to be are evacuated nicely, the "stressed" system chugs forward.

The "road to war" as described in exercise briefing documents gives no political context for why Russia would want to go to war with the United States, and then if they did, why they would attack in such limited numbers and not go for victory. I guess the answer is buried somewhere in the minds of exercise scenario writers who needed limited war to make it all fun and workable; or is the product of nuclear warfare theory that posits "limited" attacks away from really valuable things as a way of "controlling" the outcome.

In either case, on the nuclear side the two core assumptions are clear: First, nuclear warfare can break out for no particular reason at any particular time, hence not only the need for U.S. nuclear weapons but ballistic missile defenses. Second, small nuclear weapons, while bad, don't really kill that many people, hence the demand for new "mini-nukes" to attack the bad guys: They are useful.

Adm. Timothy Keating, the commander of U.S. Northern Command, spoke at a Homeland Defense Symposium yesterday in Colorado saying that he doubted scenarios that posit another mega-terrorist in the United States.

"I do not think it’s inevitable," Keating said.

(See Tom Roeder, "NORTHCOM Chief Says Attack Not Inevitable," Colorado Springs Gazette, October 6, 2006)

I'm sure no one in the audience of 1,500 industry types who feed at the trough of homeland security was particularly thrilled with Keating's remark.

Not to worry though the Admiral said that NORTHCOM was still working aggressively on disaster preparedness

"If we do this right," he said, "you’re just going to get aid."

Financial aid that is.

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The Vigilant Shield 07 Exercise Scenario

by William M.. Arkin

Supplement to Early Warning blog posting for October 6, 2006

(From the Vigilant Shield 07 exercise scenario, taken from U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) briefing documents dated August 2006. The material in brackets is added by the author to explain acronyms.

Irmingham = Iran
Nemazee = North Korea
Ruebek = Russia
Churya = China

William M. Arkin)

"• Road to Conflict (RTC): 11 Sep – 15 Oct 06

– Initial Irmingham Enrichment I&W [indications and warning]
– Initial Ruebeki & Irmingham Involvement
– Ruebek I&W, PACFLT [U.S. Pacific Fleet] Sub Deployments
– Initial Nemazee ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] I&W
– Initial MHLD [homeland defense?] I&W
– Strategic IO [information operations (cyber warfare)] operations (Ruebek & Churya)
– Ruebek & Irmingham Conduct Joint AD [air defense] Exercise

• Phase 1 / Deployment: 4 – 8 Dec 06

– Rogue LRA [Russian long-range aviation] w/CALCM [conventional air launched cruise missile] Launch
– Continue Monitoring Strategic Situation
– Continue Monitoring Nemazee Situation

• Possible Nuclear Testing
• Probable ICBM Preparation

– Continue Monitoring MHLD Situation

• Five VOIs [vessels of interest]
• Churya Flagged VOI into Dutch Harbor Supports BMDS [ballistic missile defense system] Threat to Ft Greely

– Continue Monitoring IO Activities
– Nemazee Conducts SLV [space launch vehicle] Launch – 8 Dec 06

• Phase 2 Minus 42 Days:

• Additional Nemazee ICBM Shipments to Launch Facilities
• RMOB [Russian main operating bases] Acft Conduct LR Navigation Flights
• AS-15 [nuclear armed cruise missile] Handling at RMOBs

– Minus 41 Days:
• Additional Nemazee ICBM Preps at Launch Pad # 2
– Minus 40 Days:
• Activity at Nemazee Nuclear Test Facilities
– Minus 35 Days:
• DOS [Department of State] Travel Warning
– Minus 30 Days:
• Ruebek LRA Deploys Acft to Anadyr & Vorkuta

• Phase 2 Minus 30 Days:

• Growing International Condemnation of Ruebek
• Ruebek Deploys Submarines

– Minus 20 Days:
• Nemazee Recalls Reservists
– Minus 14 Days:
• DOS Draw-down Sequencing
– Minus 13 Days:
• Ruebek Closes US Embassy in Washington DC
– Minus 11 Days:
• Nemazee Conducts Fueling of Additional ICBMs
• Ruebeki Presidential Statement on Possible US Attack

• Phase 2 Minus 10 Days:

• POTUS Addresses Congress on War Powers Act

– Minus 6 Days:
• Ruebek President Calls “Situation Grave”
– Minus 5 Days:
• CALCM Activity at Anadyr, Vorkuta, and Tiksi
• Ruebeki SS-25 [nuclear armed mobile ICBMs] Conduct out of Garrison Deployments
• Nemazee Assembling ICBM for Probable Launch
– Minus 4 Days:
• Ruebek Closes US Embassy in Washington DC
• Ruebek Acft Conduct Outer ADIZ [air defense identification zone] Pentrations
• Mid-Air Collison w/NORAD Acft During ADIZ Penetration

• Phase 2 Minus 4 Days:

• Nemazee ICBM Launch Azimuth Threatens US

– Minus 3 Days:
• NATO Diplomatic Efforts Fail to Diffuse Crisis
• USAMB to Ruebek Recalled for Consultation
• POTUS Addresses Nation
– Minus 2 Days:
• Nemazee Leadership Movement
– Minus 1 Day:
• Ruebek Expels US Mission

• Phase 2 / Execution: 10 – 14 Dec 06

– Pre-Attack I & W
– Imminent Terrorist Attack on Pentagon Suggests Pentagon COOP [continuity of operations plan]
– Nemazee Conducts 2 x ICBM Combat Launches Against United States
– Ruebek Conducts Limited Strategic Attack on United States
• Wave 1 – 8 x Bear H Defense Suppression w/CALCM
• Wave 2 – Limited ICBM & SLBM Attack
– 2 x ICBM Launched (1 impacts CMOC [Cheyenne Mountain], 1 malfunctions)
– 2 x SLBM Launched Pierside (1 impacts SITE-R ["Raven Rock" bunker on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border], 1 malfunctions)
– 3 x Bear H from Dispersal Bases w/ALCM (Eielson AFB, CANR, Cold Lake)
– US Conducts Limited Retaliatory Attack on Ruebek
• 1 x ICBM C2 Facility
• 1 x ICBM Against ICBM Launch Location
• Phase 2 / Execution:
– Ruebek Prepares Additional Attack on United States
• Wave 3 – Prepares for Additional Strategic Attacks
– 1 x ICBM Movement, NO Launch
– 3 x SLBM PACFLT Pierside Missile Handling Activity (NO Launch)
– 6 x BEAR H (launch & RTB [return to base]) w/6 x ALCM (NO launch)"

A

Global Research Articles by William M. Arkin

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle1386812.ece

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February 15, 2007

Giants meet to counter US power
Jeremy Page in Delhi


India, China and Russia account for 40 per cent of the world’s population, a fifth of its economy and more than half of its nuclear warheads. Now they appear to be forming a partnership to challenge the US-dominated world order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War.

Foreign ministers from the three emerging giants met in Delhi yesterday to discuss ways to build a more democratic “multipolar world”.

It was the second such meeting in the past two years and came after an unprecedented meeting between their respective leaders, Manmohan Singh, Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin, during the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July.

It also came only four days after Mr Putin stunned Western officials by railing against American foreign policy at a security conference in Munich.

The foreign ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, Li Zhao Xing and Sergei Lavrov, emphasised that theirs was not an alliance against the United States. It was, “on the contrary, intended to promote international harmony and understanding”, a joint communiqué stated.

Their formal agenda covered issues ranging from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Korea to energy security, nuclear non-proliferation and trade. The subtext, however, was clear: how to use their growing economic and political muscle to prevent Washington from tackling such issues alone.

“In the long term, they feel that the whole structure of international relations has to shift in their direction,” said Vinod C. Khanna, of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. “What has happened is that quite independently they’ve reacted very similarly to recent international events.”

Mr Mukherjee said: “We agreed that cooperation rather than confrontation should govern approaches to regional and global affairs. We also agreed on the importance of the UN.”

Diplomats say that it is premature to talk of a strategic axis between the world’s largest and two most populous nations because they still have more in common with the West than with each other.

Delhi was close to Moscow in Soviet times, but has forged a new friendship with Washington. Chinese relations were soured by its border wars with India in 1962 and the Soviet Union in 1969, and by its arms sales to Pakistan. Russia appears keener than China or India to challenge American hegemony. But there has been a convergence of interests as each struggles to make the transition from a command economy to free markets. Since 2003 they have found further common ground in opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq.

One area of agreement is opposition to outside interference in separatist conflicts in Chechnya, the northeast of India and the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Another is energy. India and China are desperate for Russian oil and gas, and Moscow is worried about its dependence on Western markets. But their most significant common ground is opposition to US military intervention in Iran. The joint statement did not mention Iran, but the three countries have taken a common stance in calling for a negotiated solution through the International Atomic Energy Agency. None of them wants a nuclear-armed Iran, but Russia sells Tehran nuclear technology and India and China need Iranian gas.

Luv ya music.
Sometimes landin' the first blow is strategic.
If ya dodge and throw.
But never over-blow...
appropriate escalation of force is OK,
but don't bully. Detailed force..Hoo-Ha.

I'm not for unilateral nuclear disarmanent by any means. As long as there are other countries that have nuclear weapons, I think that we need an arsenal with an unquestionable capacity to deter anyone else. (Now I could go along with giving away that arsenal to someone that we could trust, say France, but I don't think our leaders ever would and I don't think the French would accept the offer.)

But having a first strike capacity is dangerous because it makes other nuclear powers insecure. Heaven help us if one day some snafu makes Moscow wonder if the U.S. is launching a strike and they are facing a use it or lose it decision within the next 20 minutes.

If we have a first strike capacity it would be dangerous for the whole world, particularly ourselves.

Just out of curiosity, and not in response to anything or anyone, have you ever seen the small indie movie called Deterrence?

Excerpts from Nuclear Nightmare by John Steinbach, 22 February 2003
Numbered footnotes in original
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STE302A.html
-- -- --

“The most ambitious (damage limiting) strategy dictates a first strike capability against an enemy’s strategic offensive forces which seeks to destroy as much of his megatonnage as possible before it can be brought into play. An enemy’s residual retaliation, assumed to be directed against urban-industrial targets, would be blunted still further by a combination of active & passive defenses...”

-- Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld from 1978 Nuclear Posture Review, in
Robert Aldridge, The Counterforce Syndrome: A Guide to U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Strategic Doctrine,
(Washington, Transnational Institute, 1978) p. 9

--

“As the Bush administration relentlessly injects itself into conflicts around the world in the name of eradicating terror, rather than bringing peace, it only fans the flames of hatred. If this is allowed to continue, it may carry us to nuclear war, and to the annihilation of humankind.”

- Haruko Moritaki, Hiroshima, in Message to the American People (Hiroshima, Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, 2002)

--

"The primary purpose of nuclear weapons has never been about deterrence or mutually assured destruction (MAD), but rather to serve as a coercive foreign policy instrument designed and intended for actual war fighting. 5

Nuclear weapons designed to back up military intervention and enforce geopolitical dictates are seen by Pentagon war planners as the backbone of war-fighting strategy, and in this capacity have been used at least 27 times between 1945 and 1998. 6

Daniel Ellsberg, former RAND Corporation nuclear war planner wrote; “Again and again, generally in secret from the American public, nuclear weapons have been used: ...in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone's head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.” 7

Presently possessing the strongest military and dominating the most powerful economic empire in world history, the U.S. will use any military force necessary, including the use of nuclear weapons, to expand, consolidate and maintain control."

--

Rather than a radical departure from established U.S. policy, the George W. Bush Administration’s nuclear strategy actually represents a continuity of policies developed during the Gulf by his father and further advanced by Clinton. 12

The Bush Nuclear Posture Review(NPR) 13 exposed by investigative journalist William Arkin in the Los Angeles Times, “...myopically ignores the political, moral and military implications- short-term and long -of crossing the nuclear threshold,” and indicates that Bush officials “are looking for nuclear weapons that could play a role in the kinds of challenges the U.S. faces with Al Quaeda.” 14 The NPR calls for contingency plans to nuke Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya, and proposes the development of new nuclear weapons to destroy buried bunkers and reduce collateral damage...."

--

The compelling logic of the futility of antiballistic missile defense - since no conceivable ABM system can stop a massive first strike, the only rational purpose for such a system is for “mopping up” after your own first strike - led Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to negotiate the first ABM treaty in 1972. 21

Admiral Eugene Carroll with the Center for Defense Information said, “Missile defense sends a signal to the rest of the world, ‘we will hide behind our nuclear weapon shield and you can’t do anything about it. We will use nuclear weapons when and if we choose.’ We’ve even said publicly that we will use them against non-nuclear states. Then we build what we say is a National Missile Defense System to make certain that we don’t suffer the consequences of our policies and actions.” 22 NMD should be seen as an integral component of the Pentagon’s ongoing plans to dominate the Earth through the militarization of space.

-- --

The Rumsfeld Doctrine

Of all the Bush foreign policy team, Donald Rumsfeld is perhaps the most dangerous. Tellingly, Henry Kissinger called him ‘The most ruthless man he has ever known.’ 23 While Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld championed larger military budgets and advocated a return to U.S. nuclear superiority. He was responsible for initiating the B-1 Strategic Stealth Bomber, the Trident Submarine and the MX Missile, all first strike weapons. 24 While Kissinger was in Moscow negotiating the SALT 2 treaty, Rumsfeld went behind Kissinger’s back and persuaded the Joint Chiefs of Staff to kill the treaty.

After leaving Government for the corporate boardroom, Rumsfeld continued to maintain a high profile as a nuclear hawk, especially his advocacy of missile defense. (In 1998 he received the ‘Keeper of the Flame Award’ from the Center for Security Policy, the ‘nerve center of the Star Wars lobby.’ 25 The 1998 Congressionally mandated Rumsfeld Commission predictably found that the U.S. faced a ballistic missile threat from “rogue states” within five years; a finding radically at odds with the CIA’s own estimates. In 2001, shortly before he became Defense Secretary, Rumsfeld chaired another commission on U.S. satellite security which implied “active... anti-satellite weapons(ASATs), including ones in space (for) ‘protective measures’.” 26

In a little reported but crucially important January 31, 2002 speech to the American Military University presaging the current war drive against Iraq, Rumsfeld introduced a new doctrine of “strategic dominance,” dubbed the “Rumsfeld Doctrine.” 27 “According to this concept, the US must always be able to assess its adversaries' military capabilities and to reduce their ability to react through the planned destruction of its enemy's industrial, military, and political infrastructures.” 28 Rumsfeld called for fighting four major wars simultaneously in addition to eradicating ‘terrorism’. He said the 2003 Pentagon budget should include money to protect satellites(weapons in space, a long time favorite of his) and buy a new generation of earth-penetrating (nuclear)bombs that ''could make obsolete the deep underground facilities where terrorists hide and terrorist states conceal their weapons of mass destruction capabilities.'' 29 To achieve these goals, he proposed a massive increase in military spending, and deployment of a ‘Star Wars’ missile defense system. Coupled with the emphasis on nuclear war fighting and new nuclear weapons development, the ‘Rumsfeld Doctrine’ is a recipe for certain disaster.

Conforming to the Rumsfeld Doctrine, the New York Times reports that the Pentagon is proposing a new nuclear command structure which would “harness in one entity the nation's missile warning network and the new national missile-defense system now breaking ground, as well as the country's ability to plan and launch offensive strikes with nuclear and conventional weapons.” “ The command would fit neatly into the Bush administration's new doctrine of preemptive action against states and terrorist groups that are trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, officials said.” 30 The new organization would merge the U.S. Space Command 31 , Star Wars, and the U.S. Strategic Command. Rumsfeld has already briefed Bush about the plan and his “top aides” say it is certain to be approved. 32 According to Bill Arkin, “On Dec. 11, (2002) the Defense secretary sent Bush a memorandum asking for authority to place Adm. James O. Ellis Jr., the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) commander, in charge of the full range of "strategic" warfare options to combat terrorist states and organizations. The memo, obtained by The (Los Angeles) Times, recommended assigning all responsibilities for dealing with foreign weapons of mass destruction, including ‘global strike; integrated missile defense; [and] information operations’ to STRATCOM.” 33 This chilling newest development in the history of U.S. nuclear war-fighting strategy is the logical conclusion of over a half century of first strike planning, and unambiguously exposes the real purpose of ‘National Missile Defense’- the ability to threaten to dominate all rungs of the ‘escalation ladder’, including a strategic first strike.

-- -- --

"Any actual use of nuclear weapons will almost certainly follow a carefully scripted propaganda campaign, followed by one of a litany of rationalizations- ‘saving American lives’, ‘destroying a nuclear/chemical/biological weapons bunker’, ‘protecting Israel’, ‘responding to use of weapons of mass destruction(real or fabricated)’, etc.. The current highly visible nuclear threats, in conjunction with the calculated demonization of Iraq and the so called “rogue states”, can be seen as part of a strategy by Bush to reshape public opinion in support of using nuclear weapons. With the American public (and worldwide) strongly favoring nuclear disarmament, this would seem at first glance a difficult if not impossible task. 34 "

--

"Coupled with the military occupation of a likely future Iraqi client state, the U.S. “military footprint” in Pakistan, Uzbekistan and other former Soviet Republics, and Afghanistan will destabilize all of South Asia and threaten the stability of several states in the region, especially Pakistan, which possesses an arsenal of at least several dozen atomic bombs. 41 Destabilization of the Musharraf dictatorship, reportedly under attack by rogue elements in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Agency(Pakistani CIA), could easily intensify the already near war situation between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, leading to nuclear conflict. Reversing years of India’s opposition to nuclear weapons, “the Hindu fundamentalist, right wing , Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP),” 42 has strongly embraced nuclear weapons.

India and Pakistan have already brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The new relations of India and Pakistan with the U.S. A. have also promoted the prospects of a nuclear war between the two South Asian neighbors. “Each is interpreting statements and signals from the endless stream of U.S. and Western emissaries to the region over the recent period in terms that encourage them and exacerbate the tensions.” 43 In a strategy reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq war and numerous other regional conflicts, the U.S. is arming and abetting both sides in the nuclear standoff. 44 The purpose of the orchestrated escalation in South Asia is not just to extend the U.S. sphere of influence in Central and South Asia, but to complete the encirclement and isolation of Russia and China as part of a strategy to maintain hegemony and secure relatively untapped resources and markets."

--

"Bill Arkin warns, “What worries many senior officials in the armed forces is not that the United States has a vast array of weapons or contingency plans for using them. The danger is that nuclear weapons -- locked away in a Pandora's box for more than half a century -- are being taken out of that lockbox and put on the shelf with everything else. While Pentagon leaders insist that does not mean they take nuclear weapons lightly, critics fear that removing the firewall and adding nuclear weapons to the normal option ladder makes their use more likely -- especially under a policy of preemption that says Washington alone will decide when to strike. To make such a doctrine encompass nuclear weapons is to embrace a view that, sooner or later, will spread beyond the moral capitals of Washington and London to New Delhi and Islamabad, to Pyongyang and Baghdad, Beijing, Tel Aviv and to every nuclear nation of the future.” 46

-- --

"The bulk of Russia’s warheads (over 3,000) are deployed on land-based ICBMs, vulnerable to the Pentagon’s first strike weapons, while most of the U.S. warheads(again, over 3,000) are deployed on utterly impregnable Trident submarines. With both sides adopting a ‘launch on warning’ policy, this strategic asymmetry greatly destabilizes the ‘balance of terror’ and lowers the threshold to nuclear war. In the case of Russia, if the Kremlin believes that a U.S. first strike is imminent, the pressure to launch their weapons before they are destroyed would be overwhelming."

-- --

"The real key to preventing the use of nuclear weapons, an act which will inevitably have calamitous consequences for the entire world, lies in the ability of the anti-nuclear, anti-intervention, social justice and antiglobalism movements to understand that their issues are inextricably linked."

-- --

"In The Dialectics of War, Martin Shaw writes, “By the time nuclear war is even likely, war-resistance may be largely beside the point. The resistance to nuclear war has to be successful in the period of general war-preparation. The key question is the relationship between militarism and antimilitarism, and the wider social struggles of the society in which nuclear war is prepared.” 49 He argues that “If the values which sustain all the social movements for change suffer when nuclear militarism is in the ascendancy ...the relationship between nuclear militarism and society implies a general strategic relationship between peace movements and wider movements for social change.” 50 The best strategy for abolishing nuclear weapons is to fight social injustice by broadening and strengthening the people’s movement to challenge all aspects of the corporate imperial state."

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=771

-- -- --

Brzezinski and the Nuclear Attack On Iran
Saturday February 17th 2007, 10:23 am

“Most Americans are probably unaware of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s damning indictment of the Bush Regime in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1, 2007, as the United States no longer has a media—only a government propaganda ministry,” wrote Paul Craig Roberts on February 11. “Brzezinski damned the Bush Regime’s war in Iraq as ‘a historic, strategic, and moral calamity.’ Brzezinski damned the war as ‘driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris.’ He damned the war for ‘intensifying regional instability’ and for ‘undermining America’s global legitimacy,’” a “legitimacy” long ago exploited and besmirched by the Bush neocons.

Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone discuss Brzezinski’s indictment and the coming nuclear war against Iran. Listen to the program now [at link above]. Direct MP3 download available on the Taking Aim website. http://takingaim.info/

As Michel Chossudovsky says, “We are a dangerous crossroads: military planners believe their own propaganda.”

Therefore, it might be appropriate to review the following:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=...TC-RSSFeeds0312

Even a Small Nuclear War Could Change the World

New Study Shows Distant and Minor Nuclear Blasts
Could Cause a Global 'Nuclear Winter'

Commentary by Lee Dye

Dec. 12, 2006 — The decline of the Soviet Union may have left many Americans feeling safer from nuclear war, but a disturbing new study argues that an attack by terrorists sponsored by a small nuclear state could be just as lethal.

Such an attack "could generate casualties comparable to those once predicted for a full-scale nuclear exchange in a superpower conflict," says the report, presented Monday during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Furthermore, Americans should not think of themselves as isolated from potential small-scale, regional nuclear conflicts in such distant areas as the Middle East or Asia. The impact of such an encounter would be global, probably plunging the planet into a "nuclear winter" and blanketing wide areas of the world with radioactive fallout.

The report, which cautions that there are many uncertainties in its own conclusions, was produced by a team of scientists who have been long active in studying the consequences of nuclear war.

The study assumes that weapons used by terrorists, or smaller states, would be much smaller than those available to the superpowers, probably on the scale of those dropped on Japan during World War II. But the results would be catastrophic because the weapons would most likely be targeted at major cities.

"The current combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability, and urban demographics forms perhaps the greatest danger to the stability of society since the dawn of humanity," Brian Toon of the University of Colorado in Boulder told a press conference prior to the presentation.

The number of countries known to have nuclear weapons has grown to eight, but as many as 40 have some fissionable material and could produce bombs fairly quickly, the scientists said, basing their conclusions partly on studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Defense, and their own years-long research. Toon said Japan, for example, has enough nuclear material on hand to produce 20,000 weapons, and "most think they could do it in weeks."

Many of the conclusions are based on the consequences of two nations, each with 50 bombs, delivering their full complement of weapons on each other.

That's not a hypothetical figure, they suggested, because both India and Pakistan are believed to have at least that many weapons.

So what would happen if they had at it?

About 20 million persons in that area would die, the scientists concluded. But the weapons would send up such a plume of smoke that the upper atmosphere would become opaque, blocking out so much solar radiation that temperatures around the world would plummet.

"You would have a global climate change unprecedented in human history," said Alan Robock, associated director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers Cook College and a member of the research team. "It would instantaneously be colder than the little ice age." There would be shorter growing seasons, less rain, less sun, and starvation around the world.

Richard Turco, the founding director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the results would be about 10 times worse than the historic eruption of Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which sent killing frosts across North America. That year became known as "the year without a summer."

The scientists concede there are "many uncertainties" in their findings, partly because it's impossible to predict just who is likely to go to war with whom, and how those wars will be fought. But they point out, as astronomer Carl Sagan did years ago, that during World War II the United States had only two nuclear bombs, and it dropped both of them on Japanese cities. So it's not unprecedented that other countries would also likely attack major cities.

And that's one reason the scientists are so alarmed. Urbanization has swept the planet, and today there are many cities with more than 10 million inhabitants, many of them in areas where the political climate is unstable and hostile. Even one nuclear weapon, they concluded, could kill more people than some countries have lost through war during their entire history.

That lead Turco to conclude that "human society is extremely vulnerable at this time," a modest statement considering these conclusions in the report:

"Thirty-two countries that do not now have nuclear weapons possess sufficient fissionable nuclear materials to construct weapons, some in a relatively short period of time."

In some cases, the casualties could "rival previous estimates for a limited strategic war between the superpowers involving thousands of weapons carrying several thousand megatons of yield," partly because more people live in concentrated areas, surrounded by more and more volatile materials.

"An individual in possession of one of the thousands of existing lightweight nuclear weapons could kill or injure a million people in a terrorist attack."

"Many nuclear weapons are small in size and light in weight and could easily be transported in a car or van." Some tactical nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, for example, weigh only about 300 pounds.

The scientists admit that the lethality of a weapon is subject to many variables, even such things as local wind and whether it's raining, so their numbers should not be taken as absolutes.

But they insist that while many Americans may think the world is growing safer and the nuclear threat is easing, the opposite is true.

"We're on a trend toward a buildup (in nuclear weapons) around the world," Toon said.

And it wouldn't take a huge arsenal, or many weapons, to produce catastrophe. "Even a single surface nuclear explosion, or an air burst in rainy conditions, in a city center is likely to cause the entire metropolitan area to be abandoned at least for decades owing to infrastructure damage and radioactive contamination," the scientists say in the conclusion of their report. It would also leave at least a million dead, and a million more injured.

The danger from nuclear weapons is not less today than when two superpowers threatened each other just a few years ago. It is more, they said repeatedly. Much more.

---------
See also:

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/Example1.shtml
(a nine-page slide show on what would happen in a nuke went off in NYC)

----

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/planphoto/planphoto.asp
“Snapshots from the U.S. Playbook for Nuclear Attack” against Russia
A 13-page slideshow of diagrams, maps and charts -- produced by NRDC's nuclear war plans project -- offer a snapshot of what a U.S. nuclear attack on Russia would look like, with target locations, fallout clouds, and fatalities.

--

http://www.nuclearpathways.org/Docs/pdfs/7906.pdf
A 154-page pdf published by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment in 1979 entitled “The Effects of Nuclear War”

-- --
http://www.ippnw.org/NukeEPWs.html

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) has released an important new study on the medical consequences of the use of nuclear earth-penetrating weapons (EPWs), also known as bunker busters. The study was produced by a team of experts on the medical consequences of the use of nuclear weapons led by Victor W. Sidel, MD, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Princeton University physicist Robert W. Nelson, an expert on the physical effects of low-yield, precision nuclear weapons, was also a co-author.

Key Points
· The United States currently deploys both conventional and nuclear EPWs, including about 50 nuclear-tipped B61-11s, which can penetrate 2-3 meters and have reported yields between 0.3 kilotons and 340 kilotons. The 2003 Department of Energy (DOE) budget specifically requests funding for a “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” (RNEP) that would be more effective than the B61.
· Even a very low-yield nuclear weapon used in an urban environment would risk producing tens of thousands of civilian radiation casualties. Casualties of this magnitude would overwhelm even the most effective medical care system.
· An EPW explosion will inevitably breach the ground surface and throw out radioactive dirt and debris over an area of several square kilometers. Radiation is invisible and, without radiation monitors, civilians would be unaware of their exposures and consequent risks. Those within about 1 kilometer of the epicenter would receive fatal doses of radiation within 1-5 hours; others with acute radiation sickness would suffer from protracted vomiting, diarrhea, fluid and electrolyte loss, profound anemia, hemorrhaging, infection, and other symptoms; those exposed to lethal doses could take several days to a week or more to die.
· Infants, children, the elderly, and the chronically ill are especially vulnerable.
· Hazardous materials stored in underground bunkers are unlikely to be incinerated by an EPW; there is a high probability that biological and chemical agents against which nuclear EPWs are targetted would be disseminated to the ground surface and to the atmosphere, causing additional deaths and illnesses.
· There are no specific therapies for acute radiation injury; supportive treatment (intravenous fluids, blood transfusions, antibiotics) is crucial in permitting survival through acute illness and may lead to eventual recovery, but such care is unlikely to be available in Iraq or in other places where use of nuclear EPWs has been proposed, such as North Korea and Iran.
· Most of the total radiation dose received from fallout occurs in the first few hours after the detonation, making rapid evacuation essential. A low-yield nuclear EPW detonated in a crowded urban area such as New York City would require the rapid evacuation of millions of people. Because Baghdad, with 5 million people, has a greater population density than New York, even more people would have to be evacuated from any affected area.
· The use of low-yield nuclear weapons would cross the nuclear threshold for the first time since the US used nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki more than 50 years ago and may weaken the restraints against the use of nuclear weapons of greater yield.
· Further development of EPWs may require underground nuclear testing, breaking the current world moratorium and destroying prospects for eventual universal accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
· Both the resumption of nuclear testing and the production of new nuclear weapons will fuel global nuclear weapons proliferation.

The full report (PDF)
http://www.ippnw.org/IPPNWEPWReport.pdf

It should be noted as well that medical care for radiation illness is personnel-intensive and fluid-intensive, requiring multiple infusions of blood, blood products and IV fluids, thus requiring intensive care nursing, a virtual impossibility in an incident involving thousands of victims.
-- --

http://www.nae.edu/NAE/pubundcom.nsf/webli...attack%2006.pdf

A fact sheet from the National Academies and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on the probable effects of the detonation of a single small nuclear weapon

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=66417
-- -- -- --

Retired general: Turkey warns US with Putin speech
Saturday, February 17, 2007

Putting Putin’s ‘US-bashing’ speech on the Web site of the Turkish Office of the Chief of General Staff amounts to a warning to Washington, says retired Maj. Gen. Kuloğlu. Meanwhile, the Russian leader promoted defense minister Ivanov to first vice premiership in another move seen as a sign of Putin’s consolidating his power

ISTANBUL - TDN with wire dispatches


As the world debates the meaning of the now-famous Feb.10 speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference, the full text was put on the Web site of the Turkish Office of the Chief of General Staff, fueling opinions that Turkey is deeply concerned with Washington's policies on Iraq, Iran and terrorism.

The Russian leader also took new steps to guarantee that his policies will continue even after he resigns next year. Putin promoted his hawkish defense minister Sergei Ivanov to first vice premiership late Thursday, a move that is widely regarded as preparing Ivanov as his heir in the March 2008 presidential elections.

Putin's Feb. 10 speech, in which he accused the United States of stoking a new arms race, damaging the United Nations and acting unilaterally, is a sign that “unipolarity will not continue,” said retired Maj. Gen. Armağan Kuloğlu.

Observing signs of multi-polarity, Kuloğlu noted one of the new poles will be Russia. “Moscow manages and markets its energy resources skillfully, strengthens its economy and creates new resources for modernizing its military and enhancing its technology,” Kuloğlu told the Turkish Daily News over the phone on Friday. “The Russian leader gave a sign that U.S. power is not what it was before. Considering the positions of China, India or European Union, the sole power to give this sign was Russia.”



Turkey's veiled warning:

And did the “gesture” of the Turkish Office of the Chief of General Staff amount to another sign from Turkey? Noting that Turkish-U.S. relations are suffering from issues such as the approaching referendum in the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk and claims of Armenian genocide, Kuloğlu noted that to balance the situation, Washington uses the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) card as a balm for bruised relations.

The gesture could be interpreted as a message that “There are other powers than the United States,” said Kuloğlu. “If so, the Office of the Chief of General Staff is saying that there are emerging powers in the world now and thus Turkey should not be pushed too hard on issues like terrorism, northern Iraq and Iran. The bilateral dialogue should be on equal footing, as Turkey also has good relations with those other powers.”

Kuloğlu added that the United States will either dismiss the “virtual gesture” as an ordinary act, or will understand that it has to tread carefully. “I don't think it will have much of an effect,” he said.

But Professor Oktay Tanrısever, an international relations expert from the Middle East Technical University, had reservations about this point of view. The gesture should not be interpreted as an approval of Putin's opinions, he told Referans by phone on Friday.

"The speech also included some statements that could disturb Turkey, notably on energy lines and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline," he said. "The General Staff might have put the speech on its Web site to inform people of the Munich Conference and the timing with Büyükanıt's visit to Washington might just be a coincidence. Governments have much more effective ways of conveying messages to each other."



Putin on the move:

Meanwhile, Thursday night's move put Ivanov and the more liberal Dmitry Medvedev on equal footing and both men are now seen as the chief rivals for anointment by Putin as his favored successor in the March 2008 election, reported The Associated Press.

Each man now holds the title of first vice-premier, formalizing a rivalry that is never mentioned officially but is played out daily on state-run television, which prominently features them struggling to look presidential in government meetings, speeches and closely choreographed visits to farms and factories.

Putin replaced Ivanov as defense minister with Anatoly Serdyukov, until now head of the federal tax agency.

“[Ivanov] has been given a good, clean job,” said analyst Yevgeny Volk, the head of the Moscow office of the Heritage Foundation, a U.S.-based think tank. Volk said the reshuffle signaled Putin's apparent intention to even up Ivanov's chances in competition with Medvedev.

Putin is barred from a third consecutive term by the Russian Constitution. A candidate with his support would have a massive advantage over rivals because of the president's strong popularity.

Ivanov, a colleague of Putin's in the Soviet-era KGB, shares the president's chilly criticism of U.S. foreign policy and his blustery warnings to the West.

Russian analysts have speculated that similarities in their statements on issues such as U.S. missile defense plans mean the president is leaning toward supporting him as a successor.



Alkhanov dismissed:

In another move, Putin dismissed the president of the war-battered republic of Chechnya and named its widely feared prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, as acting president.

The dismissal of Alu Alkhanov came after days of speculation that he was engaged in a power struggle with Kadyrov, who is alleged by human rights groups to be responsible for abductions and detention of civilians and suspected separatist rebels.

A Kremlin statement Thursday said that Alkhanov was freed from the post “by his own wish,” but Alkhanov had denied this week that he was on the verge of resigning and that “whether I remain president fully depends on the will of the Almighty and the president of our country.”

He was appointed a deputy Russian justice minister, a separate statement said. Kadyrov is the son of the late Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated seven months after becoming Chechen president in 2003.

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view....19-123434-2995r
-- --

Russian missiles ready for INF pull out

MOSCOW, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Russia's strategic missile forces are already prepared for a Kremlin withdrawal from the INF Treaty.

"If a political decision is taken to quit the treaty, the Strategic Missile Forces are ready to carry out this task," SMF Commander Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov told a news conference in Moscow Monday, according to a report from the RIA Novosti news agency.

Solovtsov's statement followed hard on the heels of a warning Thursday from his boss, four-star Army Gen. Yury Baluyevsky, the Chief of the Russian General Staff, that Russia may unilaterally scrap the nearly-20-year-old INF.

"It is possible for a party to abandon the treaty (unilaterally) if it provides convincing evidence that it is necessary to do so," said Baluyevsky. "We currently have such evidence."

The INF treaty was a cornerstone of detente between the United States and the Soviet Union. Signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987, it scrapped intermediate range nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 300 miles to 3,400 miles. "By the treaty's deadline of June 1, 1991, a total of 2,692 such weapons had been destroyed, 846 by the U.S. and 1,846 by the Soviet Union," RIA Novosti said.

"Baluyevsky's remarks sounded as a strong warning to the United States regarding its plans to deploy elements of its anti-missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic," the Russian news agency said.

Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc

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http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews....=rss&rpc=22

Missiles could reach Europe if Kremlin wanted: general
Mon Feb 19, 2007 12:56pm ET

By Oleg Shchedrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's military is capable of firing missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic if they agreed to host a U.S. missile shield, Russia's Strategic Forces commander said, but added it was for the Kremlin to decide.

President Vladimir Putin has described Washington's plans to deploy elements of its Missile Defense System in the two central European states as a threat to Russia's national security which would damage the strategic balance of forces on the continent.

"So far we have seen nothing being done, only intentions being talked about," General Nikolai Solovtsov told a news conference on Monday.

"But should the Polish and Czech governments decide (to host the U.S. missile shield), the strategic missile forces will be capable of having these installations as their targets if a relevant political decision were made," he added.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai, responding to the general's comments, said in a statement: "The days of talk of targeting NATO territory or vice versa are long past us. This kind of extreme language is out of date and uncalled for."

In early 1990s, post-Soviet Russia announced its missiles were no longer targeted at NATO countries. Analysts said then the announcement, which could not be independently verified, was a purely symbolic gesture ending the Cold War hostility.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have soured since NATO's expansion eastward and the announcement of the U.S. missile plans.

Russia distrusts U.S. assurances the European missile shield is meant to avert possible attacks from countries such as Iran or North Korea and says it believes it is the real target.

In a speech this month which smacked of the Cold War to Western ears, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Washington of seeking to impose its will on the world.

Putin later said his speech at a security conference in Munich was intended to flag Russia's independent foreign policy rather than to revive confrontation with the West.

Solovtsov said Russia's resurgent military industrial complex was strong enough to produce a new generation of missiles, which could penetrate the U.S. missile umbrella.

He said massive investment in the military industrial complex under Putin made possible the creation of new weapons to match the U.S. project.

"Missile producers -- that is around 500 enterprises -- will be capable to meet any tasks in the next few years," he said.

Solovtsov said missile factories could produce in few years a new supersonic missile invisible to the U.S. missile shield or restart production of intermediate range missiles, if Moscow decided to quit a 1987 pact with Washington banning them.

"Russia is ready for any scenario now," he said, reiterating several times during the news conference that the military would only follow decisions by politicians.

Solovtsov rejected suggestions that the row over the U.S. missiles in Europe could restart an expensive arms race.

"During the Cold War we competed by boosting the number of missiles, launching pads," Solovtsov said. "I do not think we will go again along this path. We can now solve the task through quality of weapons, rather than through their quantity."

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

C'mon I dare you to shoot

Nah nah
I double dare you not too

Nah nah
Triple dare you

Nah nah

Super duper quadruple dare you

Dang, I came here to read this thread believing someone here actually gave a hoot about labor Unions. Wrong kind of first strike.

Labor Unions , World War Three , what's the difference ?
Nobody seems to notice either.
Or anything of importance for that matter anymore.
Except that Ms. Spears is bald in two places now.
Maybe Paris will follow suit and they can both be guest judges on American Idol sometime.

http://euronews.net/create_html.php?page=d...07393&lng=1
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Anti-missile row reveals cooling East-West relations

The USA insists its anti-missile system, to be based in the Czech republic and Poland, is designed to protect Europe against attack from, for example, Iran. However the project is unpopular in the two countries, and Russia is doing its best to shoot down the plan, as it insists the missiles could be pointed at them.

The Russians say better protection could be afforded by siting the system in Turkey, or in Russia itself. Few people there are convinced the system is not primarilly designed with them in mind.

Top General Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of strategic missile forces, joined the debate on Monday:

"I think this plan is indeed muscle-flexing, but we are also showing that Russia will uphold its interests through diplomatic, political, and if necessary, military resources".

Logic dictates the system, designed to shoot down incoming missiles early in their flight path, should be sited as close as possible to the perceived threat.

Russia's President Putin has been angered by the project. At last week's international defence conference in Munich he delivered his strongest criticisms yet of US policy. He said the Gorbatchov/Reagan 1987 medium-range missile treaty was "outdated", and the US "was overstepping its national borders in every area".

Putin warned relations were returning to a cold war atmosphere. US defence minister Robert Gates admitted he was "an old cold warrior", and that the speech had almost "filled him with nostalgia for a less complex time".

Analysts say the row is part of Russia seeking to reassert itself internationally, but its military machine is no longer capable of challenging the West.

However that is no comfort to Czechs or Poles who fear any base will be a prime target for Russian attack.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...;articleId=4873
-- -- ----

Putin and the Geopolitics of the New Cold War:
Or, what happens when Cowboys don’t shoot straight like they used to…
by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, February 20, 2007

The frank words of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to the assembled participants of the annual Munich Wehrkunde security conference have unleashed a storm of self-righteous protest from Western media and politicians. A visitor from another planet might have the impression that the Russian President had abruptly decided to launch a provocative confrontation policy with the West reminiscent of the 1943-1991 Cold War.

However, the details of the developments in NATO and the United States military policies since 1991 are anything but ‘déjà vu all over again’, to paraphrase the legendary New York Yankees catcher, Yogi Berra.

This time round we are already deep in a New Cold War whose stakes are literally the future of life on this planet. The debacle in Iraq, or the prospect of a US tactical nuclear pre-emptive strike against Iran are ghastly enough. In comparison to what is at play in the US global military buildup against its most formidable remaining global rival, Russia, they loom relatively small. The US military policies since the end of the Soviet Union and emergence of the Republic of Russia in 1991 are in need of close examination in this context. Only then do Putin’s frank remarks on February 10 at the Munich Conference on Security make sense.

Because of the misleading accounts of most of Putin’s remarks in most western media, it’s worth reading in full in English (go to www.securityconference.de for official English translation).

Putin spoke in general terms of Washington’s vision of a ‘unipolar’ world, with ‘one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making, calling it a ‘world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.’

Then the Russian President got to the heart of the matter: ‘Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.’

Putin continued, ‘We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?’

These direct words begin to touch on what Mr Putin is concerned about in US foreign and military policy since the end of the Cold War some 16 or so years back. But it is further in the text that he gets explicit about what military policies he is reacting to. Here is where the speech is worth clarification. Putin warns of the destabilizing effect of ‘space weapons.’—‘it is impossible to sanction the appearance of new, destabilising high-tech weapons…a new area of confrontation, especially in outer space. Star wars is no longer a fantasy – it is a reality…In Russia’s opinion, the militarization of outer space could have unpredictable consequences for the international community, and provoke nothing less than the beginning of a nuclear (arms race-f.w.e.) era.’

He then declares, ‘Plans to expand certain elements of the anti-missile defence system to Europe cannot help but disturb us. Who needs the next step of what would be, in this case, an inevitable arms race?’

What does he refer to here? Few are aware that while claiming it is doing so to protect itself against the risk of ‘rogue state’ nuclear missile attack from the likes of North Korea or perhaps one day Iran, the US recently announced it is building massive anti-missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Poland? Missile defense? What’s this all about?

Missile Defense and a US Nuclear First Strike

On January 29 US Army Brigadier General Patrick J. O`Reilly, Deputy Director of the Pentagon`s Missile Defense Agency, announced US plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile defense elements in Europe by 2011, which the Pentagon claims is aimed at protecting American and NATO installations from enemy threats coming from the Middle East, not Russia. Following Putin’s Munich remarks, the US State Department issued a formal comment noting that the Bush Administration is ‘puzzled by the repeated caustic comments about the envisaged system from Moscow.’

Oops…Better send that press release back to the Pentagon’s Office of Deception Propaganda for rewrite. The Iran missile threat to NATO installations in Poland somehow isn’t quite convincing. Why not ask long-time NATO member Turkey if the US can place its missile shield there, far closer to Iran? Or maybe Kuwait? Or Israel?

US policy since 1999 has called for building some form of active missile defense despite the end of the Cold War threat from Soviet ICBM or other missile launch. The National Missile Defense Act of 1999 (Public Law 106-38) says so: ‘It is the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate) with funding subject to the annual authorization of appropriations and the annual appropriation of funds for National Missile Defense.’ Missile defense was one of Donald Rumsfeld’s obsessions as Defense Secretary.

Why now?

What is increasingly clear, at least in Moscow and Beijing, is that Washington has a far larger grand strategy behind its seemingly irrational and arbitrary unilateral military moves.

For the Pentagon and the US policy establishment, regardless of political party, the Cold War with Russia never ended. It merely continued in disguised form. This has been the case with Presidents G.H.W. Bush, William Clinton and with George W. Bush.

Missile defense sounded plausible if the United States were vulnerable to attack by a tiny band of dedicated Islamic terrorists able to commandeer a Boeing aircraft with boxcutters. The only problem is missile defense is not aimed at rogue terrorists like Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, or states like North Korea or Iran.

From them the threat of a devastating nuclear strike on the territory of the United States is non-existent. The US Navy and Air Force bomber fleet today stands in full preparation to bomb, even nuke Iran back to the stone age only over suspicions she is trying to develop independent nuclear weapon technology. States like Iran have no capability to render America defenceless, without risking nuclear annihilation many times over.

Missile defense came out of the 1980’s when Ronald Reagan proposed developing a system of satellites in space and radar bases around the globe, listening stations and interceptor missiles, to monitor and shoot down nuclear missiles before they hit their intended target.

It was dubbed Star Wars by its critics, but the Pentagon officially has spent more than $130 billion on such a system since 1983. George W. Bush increased that significantly beginning 2002, to $11 billion a year, double the level during the Clinton years. And another $53 billion for the following five years has been budgeted.

Washington’s obsession with Nuclear Primacy

What Washington did not say, but Putin has now alluded to in Munich, is that the US missile defense is not at all defensive. It is offensive, and how.

The possibility of providing a powerful state, one with the world’s most awesome military machinery, a shield to protect it from limited attack, is aimed directly at Russia, the only other nuclear power with anywhere the capacity to launch a credible nuclear counterpunch.

Were the United States able to effectively shield itself from a potential Russian response to a US nuclear First Strike, the US would be able simply to dictate to the entire world on its terms, not only to Russia. That would be what military people term Nuclear Primacy. That is the real meaning of Putin’s unusual speech. He isn’t paranoid. He’s being starkly realistic.

Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, it’s now clear that the US Government has never for a moment stopped its pursuit of Nuclear Primacy. For Washington and the US elites, the Cold War never ended. They just forgot to tell us all.

The quest for global control of oil and energy pipelines, the quest to establish its military bases across Eurasia, its attempt to modernize and upgrade its nuclear submarine fleet, its Strategic B-52 bomber command, all make sense only when seen through the perspective of the relentless pursuit of US Nuclear Primacy.

The Bush Administration unilaterally abrogated the US-Russian ABM Treaty in December 2001. It’s in a race to complete a global network of missile defense as the key to US nuclear primacy. With even a primitive missile defense shield, the US could attack Russian missile silos and submarine fleets with no fear of effective retaliation, as the few remaining Russian nuclear missiles would be unable to launch a convincing response enough to deter a US First Strike.

The ability of both sides—the Warsaw Pact and NATO—during the Cold War, to mutually annihilate one another, led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD—mutual assured destruction. It was scary but in a bizarre sense, more stable that what we have today with a unilateral US pursuit of nuclear primacy. The prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side, led to a world in which nuclear war had been ‘unthinkable.’

Now, the US pursues the possibility of nuclear war as ‘thinkable.’ That’s really mad.

The first nation with a nuclear missile shield would de facto have ‘first strike ability.’ Quite correctly, Lt. Colonel Robert Bowman, Director of the US Air Force missile defense program, recently called missile defense, ‘the missing link to a First Strike.’

More alarming is the fact no one outside a handful of Pentagon planners or senior intelligence officials in Washington discusses the implications of Washington’s pursuit of missile defense in Poland, Czech Republic or its drive for Nuclear Primacy.

It calls to mind ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses,’ the September 2000 report of the hawkish Project for the New American Century, where Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld were members. There they declared, ‘The United States must develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world.’ (author’s emphasis).

Before becoming Bush’s Defense Secretary in January 2001, Rumsfeld headed a Presidential Commission advocating the development of missile defense for the United States.

So eager was the Bush-Cheney Administration to advance its missile defense plans, that the President and Defense Secretary ordered waiving usual operational testing requirements essential to determining whether the highly complex system of systems was effective.


The Rumsfeld missile defense program is strongly opposed within the military command. On March 26, 2004 no less than 49 US generals and admirals signed an Open Letter to the President, appealing for missile defense postponement.

As they noted, ‘US technology, already deployed, can pinpoint the source of a ballistic missile launch. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that any state would dare to attack the US or allow a terrorist to do so from its territory with a missile armed with a weapon of mass destruction, thereby risking annihilation from a devastating US retaliatory strike.’

The 49 generals and admirals, including Admiral William J. Crowe, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, went on to argue to the President, ‘As you have said, Mr. President, our highest priority is to prevent terrorists from acquiring and employing weapons of mass destruction. We agree. We therefore recommend, as the militarily responsible course of action, that you postpone operational deployment of the expensive and untested GMD (Ground-based Missile Defense) system and transfer the associated funding to accelerated programs to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials, and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States.’

What the seasoned military veterans did not say was that Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and company had quite another agenda than rogue terror threats. They were after Full Spectrum Dominance, the New World Order, and the elimination, for once and all, of Russia as a potential rival for power.

The rush to deploy a missile defense shield is clearly not aimed at North Korea or terror attacks. It is aimed at Russia and much less so, the far smaller nuclear capacities of China. As the 49 generals and admirals noted in their letter to the President in 2004, the US already had more than sufficient nuclear warheads to hit a thousand bunkers or caves of a potential rogue state.

Kier Lieber and Daryl Press, two US military analysts, writing in the influential Foreign Affairs of the New York Council on Foreign Relations in March 2006, noted, ‘If the United States’ nuclear modernization were really aimed at rogue states or terrorists, the country’s nuclear force would not need the additional thousand ground-burst warheads it will gain from the W-76 modernization program. The current and future US nuclear force, in other words, seems designed to carry out a pre-emptive disarming strike against Russia or China.’

Referring to the aggressive new Pentagon deployment plans for missile defense, Lieber and Press add, ‘the sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one—as an adjunct to a US First Strike capability, not as a stand-alone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal—if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes…’

This is the real agenda in Washington’s Eurasian Great Game. Naturally, to state so openly would risk tipping Washington’s hand before the noose had been irreversibly tightened around Moscow’s metaphorical neck. So the State Department and Defense Secretary Gates try to make jokes about the recent Russian remarks, as though they were Putin’s paranoid delusions.

This entire US program of missile defense and nuclear First Strike modernization is hair-raising enough as an idea. Under the Bush Administration, it has been made operational and airborne, hearkening back to the dangerous days of the Cold War with fleets of nuclear-armed B-52 bombers and Trident nuclear missile submarines on ready alert around the clock, a nuclear horror scenario.

Global Strike: Pentagon Conplan 8022

The march towards possible nuclear catastrophe by intent or by miscalculation, as a consequence of the bold new Washington policy, took on significant new gravity in June 2004, only weeks after the 49 generals and admirals took the highly unusual step of writing to their President.

That June, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld approved a Top Secret order for the Armed Forces of the United States to implement something called Conplan 8022, ‘which provides the President a prompt, global strike capability.’

The term, Conplan, is Pentagon shorthand for Contingency Plan. What ‘contingencies’ are Pentagon planners preparing for? A pre-emptive conventional strike against tiny North Korea or even Iran? Or a full-force pre-emptive nuclear assault on the last formidable nuclear power not under the thumb of the US’ Full Spectrum Dominance-- Russia?

The two words, ‘global strike’, are also notable. It’s Pentagon-speak to describe a specific pre-emptive attack which, for the first time since the earliest Cold War days, includes a nuclear option, counter to the traditional US military notion of nuclear weapons being only used in defense to deter attack.

Conplan 8022, as has been noted by some, is unlike traditional Pentagon war plans which have been essentially defensive responses to invasion or attack.

In concert with the aggressive pre-emptive 2002 Bush Doctrine, Bush’s new Conplan 8022 is offensive. It could be triggered by the mere ‘perception’ of an imminent threat, and carried out by Presidential order, without Congress.

Given the details about false or faked ‘perceptions’ in the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President about Iraq’s threat of weapons of mass destruction in 2003, the new Conplan 8022 suggests a US President might order the missiles against any and every perceived threat or even potential, unproven threat.

In response to Rumsfeld’s June 2004 order, General Richard Myers, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed the order to make Conplan 8022 operational. Selected nuclear-capable bombers, ICBMs, SSBNs, and ‘information warfare’ (sic) units have been deployed against unnamed high-value targets in ‘adversary’ countries.

Was Iran an adversary country, even though it had never attacked the United States? Was North Korea, even though it had never in five decades launched a direct attack on South Korea, let alone any one else? Is China an ‘adversary’ because it’s simply becoming economically too influential?

Is Russia now an adversary because she refuses to lay back and accept being made what Brzezinski terms a ‘vassal’ state of the American Empire?

Because there has been zero open debate inside the United States about Conplan 8022, there has been virtually no discussion of any of these potentially nuclear-loaded questions.

What makes the June 2004 Rumsfeld order even more unsettling to a world which truly had hoped nuclear mushroom clouds had become a threat of the past, is that Conplan 8022 contains a significant nuclear attack component.

It’s true that the overall number of nuclear weapons in the US military stockpile has been declining since the end of the Cold War. But not, it seems, because the US is moving the world back from the brink of nuclear war by miscalculation.

The new missile defense expansion to Poland and Czech Republic is better understood from the point of the remarkable expansion of NATO since 1991. As Putin noted, ‘NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders… think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?’

US bases encircle Russia

As Russian strategist and military expert, Yevgeny Primakov, a close adviser to Putin, recently noted, NATO was ‘founded during the Cold War era as a regional organization to ensure the security of US allies in Europe.’ He adds, ‘NATO today is acting on the basis of an entirely different philosophy and doctrine, moving outside the European continent and conducting military operations far beyond its bounds. NATO…is rapidly expanding in contravention to earlier accords. The admission of new members to NATO is leading to the expansion of bases that host the U.S. military, air defense systems, as well as ABM components.’

Today, NATO member states include not only the Cold War core in Western Europe, commanded by an American. NATO also includes former Warsaw Pact or Soviet Union states Poland, Latvia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, formerly of Yugoslavia. Candidates to join include the Republic of Georgia, Croatia, Albania and Macedonia. Ukraine’s President, Victor Yushchenko, has tried aggressively to bring Ukraine into NATO. This is a clear message to Moscow, not surprisingly, one they don’t seem to welcome with open arms.

New NATO structures have also been formed while old ones were abolished: The NATO Response Force (NRF) was launched at the 2002 Prague Summit. In 2003, just after the fall of Baghdad, a major restructuring of the NATO military commands began. The Headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic was abolished. A new command, Allied Command Transformation (ACT), was established in Norfolk, Virginia. ACT is responsible for driving ‘transformation’ in NATO.

By 2007 Washington had signed an agreement with Japan to co-operate on missile defense development. She was deeply engaged in testing a missile defense system with Israel. She has now extended her European Missile Defense to Poland, where the Minister of Defense is a close friend and ally of Pentagon neo-conservative war-hawks, and to the Czech Republic. NATO has agreed to put the question of the Ukraine and Republic of Georgia’s bids for NATO membership on a fast track. The Middle East, despite the debacle in Iraq, is being militarized with a permanent network of US bases from Qatar to Iraq and beyond.

On February 15, the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved a draft, the Orwellian-named NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007 reaffirming US backing for the further enlargement of NATO, including support for Ukraine to join along with Georgia.

From the Russian point of view, NATO's eastward expansion since the end of the cold war has been in clear breach of an agreement between then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H.W. Bush which allowed for a peaceful unification of Germany. NATO's expansion policy is seen as a continuation of a Cold War attempt to surround and isolate Russia.

New bases to guard ‘democracy’?

An almost unnoticed consequence of Washington’s policy since the bombing of Serbia in 1999, has been establishment of an extraordinary network of new US military bases, bases in parts of the world where it seems little justified as a US defensive precaution, given the threat, huge taxpayer expense, let alone other global military commitments.

In June 1999, following the bombing of Yugoslavia, US forces began construction of Camp Bondsteel, at the border between Kosovo and Macedonia. It was the lynchpin in what was to be a new global network of US bases.

Bondsteel put US air power within easy striking distance of the oil-rich Middle East and Caspian Sea, as well as Russia. Camp Bondsteel was at the time the largest US military base built since the Vietnam War, with nearly 7,000 troops. The base had been built by the largest US military construction company, Halliburton’s KBR. Halliburton’s CEO at the time was Dick Cheney.

Before the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Washington Post matter-of-factly noted, ‘With the Middle-East increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly-over rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil.’

Camp Bondsteel was but the first of a vast chain of US bases that have been built during this decade. The US military went on to build military bases in Hungary, Bosnia, Albania and Macedonia, in addition to Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, then still legally part of Yugoslavia.

One of the most important and least mentioned new US bases was in Bulgaria, a former Soviet satellite and now new NATO member. In a conflict---and in Pentagon-speak there are only ‘conflicts,’ no longer wars, which involved issues of asking the US Congress to declare them officially, and provide just reason---the military would use Bezmer to ‘surge’ men and materiel toward the front lines. Where? In Russia?

The US has been building its bases in Afghanistan. It built three major US bases in the wake of its occupation of Afghanistan in winter of 2001, at Bagram Air Field north of Kabul, the US’ main military logistics center; Kandahar Air Field, in southern Afghanistan and Shindand Air Field in the western province of Herat. Shindand, the largest US base in Afghanistan, was built some 100 kilometers from the border with Iran.

Afghanistan had historically been the heart of the British-Russia Great Game, the struggle for control of Central Asia during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. British strategy was to prevent Russia at all costs from controlling Afghanistan and thereby gaining a warm water port for its navy and threatening Britain’s imperial crown jewel, India.

Afghanistan is also seen by Pentagon planners as highly strategic. It is a platform from which US military might could directly threaten Russia and China as well as Iran and other oil-rich Middle East lands. Little had changed in that respect over more than a century of wars.

Afghanistan is in an extremely vital location, straddling South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Afghanistan also lies along a proposed oil pipeline route from the Caspian Sea oil fields to the Indian Ocean, where the US oil company, Unocal, had been in negotiations, together with Cheney’s Halliburton and with Enron, for exclusive pipeline rights to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan and Pakistan to Enron’s huge natural gas power plant at Dabhol near Mumbai.

At that same time, the Pentagon came to an agreement with the government of Kyrgystan in Central Asia, to build a strategically important base there, Manas Air Base at Bishkek’s international airport. Manas is not only near to Afghanistan; it is also in easy striking distance to Caspian Sea oil and gas, as well as to the borders of both China and Russia.

As part of the price of accepting him as a US ally in the War on Terror rather than a foe, Washington extracted an agreement from Pakistan’s military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, to allow the airport at Jacobabad, about 400km north of Karachi, to be used by the US Air Force and NATO ‘to support their campaign in Afghanistan.’ Two other US bases were built at Dalbandin and Pasni.

This all is merely a small part of the vast web of US-controlled military bases Washington has been building globally since the so-called end of the Cold War.

It’s becoming clear to much of the rest of the world that Washington might even itself be instigating or provoking wars or conflicts with nations across the world, not merely to control oil, though strategic control of global oil flows had been at the heart of the American Century since the 1920’s. That’s the real significance of what Vladimir Putin said in Munich. He told the world what it did not want to hear: The American ‘Emperor’s New Clothes did not exist. The Emperor was clothed in naked pursuit of global military control.

During the early 1990s, at the end of the Cold War, the Yeltsin government had asked Washington for a series of mutual reductions in the size of each superpower’s nuclear missile and weapons arsenal. Russian nuclear stockpiles were ageing and Moscow saw little further need to remain armed to its nuclear teeth once the Cold War had ended.

Washington clearly saw in this a golden opportunity to go for nuclear primacy, for the first time since the 1950’s, when Russia first developed Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile delivery capability for its growing nuclear weapons arsenal.

Nuclear primacy is an aggressive offensive policy. It means that one superpower, USA, would have the possibility to launch a full nuclear First Strike at Russia’s nuclear sites and destroy enough targets in the first blow, that Russia would be crippled from making any effective retaliation.

With no credible threat of retaliation, Russia had no credible nuclear deterrent. It was at the mercy of the supreme power. Never before in history had the prospect of such ultimate power in the hands of one single nation seemed so near at hand.

This stealthy move by the Pentagon for Nuclear Primacy has, up until now, been carried out in utmost secrecy, disguised amid rhetoric of a USA-Russia ‘Partnership for Peace.’

Rather than take advantage of the opportunity to climb down from the brink of nuclear annihilation following the end of the Cold War, Washington has turned instead to upgrading its nuclear arsenal, at the same time it was reducing its numbers.

While the rest of the world was still in shock over the events of September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration unilaterally moved to rip up its earlier treaty obligations with Russia to not build an anti-missile defense.

On December 13, 2001, President Bush announced that the United States Government was unilaterally abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, and committing $8 billion for the 2002 Budget to build a National Missile Defense system. It was pushed through Congress, promoted as a move to protect US territory from rogue terror attacks, from states including North Korea or Iraq.

The rogue argument was a fraud, a plausible cover story designed to sneak the policy reversal through without debate, in the wake of the September 11 shock.

The repeal of the ABM Treaty was little understood outside qualified military circles. In fact, it represented the most dangerous step by the United States towards nuclear war since the 1950’s. Washington is going at a fast pace to the goal of total nuclear superiority globally, Nuclear Primacy.

Washington has dismantled its highly lethal MX missiles by 2005. But that’s misleading. At the same time, it significantly improved its remaining ICBM’s by installing the MX’s high-yield nuclear warheads and advanced re-entry vehicles on its Minuteman ICBMs. The guidance system of the Minuteman has been upgraded to match that of the dismantled MX.

The Pentagon began replacing ageing ballistic missiles on its submarines with far more accurate Trident II D-5 missiles with new larger-yield nuclear warheads.

The Navy shifted more of its nuclear ballistic missile-launching SSBN submarines to the Pacific to patrol the blind spot of Russia’s early warning radar net as well as patrolling near China’s coast. The US Air Force completed refitting its B-52 bombers with nuclear-armed cruise missiles believed invisible to Russian air defense radar. New enhanced avionics on its B-2 stealth bombers gave them the ability to fly at extremely low altitudes avoiding radar detection as well.

A vast number of stockpiled weapons is not necessary to the new global power projection. Little-publicized new technology has enabled the US to deploy a ‘leaner and meaner’ nuclear strike force. A case in point is the Navy’s successful program to upgrade the fuse on the W-76 nuclear warheads sitting atop most US submarine-launched missiles, which makes them able to hit very hard targets such as ICBM silos.

No one has ever presented credible evidence that Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah or any other organization on the US State Department’s Terrorist Organization Black List possessed nuclear missiles in hardened underground silos. Aside from the US and perhaps Israel, only Russia and to a far smaller degree, China, have these in any number.

In 1991 at the presumed end of the Cold War, in a gesture to lower the danger of strategic nuclear miscalculation, the US Air Force was ordered to remove its fleet of nuclear bombers from Ready Alert status. After 2004 that too changed.

Conplan 8022 again put US Air Force long-range B-52 and other bombers on ‘Alert’ status. The Commander of the 8th Air Force stated at the time, that his nuclear bombers were ‘essentially on alert to plan and execute Global Strikes’ on behalf of the US Strategic Command or STRATCOM, based in Omaha, Nebraska.

Conplan 8022 included not only long-range nuclear and conventional weapons launched from the US, but also nuclear and other bombs deployed in Europe, Japan and other sites. It gave the US what the Pentagon termed Global Strike, the ability to hit any point on the earth or sky with devastating force, nuclear as well as conventional. Since the Rumsfeld June 2004 readiness order, the US Strategic Command has boasted it was ready to execute an attack anywhere on earth ‘in half a day or less,’ from the moment the President gave the order.

In the January 24, 2006 London Financial Times, the US Ambassador to NATO, Victoria Nuland, former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and wife of a leading Washington neo-conservative warhawk, declared that the US wanted a ‘globally deployable military force’ that would operate everywhere – from Africa to the Middle East and beyond.

It would include Japan and Australia as well as the NATO nations. Nuland added, ‘It’s a totally different animal (sic) whose ultimate role will be subject to US desires and adventures.’ Subject to US desires and adventures? Those were hardly calming words given the record of Nuland’s former boss in faking intelligence to justify wars in Iraq and elsewhere.

Now, with the deployment of even a crude missile defense, under Conplan 8022, the US would have what Pentagon planners called ‘escalation dominance’—the ability to win a war at any level of violence, including nuclear war.

As some more sober minds argued, were Russia and China to respond to these US moves with even minimal self-protection measures, the risks of a global nuclear conflagration by miscalculation would climb to levels far beyond any seen even during the Cuba Missile Crisis or the danger days of the Cold War.

Mackinder’s Nightmare

In a few brief years Washington has managed to create the nightmare of Britain’s father of geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder, the horror scenario feared by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and other Cold War veterans of US foreign policy who have studied and understood the power calculus of Mackinder.

The vast resources-rich and population-rich Eurasian Heartland and landmass is building economic and military ties with one another for the first time in history, ties whose driving force is the increasingly aggressive Washington role in the world.

The driver of the emerging Eurasian geopolitical cooperation is obvious. China, with the world’s largest population and an economy expanding at double digits, urgently needs secure alliance partners who could secure her energy security. Russia, an energy goliath, needs secure trade outlets independent of Washington control to develop and rebuild its tattered economy. These complimentary needs form the seed crystal of what Washington and US strategists define as a new Cold War, this one over energy, over oil and natural gas above all. Military might is the currency this time as in the earlier Cold War.

By 2006 Moscow and Beijing had clearly decided to upgrade their cooperation with their Eurasian neighbors. They both agreed to turn to a moribund loose organization that they had co-founded in 2001, in the wake of the 1998 Asia crisis, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or SCO. The SCO had highly significant members, geopolitically seen. SCO included oil-rich Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as China and Russia. By 2006 Beijing and Moscow began to view the SCO as a nascent counterweight to increasingly arbitrary American power politics. The organization was discussing projects of energy cooperation and even military mutual defense.

The pressures of an increasingly desperate US foreign policy are forcing an unlikely ‘coalition of the unwilling’ across Eurasia. The potentials of such Eurasian cooperation between China, Kazakhstan, Iran are real enough and obvious. The missing link, however, is the military security that could make it invulnerable or nearly, to the sabre-rattling from Washington and NATO. Only one power on the face of the earth has the nuclear and military base and know-how able to provide that—Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The Russian Bear sharpens its nuclear teeth…

With NATO troops creeping up to Russia’s borders on all sides, US nuclear B-52s and SSBN submarines being deployed to strategic sites on Russia’s perimeter, Washington extending its new missile shield from Greenland to the UK, to Australia, Japan and now even Poland and the Czech Republic, it should be no surprise that the Russian Government is responding.

While Washington planners may have assumed that because the once-mighty Red Army was a shell of its former glory, that the state of Russian military preparedness since the end of the Cold War was laughable.

But Russia never let go of its one trump card—its strategic nuclear force.

During the entire economic chaos of the Yeltsin years, Russia never stopped producing state-of-the art military technology.

In May 2003, some months after George Bush unilaterally ripped up the bilateral Anti-Missile Defense Treaty with Moscow, invaded Afghanistan and bombed Baghdad into subjugation, Russia’s President delivered a new message in his annual State of the Union Address to the Russian nation.

Putin spoke for the first time publicly of the need to modernize Russia’s nuclear deterrent by creating new types of weapons, ‘which will ensure the defense capability of Russia and its allies in the long term.’

In response to the abrogation by the Bush Administration of the ABM Treaty, and with it Start II, Russia predictably stopped withdrawing and destroying its SS-18 MIRVed missiles. Start II had called for full phase out of multiple warhead or MIRVed missiles, by both sides by 2007.

At that point Russia began to reconfigure its SS-18 MIRV missiles to extend their service life to 2016. Fully loaded SS-18 missiles had a range of 11,000 kilometers. In addition, it redeployed mobile rail-based SS-24 M1 nuclear missiles.

In its 2003 Budget, the Russian government made funding of its SS-27 or Topol-M single-warhead missiles a ‘priority.’ And the Defense Ministry resumed test launches of both SS-27 and Topol-M.

In December 2006, Putin told Russian journalists that deployment of the new Russian mobile Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile system was crucial for Russia’s national security. Without naming the obvious US threat, he declared, ‘Maintaining a strategic balance will mean that our strategic deterrent forces should be able to guarantee the neutralization of any potential aggressor, no matter what modern weapons systems he possesses.’

It was unmistakable whom he had in mind, and it wasn’t the Al Qaeda cave-dwellers of Tora Bora.

Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Ivanov, announced at the same time that the military would deploy another 69 silo-based and mobile Topol-M missile systems over the following decade. Just after his Munich speech Putin announced he had named his old KGB/FSB friend, Ivanov to be his First Deputy Prime Minister overseeing the entire military industry.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported that as of January 2006, Russia possessed 927 nuclear delivery vehicles and 4,279 nuclear warheads against 1,255 and 5,966 respectively for the United States. Nop two other powers on the face of the earth even came close to these massive overkill capacities. This was the ultimate reason all US foreign policy, military and economic, since the end of the Cold War had covertly had as endgame the complete deconstruction of Russia as a functioning state.

In April 2006, the Russian military tested the K65M-R missile, a new missile designed to penetrate US missile defense systems. It was part of testing and deploying a uniform warhead for both land and sea-based ballistic missiles. The new missile was hypersonic and capable of changing flight path.

Four months earlier, Russia successfully tested its Bulava ICBM, a naval version of the Topol-M. It was launched from one of its Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarines in the White Sea, travelling a thousand miles before hitting a dummy target successfully on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Bulava missiles were to be installed on Russian Borey-class nuclear submarines beginning 2008.

During a personal inspection of the first regiment of Russian mobile Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles in December 2006, Putin told reporters the deployment of mobile Topol-M ICBMs were crucial for Russia’s national security, stating, ‘This is a significant step forward in improving our defense capabilities.’

‘Maintaining a strategic balance,’ he continued, ’will mean that our strategic deterrent forces should be able to guarantee the neutralization of any potential aggressor, no matter what modern weapons systems he possesses.’

Putin clearly did not have France in mind when he referred to the unnamed ‘he.’ President Putin had personally given French President Chirac a tour of one of Russia’s missile facilities that January, where Putin explained the latest Russian missile advances. ‘He knows what I am talking about,’ Putin told reporters afterwards, referring to Chirac’s grasp of the weapon’s significance.

Putin also did not have North Korea, China, Pakistan or India in mind, nor Great Britain with its ageing nuclear capacity, not even Israel. The only power surrounding Russia with weapons of mass destruction was its old Cold War foe--the United States.

The Commander of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, General Nikolai Solovtsov, was more explicit. Commenting on the successful test of the K65M-R at Russia’s Kapustin Yar missile test site last April, he declared that US plans for a missile defense system, ‘could upset strategic stability. The planned scale of the United States’ deployment of a…missile defense system is so considerable that the fear that it could have a negative effect on the parameters of Russia’s nuclear deterrence potential is quite justified.’ Put simply, he referred to the now open US quest for Full Spectrum Dominance—Nuclear Primacy.

A new Armageddon is in the making. The unilateral military agenda of Washington has predictably provoked a major effort by Russia to defend herself. The prospects of a global nuclear conflagration, by miscalculation, increase by the day. At what point might an American President, God forbid, decide to order a pre-emptive full-scale nuclear attack on Russia to prevent Russia from rebuilding a state of mutual deterrence?

The new Armageddon is not exactly the Armageddon which George Bush’s Christian fanatics pray for as they dream of their Rapture. It is an Armageddon in which Russia and the United States would irradiate the planet and, perhaps, end human civilization in the process.

Ironically, oil, in the context of Washington’s bungled Iraq war and soaring world oil prices after 2003, has enabled Russia to begin the arduous job of rebuilding its collapsed economy and its military capacities. Putin’s Russia is no longer a begger-thy-neighbor former Superpower. It’s using its oil weapon and rebuilding its nuclear ones.

Bush’s America is a hollowed-out debt-ridden economy engaged on using its last card, its vast military power to prop up the dollar and its role as world sole Superpower.

Putin has obviously realized that his new-found ‘partner-in-prayer’, George W., has a large black spot hiding the secrets of his heart. It reminded of a popular country and western ballad from the late Tammy Wynette, ‘Cowboys don’t shoot straight like they used to. They look you in the eye and lie with their white hats on.’ That’s certainly the case with the famous cowboy of Crawford, Texas in his dealings with Vladimir Putin and the rest of the world.

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F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, and the soon-to-be published Seeds of Destruction: the dark side of gene manipulation. This article was drawn from his new book, in preparation, on the history of the American Century. He may be reached through his website: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1006-01.htm

Published on October 6, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Experts Warn of an Accidental Atomic War
Nuclear missile modified for conventional attack on Iran could set off alarm in Russia

by Eric Rosenberg

A Pentagon project to modify its deadliest nuclear missile for use as a conventional weapon against targets such as North Korea and Iran could unwittingly spark an atomic war, two weapons experts warned Thursday.

Russian military officers might misconstrue a submarine-launched conventional D5 intercontinental ballistic missile and conclude that Russia is under nuclear attack, said Ted Postol, a physicist and professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pavel Podvig, a physicist and weapons specialist at Stanford.

"Any launch of a long-range nonnuclear armed sea or land ballistic missile will cause an automated alert of the Russian early warning system," Postol told reporters.

The triggering of an alert wouldn't necessarily precipitate a retaliatory hail of Russian nuclear missiles, Postol said. Nevertheless, he said, "there can be no doubt that such an alert will greatly increase the chances of a nuclear accident involving strategic nuclear forces."

Podvig said launching conventional versions of a missile from a submarine that normally carries nuclear ICBMs "expands the possibility for a misunderstanding so widely that it is hard to contemplate."

Mixing conventional and nuclear D5s on a U.S. Trident submarine "would be very dangerous," Podvig said, because the Russians have no way of discriminating between the two types of missiles once they are launched.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the project would increase the danger of accidental nuclear war.

"The media and expert circles are already discussing plans to use intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry nonnuclear warheads," he said in May. "The launch of such a missile could ... provoke a full-scale counterattack using strategic nuclear forces."

Accidental nuclear war is not so far-fetched. In 1995, Russia initially interpreted the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket as the onset of a U.S. nuclear attack. Then-President Boris Yeltsin activated his "nuclear briefcase" in the first stages of preparation to launch a retaliatory strike before the mistake was discovered.

The United States and Russia have acknowledged the possibility that Russia's equipment might mistakenly conclude the United States was attacking with nuclear missiles.

In 1998, the two countries agreed to set up a joint radar center in Moscow operated by U.S. and Russian forces to supplement Russia's aging equipment and reduce the threat of accidental war. But the center has yet to open.

A major technical problem exacerbates the risk of using the D5 as a conventional weapon: the decaying state of Russia's nuclear forces. Russia's nuclear missiles are tethered to early warning radars that have been in decline since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. And Russia, unlike the United States, lacks sufficient satellites to supplement the radars and confirm whether missile launches are truly under way or are false alarms.

The scenario that worries Postol, Podvig and other weapons experts is what might happen if the United States and North Korea come to blows and a conventional D5 is launched against a target there from a submerged Trident submarine. Depending on the sub's location, the flying time to Russia could be under 15 minutes so the Russians would have little time to confirm the trajectory -- using decaying equipment -- before deciding to launch a nuclear strike on the United States.

The D5 missile project involves the removal of nuclear warheads from as many as two dozen D5 ICBMs that are carried aboard the U.S. fleet of 12 Ohio-class Trident submarines.

The Pentagon has the project on an accelerated schedule, with the goal of fielding the weapons alongside their nuclear variants in two years. Each Trident submarine carries 24 D5 missiles, and the plan calls for using two of those as conventional weapons in each sub.

The rocket fired by a submerged submarine would barrel up through the ocean powered by its three-stage engine and rapidly ascend through the atmosphere at speeds up to 20,000 feet per second into outer space.

The warhead compartment of the missile would then plummet back to earth, guided to its target within about 50 feet by sophisticated sensors. Defense officials believe it would gain enough speed and force to penetrate underground command bunkers.

©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

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http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=59428

Date Posted: 12/11/2006

Nuclear War Can't Be 'Regional'
Any nuclear conflict would devastate cities and threaten global population through climate change, researchers say.

Even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as occurred during all of World War II and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, impacting nearly everyone on Earth.

These conclusions are reported by a team of scientists from UCLA, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in two research articles posted online in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions and at a press conference today at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco.

The new results represent the first comprehensive quantitative assessment of the consequences of a nuclear conflict between small or emerging nuclear states, said Richard Turco, professor in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a member and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment.

The team of scientists reviewed the current status of nuclear weapons development, analyzed data on modern megacities and applied a state-of-the-science climate model. They calculated the local effects of individual "small," Hiroshima-size (15-kiloton) nuclear detonations in urban centers, including potential casualties from the blast and radioactive fallout, Turco said.

Even the smallest nuclear powers today and in the near future may have as many as 50 or more Hiroshima-size weapons in their arsenals, according to the scientists. Moreover, about 40 countries possess enough plutonium and uranium to construct substantial nuclear arsenals.

"Considering the relatively small number and sizes of the weapons — perhaps less than one megaton in total yield — the potential devastation would be catastrophic and long-term," Toon said. "A single low-yield nuclear detonation in an urban center could lead to more fatalities, in some cases by orders of magnitude, than occurred in major historical wars."

Megacities attacked with nuclear devices, through war or terrorism, would likely be abandoned indefinitely, inducing mass migration and long-term economic decline, Turco said. Turco in the 1980s headed a group — whose members included Owen "Brian" Toon, a co-author on the current research, and the late Carl Sagan — that originally defined the "nuclear winter" phenomenon, a phrase that Turco coined. For a regional-scale nuclear conflict, fatality estimates range from 2.6 million to 16.7 million, Turco said.

The scientists estimated the quantities of soot — the highly absorbing component of smoke — that would be generated in urban firestorms ignited by nuclear detonations. This effort was led by Toon, professor and chair of the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, together with Turco and University of Colorado student Charles Bardeen. At Rutgers, Alan Robock, professor of environmental sciences and associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers' Cook College, professor Georgiy Stenchikov and postdoctoral associate Luke Oman (now at Johns Hopkins University) employed a coupled atmosphere-ocean climate model to simulate the effects of the putative smoke emissions in perturbing the global climate system and causing regional climatic anomalies.

The amount of soot emitted by firestorms was found to exceed 5 million metric tons in many cases. Because so many people live in megacities, the quantity of black smoke generated per kiloton of explosive yield could be more than 100 times larger than previously estimated for a full-scale superpower nuclear exchange involving thousands of megatons, according to one of the journal papers.

While a regional nuclear confrontation among emerging nuclear powers might be geographically constrained, the environmental impacts could spread worldwide, Robock and his colleagues conclude.

"We examined the climatic effects of the smoke produced in a regional conflict in the subtropics between two opposing nations, each using 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons to attack the other's most populated urban areas," Robock said. The post-war climate simulations used soot emissions provided by Toon, Turco and Bardeen.

As had been suggested in earlier nuclear winter studies, and more recently by observations of large wildfire smoke plumes, Robock's calculations indicate that a large fraction of the nuclear soot could linger in the upper atmosphere for up to a decade, producing significant cooling and reduced precipitation, with the greatest changes occurring over land. The implications for global food supplies appear grim.

"A cooling of several degrees would occur over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions," Robock said. "As was the case with earlier nuclear winter calculations, large climatic effects would occur in regions far removed from the target areas or the countries involved in the conflict."

When Robock and his team calibrated their climate model against the recorded response to the 1912 eruptions of Katmai volcano in Alaska, they found that observed temperature anomalies were accurately reproduced. On a grander scale, the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, the largest in the last 500 years, was followed by killing frosts throughout New England in 1816 during what has become known as "the year without a summer." The weather in Europe was reported to be so cold and wet that the harvest failed and starvation stalked most of the continent. This historical event, according to Robock, perhaps foreshadows the kind of climate disruptions that would follow a regional nuclear conflict.

The researchers emphasized that known climatic anomalies associated with major volcanic eruptions such as Tambora typically last for a year or so because volcanic particles tend to fall out of the atmosphere relatively quickly. By contrast, nuclear-generated soot particles may remain suspended in the upper troposphere and stratosphere for up to a decade as a result of the strong interactions between solar heat absorption by the smoke and wind patterns in the upper atmosphere. Consequently, the climatic effects can be significantly greater and longer lasting than those associated with any historical volcanic eruption.

"With the exchange of 100 15-kiloton weapons as posed in our baseline scenario, the estimated quantities of smoke could lead to global climate anomalies exceeding any experienced in recorded history," Robock said. "And that's just 0.03 percent of the total explosive power of the current world nuclear arsenal."

In related research, researcher Michael Mills of the University of Colorado at Boulder led a broad team, including Toon and Turco, in defining the impacts of a regional nuclear conflict on the stratospheric ozone layer. Mills' results, based on detailed simulations with a two-dimensional global chemical-transport model, reveal average column ozone losses exceeding 20 percent worldwide and persisting for at least three to four years, with mid-latitude losses as large as 30 to 40 percent and polar reductions up to 70 percent.

Such ozone depletions would be unprecedented in human history and imply serious ecological and human consequences, Turco said. The primary effects on ozone are due to accelerated catalytic chemical cycles, which are caused by the heating of the stratosphere as injected soot absorbs sunlight, and to severely perturbed dynamics of the region, again owing to the soot heating.

Previous studies, carried out in the 1980s with less sophisticated models, had indicated comparable or smaller ozone losses for a full superpower nuclear exchange, Mills noted.

Turco said that a small nuclear state is likely to direct its weapons against population centers to maximize damage and achieve the greatest advantage, thus making such outcomes more plausible.

The research team concludes that the confluence of nuclear proliferation, political instability and urban demographics forms perhaps the greatest danger to the stability of human society since the dawn of civilization.

The research team assessed uncertainty at each step of their analysis. Because of the complexity of the problem and the limited data available to support calculations, they emphasize that further research is needed to improve the predictions described in their publications.

Nevertheless, the researchers note that the largest uncertainties are associated with the possible scenarios for a nuclear exchange. They conclude that the current buildup of nuclear weapons in a growing number of states points to scenarios in the next few decades that may be even more extreme than those considered in the present analysis.

The papers are: "Atmospheric Effects and Societal Consequences of Regional Scale Nuclear Conflicts and Acts of Individual Terrorism," O. B. Toon, R. P. Turco, A. Robock, C. Bardeen, L. Oman and G. L. Stenchikov, and "Climatic Consequences of Regional Nuclear Conflicts," A. Robock. L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, O. B. Toon, C. Bardeen and R. P. Turco. Both can be accessed on the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions journal Web site, at http://www.cosis.net/members/journals/df/recent.php?j_id=1.

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http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070203/bob8.asp

Week of Feb. 3, 2007; Vol. 171, No. 5 , p. 72

Sudden Chill
Even a limited nuclear exchange could trigger a climate catastrophe
Sid Perkins

Today's combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability, and urban demographics poses a renewed threat of nuclear winter. The sunlight-blocking effect of smoke and soot from even a limited nuclear war could trigger a climate catastrophe.

In the mid-1980s, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union each had thousands of nuclear warheads, along with a multitude of aircrews and missiles, sitting on red alert to carry those bombs to their targets at a moment's notice. The philosophy of mutual assured destruction—the notion that any use of nuclear weapons would trigger a full-fledged exchange that neither nation would survive—may have deterred any use of such bombs since World War II.

As devastating as a nuclear war between superpowers would have been, the after-effects probably would have been worse. In the 1980s, scientists estimated that a war in which each superpower used half its nuclear arsenal would have destroyed the upper atmosphere's ozone layer and, by filling the skies with dust and smoke, decreased temperatures at ground level in some regions as much as 40°C for up to a decade. Scientists and antinuclear advocates dubbed this chilling result nuclear winter. The lengthy famine sure to follow probably would have killed more people than the brief war would have.

Today, the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is no more, and the United States and Russia are dismantling their nuclear stockpiles. Together, the two countries now maintain about 20,000 weapons, less than a third of the number that sat at the ready in 1986.

But there's no reason to celebrate just yet, new studies suggest.

"While there's a perception that a nuclear build down by the world's major powers in recent decades has somehow resolved the global nuclear threat, a more accurate portrayal is that we're at a perilous crossroads," says Brian Toon, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and one of the researchers who first floated the idea of a nuclear winter.

Today's threat stems from a variety of factors, Toon and his colleagues say. Nations are joining the nuclear club with unnerving regularity, others are suspected of having ambitions to do so, and dozens more have enough uranium and plutonium on hand to build at least a few Hiroshima-size bombs. The leaders of some of these nations may have no qualms about using such weapons, even against a nonnuclear neighbor. Increasingly, people are living in large cities, which make tempting targets.

Finally, the results of today's climate simulations—which are much more sophisticated than those that were available in the 1980s—suggest that even a nuclear exchange of just a few dozen weapons could cool Earth substantially for a decade or more.

The current combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability, and urban demographics "forms perhaps the greatest danger to the stability of human society since the dawn of man," warns Toon.

Recognizing this danger, on Jan. 17, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand on its "doomsday clock" 2 minutes closer to midnight. "It's been 60 years since nuclear weapons have been used in war, but the psychological barriers that have helped limit the potential for the use of nuclear weapons in this country and others seems to be breaking down," says Lawrence M. Krauss, a member of the group and a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Join the club
In 1950, there were two nuclear powers—the United States, whose Manhattan Project developed the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, and the Soviet Union, which conducted its first nuclear test in August 1949. By 1968, when the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was proposed, France, the United Kingdom, and China had joined the pack. Outside that treaty from its beginning, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have developed weapons and conducted tests. Also, Israel is widely suspected of possessing nuclear weapons.

A handful of nations once possessed nuclear weapons but abandoned them. Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan inherited warheads when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 but have since transferred those weapons to Russia. South Africa has admitted constructing, but later disassembling, six nuclear devices, possibly after one test, says Toon.

In total, he says, at least 19 nations are now known to have programs to develop nuclear weapons or to have previously pursued that goal. Many more nations, through their power-generating and research nuclear reactor programs, have the raw materials for constructing nuclear devices, he and his colleagues reported in December 2006 at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Those raw materials aren't scarce: At least 40 nations have enough uranium and plutonium on hand to construct substantial nuclear arsenals.

Disturbingly, some of the nations with abundant bomb material have or have recently had strained relations with their neighbors. At the end of 2003, for example, Brazil probably had enough plutonium on hand to make more than 200 Hiroshima-size bombs, while its former rival Argentina could have produced 1,100 such bombs. Although North Korea probably has enough nuclear material to fabricate only a handful of the devices, South Korea has enough plutonium to construct at least 4,400. Pakistan could make 100 or more nuclear bombs, and its neighbor India could put together well over 10 times as many, the researchers estimate.

Today, at least 13 nations operate facilities that enrich uranium, plutonium, or both, says Toon. Altogether, 45 nations are known to have previous nuclear weapons programs, current weapons stockpiles, or the potential to become nuclear states.

Moving targets
In the late 1970s, researchers analyzed a variety of scenarios describing a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In some simulations, analysts presumed that either side's primary targets would be military facilities rather than population centers. In such an attack, between 2 million and 20 million people would die—largely as a result of radioactive fallout, not the blasts. At the other extreme, a full-scale Soviet attack that included U.S. economic targets, such as cities and ports, would use thousands of weapons and kill up to 160 million people.

Neither of those scenarios accurately portrays a nuclear war between regional rivals. A new nuclear power probably wouldn't have enough weapons on hand to target its opponent's entire military infrastructure. Therefore, "a small country is likely to direct its weapons against population centers to maximize damage and achieve the greatest advantage," Toon notes. Leaders of a fledgling nuclear power probably wouldn't believe that they could survive an opponent's first strike. Moreover, a small nuclear power might be more inclined than a superpower to strike first.

Because of recent growth and shifts in the world's population, more people are living in urban areas with more than 10 million residents, says Richard P. Turco, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Such megacities often have a densely populated urban core full of flammable materials: schools, offices, shopping malls, gas stations, vehicles with their complement of motor oils and fuels, and even the asphalt paving.

The brief but intense thermal pulse of a nuclear explosion immediately ignites any combustible material nearby. "It's like a bit of sunlight brought down to Earth," says Turco. A Hiroshima-size nuclear bomb packs the same explosive punch as about 13,500 metric tons of TNT and can cause urban fires that release more than 1,000 times the energy of the bomb itself. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima scorched an area of about 13 square kilometers.

On average, about 11 metric tons of flammable material are associated with each resident of a megacity, Turco and his colleagues reported at the San Francisco meeting. The team used population data to estimate not only how many people would die but also how much smoke and soot would be produced as the result of any given nuclear exchange.

If a Hiroshima-size bomb were to explode in the sky above each of the 50 most densely populated areas of the United States, more than 4 million people would die, the researchers estimate. Exploding 50 bombs over both India and Pakistan could cause 12.4 million and 9.2 million deaths, respectively.

The firestorms triggered by such nuclear volleys would produce millions of tons of smoke and soot, Turco notes. Lumber in buildings would generate about 40 percent of the soot. The rest would result from the combustion of petroleum products such as motor fuels, plastics, and asphalt roofing. Because soot from those sources repels moisture, water vapor in the air wouldn't condense on the particles. Therefore, rain wouldn't efficiently cleanse the air, and the soot would remain aloft longer than soot from a natural fire would.

Up, up, and away
Tracking and monitoring the smoke plumes from natural wildfires provides researchers with a notion of how soot and other small particles from nuclear firestorms would spread throughout the atmosphere, as well as data about the storms' possible effects on climate.



COOL SPELL. Average global temperature has risen for more than a century, but a hypothetical 100-bomb nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would more than offset that change. The 1.25°C drop attributable to such a nuclear war is shown in red on this graph of average global temperature changes since 1880. NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Robock et al.

In general, high-flying particles of ash and soot either absorb sunlight or scatter it. Some of that energy heats nearby particles, while some bounces back into space. That process cools Earth's surface while heating the atmosphere around the particles, says Mike Fromm, an atmospheric scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. The smoke from small wildfires typically rises only a few kilometers and stays within the troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere where most weather occurs. Within the past decade, however, scientists have recognized that the plumes from major blazes can reach the stratosphere.

Take, for example, the Chisholm fire, a 7-day blaze that consumed almost 1,200 km2 of timber in central Alberta in May 2001. The thick plume of smoke from that fire was the tallest ever observed, Fromm reported at the San Francisco meeting. Satellite observations of particles in the atmosphere in late June indicated that smoke had reached the stratosphere and spread over much of the Northern Hemisphere, reaching as far south as Hawaii and as far north as Svalbard, a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean. Similarly, smoke from a large fire surrounding Canberra, Australia, early in 2003 spread over much of the Southern Hemisphere.

Smoke and soot from huge blazes generally reach the stratosphere in a two-stage process, says Eric J. Jensen, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. First, the hot, buoyant air carries the particles to heights of around 10 km and spreads them into a layer hundreds of meters thick. Then, solar radiation heats the dark particles further, warming the surrounding air, which slowly rises higher and carries the particles with it.

Results of a recent computer analysis illustrate the phenomenon, says Jensen. He and his colleagues simulated a high-altitude smoke plume from a summer fire by modeling 10,000 metric tons of smoke particles dispersed in a 500-m-thick, 100-km square layer of atmosphere at a height of 9 km. After 1 hour of simulation time, solar radiation warmed the particles and the air, providing an updraft of about 1 m per second. After 10 hours, most of the smoke reached an altitude of 11 km, putting it into the stratosphere.

Chill in the air
Although wildfires are a prodigious source of small particles in the atmosphere, the largest suppliers of what scientists call natural aerosols are major volcanic eruptions. The sun-blocking effect of the minuscule bits of volcanic ash and droplets of water and sulfuric acid can cool Earth's climate significantly for months or even a year or two. The aerosols are especially persistent if they reach the stratosphere, where they waft above most weather and therefore aren't efficiently cleansed from the atmosphere.

Once the volcanic plumes spread at high altitude, they typically prevent no more than 1 percent of the sun's light from reaching Earth's surface (SN: 2/18/06, p. 110: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060218/note16.asp). But high-flying smoke and soot in the aftermath of even a limited nuclear war—one with as few as 100 Hiroshima-size bombs—would be much denser than that and the materials would block the sun as effectively as the thick clouds of a stormy day do, says Luke Oman, an environmental scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. He and his colleagues used computer models to simulate the effects of just such a war between India and Pakistan.

If those bombs exploded over the most-populated areas of the nations, more than 5 million metric tons of smoke and soot would soar into the sky. Most of those particles would stay aloft for more than 6 years, says Oman. On average, the temperature at Earth's surface would drop around 1.25°C for up to 3 years—about four times the short-term cooling effect resulting from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. After 10 years, the global average temperature would still be 0.5°C below normal.

Those temperature decreases may seem no more than a slight chill, but they're substantial, says Alan Robock, also of Rutgers University. Temperatures in the first few years after a 100-bomb India-Pakistan war would be cooler than during a centuries-long cold spell called the Little Ice Age, which ended during the mid-1800s. Average global temperatures were at that time between 0.6°C and 0.7°C below what they are today, and glaciers advanced in mountainous regions worldwide.

While temperatures at Earth's surface would drop, those in the stratosphere would increase by 30°C or more for at least 3 years, says Michael J. Mills, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. At those higher temperatures, the large quantities of nitrogen oxides formed during the nuclear explosions—when nitrogen in the air literally burns—would destroy high-altitude ozone at rates much higher than normal, he notes.

In the team's simulations, between 50 and 70 percent of the ozone high over polar regions disappeared. Losses were lower over the tropics, but ozone there still decreased by at least 10 percent. A 100-bomb nuclear exchange would create "a global ozone hole," says Mills. Because animals are adapted to the particular level of ozone protection that's normal for their latitudes, any significant ozone loss could be catastrophic, he suggests.

"Only disarmament can prevent the possibility of a nuclear environmental catastrophe," Robock grimly told the audience at the San Francisco meeting.

That a nuclear winter could be triggered by a regional war is particularly ironic, adds Stephen Schneider, a climate scientist at Stanford University. A few decades ago, people were afraid that an all-out nuclear war between superpowers would trigger a climate catastrophe. Today, the United States and Russia could simply end up as helpless bystanders—who would nevertheless be left out in the cold.

The Effects of Nuclear Weapons
Russell D. Hoffmann
1999

http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/n...nw/nuke_war.htm

This web site has a copyright. It is focused on the possibility of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan.


"The perpetrator of this crime against humanity may never have seen his adversary. He only needs to be good at following the simplest of orders. A robot could do it. One would think, that ONLY a robot WOULD do it.

Nuclear war is never anything less than genocide."


"Nuclear weapons do not recognize the end of a war, or signed peace treaties, or even the deaths of all the combatants. They simply keep on killing a percentage of whoever happens to inhale or ingest their deadly byproducts.'


"Nuclear weapons do not recognize international borders.'


"I think the world would be a better place if we all stopped and said, "I will not be a part of this. I do not need these weapons, for I would never commit this sin against my own children, nor against my neighbor's children, nor against my enemy's children, nor even against my enemy. I choose not to be a part of this madness."

There is a greater battle mankind must fight than against each other. Humanity's fight right now, is for humanity's general survival despite depleted and poorly used resources, environmental degradation (there is none greater than that from a nuclear explosion), dwindling effectiveness of antibiotics and other wonder drugs, an uneven distribution of available food, knowledge and wealth, and against weapons of mass destruction."

-- -- -- -- -- --


For those at home who would like to play along:


http://www.nukefix.org/

"With the new Nukefix, ver. 2.3, you have greater power to analyze the nuclear weapons problem than ever before. Nukefix's methods are based on Ike Jeanes' book, Forecast and Solution, grappling with the nuclear (Pocahontas Press, 1996). However, the treaty, health risk, and simultaneous-detonation analyses provided in Nukefix have not been previously available. Forecast and Solution is frequently referred to as F&S in citations. It is available at BarnesandNoble.com or amazon.com."

"The new Nukefix is designed for the serious researcher. On the nuclear weapons front, the past few years have been busy. Several thousand important nuclear weapon articles have appear annually in major newspapers and magazines. Categorized according to subject area, excerpts from many of them are now only a click away in the new version of Nukefix. References to them appear in Nukefix's Table of Contents. Never before has Nukefix contained such a thorough review of nuclear weapon news.

It is often asserted that nations will successfully learn to live with nuclear weapons, and that they will reach a state of relative safety. This presumes some kind of learning curve. In the new graphs attached to Nukefix's Learning Curve page, you can model and see the outcomes for two "learning" curves (Accidental and Willful Use). In most practical scenarios, the assertion that "learning curves" are sufficient to provide safety is baseless, because risk accumulated in early years all too rapidly tends to bring one to a 50% chance of a nuclear use.

See the expected death rates in the "T" (Treaty) command when limits on number of warheads anywhere from 10,700 to 10 are imposed on the superpowers.

See on the "Hit By Risk" page why baseline conditions show that the United States, over the long-term, is now experiencing a higher average risk death from nuclear weapons than from Cancer [over the long-term, 245 versus 209 deaths per 100,000 population annually].

Check out the methods for determining median years to nuclear attacks of different sizes in the "Q"(Quick) command.

See method for predicting median years to attacks of sufficient size to provoke nuclear winter/autumn on the "Nuclear Winter" page.

See the "SDI" page for methods, via probability analysis, for assessing the degree to which SDI can be expected to reduce the worldwide risk of nuclear weapon deaths. Typically, the reduction is quite modest at best.

See the "U" (Ultimate) command for the worldwide composite reluctance level curve. This curve provides a powerful tool for analyzing deterrence, death rates, and war in general.

The "O" (Outcome) command makes it possible to assess the consequences of ambiguous international relations, which do not have an explicit schedule for specific nuclear arms reductions. For a preview look at the screen snapshots and commentary provided here.

It is often difficult to estimate how many years will elapse before treaties dramatically reduce the risk of death from nuclear weapons. Will substantial reductions in risk occur in 3, 5, 10, or more years? With the "O", Outcome, command you can test the outcome.

Nukefix cuts through the nuclear dilemma with a few easy to use commands. Just press the "U" and "Q" keys when running Nukefix, and you will see how easy it is to make a highly competent analysis. More importantly, you can see precisely what nations are going to have to do in the post-Cold War era to deliver a safe system.

You can use the Nukefix "!" command to automatically write sections of reports and articles based on your own analysis of the nuclear weapons problem."

"The computer program Nukefix makes it possible to assess and reduce the probability of a nuclear weapons use. Nukefix screen snapshots show probability of a nuclear use, effects of proliferation, START II treaty, deterrence, simultaneous detonations, and more."

"Richard Feynman's assessment of the Challenger Space Shuttle Accident goes hand-in-hand with analysis of the nuclear weapons problem." See http://www.nukefix.org/intro.html

Get "Answers to questions, such as: What is the chance of a nuclear use occurring during your remaining lifetime and your children's lifetime? What is the health risk?"

"Consider, for example, an "optimistic" case of ten ostensibly peaceful nuclear-weapon nations, each of which is so peaceful that it would initiate one, and only one, nuclear attack once in 300 years. One might be mislead to think that such a scenario would produce a "peaceful world."

However, look carefully at the problem. The outcome is not intuitively obvious.

Given, for example, a 900 year period, each of these nations would initiate 3 attacks, if they performed as stipulated [900/300=3]. With 10 such nations, this would mean 30 nuclear attacks during the 900 year period [10*3=30].

Thirty nuclear attacks over 900 years hardly constitutes a peaceful or secure world, notwithstanding that each of the nations appeared peaceful at the outset. Such a performance would mean one nuclear attack every 30 years, on average [900 years/30 attacks=30 years per attack].

There are now at least eight (possibly ten) nuclear weapon nations. These nations will have to be far more reliable than stipulated in this exercise for the world to be nuclearly peaceful.... Rather than miring ourselves down in fatalism, calculations of the kind shown here suggest that we must construct a far safer nuclear world than the one illustrated in this exercise."

Screenshots available here:http://www.nukefix.org/nukepix.html

"Via mouse clicks, graphs, text, and windows, you can easily make a thorough analysis of the nuclear weapons problem. Nukefix is exceptionally easy to use, it will practically run on auto-pilot if you like.

For those of you who are unalterably in favor of nuclear weapons, please carefully examine the portions of the program that relate to accidental use. Controls in this area are paramount to the safety of nations, regardless of what position one takes on nuclear weapons in general.

Political leaders do not respond to historical imperatives but to the clamor of their constituents. Indeed, the exclusive remedy may be to clamor them with facts of the kind that they have never seen."

"Anyone is capable of talking about the nuclear weapons issue with neighbors, friends, and government leaders, just as one would discuss any other public health problem. This issue did not come "out of closet" in the 1990s, and it's urgent that it do so promptly."

Ike Jeanes' paper "Evaluating and Reducing Nuclear Weapons Risk Over the Next Two Decades" in the April 1998 INESAP Information Bulletin, Issue No. 15 illustrates Nukefix applications [INESAP is the acronym for International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation]. Nukefix was also discussed in the September/October 2000 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

"Nukefix runs on IBM compatible computers. It cannot be run on a Macintosh (sorry). Nukefix is designed to run under Windows95/98/2000 or DOS. There is no charge for Nukefix, if you download it. If you wish to purchase the identical version on a floppy disk for $10 (shipping included), you may do so.


-- -- --

http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/nucwar.htm
("This page last updated Feb 12, 2007 (and seldom needs updating)")

Among the offerings here:


NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION: the second `expansion set' for Nuclear War, this explosively funny [??] card game is for 2-6 players of all ages. Choose which world power you'll play: Little Bittyland, Bananaland, Bermuda Triabland, Bagmad, or one of many others included. Use your country's Special Power, secrets, top secrets, & propaganda to gain control of, or eliminate your enemy's population. When that inevitably fails, all-out war breaks out as players launch stealth bombers, submarines, scud missiles, and fire atomic cannons at each other. Stop attacks with patriot anti- missiles, stealth fighters, decoy missiles, saboteurs, and other special cards. Includes one of our special "Nuclear Misfunction" dice, which may glow in the dark if you get one of the lucky ones. Nuclear Proliferation adds special trading sessions, new top secret and other special cards. It's a sarcastic, humorous look at the futility of Atomic Warfare in the post-cold war 1990's, Can be played by itself, or combined with Nuclear War, Escalation, or both! - $29.95

Nuclear Proliferation won the Origins Award for Best SF Boardgame of 1992


NUCLEAR WAR BOOSTER PACKS: All-new set of full color Nuclear War cards, same backs, same size as the other Nuclear War cards. Each booster pack comes with 8 randomly selected bonus cards to add to your Nuclear War set. New secrets, new specials, new sizes of warheads, including the incredible 200-megaton bomb & the horrifying Doomsday device. (Not available in every pack). Also each pack includes a proof-of-purchase card. For 40 proof of purchase cards, you can have a free SUPERGERM tshirt. - $2 for an 8 card pack.

You can now buy a BLANK DECK of Nuclear War cards. This is a deck of 56 cards, with the backs the same as all the other Nuclear War cards, but the faces completely blank. Make up your own secrets. Add odd-sized warheads. Replace missing cards. Confuse your friends. Only $10 per deck.

NUCLEAR WAR COUNTRY LISTS (from Nuclear Proliferation and the bonus pack #1)
NUCLEAR WAR BOOSTER PACK CARD LIST
SAMPLE NUCLEAR WAR BOOSTER AND NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION CARDS
NUCLEAR WAR Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

NUCLEAR WAR COMPUTER GAME: New World Computing released this one-player computer version of the Nuclear War card game, but now it is available only from US. In this game, you play against 4 computer opponents, all of whom are parodies of famous world leaders (you get to choose from 12 potential opponents). It's a funny, fast paced game that you can play in about an hour and will want to play again and again. Nuclear War is available in IBM 3 1/2" format. ( 5 1/4" version available by special request.). The computer game comes in a zip lock bag. This program is a DOS program and should run on any computer that lets you run a DOS program. No longer available in an AMIGA version. $14. 95.

... a hard plastic mousepad with a solar-powered calculator built in. The surface has the anti-missile and population charts from Nuclear War printed on it... only $24.95.

Play the Nuclear War Card Game online!

Through an agreement between GameTableOnline and Flying Buffalo, you can now play a game of NW anytime online, just like you would play it at home. They charge a small monthly fee, but for that fee you get to play all their online games, all you want.

Now you can turn Iran into a glass ashtray!

-- -- --


Of note: The Titan Missile Museum, the only publicly accessible Titan II missile site in the US,
had its one millionth visitor on February 10, 2007, at 10:41 a.m.!

This is one scary thread Mag, and I suppose it should be...but you've done a wonderful job with these journal articles......Thanks

Thanks, DWB... I'd rather we could all just relax and have a dance at the beach, but we have to work to do first...

-- -- --

Of the "screenshots" from the NukeFix software noted above (which are really explanations and graphs from the mathematical formulae described in the book and used in the software), the last three may be the most important for the casual reader:

Here are some excerpts from the one on RETALIATION/EARLY-WARNING SYSTEMS ( http://www.nukefix.org/nukepix2.html#retaliation ):

"FALSE EVALUATION, JUST A FEW MORE MINUTES PLEASE: The first phase of the problem is akin to taking a very difficult test, where if there were only a few more minutes, you would be able to answer the given question (or more questions), but because of insufficient time you are unable to do as well as you otherwise would have done. Michael Wallace et al. have demonstrated how these principals also apply in nuclear-weapon early warning systems, where there is little time available to solve the problem of whether an alarm is true or false [Forecast & Solution, pp. 220-233].

As shown, the key ingredients are:

1) The arrival rates of alarms of a TAC level of seriousness [see the "Retaliation" page in Nukefix]. From 1977 to 1984, the average rate of occurrence was once in 1.33 years in the U.S.; 3.3 years would probably be a moderately optimistic assumption for worldwide conditions [Forecast & Solution, p. 233].

2) The decision time available to solve the average alarm, which in a land-based missile in a U.S. Russia scenario would tend to vary from roughly 12 to 21 minutes and in a submarine attack would tend to vary from 0 to 13 minutes [Forecast & Solution, p. 220].

3) An average difficulty level of the problem of, say 5.5 minutes to solve, would be a moderately optimistic assumption. The record indicates that it has taken from 6 to 36 minutes to resolve TAC alarms in the U.S. [Forecast & Solution, p. 230-233].

With this data you can make a reasonable first approximation of years to false evaluation due to insufficient time to resolve the alarm problem. This figure would indicate the frequency at which people working on the alarm problem would be unable to reject the alarm as being false, because of insufficient time to evaluate it. So in these instances, on average, in the nation evaluating the alarm, the evaluation report would tend to be wrong at least once in the designated "years to false evaluation," when decision-making regarding whether to retaliate is being considered. You can set "years to false evaluation" to any value you feel is appropriate."

-- snip --

"In a proliferated world the peaceful are cheated out of their peace. In the worksheet, with 9 nuclear weapon nations, after each nation maintained a Willful proclivity to initiate a nuclear use only once in 2,363 years, the peaceful are granted a median 22.7 years of nuclear peace, a mere .96% return for their initial investment. As a bonus, an accidental use is 7 times as likely as a willful use [Forecast & Solution, p. 393].

These are the systematic consequences of a "rational" nuclear weapons system that maintains launch-before-detonation policies and sustains the reliability levels shown on the above worksheet."

-- -- --

In the section on pre-emption ( http://www.nukefix.org/nukepix2.html#preemption ):

"It is often asserted that via nuclear deterrence, rationality offers a protective influence. Less attention has been given to the fact that rationality also exerts an enormously dangerous influence when nations operate under a policy of preempting if an incoming attack appears likely. The dangerous influence from rationality is most explicitly evident when one carefully analyzes the preemption phenomenon.

When a nation reaches the point of contemplating preemption, it has already arrived at the point where it believes that it will be nuclearly attacked. It has crossed the line where it believes a nuclear war is substantially inevitable.

In the upcoming worksheet you can select any of the nuclear nations to evaluate the role that preemption would tend to play under such conditions....

It is shocking to see that after accounting for Accidental Use and False Preemption, there often tends to be little room for any other potential causes for nuclear attack. And, when nations operate under a policy of preempting and when an incoming attack appears likely, this tends to be so even with "rational" decision-making."


"The preemption problem can be readily modeled, because the key ingredients correspond to those which this program used above to illustrate decision-making in the early warning retaliation system. In the upcoming Preemption worksheet you can see the consequences of rationality in preemption decision-making.

Just as the decision-making in launch-before-detonation begins with a false evaluation of an alarm of an incoming attack, the preemption case is governed by analogous circumstances. But instead of facing a false evaluation of an INCOMING attack via an alarm, the preemption case is governed by a military or intelligence evaluation which falsely indicates an anticipated IMMINENT INCOMING nuclear attack.

For purposes of modeling, the difference between the early-warning alarm and the preemption case resides only in the difference between INCOMING and IMMINENT INCOMING attack, and the difference in the kinds of data being evaluated.

In the launch-before-detonation case, it is an alarm from infrared sensors, radar, and other intelligence information that is being evaluated. In the preemption case, it is primarily conventional intelligence data and military assessments which are being evaluated. The rest is much the same. The same Bayesian formula can be applied in both instances."

-- --

The section on economics ( http://www.nukefix.org/nukepix2.html#economics ) is very interesting reading:

"In 1995, Erich Weede pointed out that China, vis-à-vis the ex-Soviet Union, loomed as a potentially formidable economic and military power.

"[The Economist in 1992 observed that] 'Russia's output has fallen more in the past three years than America's did during the Great Depression. . .' The economic size of Russia [in 1993] was about 18.4% of the American [economy]. . . ."

"[By contrast,] the China-United States economic size ratio [more than 35% of the U.S. in 1995] is comparable to the Soviet-American ratio during the Cold War. . . . Starting as a nuclear power and with real military spending recently growing at double digit rates, China builds the basis for a future [military] challenge. . . . THE CHINESE MIGHT NOT OBLIGE BY MISMANAGING THEIR ECONOMY, AS THE SOVIETS DID [emphasis added, Forecast & Solution, p. 439].

By 1997 China's economy was approximately six times larger than the Russian economy and approximately 57% the size of the U.S. economy. Its population was approximately a 4.5 times larger than the United States. Its acquisition of Hong Kong and growth rates in the range of 10.3% in 1995 and long-term projected rates of growth of 8.5+% point to vast changes in its economic and power relationships in the coming years. [All growth rates here and later are stated in real terms after adjusting for inflation.]

The U.S. economy in 1995 grew at 2.1% rate, and for nearly a century its growth rate has averaged approximately 3.3% [Forecast & Solution, p. 438]. As can be seen see on the upcoming graph when running Nukefix, if growth rates for the U.S. and China fall anywhere within these stated growth rates, then the economies of China and the U.S. will be equal in 7.5 to 12.7 years [the years 2004 to 2009].

If the Chinese maintain a positive spread over U.S. economic growth, the U.S. will continuously face, from this day forward, another nuclear nation with greater relative economic might than it has ever encountered before. This relationship is already being considered in military terms, as was indicated in a 1995 article in Scientific American:

"[The inspiration for exploring high-tech wars that move beyond the Gulf War] has come from the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, a future-oriented planning office headed by Andrew Marshall, a former cold-war strategist.

"One reason for a reassessment is that, within a few decades, the threat to the U.S. may come not from a small rogue regional power but instead from what has come to be known as a 'peer competitor': in essence, a new superpower, such as China, a resurgent Russia or perhaps even India [Forecast & Solution, p. 440]."





-- snip --

"One of the striking points when looking at the graphs is that those nations with a negative growth rate tend to be viewed as being more likely to use a nuclear weapon. Further, a negative growth rate cannot usually be sustained for long periods in a nation without conditions becoming quite desperate within that nation. A sustained negative growth rate in a nuclear weapons nation is a grave security risk.'

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/intelan...hreat_not_bluff
-- -- ---

BMD Focus: Russia`s INF threat not bluff
By Martin Sieff Feb 21, 2007, 16:57 GMT


WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) --

The extraordinary tough talk coming out of Moscow over the past week on the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty is mixed but not contradictory.

First, four-star Army Gen. Yury Baluyevsky, the Chief of the Russian General Staff, warned explicitly last Thursday that Russia might unilaterally pull out of the nearly 20-year-old treaty that has been a cornerstone of detente and of peace and security in Europe. 'It is possible for a party to abandon the treaty (unilaterally) if it provides convincing evidence that it is necessary to do so,' said Baluyevsky. 'We currently have such evidence.'

'What they (the Americans) are doing at present, building a third missile defense ring in Europe, is impossible to justify,' he said.

Baluyevsky`s remarks sounded as a strong warning to the United States regarding its plans to deploy elements of its anti-missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic,' the RIA Novosti news agency said.

Baluyevsky`s threat followed a rising tide of warnings from Russian leaders about how seriously they would react to the Bush administration`s plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech republic, two former Soviet satellite states that are now members of the U.S.-led NATO alliance.

The very next day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, sounded an -- apparently -- more moderate tone when he said that Baluyevsky`s comments did not reflect any decision that the Kremlin had already made to scrap the INF, which was signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987.

But Lavrov made it very clear he was not contradicting any of Baluyevsky`s comments. 'We are not speaking about a decision that has already been made. We are just stating the situation,' he said.

Lavrov`s comments, therefore, appeared to be a not-so-veiled hint that Russia would stay within the INF if the United States abandoned its plans to deploy BMD radars and other assets in Poland and the Czech Republic

And on Monday, Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, the commander of Russia`s mighty Strategic Missile Forces, issued another tough warning. As we reported in our regular BMD Watch column Tuesday, Solovtsov said Russia was ready to resume construction of intermediate- and short-range nuclear missiles at any time. He said abandoning the INF would pose no military or security problems to his nuclear forces. Russia`s strategic missile forces will be able to locate and target any ballistic missile defense facilities the United States puts in Central Europe.

Solovtsov told a Moscow press conference the Strategic Missile Forces would be able to track down and, if necessary target, U.S. ballistic missile defense radars and missiles if they were ever deployed in Central Europe.

'If the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic make such a decision, the Strategic Missile Forces will be able to target these systems,' he said.

The INF treaty was a cornerstone of detente between the United States and the Soviet Union. Signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987, it scrapped intermediate-range nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 300 miles to 3,400 miles.

'By the treaty`s deadline of June 1, 1991, a total of 2,692 such weapons had been destroyed, 846 by the U.S. and 1,846 by the Soviet Union,' RIA Novosti said.

Baluyevsky, Lavrov and Solovtsov all appeared to be fleshing out the frank warning of their leader, President Vladimir Putin, at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy on Feb. 10 when he warned that the U.S. drive to deploy BMD assets in Central Europe could set off a new superpowers arms race.

'What they (the Americans) are doing at present, building a third missile defense ring in Europe, is impossible to justify,' Baluyevsky said.

The United States maintains that the BMD assets are meant only to protect Western European nations from the threat of nuclear missiles launched by Iran or some other so-called 'rogue' state. But Putin and other top Russian leaders now openly ridicule that explanation, claiming that the deployments are instead aimed at them.

In these columns over the past year, we have consistently tracked the rising Russian tide of alarm over U.S. plans to extend BMD systems into Central Europe. The latest statements from Moscow confirm our assessment that the Russian threats are not bluff and should be taken seriously by U.S. policymakers. So far they have not been. This state of complacency may well continue until Russian intermediate-range nuclear missiles are once again targeting the great cities of Western Europe for the first time in a generation.

-- -- --

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/intelan...cle_1264489.php

BMD Focus: Why Russia fears BMD
By Martin Sieff Feb 15, 2007, 19:38 GMT

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Why does Russia oppose so fiercely the deployment of U.S. ballistic missile defenses in Central Europe to protect NATO allies from any Iranian threat? A lengthy article published Tuesday in the Moscow newspaper Kommersant by Mikhail Barabanov, editor of Arms Export magazine, gives an important insight into Russian thinking.

First, Barabanov expressed skepticism that the Iranian threat is the real reason the new BMD system is going to be deployed with frontline radar bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. Like the late Henry Ford, Barabanov argued that people have two reasons for doing what they do: a good reason and the real reason. In the case of BMD, a determination to fence Russia in is, he argued, the real reason.

'It is highly likely that the missile threat from `problem` states is not the genuine reason for the creation of the missile defense system by the Americans,' Barabanov wrote. 'The real motivation of the multibillion-dollar undertaking is the desire to expand U.S. military and strategic capacities and constrict those of other states that have nuclear missiles, Russia and China most of all.'

As we have repeatedly noted in these columns, the U.S. anti-ballistic missile defense system currently being developed at enormous cost is not designed to defend the Untied States against a full-scale launch of ICBMs by Russia`s Strategic Missile Forces with their multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle, or MIRV, warheads. And it could not do so.

Nevertheless, Barabanov argued that 'even a limited missile defense system injects a high degree of indeterminacy into the strategic plans of other countries and undermines the principle of mutual nuclear deterrence. With Russia continuing to reduce its nuclear arsenal significantly and China maintaining a low missile potential, the Americans` ability to down even a few dozen warheads could deprive the other side of guaranteed ability to cause the U.S. unacceptable damage in a nuclear war.'

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin is pouring unprecedented funds from a treasury bursting with energy-export profits into modernizing Russia`s strategic nuclear arsenal, Barabanov struck an uncharacteristically pessimistic, or frank, note about Russia`s long-term strategic prospects.

'If current tendencies continue, Russia will be unlikely to have the capacity to maintain more than 400-500 nuclear warheads by 2020. Russian experts have estimated that the U.S. could down half of that quantity with its missile defense system. That would be an especially heavy blow if the Americans delivered a disarming nuclear missile first-strike and the remaining Russian missiles could be eliminated almost completely.

'The first 10 U.S. interceptor missiles in Poland will not make a serious dent in Russian nuclear potential for the first few years,' Barabanov acknowledged. But, he continued, 'The Russian Army is buying six or seven Topol-M ballistic missiles per year. The destruction of just one of two of them by the American missile defense system would have a high price for Russia. And the placement of a strategic weapons system in Poland, even a defensive one, is a challenge to Moscow by Washington.

'Practically the only way to prevent a slow growth of the American strategic advantage is a significant increase in the purchase of new ballistic missiles by Russia. But the current Russian leadership is not prepared for that, mainly for political reasons,' Barabanov said. And that is why, he continued, 'Russia`s reaction to the news of the possible placement of American interceptor missiles by the Russian border was loud and disorderly, both in political circles and in the press.'

In line with his other frank comments, Barabanov was also remarkably outspoken in his criticisms of the Russian diplomatic reaction to the proposed BMD deployments. Russian officials, 'as usual, made a number of contradictory statements that amounted to the usual vague threats to `take adequate measures,` boasting an unconvincing justification for their helplessness,' he wrote. 'The Russian leadership had the same initial reaction to the expansion of NATO and the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Everything possible has been done to convince the West that there is no need to pay attention to Russia and Moscow`s loud objections.'

Finally, Barabanov appeared to argue that Russia should rely much more on its strategic clout as the world`s greatest energy exporter of oil and gas combined than on its traditional strategic nuclear arsenal to retain a leading role in the world.

'For an `energy superpower,` it is more important to be able to pump its energy resources westward than to maintain any strategic balances,' he concluded.

Most western analysts would disagree with most of Barabanov`s analysis. But it is of great value in explaining the background to the Russian alarm over the BMD program`s extension to Europe and President Putin`s broadsides against U.S. policies this past week in Munich and Amman. The United States remains on a collision course with Russia on this issue.

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http://news.monstersandcritics.com/intelan...cle_1261425.php

BMD Focus: CRS skepticism on BMD
By Martin Sieff Feb 8, 2007, 18:41 GMT


WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The U.S. armed forces have demonstrated no learning curve in their development of kinetic energy interceptors to destroy incoming ballistic missiles, an updated congressional report claims.

The report is entitled 'Kinetic Energy Kill for Ballistic Missile Defense: A Status Overview.' It was written by Steven A Hildreth, a specialist in national defense in the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service, and an updated version of his report was released on Jan. 5.

'U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs have focused primarily on developing kinetic energy interceptors to destroy attacking ballistic missiles ... over 30 years,' Hildreth wrote. Yet, '... The data on the U.S. flight test effort to develop a national missile defense (NMD) system remains mixed and ambiguous.'

'There is no recognizable pattern to explain this record nor is there conclusive evidence of a learning curve over more than two decades of developmental testing,' he wrote. 'In addition, the test scenarios are considered by some not to be operational tests and could be more realistic in nature; they see these tests as more of a laboratory or developmental effort.

'Analysis of flight test data shows that the U.S. effort to develop, test, and deploy effective BMD systems based on this concept has produced mixed and ambiguous results,' Hildreth wrote. Even ' The actual performance in war-time of one kinetic-energy system currently deployed by the United States (i.e., the Patriot PAC-3) is similarly ambiguous,' he wrote.

'Further, it is not yet possible to assess the operational effectiveness the other deployed system (i.e., the National Defense System) against long-range ballistic missile threats,' he wrote.

The current Ground Missile Defense program 'began flight testing in 2002,' Hildreth wrote. 'Since that time six flight tests have taken place. Five of these flight tests were planned intercept attempts, with three resulting in failure to intercept.'

'Officials concluded that about 80 percent of the program`s 40 or so primary intercept flight test objectives were met; all the secondary objectives were met fully or partially,' he wrote. 'In 2004, the GMD undertook a new configuration with a different booster and interceptor. It flew a successful integration flight test (non-intercept test) in early 2004 with all primary and secondary objectives met.'

'This system was deployed in Alaska and California in 2004 and declared operational after eight missiles were placed in silos. Subsequently, two planned intercept flight tests in December 2004 and February 2005 failed to launch,' the report continued.

Therefore, 'The currently deployed system thus remains to be tested successfully against targets it might be expected to intercept,' Hildreth concluded.

'In September 2006, a successful flight test exercise of the GMD system too place. Although not a primary CRS-4 objective of the data collection test, an intercept of the target warhead was achieved,' he wrote.

'There do not appear to be any recognizable patterns that emerge to account for the mostly unsuccessful history of the effort. Nor is there conclusive evidence of a learning curve, such as increased success over time relative to the first tests of the concept 20 years ago,' the CRS report said.

'Program supporters can point to limited evidence that, under controlled conditions, there is reason to support the contention that kinetic energy interceptor technology for use against long-range ballistic missiles holds promise,' Hildreth acknowledged.

However, 'Critics of the flight test effort to date, whether they support missile defense or not in general, can raise questions about the success rate and the realism of the testing effort, given a generation of U.S. investment in its development,' he continued.

'Can kinetic energy interceptor technologies for use against long-range ballistic missiles be developed successfully and deployed as an effective part of the U.S. military posture?' Hildreth asked. 'The answer appears to be ambiguous at this juncture.'

'Can the now deployed NMD system protect the United States from long-range ballistic missile attacks? Currently, there is insufficient empirical data to support a clear answer,' he concluded.

The release of the updated version of Hildreth`s report appears timed to catch the eye of the new Democratic masters of the recently-elected 110th Congress.

The first three Republican-controlled Congresses of President George W. Bush`s time in office uncritically voted through the enormous appropriations he requested for the crash development of BMD systems to protect the United States against individual or small numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles launched by so-called 'rogue' states. However, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the new chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, has said he will scrutinize the BMD budget far more closely to make sure that it is focused and spent on relevant and effective programs.

A major new debate on the effectiveness of BMD and on future strategies in its budget priorities is about to start. Hildreth`s report should be seen as one of the opening shots in that struggle.

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more to come...

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/intelan...cle_1255162.php
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BMD Focus: What`s wrong with the Bulava?
By Martin Sieff Feb 3, 2007, 11:51 GMT


WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- What has happened to the Bulava missile, the submarine-launched new star of Russia`s formidable strategic weapons arsenal?

Everything seemed to be shining on the Bulava. It had three successful test launches in a row. It was not some radical new design with untested technology but a mature adaptation of the already tried and tested Top-M intercontinental ballistic missile. It did not lack funds for development. With soaring global oil prices, the Russian government, as the world`s largest energy exporter, has been spending more money on upgrading and modernizing its strategic rocket forces than at any time in the past quarter century.

Then suddenly it all started to go wrong for the Bulava. Test ICBM launches failed three times in a row in a brief four month period in the second half of last year. The third failure occurred on Dec. 24

'These three test failures, and only three successes, are worrisome. So the test program has been temporarily suspended,' analyst James Dunnigan wrote on StrategyPage.com on Nov. 12.

'The first stage performed well, the second stage performed well, but the third stage, not so well,' Anatoly Perminov, head of the Federal Space Agency said according to a report carried on StrategyPage.com on Dec. 29.

The Moscow newspaper Kommersant reported on Dec. 27 that the third stage of the missile exploded over the Sea of Okhotsk after being fired from a Dimitry Donskoy class nuclear submarine while it was sitting on the surface of the White Sea.

Kommersant also quoted Peminov as saying that Bulava would require 12 to 14 successful test launches before it could be deployed as the next generation of the sea-based leg of Russia`s nuclear triad.

'Given that Bulava blasts off two or three times a year, Russia`s armed forces will hardly get it sooner than two or three years,' Kommersant said. 'So, three failures of Bulava in a row may easily disrupt the country`s program of nuclear rearmament.'

The previous test failures of the Bulava occurred on Sept. 7 and Oct. 25, the RIA Novosti news agency reported on Dec. 26. RIA Novosti said that both those tests were also attempted 'from a ballistic missile submarine in the White Sea.'

'The first missile failed to reach its target and the second self-destructed after deviating from its trajectory,' the Russian news agency said.

Kommersant also noted that the Russian navy had planned to equip the Yury Dolgoruky, the first of its new Borey 955 class strategic nuclear submarines, with the Bulava as early as this year. That now appears to be an impossible goal.

The December test failure would have been a major disappoint to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since taking office he has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to modernizing the nuclear firepower of the Russian navy, and he would certainly have wanted to see the Bulava operationally deployed on the new Borey-class submarines before he is scheduled to leave office next year.

'Two special commissions were set up to probe into the accident,' Kommersant said. 'The first one will focus on the course of the breakdown, while the second will attempt to find out sources that leaked to the mass media the data on the Bulava`s failure.

'The two previous unsuccessful launches occurred Sept. 7 and Oct. 25 from a Russian missile submarine located in the White Sea. The first missile failed to reach its target, and the second was destroyed after it flew outside of its intended course,' StrategyPage.com said.

'The R-30 Bulava, or SS-NX-30, intercontinental ballistic missile is a version of the land-based Topol-M ICBM that is cut down in length in order to fit into a submarine missile firing tube. This cuts back the amount of solid fuel propellant it can carry and reduces its range to a still formidable 4,800 miles. Each of the new Borey 955 class submarines is designed to carry 12 Bulavas and each Bulava can carry up to 10 independently-launched re-entry vehicles or MIRVs that could strike different targets, so a single Borey class submarine would have the capability to annihilate up to 120 American or European cities.

The Bulava`s developmental problems suggest several conclusions: First, there is a lot more to developing a new ballistic version, or, even a significantly upgraded version of an old one than most people think. The Russian strategic missile development program is being lavishly funded once again thanks to the huge influx of energy dollars from Russia`s oil and gas exports. And Russia has had more experience and a larger number of successful intercontinental ballistic missile tests than any other nation in the world. But the Bulava`s problems have so far remained intractable.

Second, the Bulava`s poor recent record contrasts with the exceptional reliability of most of Russia`s land-based ICBMs and satellite-carrying booster rockets such as the Topol-M, the RS-20 (also known as the SS-18) and the Soyuz. This may suggest that the problem is not in the basic missile design, but in the marine engineering involved in manufacturing its launch tube; or it may be that the changes that have been made to the basic Topol-M design to adapt it for launch from a submarine have created some unanticipated technical problems. The Bulava was designed at the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology, RIA Novosti said.

For all their otherwise impressive record of success, Russian missile designers have encountered repeatedly problems with the challenge of designing a new generation of submarine-launched ICBMs from scratch. The 'Bark' design that preceded the Bulava was scrapped and the design was taken to adapt the Topol-M or maritime use instead.

However, U.S. analysts and policymakers should not get too complacent over Russia`s Bulava problems. The other strategic weapons in the Russian ICBM arsenal seem to work just fine. And like their American counterparts, Russia`s rocket-men can be counted to keep wrestling with the problem until they solve it. They have a half century record of success in doing just that.

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http://news.monstersandcritics.com/intelan...cle_1252206.php

BMD Focus: China`s ASAT shock
By Martin Sieff Jan 26, 2007, 17:53 GMT


WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- China`s successful anti-satellite missile test earlier this month came as a shock to the Washington defense establishment on the policitical right and left alike.

The comfortable assumption shared by most liberal, Democrat-leaning and conservative, Republican defense analysts was that China was incapable of developing such a weapon for at least the next decade. This consensus was repeatedly articulated in blogs and communications between American watchers of the Chinese space program. On the right, the confident assumption was that U.S. space assets remained invulnerable. On the left, it was widely assumed that China wanted to de-militarize space just as much as U.S. doves did.

Both those views have now been blasted into debris as much as the destroyed weather satellite was in the Jan. 11 test, details of which emerged this week.

The Washington Times Wednesday reported details of the successful test. It said U.S. defense intelligence agencies reported the test was carried out by a commercial KT-1 rocket, a version of the DF-21 missile that was fired from the Xichang space center in China`s southwestern Sichuan province.

'The ASAT weapon separated from the last stage in space and then destroyed the Feng-Yun-1C weather satellite, launched in 1999 and orbiting over both poles,' The Washington Times said

'U.S. officials said debris for the deployed satellite continues to orbit and poses a risk to some of the 800 satellites now in space, 400 of which are American,' the newspaper said.

China`s ASAT test derailed key U.S. government strategic assumptions. Bush administration policymakers had been confident that China was at least a decade away from being able to deploy such weapons. China`s repeated diplomatic calls for a new treaty to prevent the militarization of space were seen as an attempt to get the United States to abandon its strategic command of near space through diplomatic means precisely because China lacked the means to contest that superiority with its own space assets in the foreseeable future.

The Washington Times report detailed a key reason for that assumption. It noted that China had previously made at least three unsuccessful attempts by the same means to destroy a satellite in orbit about 500 miles above the earth.

The Washington Times also cited U.S defense officials as admitting that 'there are major gaps in U.S. intelligence about which other space weapons China has or is developing that could cripple or disable U.S. satellites, which handle 90 percent of all military communications, as well as intelligence and missile guidance.'

The stakes are very high in this lack of intelligence about China`s developing ASAT capabilities. For the global U.S. dominance in conventional war over the past 15 years since the first Gulf War in 1991 has been explicitly based on space-based assets for reconnaissance, communications and control of military forces on the ground. These orbiting space-based resources have also been essential for the precision-targeting and destruction of hostile military forces that have made U.S. military power so irresistible over the past decade and a half.

These assets would also be essential for the United States to successfully project its power to defend Taiwan from any future conventional military threat by China.

A report issued last month by the State Council, China`s Cabinet, said the country`s air force was giving priority to the development of new fighters as well as air and missile defense weapons.

We have previously noted in these columns the complacency by almost all U.S. analysts about the development of China`s space war and asymmetrical warfare capabilities designed to neutralize the U.S. dominance in information technology and space-based military assets. China has been systematically organizing hundreds of factories, possibly thousands, in an immense missile-industrial complex to boost its manned space program and also its space military capabilities. There has been a strong tendency in the United States to dismiss that effort because in the short term it did not appear to be delivering any significant achievements. The Jan. 11 test, however, has shown that the Chinese tortoise may yet prove to be a significant challenger in these fields to the American hare.

The Chinese ballistic missile, civilian space and asymmetrical warfare ASAT programs have all been marked by relatively, slow development punctuated by dramatic breakthroughs in capability after extensive preparations. This week`s successful ASAT test fits that well-established pattern.

The test shook American doves too. Their argument that the United States could prevent the militarization of space by refraining from deploying its own space assets rested in large part on the assumption that China favored the diplomatic route. But now, as analyst Victoria Samson of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank, noted in a CDI report this week, 'Due to the recent test, China now has lost much of its credibility in the international arena.'

The Chinese do not appear to mind. They are clearly following the old principle that it is better to be respected and even feared for displaying one`s strength, than liked but despised for acting idealistically and well-meaning in a condition of weakness. The Jan. 11 test was a display of strength and defiance towards Washington. It was also a warning that China intends to work hard to dramatically expand the ASAT capabilities it has already displayed.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/21/world/main2497840.shtml
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Rice Slams Russian General Over Warning
General Says Czech Republic And Poland Could Be Targeted If They Allow U.S. Missile Defenses
BERLIN, Feb. 21, 2007

(AP) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday called a Russian general's warning that Poland and the Czech Republic risk being targeted if they host U.S. missile defense bases "extremely unfortunate." Rice also repeated assurances the system does not threaten Russia.

Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, head of Russia's strategic missile forces, said Monday that Russia might train its missiles on the two countries if they accept a U.S. proposal to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic.

"I think that was an extremely unfortunate comment," Rice said at a news conference in Berlin, adding that the system did not threaten Moscow's forces "and we have had the opportunity to explain that to Russia."

She said the United States has made clear to Russia that the system would be to counter any missile threat from Iran. The system is too small to stop Russia's large nuclear arsenal, she said.

"Anyone who knows anything about this knows that there is no way that 10 interceptors ... are a threat to Russia or that they are somehow going to diminish Russia's deterrent of thousands of warheads," Rice said.

"I think everyone understands that with a growing Iranian missile threat, which is quite pronounced, that there need to be ways to deal with that problem," she added.

The missile dispute is chilling relations between Moscow and Washington, which have already been damaged by differences over NATO's eastward expansion and U.S. concerns over human rights in Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow sees the establishment of the missile defense sites as a signal that the United States wants to gain nuclear superiority over Russia. He dismissed U.S. claims that it was to counter Iranian threats.

"If they talk about potential threats coming from Iran or North Korea, missile defense elements should be located in a different place," Lavrov said in an interview published Wednesday in the daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta. "We can't help noting that these facilities would be capable of intercepting missiles launched from Russia."

Lavrov said that having the ability to shoot down Russian missiles could allow the United States to consider the possibility of a nuclear strike on Russia without fear of retaliation.

He referred to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that Washington quit in order to develop missile defenses, saying that it banned missile defense systems on the assumption that the fear of retaliation would prevent each nation from launching a first strike.

"Since protection from the first strike would be guaranteed, as American strategists apparently expect, another temptation arises — to be the first to launch a strike, aware that a chance has emerged to go unpunished," Lavrov said.

The system consists of interceptor rockets that release a small kill vehicle which maneuvers into the path of oncoming warheads and destroys them in a high-speed collision. Critics say the system has not been convincingly shown to work.

The defensive shield would protect Europe and the eastern United States, complementing bases at Fort Greely, Alaska, and at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which are positioned to guard from any North Korean missile launch.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned earlier this month that the U.S. plan risks provoking a new arms race.

Lavrov followed up on Putin's warning that Russia would take countermeasures in response to the U.S. missile sites deployment in Europe.

"We will respond, of course, but without any hysteria. We can't afford being entangled in an arms race once again," he said.

He said that Russia and the United States must negotiate new arms control agreements to improve mutual trust, particularly as a landmark Soviet-era nuclear arms reduction treaty expires in 2009.

Russian officials have called for negotiations on a replacement for START I, signed in 1991 by the United States and the Soviet Union, which limits the number of various types of vehicles and warheads that can be deployed by either side.


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http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070221/61071060.html


Opinion & analysis
A bad treaty is better than a good missile
16:38 | 21/ 02/ 2007

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov) - In December of this year, the Russian-American treaty on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles (INF Treaty) may celebrate its 20th anniversary.

Or it may not. Considering the position of Poland and the Czech Republic, which are about to allow the Americans to install elements of an anti-missile defense system on their soil, the Russian leadership may well act on its recent threat to withdraw from that treaty. Such a step will certainly have many repercussions.

In mid-February, Yury Baluyevsky, chief of Russia's General Staff, said that Russia might unilaterally pull out of the 1987 treaty. He directly linked the possibility of that step with plans for the implementation of an American anti-missile defense program for European countries.

For several years now the Russian military and political leadership has been saying that it will give an asymmetrical, less expensive but very effective answer to Washington's anti-missile defense plans. It is no secret that the reference is to systems, both existing and under development, for penetrating anti-missile defenses with Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In principle there is nothing radical about this, despite the fact it pits strategic offensive weapons against purely defensive armaments. Modernizing the existing nuclear missile arsenal is indeed quite an understandable asymmetrical answer to the appearance of global anti-missile systems. But adding intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles to such an answer in the future is not a very happy choice.

By the mid-1980s, efforts by the U.S.S.R. and the United States to deploy intermediate- and shorter-range missiles had reached their peak and posed a real threat to global security. In the middle of December 1985, the Americans completed the deployment in Germany of all 108 planned Pershing-2 ballistic missiles, with a range of 1,800 kilometers. With an impressive circular error probable of 20-40 meters, the missile could carry a nuclear warhead with a regulated TNT equivalent of 50-100 kilograms. The target approach time was about 14 minutes.

In addition, Britain (on two bases), Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and West Germany deployed a total of about 500 GLCM/109G missiles with nuclear warheads. The range of these missiles was 2,500 kilometers.

The U.S.S.R. could engage the probable enemy from several positioning areas on its territory by deploying its famous Pioneer mobile ground-based missile system, carrying an RSD-10 (SS-20) missile with a range of around 5,200 kilometers, i.e. the whole of Europe lay within its reach. There were also plans to deploy this system in the country's Far Eastern near-polar region. In that case, most of the U.S. western seaboard would have been vulnerable. And even that was not the whole story. In November 1983, a decision was made to develop a new advanced Skorost mobile missile system, which would be deployed in Czechoslovakia and East Germany.

But even under these circumstances, the U.S.'s tightening nuclear missile noose compelled the U.S.S.R.'s leadership to hold negotiations on the limitation of intermediate-range missiles.

In such a case it is hard to refrain from asking: why is the present situation any different than the past? It is not, to put it mildly. Should the Americans want to drop their rhetoric about the future of the INF Treaty in favor of practice, they will have all of Western Europe at their disposal. Speaking technically, an initial arrangement could be to replace destroyed ground-launched cruise missiles with similar, but not banned, ground-based SLCM/BGM-109A Tomahawk missiles (only mothballed in 1991) equipped with nuclear warheads.

For Russia, however, the second episode in the saga of intermediate-range missile deployment is one big question mark. Which plant will manufacture the required number of missiles? The existing facility east of the Urals chronically fails to cope even with the production of ICBMs ordered by the state. What must be the procedure for condemning land for positioning areas and where should they be located? How to provide the proper infrastructure and bring units up to the necessary strength? How to ensure uninterrupted command and control, including launching new communications and reconnaissance satellites into orbit?

And last but not least: where is the war chest to help pay for all these things? If we recognize that no magic wand has been found yet, then we'll have to cut back on existing national projects, and no one will be able to choose which ones to axe.

Sergei Ivanov, Russia's former defense minister, may have been right to describe the INF Treaty as a relic. But all things old are not always worse than what's new.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ccde2cee-c14f-11db...0b5df10621.html

Russia pushes Poles, Czechs closer to US
By Jan Cienski in Warsaw and Robert Anderson in Prague

Published: February 21 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 21 2007 02:00

The missile defence system is designed to protect the eastern US seaboard against a nuclear attack from the Middle East. Poland and the Czech Republic stand to gain little direct security from the shield bases on their territory but they see the US presence as a bulwark against Russian influence and repayment for the US's role in defeating the Soviet Union.

"Considering the relative weakness of the EU's common foreign and defence policies, it comes down to a single question, 'Do we want the Americans in or do we want the Americans out?'" said Eugeniusz Smolar, president of the Centre for International Studies, a Polish foreign policy think-tank.

The 10 missile silos to be located in Poland, and the radar tracking system to be built in the Czech Republic will commit the US to an area where no US bases were located following Poland and the Czech Republic's 1999 Nato accession.

"These installations in no way endanger Russia," said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Polish prime minister, in a radio interview yesterday. "It's simply about Poland's status and about Russia's hopes that Poland will again in one way or another . . . find itself in the sphere of Russian influence."

Although no one foresees Russian tanks clanking westwards any time soon, Warsaw is apprehensive about overdependence on Russian energy.

For years warnings about Russian intentions were treated as Polish paranoia by west Europeans, who had no experience of Soviet occupation. But the recent murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy, and cuts in oil and gas supplies have tarnished Moscow's image in the west.

Russian warnings that it may pull out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and this week's threat to point its weapons at the US anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic are adding to fears about Russia.

Like Poland, the Czech Republic has been a firm ally of the US since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The foreign policy establishment regards the bases as a way of cementing trans-atlantic links and repaying the US for its role in ending Soviet domination.

Tomas Pojar, the deputy Czech foreign minister told the Financial Times that the bases would strengthen co-operation within Nato and erase the rift between the US and Europe. "Any [future] Nato missile defence will have to be integrated with this system. This should be the the beginning of the building of real protection for the European continent."

Alexandr Vondra, the Czech vice-premier for Europe, said in an interview with Hospodarske Noviny, the business daily, this week: "Being in alliances also means that we do not only take - we also have to offer to give back. Should we turn our back on this request, there is a threat that the USA will back off from Europe. Should the Poles and the Czechs reject this base, the Americans will act accordingly."

While the right-of centre governments in Warsaw and Prague are keen to begin negotiations with Washington, opinion polls show opponents of the the US bases significantly outnumber supporters.

Sweeteners could come in the form of a US decision to waive visas for Poles and Czechs, as well as money to modernise the countries armed forces.

"The system itself doesn't actually help Poland's security. In fact it creates additional problems by angering the Russians," says Dariusz Rosati, a former Polish foreign minister. "But it's always good to protect an ally and the US wants this."

Missile sites chosen for geography

The reason for the proposed siting of facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic is simple: geography, writes Stephen Fidler in London.

The proposed interceptor sites in Poland, near the Baltic Sea, are on a direct line drawn between northern Iran and New York or Washington.

The proposed siting near Jince in the Czech Republic of the powerful X-Band radar that would home the interceptors on to the US-bound missiles is, according to some scientists, to the west of its ideal location. Other suitable radar locations, from a geographical standpoint, would include Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Georgia.

Philip Coyle, a missile defence expert with the Center for Defense Information in the US, says in practical terms the system poses no threat to Russia since it could not cope with either the number of Russian missiles or their sophisticated decoys and countermeasures. he said the system "has not demonstrated the capability to defend the United States under likely battlefield conditions".

One question is whether the countries concerned have increased risks to themselves by agreeing to site these missiles there. Theodore Postol, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has argued that the curvature of the earth would prevent the US early warning radar at Fylingdales in the UK from seeing missiles from Iran aimed at the Czech or Polish sites. Mr Coyle says that, for this reason, US statements that the system would protect people in the Czech Republic and Poland from Iranian missiles are "misleading".

There is too much surrounding movement here for me to continue to believe that Iran is the principal target ....In fact Iran is looking more like "Cuba" every day.....(the bone of contention between old cold war foes). As I mentioned to you last night Mag, I find it highly plausible that we are indirectly trained on Russia, and the resource wealth of the Caspian et al...Nato expansionism is painting Putin into a corner in which he may not be willing to remain.

All that firepower sitting in the Mideast isn't needed to take out a few Iranian underground sites; one of our missile subs could make most of Iran disintegrate faster than you can log on to CGCS some nights... Stealth F-117's in the Far East.... Stealth B-2's flying out of Romanian and Bulgarian fields on the Black Sea (go look at a map)... Russia weak but re-building, China weaker but providing startling proof of new technological success, high-level diplomatic and military exchanges in the last little while between Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan and Iran... Russia seemingly backed into a corner... Bush/Cheney seemingly backed into a corner...

I refer the reader again to the simulations and games noted above.

I refer the reader again to the groupings of 12 questions in the first post.

Are we indeed planning a first strike?

Does Russia feel it may have no choice but to initiate a first strike?

Is there a new alliance built around the Iran question?

Is there a meeting of key Congressional leaders underway to examine these issues?

Is this what the American people want?

Is there, as has been postulated by many, an incident about to happen?

Do we have sane and sound thinkers in place at this moment?

Can we trust Bush, Cheney et al to weave us through this confrontation?

What was the final conclusive statement of the computer in the movie War Games?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/o...-oped-headlines

Baltimore Sun (Op-Ed)
January 16, 2007

Halt The Pentagon’s Intelligence Takeover
By Melvin A. Goodman

The expected confirmation of retired Navy Adm. Mike McConnell as director of national intelligence will complete the Pentagon’s takeover of the intelligence community and end any pretense of civilian influence, let alone control, of that community. Flag officers are in control of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center as well as the key position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence. The militarization of intelligence is a reversal of the kind of community that President Harry Truman began to create 60 years ago and will complicate efforts to rebuild the nation’s strategic intelligence capabilities.

Over the past 10 years, the Department of Defense has gradually become the chief operating officer of the $45 billion intelligence industry. The Pentagon controls more than 80 percent of the intelligence budget as well as more than 85 percent of all intelligence personnel. Most collection requirements flow from the Pentagon, and the deference within the policy community and the congressional intelligence communities for the “warfighter” has meant that tactical military considerations have overwhelmed collection for strategic geopolitical considerations.

There are major risks in the military domination of the important field of satellite imagery, which is used to justify the defense budget, to gauge the likelihood of military conflict, and to verify and monitor arms control agreements. Gen. Colin L. Powell’s memoir, An American Journey, details the military’s willingness to suppress sensitive imagery intelligence. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf said that a smart bomb had destroyed four Iraqi Scud missile launchers. Intelligence imagery demonstrated that it had actually destroyed four Jordanian fuel tanks. General Schwarzkopf’s intelligence officers would not tell him he was wrong, nor would General Powell, who concluded that preserving General Schwarzkopf’s “equanimity” was more important than the truth.

An excellent example of the Pentagon’s lack of interest in strategic intelligence, particularly dealing with arms control and disarmament, took place in 1998, when the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency failed to monitor five Indian nuclear tests. This intelligence failure led CIA Director George J. Tenet to tell Congress that the CIA could not monitor the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; as a result, the Senate failed to ratify the treaty. In piecing together the reasons for the intelligence failure, it was obvious that the Pentagon had placed a low priority on satellite collection against India because the military was insufficiently concerned with threats from South Asia and was certainly not interested in arms control issues.

It is essential that the major technical collection agencies, the National Security Agency (which intercepts signals and communications and is critical to strategic warning), the National Reconnaissance Office (which designs and launches spy satellites) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (which interprets satellite imagery) be taken from the Pentagon’s control and transferred to an office dominated by civilian leadership. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Armed Services Committee must agree to abolish or at least weaken the position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence, which was created by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to solidify the Pentagon’s control over the intelligence community. The Pentagon played a major role in the politicization of intelligence that was used to justify the war against Iraq.

Over the past 10 years, the intelligence community has gotten away from strategic and long-term intelligence and placed too much emphasis and resources on short-term, tactical intelligence and “operational intelligence.” The CIA dropped its historical staff and its estimates staff, which did long-term analysis on strategic issues central to American national security. As the first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte made no attempt to create a corporate analytical community and to foster an elite analytical cadre. The intelligence community also must be opened up to the larger academic and think-tank community outside the intelligence arena. It is unlikely that the general officers who run the key institutions of the intelligence community will do any of these things.

The absence of an independent civilian counter to the power of military intelligence threatens civilian control of the decision to use military power and makes it more likely that intelligence will be tailored to suit the purposes of the Pentagon. The confirmation process for Mr. McConnell as director of national intelligence will be an important opportunity to debate these key issues.

Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, was an analyst at the CIA from 1966 to 1990.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/20/news/shield.php
-- -- -- --

A top aide to Bush heads to Moscow after Putin criticism
By Brian Knowlton

Published: February 20, 2007

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush's national security adviser left Tuesday for talks in Moscow amid a sharpening of Russian rhetoric against the United States, underscored by a Russian general's threat to aim missiles at the Czech Republic and Poland if they accept U.S. antimissile bases.

The trip by the adviser, Stephen Hadley, was planned weeks ago. But it now comes in the context of the harsh Russian words about the antimissile plan, the earlier stinging denunciation of U.S. policy by President Vladimir Putin, and the underlying Russian suggestion that a hidden American agenda is designed to expand its influence in Eastern Europe.

The warning Monday by General Nikolai Solovtsov, who heads Russian strategic missile forces, that U.S. antimissile facilities in Eastern Europe would upset regional stability — and would themselves be within reach of Russian missiles — drew quick responses Tuesday.

Warsaw sought to reassure Moscow that the U.S. facilities would pose no threat to Russian territory, while cautioning the Kremlin against attempts at intimidation.

"These installations do not in any way threaten Russia," Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on state radio, The Associated Press reported from Warsaw. He said the Russian comments seemed aimed at trying to keep Poland "in the Russian sphere of influence."

In Prague, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg suggested the Russian warnings amounted to blackmail.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that Hadley would discuss a range of issues in Moscow — which he will visit after stops at NATO headquarters in Brussels and in Berlin — including counterrorism and weapons proliferation.

"If the issue comes up of missile defense," Johndroe said, "our position is clear, and that's that the Russians should have no concerns, and that this is designed to protect from threats emanating from outside the region."

American officials have said the new facilities, involving 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and radar facilities on Czech territory, would aim to block any eventual Iranian missile threat — while remaining grossly inadequate to defend against any attack by Russia's sizable arsenal.

The United States has already installed 11 interceptors in Alaska and California, presumably to stop any North Korean attack. Iran is thought to be years from posing a missile threat to the United States. North Korea's long- range Taepodong-2 may be able to reach the continental United States.

Kaczynski and Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic indicated Monday that they were prepared to negotiate the conditions of the U.S. presence, a project tentatively set for completion in 2011.

Solovtsov's warning followed a blast of anti-American criticism from President Vladimir Putin.

In a Feb. 10 conference in Munich, Putin said that the United States risked provoking a new nuclear arms race by developing ballistic missile defenses, that it was undermining international institutions and that it had "overstepped its national boundaries in every way."

Julianne Smith, head of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, was at the Munich conference.

She said American and most European participants were equally taken aback by Putin's confrontational new tone, a tone employed by several other Russian officials there.

"Even the Europeans in the room were shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes, as if to say, Can this be for real? Does he legitimately believe the missile defense is aimed at him, and at Russia? I couldn't find anyone in room who thought that was the case."

She said she believed the Russian denunciations of the U.S. antimissile system — including a threat last week that Moscow might withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement — were largely symbolic.

She said the new tone appeared to reflect Russian concerns both about NATO enlargement, and U.S. support for democratization that Russia sometimes views as a cover for displacing Moscow-friendly regimes. Putin also seems to sense that the tough approach plays well domestically, Smith said.

Anatoly Safonov, Putin's special envoy on counterterrorism, said Tuesday that the Russian president did not aim to begin a tense new era of U.S.-Russian relations, but rather to help resolve "awkward questions" between the sides.

Among those, he told a Reuters interviewer in Brussels, was why the United States planned the deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic after NATO had pledged in the early 1990s not to build military bases on former Warsaw Pact territory.

"They told us, 'We won't do that,' and now they're doing it," Safonov said.

But Safonov said that strong binds between the countries, including on intelligence-sharing, would not be damaged.

The symbolism of the installation would be unmistakable. Poland and Czechoslovakia spent decades in the Warsaw Pact. The deployment of interceptors in Poland would create the first permanent U.S. military presence in that country. The United States has already fashioned close ties to both nations. Poland sent troops to Iraq, and both Poland and the Czech Republic are now NATO members.

Smith said that Hadley would have to strike a careful balance in Moscow.

"You have to chip away at some of the conspiracy theories, that in fact Europe and the United States are not trying to encircle Russia and weaken Russia," she said. "But it's a delicate line because you want to have a firm hand to criticize them" on many other issues, from energy policy to Iran to the treatment of journalists and nongovernmental organizations.

Updated:2007-02-23 09:38:52
Cheney Criticizes China's Military Buildup
Protesters Greet Vice President on Australian Visit
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
AP
SYDNEY, Australia (Feb. 23) - China's recent anti-satellite weapons test and its continued military buildup are "not consistent" with its stated aim of a peaceful rise as a global power, Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday.

In a speech in Sydney, Cheney also expressed wariness about North Korea 's commitment to a landmark deal on ending its nuclear programs.

As anti-war demonstrators clashed with police outside the hotel where Cheney was speaking, the vice president also expressed gratitude to Australia for sending troops to the Iraq war, which he said must be won or terrorists would be emboldened worldwide.

Cheney praised China for playing an "especially important" role in the negotiations that resulted in the North Korea deal, under which the North is to seal its main nuclear reactor and allow international inspections in exchange for fuel oil.

"Other actions by the Chinese government send a different message," Cheney told the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, a private organization that promotes ties between the two countries.

"Last month's anti-satellite test, China's continued fast-paced military buildup are less constructive and are not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise," he said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Cheney's remarks. Many government offices were closed Friday for the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday.

Beijing previously said its Jan. 11 firing of a missile into a defunct weather satellite was for scientific purposes, but the test was widely criticized as a provocative demonstration of China's growing military clout.

Washington said the test, which made China only the third nation after the United States and Russia to use weapons beyond the atmosphere, undermined efforts to keep weapons out of space. Beijing countered by saying the United States is blocking a possible global treaty that would ban weapons in space.

China's military has grown rapidly along with its economy in recent years, prompting concern that the balance of military power in the Pacific could start to shift away from the United States.

China said in late December it was strengthening its military to thwart any attempt by Taiwan to push for independence, but vowed it was committed to the peaceful development of its 2.3 million-strong military, the world's largest.

Regarding the North Korea deal, Cheney said it represented "a first hopeful step" that would "bring us closer" to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, but he also sounded a note of caution.

"We go into this deal with our eyes open," he said. "In light of North Korea's missile test last July, its nuclear test in October and its record of proliferation and human rights abuses, the regime in Pyongyang has much to prove."

Cheney, a key backer of the Iraq war, praised Prime Minister John Howard for sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan , saying Australians had won the respect of the world through their support of the fight against terror.

"The notion that free countries can turn our backs on what happens in places like Afghanistan or Iraq or any other possible safe haven for terrorists is an option that we simply cannot indulge," he said.

He said that if the U.S.-led coalition leaves Iraq before domestic forces can handle security, violence among rival factions would spread throughout the country and beyond.

"Having tasted victory in Iraq, jihadists would look for new missions," joining the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan and spreading "sorrow and discord" across the Middle East and further afield, he said.

"Such chaos and mounting danger does not have to occur. It is, however, the enemy's objective," Cheney said. "For the sake of our own long-term security, we have a duty to stand in their way."

Outside, about 100 protesters waved placards saying "Go home Cheney" and "Bring the troops home." Three people were arrested after scuffles broke out and officers on horseback moved in to disperse the crowd.

Cheney later visited a military barracks in Sydney and held talks with a group of Australian troops who had served overseas. He also met with opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who wants a timetable set for withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq and faster action to deal David Hicks, an Australian who has been jailed without trial at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than five years.

http://www.spacewar.com/2006/070223065019.7ng8hlzu.html
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Pakistan successfully tests nuclear-capable missile

ISLAMABAD, Feb 23 (AFP) Feb 23, 2007

Pakistan Friday test-fired its longest range nuclear-capable ballistic missile, two days after signing a deal with rival India to cut the risk of atomic weapons accidents, the military said.

The Shaheen II, or Hatf VI, missile with a range of 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) was launched from an undisclosed location, military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP.

"The test was very successful. It was carried out to validate technical parameters and it hit the target with 100 percent accuracy," Sultan said.

"It is a two-stage solid-fuel-based missile capable of carrying all types of warhead including nuclear."

Pakistan had informed "neighbouring countries" in advance about the missile test, foreign office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said. Pakistan is bordered by India, Afghanistan, China and Iran.

"We conduct these tests from time to time according to our requirement and defence needs. It was not meant to convey any message to anyone. It was not any country-specific," she said.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz congratulated the missile's technical team "on its outstanding success," a military statement said.

"The missile test was part of (a) continuous process of validation and technical improvement, which Pakistan follows to consolidate and verify its various land-based strategic missile systems," the statement said.

The test comes at a key time in relations between New Delhi and Islamabad following the firebombing of a cross-border train at midnight Sunday, which killed 68 Pakistanis and Indians.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri went ahead with a visit to India starting on Tuesday, during which the two countries signed the nuclear weapon safeguard agreement.

Friday's missile launch was watched by Pakistan's Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Ehsan Ul Haq, who said the test was "an important milestone in Pakistan's quest for sustaining strategic balance in South Asia."

India and Pakistan carried out tit-for-tat nuclear detonations in May 1998 and have routinely conducted missile tests since, even after the start of a slow-moving peace process in January 2004.

The neighbours have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, which is divided between the two and claimed by both in its entirety.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...;articleId=4888

"Theater Iran Near Term" (TIRANNT)
by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, February 21, 2007

DUBAI, UAE, 21 February 2007. (revised 23 Feb 2007). Code named by US military planners as TIRANNT, "Theater Iran Near Term" has identified several thousand targets inside Iran as part of a "Shock and Awe" Blitzkrieg, which is now in its final planning stages.

According to the Kuwait-based Arab Times, an attack on Iran under TIRANNT could occur any time between late February and the end of April. This assessment, however, does not take into account the disarray of US ground forces in Iraq as well as the untimely withdrawal of several thousand British troops from the Iraq war theater, many of whom were stationed in Southern Iraq on the immediate border with Iran.

Revealed last April by William Arkin, a former US intelligence analyst, writing in the Washington Post, TIRANNT was first established in May 2003, following the invasion of Iraq.

"In early 2003, even as U.S. forces were on the brink of war with Iraq, the Army had already begun conducting an analysis for a full-scale war with Iran. The analysis, called TIRANNT, for "theater Iran near term," was coupled with a mock scenario for a Marine Corps invasion and a simulation of the Iranian missile force. U.S. and British planners conducted a Caspian Sea war game around the same time. And Bush directed the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a global strike war plan for an attack against Iranian weapons of mass destruction. All of this will ultimately feed into a new war plan for "major combat operations" against Iran that military sources confirm now exists in draft form. [This contingency plan entitled CONPLAN 8022 would be activated in the eventuality of a Second 9/11, on the presumption that Iran would be behind it]

... Under TIRANNT, Army and U.S. Central Command planners have been examining both near-term and out-year scenarios for war with Iran, including all aspects of a major combat operation, from mobilization and deployment of forces through postwar stability operations after regime change." (William Arkin, Washington Post, 16 April 2006)

The 2003 decision to target Iran under TIRANNT should come as no surprise. It is part of the broader military roadmap. Already during the Clinton administration, US Central Command (USCENTCOM) had formulated in 1995 "in war theater plans" to invade first Iraq and then Iran.

"The broad national security interests and objectives expressed in the President's National Security Strategy (NSS) and the Chairman's National Military Strategy (NMS) form the foundation of the United States Central Command's theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the region, and to their own citizens. Dual containment is designed to maintain the balance of power in the region without depending on either Iraq or Iran. USCENTCOM's theater strategy is interest-based and threat-focused. The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in the NSS, is to protect the United States' vital interest in the region - uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil."

(USCENTCOM, http://www.milnet.com/milnet/pentagon/cent...ic.htm#USPolicy , emphasis added)

First Iraq, then Iran

Consistent with CENTCOM's 1995 "sequencing" of theater operations, the plans to target Iran were activated under TIRANNT in the immediate wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Confirmed by Arkin, the active component of the Iran military agenda was launched in May 2003 "when modelers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data needed for theater-level (meaning large-scale) scenario analysis for Iran." (Arkin, op cit). In October 2003, different theater scenarios for an Iran war were contemplated:

"The US army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Admiral Fallon, the new head of US Central Command, has inherited computerized plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term)." (New Statesman, 19 Feb 2007)

Concurrently, the various parallel components of TIRANNT were put in place including the Marines "Concept of Operations":

"The Marines, meanwhile, have not only been involved in CENTCOM's war planning, but have been focused on their own specialty, "forcible entry." In April 2003, the Corps published its "Concept of Operations" for a maneuver against a mock country that explores the possibility of moving forces from ship to shore against a determined enemy without establishing a beachhead first. Though the Marine Corps enemy is described only as a deeply religious revolutionary country named Karona, it is -- with its Revolutionary Guards, WMD and oil wealth -- unmistakably meant to be Iran.

Various scenarios involving Iran's missile force have also been examined in another study, initiated in 2004 and known as BMD-I (ballistic missile defense -- Iran). In this study, the Center for Army Analysis modeled the performance of U.S. and Iranian weapons systems to determine the number of Iranian missiles expected to leak through a coalition defense.

The day-to-day planning for dealing with Iran's missile force falls to the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha. In June 2004, Rumsfeld alerted the command to be prepared to implement CONPLAN 8022, a global strike plan that includes Iran. CONPLAN 8022 calls for bombers and missiles to be able to act within 12 hours of a presidential order. The new task force, sources have told me, mostly worries that if it were called upon to deliver "prompt" global strikes against certain targets in Iran under some emergency circumstances, the president might have to be told that the only option is a nuclear one. William Arkin, Washington Post, 16 April 2006)

"Shock and Awe"

US military planning includes specific roles to be performed by NATO and Israel in the event of an attack on Iran. The German navy is deployed formally under a UN mandate in the Eastern Mediterranean. NATO bases in Europe would also be involved.

Documented by Global Research, extensive war games were conducted since last Summer by Iran and its allies of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, including Russia and China. In turn, the US has conducted war games off the Iranian coastline.

The Pentagon's Second 9/11

What is now being contemplated by Washington is an overwhelming use of military force in retaliation to Iran's alleged non-compliance. This of course is the pretext, the justification for waging war. The Pentagon has also contemplated retaliating against Iran in the case of a second 9/11 attack:

"A third plan sets out how the military can both disrupt and respond to another major terrorist strike on the United States. It includes lengthy annexes that offer a menu of options for the military to retaliate quickly against specific terrorist groups, individuals or state sponsors depending on who is believed to be behind an attack. Another attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets, according to current and former defense officials familiar with the plan.

This plan details "what terrorists or bad guys we would hit if the gloves came off. The gloves are not off," said one official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. (emphasis added, WP 23 April 2006)

The presumption of this military document, is that a Second 911 attack "which is lacking today" would usefully create both a "justification and an opportunity" to wage war on "some known targets [Iran and Syria]".

Civilian Targets

Press reports in the Middle East confirm that the planned air strikes are by no means limited to Iran's nuclear facilities. Central Command Headquarters in Florida (CENTCOM) has already selected a comprehensive list of military and civilian targets. Industrial sites, civilian infrastructure including roads, water systems, bridges, electric power plants telecommunications towers, government buildings are part of the assumptions underlying the Blitzkrieg. "A single raid could result in 10,000 targets being hit with warplanes flying from the US and Diego Garcia" (Gulf News, 21 Feb 2007, emphasis added)

Meanwhile, the US has been mustering support for its agenda following the holding of a regional Security Conference in the UAE.

Nuclear War

Military planners are said to favor the use of conventional weapons. The use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are now part of the Middle East war theater arsenal, are not explicitly contemplated, at least in the first round of the US sponsored Blitzkrieg. However, the fact that nuclear weapons are acknowledged as a possible choice in the conventional war theater is indicative that their use is an integral part of military planning.

In November 2004, US Strategic Command conducted a major exercise of a "global strike plan" entitled "Global Lightening". The latter involved a simulated attack using both conventional and nuclear weapons against a "fictitious enemy" [Iran]. Following the "Global Lightening" exercise, US Strategic Command declared an advanced state of readiness.

In this context, CONPLAN is the operational plan pursuant to the Global Strike Plan. It is described as "an actual plan that the Navy and the Air Force translate into strike package for their submarines and bombers,'

CONPLAN 8022 is 'the overall umbrella plan for sort of the pre-planned strategic scenarios involving nuclear weapons.'

'It's specifically focused on these new types of threats -- Iran, North Korea -- proliferators and potentially terrorists too,' he said. 'There's nothing that says that they can't use CONPLAN 8022 in limited scenarios against Russian and Chinese targets.' (According to Hans Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, quoted in Japanese economic News Wire, op cit)

The use of tactical nuclear weapons is contemplated under CONPLAN 8022 alongside conventional weapons, as part of the Bush administration's preemptive war doctrine. In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization was issued. While its contents remains classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with CONPLAN 8022.

(For further details on the US nuclear option, see Michel Chossudovsky, Nuclear War against Iran, January 2006, The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War, February 2006, Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust , February 2006)

Israel in a State of Readiness

War preparations in Israel have been ongoing since late 2004. The Israeli Air Force would attack Iran's nuclear facility at Bushehr using US as well Israeli produced bunker buster bombs. The attacks are slated to be carried out in three separate waves "with the radar and communications jamming protection being provided by U.S. Air Force AWACS and other U.S. aircraft in the area". (See W Madsen, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD410A.html

The bunker buster bombs can also be used to deliver tactical nuclear bombs. The B61-11 is the "nuclear version" of the "conventional" BLU 113. It can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb. (See Michel Chossudovsky, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO112C.html , see also http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf03norris ) .

According to a recent report in the London's Sunday Times (7 January 2007): "Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources."

If Iran were to respond to US-Israeli attacks in the form of targeted strikes on US military facilities in the Iraq and the Gulf States, the war would escalate to the entire region, in which case the US could retaliate in the form of "pre-emptive" nuclear attacks on Iran using bunker buster tactical nuclear war heads.

The most likely scenario is that Iran, in the logic of its own military planning, would indeed respond to the US sponsored attacks as well as deploy ground forces inside occupied Iraq.

Naval Deployment

Three strike groups including the Stennis, the Eisenhower and the Nimitz are being deployed in the Persian Gulf. According to Gulf News, "The Stennis strike group... is now strengthening a high level of US Navy presence in the Gulf. The Stennis and the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, already in the region, will soon be joined by the carrier Nimitz. (Gulf News, 21 Feb 2007). According to British military sources, the US navy can put six carriers into battle at a month's notice.

Redeployment of US Troops

Confirmed by military sources, some 8500 of US troops are being redeployed from US military facilities in Germany and Italy to Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border on Iran. One assumes that they are being dispatched to the Middle East war theater in the eventuality that the air strikes will lead into a ground war with Iran.

The Pentagon, contradicting its own statements, has dismissed as "ludicrous" the press reports that the US is planning an all out attack on Iran in the "near term".

Meanwhile, Iran has launched a three days war games entitled Eghtedar or Grandeur. These exercises which involve naval, air and ground forces are larger than those conducted last Summer. They are slated to take place in 16 out of Iran's 30 provinces. The stated objective is to establish a state of readiness to defend Iran in the eventuality of a US attack.

Vigilant Shield 07 War Games

From September through December 2006, the US conducted a New Cold War scenario of all out war directed against Iran and its Cold war era enemies: Entitled Vigilant Shield 07, the war games are not limited to a single Middle East war theater (e.g. Iran), they also include Russia, China and North Korea.

-- snip -- [Detail noted above in this thread]

Complacency of Western Public Opinion

The complacency of Western public opinion (including the US anti-war movement) is disturbing. No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of these attacks, which could evolve towards a World War III scenario, with Russia and China siding with Iran.

With the exception of the Middle East, the war on Iran and the dangers of escalation are not considered "front page news." All of which contributes to the real possibility that the war could be carried out, leading to the unthinkable: a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East. It should be noted that a nuclear nighmare would occur even if nuclear weapons are not used. The bombing of Iran's nuclear facitlities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing a Chernobyl type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout.

We're invading Iran again? I can understand assuming Dubya is lying again when he says he has no plans for using military force against Iran, but with SecDef, the military brass and the intelligence community all on record saying it would be an intolerably bad idea what makes you think they'd be going along without a whimper?

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/ar...41&rel_no=1
-- -- -- --

U.S. Missile Scheme Threatens Return of Cold War
[Analysis] Washington's plans are perceived as a threat in Moscow

Published 2007-02-23 16:41 (KST)

As the world inches ever closer towards another war in the Gulf region let's turn our focus to Europe, where the U.S. seeks to deploy an anti-missile shield armed with "interceptors." This has caused great consternation in Moscow. Washington seems befuddled by Russia's apparent "overreaction."

There is a certain sense of deja vu to all this. In the early 1980s when it was proposing the "star wars" space-based missile shield, the U.S. decided to deploy cruise missiles in Western Europe. This was seen as an attempt to offset the threat of the mobile SS-20 rockets on the Soviet side.

Washington at the time saw the SS-20 nuclear-tipped missiles, which were mobile and were stationed at the time in Poland and central Europe, as a direct threat.

Subsequently, at the behest of Washington, missile batteries were installed on West German territory despite popular unrest and opposition to the plan at the time. The move fueled a wave of anti-American sentiment throughout Europe which the Soviets capitalized on by sowing dissent among NATO allies.

A new cold war in the making?

Fast forward to today and it appears the U.S. wishes to extend it strategic-nuclear protective umbrella further east by stationing a radar and missile sites in former Warsaw pact states. Such silos and radar systems are to be installed in this historically tense "hot zone" between East and West.

One can't blame the majority of Czechs and the Poles for being reluctant about all this. They have seen all this before and are not to keen on returning to the old cold war days by playing the part of pawns in another nuclear chess match (1).

A minor diplomatic tiff or a possible prelude to a full blown nuclear standoff?

Western media reports describe Moscow's verbal response to the anti missiles scheme as "saber-rattling." But just taking a glance at the map demonstrates or highlights the nature of the perceived threat in Moscow.

Looking at it from Russia's angle the country is now practically surrounded as almost never before in its history. For centuries Russia has fallen pray to hostile invaders.

In modern times it was invaded during the Napoleonic wars and then during the immediate aftermath of the Russian revolution during the civil war an allied intervention sought to bolster the "white Russians" in their unsuccessful bid to overthrow the Bolsheviks who took power in Moscow (2).

Then there was the Wehrmacht's brutal assault and invasion of Soviet territory in 1941. In the past these incursions failed. However, we see once again a military alliance moving into former Soviet space now that NATO has expanded to the Baltic States. It is effectively camped on Russia's doorstep.

The U.S. counters any accusations of aggressive posturing against its superpower former rival by insisting that the weaponry to be stationed in Poland and the Czech Republic is not aimed at it but at "rogue states" such as Iran.

This appears to be sophistry or put more aptly simply misleading on Washington's part. Under President Bush the United States is conducting one of the most expansionist, militaristic and highly aggressive foreign policies in its history. No wonder then that Moscow is a tad miffed by the missile plan.

Russia for its part, has certainly not been a paragon of peace. It overran central Europe after the Second World War. But it did so while repelling a retreating aggressor-invader.

Furthermore, what was the Soviets' sphere of influence in eastern and central Europe comprising of Poland and the former Czechoslovakia is now firmly anchored within the West. Central Europe already enjoys NATO's article 5 protection from any attack and it needs no more security assurances. In addition territory which Russia considers "its own" such as the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- which were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1941 -- are also in NATO. Hence, the Western military alliance now borders Russia.

This is unprecedented in the alliance's history. During the cold war, the policy known as "containment" devised by the eminent Kremlinologist and American diplomat George Keenan -- who was opposed to NATO expansion in the 1990s -- was meant to confine Soviet expansionism and limit it reach. Today the West however apparently seeks to corner or worse corral Russian by expanding NATO into its former Soviet space, rolling back its former sphere of influence even further to the Russian border and perhaps even beyond.

But each time Moscow sees itself threatened by outside aggression, as in the case of the U.S. proposed missile shield, it has taken effective countermeasures to ensure its territorial integrity and security is maintained.

You can bet it will do so again.

In 2001 reports coming from an unnamed Pentagon sources (3) suggested that Russia was playing a "shell game" with tactical nuclear weapons in its territorial enclave by moving them in or out of Kaliningrad. The possibility of Russia retaliating for the installation of the so called "defense shield" by stationing nuclear weapons in its Kaliningrad Oblast or region cannot be excluded in the current volatile context.

This would effectively render Poland and by extension NATO vulnerable to a nuclear strike. Using more "soft power" tactics Moscow can of course shut off gas and oil supplies to its Western clients. It has done so in the past as we have seen recently.

Calling Moscow's bluff on the energy supply issue could leave many Eastern European states allied to the U.S. literally out in the cold.

Moscow might also be tempted to withdraw from the intermediate and short range nuclear forces treaty (INF) of 1987 (4).

Whatever the outcome of the stand off over the missile scheme, the Bush administration seems to be following in the steps of previous powers which have sought to "strangle" Russia either by means of invasion, incursion or in a less confrontational fashion through "containment." Each time this has destabilized the continent of Europe. The missile defense shield if deployed is bound to be a repeat of one of history's most bitter lessons.


Notes:
(1) "Czechs Must Learn to Love the Bomb Again" by Michael Werbowski
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Interv...ssian_Civil_War
(3) http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/...pons/index.html
(4) http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070221/61097198.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...24/wiran124.xml
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Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.

A senior Israeli defence official said negotiations were now underway between the two countries for the US-led coalition in Iraq to provide an "air corridor" in the event of the Israeli government deciding on unilateral military action to prevent Teheran developing nuclear weapons.

More at the link ...

US-Russia Tensions Rise Over Anti-Missile Bases


By Arthur Bright
The Christian Science Monitor

Wednesday 21 February 2007


Russia has threatened to withdraw from INF missile treaty, and target proposed US bases in Poland, Czech Republic.

A top advisor to President Bush left for Moscow Tuesday to deal with rising tensions between the US and Russia over American plans to build missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The International Herald Tribune reports that national security advisor Stephen Hadley set out for talks in Moscow just a day after a Russian general warned that Poland and the Czech Republic could become targets if they played host to US antimissile bases, meant to defend against Iranian ballistic missiles.

The trip by the adviser, Stephen Hadley, was planned weeks ago. But it now comes in the context of the harsh Russian words about the antimissile plan, the earlier stinging denunciation of U.S. policy by [Russian] President Vladimir Putin, and the underlying Russian suggestion that a hidden American agenda is designed to expand its influence in Eastern Europe.

Comments earlier this month by Mr. Putin were hostile to the US missile defense plan, saying that American plans to build such a shield had "overstepped its national boundaries in every way."

RIA Novosti reports that those American antimissle bases could prompt Russia to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that the US and USSR signed in 1987. Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, said Tuesday that "If a political decision is taken to quit the treaty, the Strategic Missile Forces are ready to carry out this task." RIA Novosti adds that Mr. Solovtsov's comments were not the first time that Russia has publicly mentioned leaving the treaty.

Army General Yury Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian General Staff, said last February 15 that Moscow might unilaterally abandon the treaty.

"It is possible for a party to abandon the treaty [unilaterally] if it provides convincing evidence that it is necessary to do so," said Baluyevsky. "We currently have such evidence."

The INF treaty eliminated nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,400 miles). By the treaty's deadline of June 1, 1991, a total of 2,692 such weapons had been destroyed, 846 by the U.S. and 1,846 by the Soviet Union.

The Associated Press reports that Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski dismissed the Russian threat as "an attempt to frighten" Poland, saying Russia's stance is not about security, but rather about influence.

"To make it clear - this is not about Russian security; these installations do not in any way threaten Russia," Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on state Radio 1. "It's about the status of Poland and Russian hopes that the zone, in other words Poland, will once again find itself ... in the Russian sphere of influence."

"From the moment the missile bases are installed here, the chances of that happening, for at least decades to come, very much declines," he said.

Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg similarly dismissed Russian comments, calling them "blackmail," reports Reuters.

"The Czechs will now think the shield is even more necessary," Schwarzenberg told Reuters on the sidelines of a business conference in Warsaw.

"We have quite an experience with Russians. You have to make clear to them you won't succumb to blackmail. Once you give in to blackmail, there's no going back. We have to be strong."

However, the Guardian reports that while the center-right, pro-American governments of Poland and the Czech Republic support the missile defense plan, "some opposition parties are against the plan and polls in recent weeks suggest that up to two-thirds of Poles and Czechs oppose their country taking part."

There is concern among some that greater ties with the US will increase the threat of domestic terrorism. A recent poll showed that 53% of Poles opposed hosting a base, while 34% were in favour.

The Guardian also writes that although Mr. Kaczynski and his Czech counterpart, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, both oppose referendums on the defense plan, they still have concerns about the presence of sovereign US bases on their soil and the efficacy of the Bush administration, given its troubles in Iraq.

Despite Polish and Czech claims that Russia's response is about influence, Russia says that it is a matter of national security, reports The Washington Post, as Iran, the shield's purported focus, is decades away from being a missile threat.

Russian officials have said that Iran has no missiles capable of reaching the United States or even Western Europe and that Iran is incapable of developing them any time soon. Sergei Ivanov, then defense minister, told the German newspaper Die Welt this month that it would take "at least 20 years" for Iran to develop missiles that could reach Central Europe.

"I think you can draw your own conclusions about which missiles this system actually targets," Solovtsov said. "This is why we are watching the situation with anxiety and concern."

But the Post adds that US officials admit that if they wanted, Russia could easily overwhelm the missile shield - which only includes 10 interceptors. Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency, said in January that the interceptors "are directed toward rogue nations' capabilities, not an obviously sophisticated ballistic missile fleet such as the Russians have."

Still, some experts understand Russia's concern. Otfried Nassauer, director of the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security, tells German news broadcaster Deutsche Welle that the presence of US bases in Poland and the Czech Republic would represent a renege of NATO promises to refrain from military expansion into new NATO member states near Russia.

As NATO planned its expansion to the East, the alliance had guaranteed Russia it would not station any important military capacities on the new members' territory for the long-term, Nassauer said.

"Now Moscow feels betrayed because the biggest NATO state doesn't feel bound (to that guarantee) and wants to station national rather than NATO capacities," he said.

Global intelligence provider Stratfor writes that while abandoning the INF treaty would not make Russia a direct threat to the US, it would effectively neutralize the threat to Russia of American missile interceptors, while also dramatically shifting Russian military influence in Europe.

Though a direct arms race with the United States remains out of the question, a lopsided race in which the Russians focus on IRBMs [intermediate-range ballistic missiles] could change the game entirely. A barrage of several dozen IRBMs easily could overwhelm a small squadron of BMD [ballistic missile defense] interceptors based in Europe - as well as any system that the United States conceivably might field in the next 20 years.

To be clear, this is not an option that would buy Russia parity with the United States. But it would be a stout reminder to Europe - and to the United States by extension - that even a weakened Moscow is not to be trifled with. Unable to reclaim the global power it wielded during the Soviet era, Russia nevertheless could use a new IRBM force to threaten Europe and, in so doing, resurrect a host of diplomatic options that served Kremlin interests very well in the past.

Such a step might not mark Russia as a resurgent world power, but it certainly would reforge perceptions of Russia as a power that is impossible to ignore.

Nonetheless, Russia says that the tensions over the US missile defense system will not lead to a new arms race, reports RIA Novosti. "The current developments in the world do not point at a new variant of the Cold War," Mr. Lavrov said.


http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022307A.shtml

http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFre...t?fuid=Mjk5MDA2
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February 21, 2007
Russia warns U.S. on Iran moves

Russia's foreign minister Wednesday warned the United States not to take military action against Iran.

"The Russian foreign minister said Wednesday U.S.-led multinational foreign forces in Iraq must not conduct military operations outside the country, including against Iran," the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

"The multinational force in Iraq should abide strictly by the UN Security Council's mandate, which does not provide for any operations outside the country," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Lebanese magazine Al-Watan Al-Arabi in an interview.

"The escalation of the conflict and its possible spread beyond the Iraqi borders will inevitably result in catastrophic consequences and not for the Middle East alone," Lavrov said according to the report. "I believe Washington understands this."

Lavrov told Al-Watan Al-Arabi that a timetable needed to be drawn up for the coordinated and gradual evacuation of all foreign military forces from Iraq. He said that was essential to bring stability to the troubled Middle eastern nation.

"But at the same time we believe that U.S. Army detachments and their coalition allies should not leave Iraq tomorrow," Lavrov said.

Lavrov also said that Iraq's own police, army and other security forces needed to be increased in size and strength to prepare for the pull out of U.S. and other forces.

"The long-standing confrontation between the U.S. and Iran deteriorated further Jan. 11 when American servicemen burst into Iran's mission in Erbil (Kurdistan) and detained five officials. American troops disarmed guards and confiscated computers and documents without providing any explanation," RIA Novosti noted.

The Russian news agency also noted that "earlier this month the United States accused Iran of backing the insurgency and unrest in Iraq, and suspects the Islamic Republic of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program."

http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2007/02...664389-sun.html
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Sun, February 25, 2007

Don't ignore Putin's warning
Russia will not let the U.S. attain unchallenged world nuclear, political, or energy domination
By ERIC MARGOLIS, TORONTO SUN

NEW YORK -- Vladimir Putin's harsh criticism of U.S. military and foreign policy on February 10 should have set off alarm bells in the West, but apparently did not.

In a startlingly blunt speech at a Munich security conference, Russia's president accused Washington of seeking world domination, undermining the UN and other international institutions, monopolizing world energy resources, destabilizing the Mideast by its bungled occupation of Iraq, and unleashing a new nuclear arms race by planning to deploy anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe.

Russia has long fumed over NATO's advance to its western borders, and Washington's attempts to replace Moscow's influence in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

This column has long maintained that while one sympathizes with the desire of Eastern European states to take shelter from old foe Russia by joining NATO, pushing the alliance to Russia's doorstep was dangerously provocative and militarily ill-advised.

"He who defends everything," said Frederick the Great, "defends nothing."

The Baltic states are indefensible; Bulgaria and Romania are military liabilities, as Germany found in World War II. Bulgaria and Romania were included into NATO because the U.S. wanted access to their Black Sea air bases as part of its air bridge to the Mideast and Central Asia.

The U.S. and its allies shrugged off Putin's warnings while the Western media blasted the Russian leader for daring to challenge the Pax Americana.

President Putin certainly merits strong criticism for his faked-up war against independent Chechnya and massive human rights violations there, and his increasingly authoritarian rule -- ironically, charges many also level at President George W. Bush.

But Putin is absolutely right when he warns that the Bush administration is igniting a strategic arms race by modernizing its nuclear arsenal and planning to deploy ballistic missile defence systems (BMD) in Poland and the Czech Republic.

This week, Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, warned U.S. BMD plans may compel Russia to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a cornerstone of U.S.-Russian detente, and deploy a new generation of intermediate-range missiles aimed at Europe. An over-reaction, but still ominous.

The Russians rightly scoff at U.S. claims the BMD systems in Poland and the Czech Republic are designed to stop missiles from Iran and other unspecified "rogue" states.

DESTABILIZING EFFORTS

These new strategic systems, says Moscow and some western defense analysts, are part of the Bush/Cheney administration's profoundly destabilizing efforts to erect anti-missile defenses in Alaska and Europe that may nullify the nuclear arsenals of Russia and China.

In short, the White House is heading away from the traditional balance of mutually assured destruction to absolute nuclear supremacy.

Given the faked war against Iraq, and Bush and Cheney's strident talk about "pre-emptive strikes against threatening nations," the Russians are understandably uneasy.

Putin's angry speech is a warning that Russia, which remains a great power with a large, capable missile force, will not let the U.S. attain unchallenged world nuclear, political, or energy domination. China echoes this warning.

Ironically, high world oil prices caused in good part by Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq boosted Russia's oil-based economy, allowing Moscow to modernize its run-down armed forces.

Putin's speech also suggested Russia will take a more active role in the Mideast. This could be a positive development given the striking inability of the Bush/Cheney Administration to separate itself from the interests of Israel's right wing parties and return to its traditional role of at least semi-honest broker.

GROWING IRRITATION

Some Europeans also quietly welcomed Putin's declamation.

There is growing irritation in the EU and NATO -- what former U.S. National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski cruelly terms "America's vassal states" -- at being brusquely ordered about by Washington and told to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many Western Europeans are starting to long for the Cold War days and old bi-polar world order.

No one loves Russia, but many Europeans say a strong Russia -- and China -- are necessary to restrain some of America's more overly assertive or unwise instincts.

Here are two interactive tools are made available by the Federation of American Scientists. (They require Java, which can be downloaded from within these links.):


Nuclear Weapons Effects Calculator

This interactive tool is intended to give an idea of the devastating blast effects of ground-level, shallow subsurface, and low-altitude nuclear weapon detonations. It is relevant to traditional nuclear weapons, potential terrorist attacks, and next generation nuclear weapons such as "Bunker Busters" or "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators" (RNEPs). (Despite the name, "Earth Penetrators" will not penetrate far into hard rock and can be considered "surface" bursts when using the bomb calculator.)

High definition aerial maps of selected U.S. cities have been provided. The size of the bomb can be chosen by selecting the weapon's yield, as measured in kilotons (KT) or megatons (MT) of TNT equivalent. There is also the option of having the bomb delivered using an automobile at ground level or using an aircraft flying at an altitude that produces the widest area of destruction.

Red Circle: Intense heat from the explosion will likely cause widespread fires within this region.

Blue Circle: Most homes are completely destroyed and stronger commercial buildings will be severely damaged due to the high pressure blast wave in this region.

Yellow Circle: Moderate damage to buildings causing some risk to people due to flying debris is caused by the blast wave in this region.

For those interested in the technical details, this tool is based upon data obtained from The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. The blue and yellow contours mark overpressures of 5 psi and 2 psi, respectively. The blast radius scales with the weapon's yield as a cube root law. Choosing to deliver the bomb by aircraft assumes it is flying at an altitude which maximizes the size of the 5 psi contour. The red contour marks the region in which the thermal flux is 15 cal/cm2 or higher. This is likely to cause many materials to begin combustion, which can then spread into much larger fires. This model, however, does not take into account obstructions that may block some of the heat radiating from the fireball.

For further information on modern nuclear weapons and nonproliferation with regards to present developments see "Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century". To send your opinion on nuclear weapons to your representatives in Congress, see the Friends Committee on National Legislation site.

References:
Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, eds., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1977).
United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War, May 1979.
H. L. Brode and R. D. Small, "A Review of the Physics of Large Urban Fires," in The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, eds. F. Solomon and R. Q. Marston, Institute of Medicine, National Academy Press, 1986.


Fallout Calculator

This java-based interactive calculator shows the distribution of fallout, by wind, from nuclear bomb blasts of various yields. The contours depict calculated radiation doses of 300, 25, and 1 REM at 96 hours after detonation.

In using the calculator, you may select from an assortment of virtual satellite maps of major world cities. You may select the magnitude (15, 30, or 45 miles per hour) and direction of the wind. You may choose from an assortment of yields ranging from 1 kiloton to 50 megatons. And, you may choose the location of the bomb blast on the map simply by clicking on the preferred location.

The following dosage information was taken from the Manual of Protective Action Guides and Protective Actions for Nuclear Incidents provided by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

The contour specifications are as follows:

Blue Ellipse: 300 REM. At this accumulated dosage, the risk of fatalities is approximately 50% and increases drastically closer to the blast site.

Green Ellipse: 25 REM. At this range, only emergency workers and parties fully aware of the associated risks will (on a voluntary basis) be allowed to enter this region for the purpose of saving lives.

Red Ellipse: 1 REM. At this accumulated dosage, evacuation and sheltering is recommended.

In this calculation, we assume a constant "unit-time dose rate" and constant windspeed. We also assume gamma rays to be the primary type of radiation involved, so 1 RAD = 1 REM. Our model is based on a simulation which takes into account the shape of the cloud, radioactive activity for various particle sizes in different regions of the cloud, centerline windspeed effects, a tri-layered atmospheric model, horizontal diffusion, and a detailed accumulated-dose calculation. The Radioactive Cloud Model writeup is available here and a sample Mathcad run of the calculation is available here . Commentary on the model is encouraged.

For more information on modern developments concerning nuclear weapons see "Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century" [see http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAc...amp;projectId=7 ].

To send your opinion on nuclear weapons to your representatives in Congress, see the Friends Committee on National Legislation site [see http://www.fcnl.org/nuclear/index.htm ].

References:
Purnell, Blake. Fallout Model for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Federation of American Scientists. Washington, DC, 2005.
Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, eds., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1977).
Manual of Protective Action Guides and Protective Actions for Nuclear Incidents. Office of Radiation Programs. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Washington, DC 20460, 1991.

There is a very interesting 27-page article published in China Security (Autumn 2006) which can be read and/or downloaded in pdf format here: http://www.wsichina.org/cs4_4.pdf. It is entitled "The Fallacy of Nuclear Primacy" and is written by Bruce Blair and Chen Yali.

Chen Yali is the editor in chief of Washington Observer. She is also a Program Manager of Chen Shi China Research Group based in Beijing.

Bruce G. Blair is the President of the World Security Institute. Mr. Blair is the author of numerous articles and books on security issues including The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War and Global Zero Alert for Nuclear Forces. He is presently completing a new book on U.S. nuclear policy.
-- --

"The World Security Institute (WSI) is a 21st century global think tank and a leading not-for-profit media organization committed to independent journalism and research, and the development, production, and marketing of impartial news and information to a global audience. Through a variety of publications and services, in several languages including Chinese, Russian, Farsi, and Arabic, WSI provides a unique news and research-based approach to communications, policy development, and cooperation focusing on the social, economic, environmental, political and military components of international security and interdependence. WSI's divisions include the Center for Defense Information, International Media, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Azimuth Media and International Programs with offices in Washington, D.C. (founded in 1972), Brussels (founded in 2002), Cairo (founded in 2006) and Moscow (founded in 2001), and a Beijing program (founded in 2004)."

--
China Security, Winter 2007, Issue #5
7 February 2007
Author: Eric Hagt, WSI China Director

Deterrence Revisited: Outer Space --
US-Sino Relations in Space: From "War of Words" to Cold War in Space? --
China's ASAT Test: Strategic Response --
Nuclear Challenges and China's Choices --
US Nuclear Primacy and the Future of the Chinese Deterrent --
Crisis Management in China.

China's ASAT Test and Space Deterrence
China's anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test on Jan. 11, 2007, was a defining moment for the security of outer space. Three articles in the current issue of China Security explore China's motivations behind the test, U.S. and international reactions, and implications for the delicate strategic balance in space. Complementing these analyses, this issue also discusses the rationale for China's robust deterrence in space.

U.S. Nuclear Primacy and China's Nuclear Challenges
The global strategic nuclear environment is rapidly changing. A Chinese scholar and senior PLA colonel surveys the threats that China faces and its future choices in meeting those challenges. A second analysis revisits the issue of U.S. nuclear primacy with the debate shifting to its consequences for China's minimum nuclear deterrent and the future stability of China-U.S. strategic nuclear relations.

Crisis Management in China
China's domestic crises are rising. From SARS, avian flu, and HIV/AIDS, to coal-mining accidents and social unrest, these non-traditional security challenges will play a critical role in defining the future of China's stability. A Chinese scholar closely examines how China has fared in undertaking this monumental task and the path ahead to better crisis management strategies.

China Security is a policy journal that brings diverse Chinese perspectives to Washington on vital traditional and non-traditional security issues that impact China's strategic development and its relations with the United States.

To subscribe to the electronic version of China Security, go to: www.wsichina.org.

You may request a hard copy by emailing info@wsichina.org.

Deterrence Revisited: Outer Space, by Bao Shixiu
"China cannot accept the monopolization of outer space by another power." BaoShixiu is a senior fellow at the Academy of Military Sciences.

U.S.-Sino Relations in Space: From "War of Words" to Cold War in Space? by Theresa Hitchens
"If the intent of the Chinese test was to deter the United States from building space-based missile defenses, it may well backfire." Theresa Hitchens is the director of the World Security Institute's Center for Defense Information.

China's ASAT Test: Strategic Response, by Eric Hagt
"China has concluded that the United States is determined to control space." Eric Hagt is the director of the China Program at the World Security Institute.

Nuclear Challenges and China's Choices, by Wang Zhongchun
"China should avoid sacrificing its interests to satisfy U.S. nonproliferation requests." Wang Zhongchun is a professor at the National Defense University and senior colonel of the People's Liberation Army.

U.S. Nuclear Primacy and the Future of the Chinese Deterrent, by Keir A. Lieber & Daryl G. Press
"America's drive for nuclear primacy is primarily driven by concerns about the future relations with China." Keir A. Lieber is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. Daryl G. Press is an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College.

Crisis Management in China, by Zhong Kaibin
"Crises increasingly spill over national borders and affect regional and international actors." Zhong Kaibin is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Public Policy & Management at Tsinghua University.


http://www.worldsecurityinstitute.org/show...ions.cfm?id=148

"Missions for Nuclear Weapons After the Cold War"

http://www.fas.org/resource/01282005175922.pdf ... a 75-page publication of the Federation of American Scientists
written by Ivan Oelrich, Director, Strategic Security Program, FAS in January 2005

I have not yet read the article in its entirety.

It reviews 15 missions for nuclear weapons:

Mission 1: Retaliation for nuclear attack against homeland
Mission 2: Retaliation for nuclear attack against allies
Mission 3: Retaliate for CBW attack against homeland
Mission 4: Retaliate for CBW attack against allies
Mission 5: Retaliate for CBW use in military theater
Mission 6: Deploying weapons capable of attacking enemy nuclear weapons to discourage their development
Mission 7: Deploying weapons capable of attacking enemy CBW weapons to discourage their development
Mission 8: Damage-limitation attacks against nuclear weapons in military theater
Mission 9: Damage-limitation attacks against CB weapons in military theater
Mission 11: Retaliate for regional conventional attacks
Mission 12: Overawe potential rivals
Mission 13: Provide virtual power
Mission 14: Fight regional wars
Mission 15: War termination

An appendix is entitled "Nuclear "Usability" and the Likelihood of Use" and features a discussion of the “More is Less” curve.

From the Executive Summary:

" ... today, America's conventional superiority stands the Cold War strategic balance on its head. Introduction of nuclear weapons into conflicts around the world will work to the disadvantage of the United States."

"The analysis distinguishes between "missions" and "goals." For example, deterrence is not a nuclear mission. The ability to survive a nuclear attack and strike back at the attacker is the nuclear mission. Deterrence is the goal of that mission."

"... the U.S. nuclear arsenal looks much as it would if a disarming surprise first strike against Russian forces were its paramount mission."

"Everyone agrees that the overwhelming majority of foreseeable military missions will be met with conventional weapons. "Advocates" of nuclear weapons, who argue for greater consideration of nuclear use, are not arguing for widespread, profligate nuclear bombing. The central debate is between those who want nuclear use to be very rare, and those who want it to be very, very rare. The question is whether the United States should maintain, or even develop, nuclear weapons for those few, special cases where they seem advantageous on the chance that these extraordinary circumstances might arise. This study concludes that the United States should not."

"Over the last decades, the United States has, moreover, used that conventional superiority to execute a military strategy of forward deployment and conventional engagement that is particularly vulnerable to even primitive nuclear weapons. Anything that tends to conventionalize nuclear weapons and works toward their more likely use works against American superiority and the strategy and interests of the United States."

From the Conclusion:

"Maintaining the ability to execute a disarming surprise first strike against Russia is also an essentially nuclear mission. But this mission makes sense only if it comes close to total success. Since the Russians would most likely launch their nuclear missiles rather than watch them be destroyed, time is of the essence. The U.S. strike would have to destroy everything in one blow. At least some Russian nuclear weapons are hardened enough to require multiple attacks with conventional weapons. The need for post-attack evaluation and re-attack
does not allow time for conventional attack. Although the United States claims that a disarming first strike is not an explicit mission of U.S. nuclear forces, the nature of the arsenal argues otherwise. Also this mission is suggested by the Administration's "defeat" goal. Of the necessarily nuclear missions, the need to maintain a disarming first strike seems to drive the size, structure, and deployment of U.S. nuclear forces. This is also the mission that most tightly binds U.S. force requirements to the size of the Russian arsenal."

"Nuclear weapons can fulfill almost every mission suggested here. That is not in question. The question is whether they are the weapons of choice. Compared to conventional alternatives, the advantages of nuclear weapons range from none to small. Their disadvantages extend far beyond the battlefield of the day. These disadvantages include proliferation effects around the world and loss of moral leadership.
The United States benefits from a global conventional military advantage. Anything that moves the world toward facile nuclear use erodes that conventional advantage and works against the interests of the United States."

"This analysis argues that a disarming first strike against Russian nuclear forces is the current mission that underpins the U.S. force structure, determining its size, performance, readiness, and deployment. We must not confuse a disarming first strike with deterrence, as some do. After the Cold War, the deterrence mission is comparatively easy while the first strike mission against Russia remains difficult. This mission, moreover, encourages the Russians toward dangerous behavior, for example, maintaining large forces, quick force dispersal, launch authority delegation, or launch on warning. Ironically, maintaining our ability to destroy most Russian nuclear forces increases the nuclear threat to the United States."

http://gadfly.igc.org/brink/SDI-2.htm
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"Strategic Defense" – It’s BAAACK!
(June, 2000 & March, 2002)

In 1983, Ronald Reagan proposed a "Strategic Defense Initiative" – a "space shield" against incoming nuclear missiles. George W. Bush promises to renew the "initiative," despite the strenuous objections of the NATO allies . Missile defense was a bad idea during the Reagan era, and it is a bad idea now.

First of all, it probably would not work, and much more to the point, even if (however improbably) it did work, it would be useless.

In a recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, MIT scientist, Theodore Postol, validates what we have heard and read about the feasibility of the scheme. A determined effort by an aggressive power to defeat missile defense, through the use of decoys, would probably succeed. "Tests" of anti-ballistic devices are directed more toward the task of persuading the public and the Congress, and at authentic research and development. Critics have characterized such "tests" as "strapped chicken demonstrations."

Back in the Reagan/SDI days, we pointed out the ease with which missile defense might be defeated, and so we will not repeat that argument here. (See "Star Wars: The National Sanity Test," this site). [See http://gadfly.igc.org/brink/starwars.htm ]

But never mind all that. Just suppose that we might devise a system that could stop an errant ICBM, launched by some "rogue state." What would that accomplish? Virtually nothing, I suggest.

The trajectory of an ICBM launched at an American city can be plotted with near certainty back to the launch site. If such a missile successfully took out its target, we can be sure that North Korea or Iraq or some such "rogue state" responsible for the launch would soon be reduced to rubble. In short, an ICBM launch is a plain act of personal and national suicide.

So clearly, any national or sub-national entity (e.g., the mafia or al Qaeda, etc.) would choose a delivery system that would hide the place or group of origin. These might include "suitcase devices" in autos, aircraft or ships, or possibly an off-shore "lob". In addition, none of these require the advanced technology, inflated budgets and readily detectable trail of evidence entailed by the deployment of ICBMs.

And none of these far more likely scenarios would be the least bit affected by an anti-missile defense system.

There are other consequences as well. In order to advance the missile defense system, George Bush has announced that the United States will abandon the 1972 ABM treaty with Russia. Facing an opposing missile defense system, the Russian government will be under irresistible pressure to reactivate and expand its offensive missile forces. This is a safe assumption since it precisely what the West would do if faced with the prospect of a Russian missile defense system.

It takes little historical memory to realize that this is precisely the mind-set that dominated, and arguably prolonged, the Cold War. Despite the advice of wiser and cooler heads among Western European leaders, it is a mind-set that has apparently recaptured the adherence of the Bush administration.

Moreover, this confrontational mind-set is totally inappropriate to the greater nuclear dangers that we face today. As we have learned to our great sorrow, the greatest danger, by far, is a terrorist act, with the nuclear "device" delivered by briefcase or truck, as with World Trade Center in 1993 or the Oklahoma City Federal Building, or by a commercial airliner, as with the World Trade Center again, September 11, 2001. Prevention of such a disaster calls for close cooperation and coordination among international and state security agencies, such as Interpol, the CIA and FBI in the United States, and the FSB in Russia. "Human intelligence" must be cultivated within terrorist groups and "rogue nations," security files and surveillance data of many nations must be integrated, international inspection agencies must be reactivated, and acutely sensitive radiation detection devices must be developed and deployed.

If, somehow, "missile defense" is a technological imperative that cannot be stopped, then it should be made an international project – not merely "shared" with Russia, China, and NATO, but still more openly developed with and deployed by these powers. Only then might we avoid a renewed arms race.

Alas, "integration" and "cooperation" seems furthest from the minds of our national leaders, including it seems the ex-KGB officer who is now the President of Russia. "Strategic theory" that was hard-wired in the heads of our leaders during the cold war and which remains active in numerous careers and investments, still seems to control our policies.

How else are we to explain the return of the "missile defense" fantasy?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PostScript: SECRET CIA SURVEILLANCE TAPES

Saddam Hussein is meeting with his cabinet in Baghdad.

SH: I would like very much to nuke New York City. When can we do it, and what are our options?

Minister 1: Well, we could put a bomb in a freighter, or we could put it in a diplomatic pouch, or we could put it in the trunk of a car and drive it across the Canadian border.

SH: And when could we do this?

Minister 2: As early as next month, and the delivery system would cost a few hundred dollars. Best of all, the Americans would never be able to prove that we set it off.

SH: Any other options?

Minister 3: Well, we could spend several billion dollars on an ICBM, which wouldn't be ready in less than five years -- provided of course the Americans didn't find out about it first and destroy our facilities.

Minister 4: Worst of all, the missile would carry a return address. The Americans would know for certain who launched it, and within 24 hours 90% of the Iraqis, included all of present company, would be reduced to radioactive atoms.

SH: Then that settles it. Let's build an ICBM.



If you believe that this transcript is authentic, then you are certifiably bonkers. As crazy as Saddam Hussein is depicted here. And as crazy as anyone in the Bush administration who really believes that the proposed National Missile Defense system has anything at all to do with a supposed threat from Iraq or North Korea, or wherever.

http://www.alternet.org/story/48274/
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Russia Could Go Ballistic on American Missile Defense

By Scott Ritter, AlterNet. Posted February 23, 2007.

We’re all in trouble if Russia follows up on its threat to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in reaction to America's attempt to construct missile defense bases in Eastern Europe.


In October 1986 what was supposed to be merely a preliminary meeting between the leaders of the world's two superpowers, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, turned into a historic summit that brought humankind to the brink of total nuclear disarmament. While the Reykjavik, Iceland, summit broke up without this dramatic disarmament threshold being crossed (the Americans and Soviets had reached a contingent agreement to eliminate all nuclear ballistic missiles within 10 years, but the deal fell apart when the United States insisted on being able to deploy its Strategic Defense Initiative missile defense system (SDI, or better known as "Star Wars").

While the world missed an opportunity to walk away from the nuclear abyss altogether, the meeting was not completely for naught. Little more than a year later, from the foundation of trust and respect forged in Reykjavik, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, completely eliminating two entire classes of nuclear missiles (intermediate and short range) and putting into play stringent on-site inspection verification protocols that forever transformed the way in which the world would view arms control and disarmament.

I remember those days well. As an officer in the Marine Corps, I was a member of the original team assigned to the newly created On-Site Inspection Agency, tasked with implementing the INF treaty. In June of 1988, a scant six months after the ink had dried on the INF Treaty document, I had the honor of participating in the first-ever inspection carried out under the INF Treaty as a member of the advance party dispatched to a Soviet missile production facility outside the city of Votkinsk. For the next two years I helped forge a new chapter in arms control history, overseeing the installation of a monitoring facility outside the gates of a factory that had produced SS-12 and SS-20 intermediate-range missiles, and was still producing the modern road-mobile SS-25 intercontinental missile.

In addition to making sure that the Soviets lived up to their end of the bargain (the Soviets had a similar monitoring operation at work in Magna, Utah, where U.S. Pershing II missiles had been produced), our operation in Votkinsk and elsewhere helped facilitate a deeper, broader understanding between two superpowers who had, prior to the INF Treaty, been plotting the destruction of one another. Comprehension of a shared system of human values and ideals tore down barriers of distrust and ignorance of the Cold War era. The INF Treaty led to even greater disarmament initiatives, namely the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), where deep cuts were made in the long-range arsenals of both the United States and the Soviet Union (and, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia and the other nuclear-armed republics).

When President George W. Bush, in June 2001, looked into the eyes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and got "a sense of his (Putin's) soul," he should have looked deeper. Although the two world leaders got along quite well on a personal level, their initial meeting was strained by Russian concerns over the expansion of NATO and continuing U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense shield. The signing of the "Treaty of Moscow" in June 2003 likewise should have been a landmark date in President Bush's growing understanding of what makes the Russian leader tick. While President Bush spoke of an agreement "founded on mutual respect and a common commitment to a more secure world," the critical areas of Russian concern (again, the expansion of NATO and the U.S. missile defense system) were addressed only in the theoretical, with there being a distinct need for the United States to deliver demonstrable steps that would reassure the Russians (and Putin) that the United States boded no ill towards their nation.

Today, Putin's "soul" is dark indeed. Having expended considerable political capital in reaching out to Bush in hopes of genuinely improving the relations between Russia and the United States, Putin has not only failed to generate any viable movement in reaching agreements of substance, but has watched Russia's security position be whittled away by American "unilateralism." From the very start of the Putin-Bush relationship, the Russians had strongly cautioned against such unilateral tendencies. The American withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the expansion of NATO up to the borders of Russia in 2004 all severely tested the Russian leader's patience and credibility. The strong-handed U.S.-led approach toward confronting Iran in 2005-2006 strained the U.S.-Russian relationship to the breaking point. But it was the announcement by the United States in October 2006 that it would construct a major missile defense base in either Poland or the Czech Republic that apparently pushed the Russians over the edge.

Putin had tolerated the Bush administration's decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, noting that while it wasn't a sound decision, it was one which in his mind posed no direct threat to Russia. But his temerity in the face of American unilateralism and NATO expansion had left him in a precarious position in Moscow. The new U.S. initiative represents everything the Russians had feared: the United States marching inexorably toward the complete nullification of Russia as a world power. This American-centric approach was unacceptable to the inner circles of Russian leadership. Awash in a growing sea of oil revenue, the Russians had for some time been quietly rebuilding their once vast military industrial infrastructure. A few years ago the Russians successfully tested a new road-mobile ICBM, the SS-27 M "Topol," which incorporated performance features designed to defeat the U.S. missile defense system's operational parameters. Now, with the United States poised to construct a missile defense umbrella over an expanded NATO membership that laps at the very borders of Mother Russia, Putin has had enough.

Earlier this month, in a speech before the Munich Security Conference, Putin condemned America's drive toward the creation of what he termed a "uni-polar world." In such a world, Putin argued, the United States sought the creation of "one single center of power, one single center of force and one single master." He went on to note that "... the United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres -- economic, political and humanitarian, and has imposed itself on other states," and that this represented a "disaster." Most observers brushed off Putin's strong remarks as being unconstructive, with few fearing anything more than strong language coming from the Russians. But this time the Russian reaction appears to go well beyond simple rhetoric. Invoking the same rational employed by the United States when it withdrew from the ABM Treaty, the Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, recently called the INF Treaty a "relic of the Cold War," while the chief of the Russian general staff, Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, stated that it would be in Russian interests to withdraw from the INF Treaty altogether.

Any Russian withdrawal from the INF Treaty would be a disaster for Europe, NATO, global security and, something members of Congress and the American public should note, the United States. From its very inception, missile defense has been played up by American unilateralists as the "cure all" for genuine security, being cited again and again as the proper response to the ballistic missile threats of Russia, China, Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The reality is much different. Missile Defense has always had a Maginot Line-like quality to it, the technologies encompassed always being decades old before they can be fielded. Since intercepting a missile is much more difficult than launching one, the technology implementation cycle for delivery systems is always tighter than for interception systems, meaning that a missile defense system will never be able to catch up to the threat, especially if the threat is derived from a power such as Russia. If Russia withdraws from the INF Treaty, the United States and NATO will soon be confronted by entirely new generations of advanced short- and intermediate-range missiles which will once again place the cities of Europe beneath an umbrella of potential nuclear holocaust.

I once had the opportunity to serve my country, and the world, by helping eliminate a class of nuclear weapons that destabilized the security of America, the former Soviet Union and all of Europe. The precedent set, both in terms of disarmament and verifiable arms control agreements, set the stage for conventional forces reductions, the elimination of WMD in Iraq, and the expansion of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, among others. Thanks to the policies of the Bush administration, these advances are about to be completely eliminated in the name of American unilateralism. One of the greatest lessons to be learned from the ground-breaking disarmament agreement that Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed nearly 20 years ago was that we lived in a multilateral world, where multilateral problems required multilateral solutions.

While the INF Treaty was a bilateral agreement, it established a precedent for far-reaching multilateral disarmament agreements involving the entire world. In this day and age of global terror, if there ever was a need for the kind of security mechanisms represented by the INF Treaty, it is now. Far from being a "relic of the Cold War," the INF Treaty represents the very foundation of a new world order funded on the principles of verifiable multilateral security. If the Bush administration continues to pursue its reckless policies of unilateral security, and if Russia follows up on its threat to withdraw from the INF Treaty, then the world will be a much more dangerous place for us all.

There is an MP3 of an audio prgram featuring Chalmers Johnson being interviewed on 2/27 by Amy Goodman which can be found at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17210.htm . In it, the "CIA analyst, distinguished scholar, and best-selling author Chalmers Johnson argues that US military and economic overreach may actually lead to the nation's collapse as a constitutional republic. It's the last volume in his Blowback trilogy, following the best-selling "Blowback" and "The Sorrows of Empire." In those two, Johnson argued American clandestine and military activity has led to un-intended, but direct disaster here in the United States."

"Professor Johnson is a noted expert on Asia politics. He has authored a number of books on the Chinese revolution, on Japanese economic development. In his thirty years in the University of California system, Johnson served as chair of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley."

"Nemesis was the ancient Greek goddess of revenge, the punisher of hubris and arrogance in human beings. You may recall she is the one that led Narcissus to the pond and showed him his reflection, and he dove in and drowned."

There are a range of subjects discussed; the link has it in transcript form as well.

But pertinent to this thread are these comments by Johnson:

"I have a chapter in Nemesis ... called “The Ultimate Imperialist Project: Outer Space.” It's about the congressional missile lobby, the fantastic waste of funds on things that we know don't work. But they're not intended to work. They're part of military Keynesianism, of maintaining our economy through military expenditures. They provide jobs in as many different constituencies as the military-industrial complex can place them."


"... there's three ways to shoot down an alleged incoming missile. This is the whole farce of whether there is a defense against a missile. I guarantee you there is no defense at all against the Topol-M, the Russian missile that goes into orbit extremely rapidly -- it goes into its arch extremely rapidly. It has a maneuvering ability that means that it's undetectable.

We're basically looking at very low-brow weapons that would be coming from a country like North Korea, in which we have three different ways of trying to intercept them. We used to only try to do with one under the Clinton administration. Under the enthusiasm of the current neoconservatives, we have three ways. One, on blastoff, this is extremely difficult to do, but we're trying to create a laser, carried in a Boeing 747, that would hit one. You've got to be virtually on top of the launch site in order to do so. It’s never worked. It probably doesn't work, and it's just expensive.

The much more common one would be to down the hostile missile, while it is in outer space, from having given up its launch vehicle and is now heading at very high speed toward the United States. This is what the interceptors that have been put in the ground at Fort Greely, Alaska, and a couple of them at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, are supposed to do. They have never once yet had a successful intercept. The radar is not there to actually track the allegedly hostile vehicle. As one senior Pentagon scientist said the other day, these are really essentially scarecrows, hoping that they would scare off the North Koreans.

This is a catastrophic misuse of resources against a small and failed communist state, North Korea. There is no easier thing on earth to detect than a hostile missile launch, and the proper approach to preventing that is deterrence. We have thought about it, worked on it, practiced it, studied it now for decades. The North Koreans have an excellent reputation for rationality. They know if they did launch such a vehicle at Japan or at the United States, they would disappear the next day in a retaliatory strike, and they don't do it.

It's why, in the case of Iran, the only logical thing to do is to learn to live with a nuclear-armed Iran. It's inevitable for a country now surrounded by nuclear powers -- the United States in the Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union, Israel, Pakistan and India. The Iranians are rationalists and recognize the only way you're ever going to dissuade people from using their nuclear power to intimidate us is a threat of retaliation. So we are developing our minimal deterrent, and we should learn to live with it."


"This is the insidious way in which the military-industrial complex has penetrated into our democracy and gravely weakened it, produced vested interests in what I call military Keynesianism, the use and manipulation of what is now three-quarters of a trillion dollars of the Defense budget, once you include all the other things that aren't included in just the single appropriation for the Department of Defense.

This is a -- it's out of control. We depend upon it, we like it, we live off of it. I cannot imagine any President of any party putting together the coalition of forces that could begin to break into these vested interests, any more than a Gorbachev was able to do it in his attempted reforms of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there anything, Chalmers, that gives you hope?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Well, that's exactly what we're doing this morning. That is, the only way -- you've got to reconstitute the constitutional system in America, or it is over. That is that empires -- once you go in the direction of empire, you ultimately lead to overstretch, bankruptcy, coalitions of nations hostile to your imperialism. We're well on that route.

The way that it might be stopped is by a mobilization of inattentive citizens. I don't know that that's going to happen. I’m extremely dubious, given the nature of conglomerate control of, say, the television networks in America for the sake of advertising revenue. We see Rupert Murdoch talking about buying a third of the Los Angeles Times. But, nonetheless, there is the internet, there is Amy Goodman, there are -- there's a lot more information than there was.

One of the things I have experienced in these three books is a much more receptive audience of alarmed Americans to Nemesis than to the previous two books, where there was considerable skepticism, so that one -- if we do see a renaissance of citizenship in America, then I believe we could recapture our government. If we continue politics as in the past, then I think there is no alternative but to say Nemesis is in the country, she's on the premises, and she is waiting to carry out her divine mission."

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/754
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The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War
By George Lakoff

Last modified Tuesday, February 27, 2007 01:34 PM

"The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete."

—Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, April 17, 2006

"The second concern is that if an underground laboratory is deeply buried, that can also confound conventional weapons. But the depth of the Natanz facility - reports place the ceiling roughly 30 feet underground - is not prohibitive. The American GBU-28 weapon - the so-called bunker buster - can pierce about 23 feet of concrete and 100 feet of soil. Unless the cover over the Natanz lab is almost entirely rock, bunker busters should be able to reach it. That said, some chance remains that a single strike would fail."

—Michael Levi, New York Times, April 18, 2006

A familiar means of denying a reality is to refuse to use the words that describe that reality. A common form of propaganda is to keep reality from being described.

In such circumstances, silence and euphemism are forms of complicity both in propaganda and in the denial of reality. And the media, as well as the major presidential candidates, are now complicit.

The stories in the major media suggest that an attack against Iran is a real possibility and that the Natanz nuclear development site is the number one target. As the above quotes from two of our best sources note, military experts say that conventional "bunker-busters" like the GBU-28 might be able to destroy the Natanz facility, especially with repeated bombings. But on the other hand, they also say such iterated use of conventional weapons might not work, e.g., if the rock and earth above the facility becomes liquefied. On that supposition, a "low yield" "tactical" nuclear weapon, say, the B61-11, might be needed.

If the Bush administration, for example, were to insist on a sure "success," then the "attack" would constitute nuclear war. The words in boldface are nuclear war, that's right, nuclear war — a first strike nuclear war.

We don't know what exactly is being planned — conventional GBU-28's or nuclear B61-11's. And that is the point. Discussion needs to be open. Nuclear war is not a minor matter.

The Euphemism

As early as August 13, 2005, Bush, in Jerusalem, was asked what would happen if diplomacy failed to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear program. Bush replied, "All options are on the table." On April 18, the day after the appearance of Seymour Hersh's New Yorker report on the administration's preparations for a nuclear war against Iran, President Bush held a news conference. He was asked,

Sir, when you talk about Iran, and you talk about how you have diplomatic efforts, you also say all options are on the table. Does that include the possibility of a nuclear strike? Is that something that your administration will plan for?"

He replied,

"All options are on the table."

The President never actually said the forbidden words "nuclear war," but he appeared to tacitly acknowledge the preparations — without further discussion.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, speaking in Australia last week, backed up the President.

"We worked with the European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference. But I've also made the point, and the president has made the point, that all options are on the table."

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain, on FOX News August 14, 2005, said the same.

"For us to say that the Iranians can do whatever they want to do and we won't under any circumstances exercise a military option would be for them to have a license to do whatever they want to do ... So I think the president's comment that we won't take anything off the table was entirely appropriate."

But it's not just Republicans. Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, in a speech in Herzliyah, Israel, echoed Bush.

"To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table. Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table."

Although, Edwards has said, when asked about this statement, that he prefers peaceful solutions and direct negotiations with Iran, he has nonetheless repeated the "all options on the table" position — making clear that he would consider starting a preventive nuclear war, but without using the fateful words.

Hillary Clinton, at an AIPAC dinner in NY, said,

"We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table."

Translation: Nuclear weapons can be used to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Barack Obama, asked on 60 Minutes about using military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, began a discussion of his preference for diplomacy by responding, "I think we should keep all options on the table."

Bush, Cheney, McCain, Edwards, Clinton, and Obama all say indirectly that they seriously consider starting a preventive nuclear war, but will not engage in a public discussion of what that would mean. That contributes to a general denial, and the press is going along with it by a corresponding refusal to use the words.

If the consequences of nuclear war are not discussed openly, the war may happen without an appreciation of the consequences and without the public having a chance to stop it. Our job is to open that discussion.

Of course, there is a rationale for the euphemism: To scare our adversaries by making them think that we are crazy enough to do what we hint at, while not raising a public outcry. That is what happened in the lead up to the Iraq War, and the disaster of that war tells us why we must have such a discussion about Iran. Presidential candidates go along, not wanting to be thought of as interfering in on-going indirect diplomacy. That may be the conventional wisdom for candidates, but an informed, concerned public must say what candidates are advised not to say.

More Euphemisms

The euphemisms used include "tactical," "small," "mini-," and "low yield" nuclear weapons. "Tactical" contrasts with "strategic"; it refers to tactics, relatively low-level choices made in carrying out an overall strategy, but which don't affect the grand strategy. But the use of any nuclear weapons at all would be anything but "tactical." It would be a major world event – in Vladimir Putin's words, "lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons," making the use of more powerful nuclear weapons more likely and setting off a new arms race. The use of the word "tactical" operates to lessen their importance, to distract from the fact that their very use would constitute a nuclear war.

What is "low yield"? Perhaps the "smallest" tactical nuclear weapon we have is the B61-11, which has a dial-a-yield feature: it can yield "only" 0.3 kilotons, but can be set to yield up to 170 kilotons. The power of the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons. That is, a "small" bomb can yield more than 10 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. The B61-11 dropped from 40,000 feet would dig a hole 20 feet deep and then explode, send shock waves downward, leave a huge crater, and spread radiation widely. The idea that it would explode underground and be harmless to those above ground is false — and, anyway, an underground release of radiation would threaten ground water and aquifers for a long time and over wide distance.

To use words like "low yield" or "small" or "mini-" nuclear weapon is like speaking of being a little bit pregnant. Nuclear war is nuclear war! It crosses the moral line.

Any discussion of roadside canister bombs made in Iran justifying an attack on Iran should be put in perspective: Little canister bombs (EFP's — explosively formed projectiles) that shoot a small hot metal ball at a humvee or tank versus nuclear war.

Incidentally, the administration may be focusing on the canister bombs because it seeks to claim that the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 permits the use of military force against Iran based on its interference in Iraq. In that case, no further authorization by Congress would be needed for an attack on Iran.

The journalistic point is clear. Journalists and political leaders should not talk about an "attack." They should use the words that describe what is really at stake: nuclear war — in boldface.

Then, there is the scale of the proposed attack. Military reports leaking out suggest a huge (mostly or entirely non-nuclear) airstrike on as many as 10,000 targets — a "shock and awe" attack that would destroy Iran's infrastructure the way the US bombing destroyed Iraq's. The targets would not just be "military targets." As Dan Plesch reports in the New Statesman, February 19, 2007, such an attack would wipe out Iran's military, business, and political infrastructure. Not just nuclear installations, missile launching sites, tanks, and ammunition dumps, but also airports, rail lines, highways, bridges, ports, communications centers, power grids, industrial centers, hospitals, public buildings, and even the homes of political leaders. That is what was attacked in Iraq: the "critical infrastructure." It is not just military in the traditional sense. It leaves a nation in rubble, and leads to death, maiming, disease, joblessness, impoverishment, starvation, mass refugees, lawlessness, rape, and incalculable pain and suffering. That is what the options appear to be "on the table." Is nation destruction what the American people have in mind when they acquiesce without discussion to an "attack"? Is nuclear war what the American people have in mind? An informed public must ask and the media must ask. The words must be used.

Even if the attack were limited to nuclear installations, starting a nuclear war with Iran would have terrible consequences — and not just for Iranians. First, it would strengthen the hand of the Islamic fundamentalists — exactly the opposite of the effect US planners would want. It would be viewed as yet another major attack on Islam. Fundamentalist Islam is a revenge culture. If you want to recruit fundamentalist Islamists all over the world to become violent jihadists, this is the best way to do it. America would become a world pariah. Any idea of the US as a peaceful nation would be destroyed. Moreover, you don't work against the spread of nuclear weapons by using those weapons. That will just make countries all over the world want nuclear weaponry all the more. Trying to stop nuclear proliferation through nuclear war is self-defeating.

As Einstein said, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

Why would the Bush administration do it? Here is what conservative strategist William Kristol wrote last summer during Israel's war with Hezbollah.

"For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.

The right response is renewed strength--in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

—Willam Kristol, Weekly Standard 7/24/06

"Renewed strength" is just the Bush strategy in Iraq. At a time when the Iraqi people want us to leave, when our national elections show that most Americans want our troops out, when 60% of Iraqis think it all right to kill Americans, Bush wants to escalate. Why? Because he is weak in America. Because he needs to show more "strength." Because, if he knocks out the Iranian nuclear facilities, he can claim at least one "victory." Starting a nuclear war with Iran would really put us in a world-wide war with fundamentalist Islam. It would make real the terrorist threat he has been claiming since 9/11. It would create more fear — real fear — in America. And he believes, with much reason, that fear tends to make Americans vote for saber-rattling conservatives.

Kristol's neoconservative view that "weakness is provocative" is echoed in Iran, but by the other side. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted in the New York Times of February 24, 2007 as having "vowed anew to continue enriching uranium, saying, 'If we show weakness in front of the enemies, they will increase their expectations.'" If both sides refuse to back off for fear of showing weakness, then prospects for conflict are real, despite the repeated analyses, like that of The Economist that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran would be politically and morally impossible. As one unnamed administration official has said (New York Times, February 24, 2007), "No one has defined where the red line is that we cannot let the Iranians step over."

What we are seeing now is the conservative message machine preparing the country to accept the ideas of a nuclear war and nation destruction against Iran. The technique used is the "slippery slope." It is done by degrees. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of water – if the heat is turned up slowly the frog gets used to the heat and eventually boils to death – the American public is getting gradually acclimated to the idea of war with Iran.

• First, describe Iran as evil – part of the axis of evil. An inherently evil person will inevitably do evil things and can't be negotiated with. An entire evil nation is a threat to other nations.
• Second, describe Iran's leader as a "Hitler" who is inherently "evil" and cannot be reasoned with. Refuse to negotiate with him.
• Then repeat the lie that Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons —weapons of mass destruction. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei says they are at best many years away.
• Call nuclear development "an existential threat" – a threat to our very existence.
• Then suggest a single "surgical" "attack" on Natanz and make it seem acceptable.
• Then find a reason to call the attack "self-defense" — or better protection for our troops from the EFP's, or single-shot canister bombs.
• Claim, without proof and without anyone even taking responsibility for the claim, that the Iranian government at its highest level is supplying deadly weapons to Shiite militias attacking our troops, while not mentioning the fact that Saudi Arabia is helping Sunni insurgents attacking our troops.
• Give "protecting our troops" as a reason for attacking Iran without getting new authorization from Congress. Claim that the old authorization for attacking Iraq implied doing "whatever is necessary to protect our troops" from Iranian intervention in Iraq.
• Argue that de-escalation in Iraq would "bleed" our troops, "weaken" America, and lead to defeat. This sets up escalation as a winning policy, if not in Iraq then in Iran.
• Get the press to go along with each step.
• Never mention the words "preventive nuclear war" or "national destruction." When asked, say "All options are on the table." Keep the issue of nuclear war and its consequences from being seriously discussed by the national media.
• Intimidate Democratic presidential candidates into agreeing, without using the words, that nuclear war should be "on the table." This makes nuclear war and nation destruction bipartisan and even more acceptable.

Progressives managed to blunt the "surge" idea by telling the truth about "escalation." Nuclear war against Iran and nation destruction constitute the ultimate escalation.

The time has come to stop the attempt to make a nuclear war against Iran palatable to the American public. We do not believe that most Americans want to start a nuclear war or to impose nation destruction on the people of Iran. They might, though, be willing to support a tit-for-tat "surgical" "attack" on Natanz in retaliation for small canister bombs and to end Iran's early nuclear capacity.

It is time for America's journalists and political leaders to put two and two together, and ask the fateful question: Is the Bush administration seriously preparing for nuclear war and nation destruction? If the conventional GBU-28's will do the job, then why not take nuclear war off the table in the name of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons? If GBU-28's won't do the job, then it is all the more important to have that discussion.

This should not be a distraction from Iraq. The general issue is escalation as a policy, both in Iraq and in Iran. They are linked issues, not separate issues. We have learned from Iraq what what lack of public scrutiny does.

http://mae.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Di...p;VERSION_NUM=2
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Military & Aerospace Electronics January, 2007

Laser weapons are getting closer to reality
By John McHale

Laser weapons are not as far away as the average citizen may think. U.S. Department of Defense experts are close to fielding the Airborne Laser (ABL) for missile defense and several other high-energy laser weapons programs received new funding this year.

Many of these programs that expect to bring laser weaponry into the hands of the warfighter on the ground involve solid-state laser technology.

more at link ....

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/48672/

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in its entirety, but without the very graphic pictures...

GOP House Minority Whip To Aid Group Seeking Nuclear War, Holocaust

Posted by Bruce Wilson at 4:28 PM on March 1, 2007.

Bruce Wilson: "Christians United For Israel" leader gets promise of red carpet visit in DC from Roy Blunt.

US House minority whip Roy Blunt flew to San Antonio, last week, to pay tribute to Texas Pastor and apocalyptic nuclear war advocate John Hagee. In a "Christians United For Israel" [CUFI] mailing sent February 26th, Hagee wrote:

I am delighted to announce that Roy Blunt is a strong supporter of Israel and following our conversation about CUFI has offered to gather groups of Congressmen in his office any time I come to Washington D.C. in the future.

Blunt is not the only politician to have courted Hagee, who had a private meeting with Senator John McCain in late January to discuss Israel and "other matters." McCain has recently said, of US tensions with Iran, that the situation could be "armageddon". [See http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/2/23/9556/02805 ]{TIM RUSSERT: So we could have two wars at once?
SEN. McCAIN: I think we could have Armageddon. -- John McCain, on the Iran crisis. April 2nd 2006, "Meet The Press."]

John Hagee, one of several alleged religious influences on George W. Bush, has characterized liberal Jews who do not agree with his political views as "poisoned" and is a strong proponent for a "preemptive" ( or unprovoked ) US and Israeli nuclear attack against Iran. In "Jerusalem Countdown," Hagee's latest book that has so far sold over 1.1 million copies, Hagee says the Holocaust and historical persecution of the Jews is a divine punishment for the "disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, as is antisemitism... Their own rebellion [against God] had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come." ( Jerusalem Countdown, pages 92 and 93, paperback edition ).

[image: The Holocaust, part of divine plan ?]

The Holocaust also served as a divine mechanism [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-gol...-w_b_34220.html ], suggests Hagee in the book, to scare Jews into moving to Israel where he seems to feel they properly belong, as a necessary, magical human precondition that must be in place before the Rapture, that will grant Christians physical immortality in Heaven, can occur. In Hagee's view, after Christians are "Raptured" to Heaven, Israeli Jews will be mostly killed in the End-Time apocalyptic conflict the Texas pastor has also formed a lobbying group to -- apparently -- encourage.

In a recent Charisma Magazine issue John Hagee, in a piece entitled "The Coming Holy War," wrote : "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons." [See http://www.charismamag.com/display.php?id=12391 ]

On July 19, 2006, at a CUFI sponsored Washington DC event called "A Night to Honor Israel," [ http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=1892 ]with GOP Party head Ken Mehlman and US GOP Senators Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, John Cornyn, and Kay Bailey-Hutchinson ( President George W. Bush sent recorded greetings to the event ) , Pastor John Hagee declared:

"The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West... a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation [...] and [the] Second Coming of Christ."

As recounted by Terje Langeland, reporting for the Colorado Springs Independent in 2003 [ http://evolvefish.com/freewrite/New-Stories_8-2003.htm ], one of Pastor John Hagee's CUFI board members, George Morrison, expresses his sense of how Israeli and Israeli Jews will fare in the apocalytpic scenario Hagee and others long for:

"Morrison, whose casual, folksy manner belies his apocalyptic beliefs, already sees signs that the End is approaching. The European Union, he says, might be the alliance of nations that according to prophecy will join the Arabs to wage war against Israel during the final days.

"Great wars will begin to take place" Morrison says in a matter-of-fact voice. "Those wars are going to involve nukes."

The extent of the destruction will prompt Jesus to return in order to stop it, Morrison believes. Unfortunately, he says, many Jews will be killed.

"It's another Holocaust, if you will" Morrison says. "

[image, above : Hiroshima survivor's drawing of the bombing's aftermath, from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum]

Many Christian Premillenial Dispensationalists -- the theological persuasion Pastor John Hagee belongs to -- believe that the majority of the Jews currently living in Israel will be killed in the period of warfare that follows the "Rapture," when "believing" Christians ( fundamentalist Christians, that is ) are bodily transported up to safety in heaven. The standard interpretation is that 2/3 or more of Israeli Jews will be slaughtered during this period but that a righteous "remnant", who have realized the error of their ways and converted to Christianity, will survive what Christian Zionists often call the "final Holocaust" or the "second Holocaust." Writings and statements made by CUFI board member Jerry Falwell, made in 1984, sum up such views:

Falwell said, in a December 2, 1984 sermon: "Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra. I don't know how, but God will keep them because the Jews and the Chosen People of God." (December 2, 1984 sermon)"

From a pamphlet by Jerry Falwell entitled “Armageddon and the Coming War with Russia." :"the stage is rapidly being set, even today in the Middle East, for the final conflict. Russia will invade Israel, communism will be defeated, the antichrist will appear and the 'final holocaust' at Armageddon will consume the Earth." ( as quote by the The Oakland Tribune, October 23, 1984 )

In "Jerusalem Countdown", Pastor Hagee writes, in reference to passages from the Bibles Book Of Isaiah 10:22, 22:

"Who is this remnant [those who will survive] ?

First, it's obvious that all of that remnant is Jewish.....

God promises that by his sovereign grace a "remnant" would be saved by the grace of God, a group of survivors who have the opportunity to receive Messiah, who is a rabbi known to the world as Jesus Christ." ( Jerusalem Countdown, paperback edition, pages 192 and 194 )

This is a continuation of a running series on Pastor John Hagee and his new "apocalypse lobby," CUFI. For the last installment, see:

What Secret "Other Matters" Did McCain Discuss With "Apocalypse Now" Hagee ?
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/2/23/9556/02805/

and also these stories:

Max Blumenthal : Israel, the US, and the Christian Right: The Menage a Trois From Hell
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/8/10/213055/581

Bill Berkowitz : Holy Warriors Set Sights
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/berkowitz.php?articleid=10192

on Iran

Esther Kaplan : Christian Zionism all juiced up
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/4/4/14144/60039

Richard Bartholomew : Armey: Bush Believes in Tribulation, but not Trying to Make it Happen
http://blogs.salon.com/0003494/2006/08/14.html

Bruce Wilson : Dick Armey Denies Bush Administration Trying To Provoke "End Times"
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/8/15/12348/4792

Sarah Posner: Lobbying For Armageddon
http://www.alternet.org/story/39748/

"As Bush's War Strategy Shifts to Iran, Christian Zionists Gear Up for the Apocalypse"
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/46753/

"Apocalyptic preacher John Hagee says McCain is 'on target'"
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/47402/

"Can Giuliani Be the Armageddon Candidate?"
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/47695/

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=789
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Condi Picks Neocon Cohen to Make Her Decisions
Friday March 02nd 2007, 5:18 pm

No sooner are we told for the umpteenth time Bush has swept a gob of neocons out of his administration, we get word that Condi the Destroyer has picked PNAC forever war fanatic Eliot Cohen out of a line-up to serve as her “counselor, a key trouble-shooting role in US diplomacy,” according to AFP.

Cohen is known as “the most influential neocon in academe” and came up with the lovely term “World War Four” all on his lonesome, although former CIA director James Woolsey is fond of using the term to scare small children and women with weak constitutions, as well as Muslims and Arabs who are afraid the “fucking crazies” will invade their countries and take out their electrical grids, water treatment plants, hospitals, etc.

“From his perch as a professor of national security studies at John Hopkins University (SAIS), Cohen refers to the war against terrorism by a chilling name: World War IV (citing the Cold War as WWIII),” writes Ahmad Faruqui. “He claims America is on the good side in this war, just like it has been in all prior world wars; and the enemy is militant Islam, not some abstract concept of ‘terrorism.’”

Tom Casey, State Department spokesman, described Cohen as a “distinguished scholar, a very important military historian and expert on US defense policies,” that is, in regard to the latter, Cohen is considered an “expert” at killing people who make the mistake of associating with or living within shrapnel distance of “militant” Muslims.

SourceWatch notes Cohen “is believed to be a member of the Council on Foreign Relations” and a member the Aspen Strategy Group, part of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, an “international nonprofit organization” (NGO) and “international forum” (for one-worlders) funded by the usual globalist suspects, including the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and associated with the British-based Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, that is so long as such “relations” produce stepfordized humans.

In other words, there is little difference between the stark raving criminally insane neocons and their more staid, although just as murderous, neoliberal brethren.

It is interesting, in a perverse sort of way, that Condi would pick as her “counselor,” or have picked for her, the guy who coined the term “World War Four,” a “war”—sort of the same way shooting fish in a barrel might be considered a “war”—to be waged specifically against the Muslim world. Condi apparently cannot be trusted when it comes to making sure the State Department is on cue, especially with the all-important shock and awe of Iran campaign deadline closing in.

---

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=788

Poltergeist Osama Makes His Return
Friday March 02nd 2007, 2:19 pm

Asia Times Online usually runs decent articles, but a recent piece by Syed Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan Bureau Chief, is nothing less than a Brothers Grimm fairy tale on steroids, not surprising as Pakistan serves as an ISI disinfo hub. [See http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27d/026.html ]

“Al-Qaeda will this year significantly step up its global operations after centralizing its leadership and reviving its financial lifelines. Crucially, al-Qaeda has developed missile and rocket technology with the capability of carrying chemical, biological and nuclear warheads, according to an al-Qaeda insider who spoke to Asia Times Online,” writes Shahzad.

Of course, the media, reading straight from a Pentagon script, has told us the CIA-ISI manufactured terrorist group has been “centralizing its leadership and reviving its financial lifelines” for years now, not that this supposed reorganization and infusion of operating capital has produced tangible results. However, now that Iran is in the crosshairs, it makes perfect sense “al-Qaeda” is “reviving” itself.

As for the claim al-CIA-duh “has developed missile and rocket technology” supposedly capable of “carrying chemical, biological and nuclear warheads,” this is simply and utterly absurd as it obviously requires the apparatus of a state and industrial complex to produce such sophisticated technology, unless we are witless enough to believe the sort of nuclear weapons and the missiles required to deliver such payloads are easily manufactured in Waziristan with parts smuggled in under cover of sheep-herding Wazir tribes.

“While al-Qaeda will continue to operate in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will broaden its global perspective to include Europe and hostile Muslim states, Asia Times Online has learned. For the first time since its attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, this could be al-Qaeda’s year on the offensive.”

In other words, the neocon agenda needs to be completed before Bush leaves office in 2008, thus we are to be sold on the idea that 2007 may represent “al-Qaeda’s year on the offensive.”

“According to the contact, ‘The time has come for a message to be communicated to Europe.’ Asked what kind of message this would be, the contact simply smiled.”

Obviously, much of Europe, outside of impoverished and desperate for recognition and hard-strapped for cash former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, need to be sent a “message,” not from “al-Qaeda” terrorists but rather from the neocons, demanding “Old Europe” tow the “clash of civilizations” line.

For instance, Spain left the neocon fold in 2004 when the people elected José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, throwing out José María Aznar, son of the Franco fascist and propagandist Manuel Aznar Acedo. Zapatero has withdrawn Spanish troops from Iraq—an unforgivable sin for neocons far and wide. France, of course, serves as a convenient and long-standing target for the neocons, as they have different ideas about the so-called “war on terrorism.” Recall French foreign minister Hubert Védrine characterizing the neocon grasp of foreign relations as hopelessly “simplistic” and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin declaring the French would not do tricks like a well trained circus monkey for the United States.

Shahzad’s “al-Qaeda” source “stated that with Western forces trapped in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was time to open up new fronts in Somalia, Algeria, Egypt, Palestine and other places.”

Isn’t it curious “al-Qaeda” has decided to “open new fronts” in countries that figure on the neocon target list? It is of utmost importance “al-Qaeda” get busy in Palestine, of course, as the Israelis, who are connected at the hip with the American neocons, never get tired of demonizing and victimizing Palestinians.

“‘In each place, al-Qaeda has its own command and control apparatus, including Palestine, and all those fronts will be opened up very soon,’ the contact said.”

But of course—and no doubt a “front” will be opened in Palestine “very soon,” as the next wave of violence against the Palestinians will likely coincide with any action—that is to say, a mass murder campaign—against Iran, due to arrive soon, probably well before Bush leaves office. Recall the last spate of Israeli state violence against the Palestinians occurred at the same time Israel was blowing up apartment buildings with U.S.-supplied munitions in Lebanon.

“Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has not appeared in a video since October 2004 or on an audio tape since January 2006. He is by no means out of the al-Qaeda picture, although his deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, claims the media spotlight.”

By this, no doubt, Mr. Shahzad means the fake Osama, or fake Osamas (or computer generated Osamas), because the real Osama, a former CIA asset, is long dead and buried.

As we know, Ayman al-Zawahiri got his start by way of the long ago U.S. and British intelligence penetrated Muslim Brotherhood. For some odd reason, the corporate media never mentions that al-Zawahiri worked closely with Ali Mohamed, a former officer in the Egyptian army’s military intelligence who was also “cross-trained” at the U.S. Army Special Forces school at Fort Bragg. It is sincerely interesting that the American-hating al-Zawahiri would work with a guy who was recruited by the CIA to infiltrate Hezbollah. It should be noted that Mohamed was eventually put on a terrorist watch list but managed to get a visa to enter the country with al-Zawahiri in tow. But then this is apparently routine, as Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, also on a “terrorist watch list,” effortlessly entered the United States and was eventually framed for the February 26, 1993, WTC bombing, an event with more than a little input from “double agent” Ali Mohamed, who just so happened to work for the FBI at the time. Coincidence, no doubt.

“Reportedly recovered from ill health, bin Laden—possibly even sporting a trimmed beard—is active in al-Qaeda’s planning, according to the contact Asia Times Online spoke to. ‘He could be in Chechnya, Somalia or Iraq,’ the man said coyly, obviously not about to divulge bin Laden’s whereabouts. Or even in Iran, some insiders hint.”

Osama bin Laden in Iran? Stands to reason, of course, never mind Bin Laden’s Salafy branch of Sunni Islam is highly intolerant of Shiites, and Iran is primarily a Shi’a nation. Not that it matters, as most Americans, easily frightened by the very prospect of dark-skinned Freddy Kruger-like bad guys in turbans or keffiyehs, do not know there are two Islamic sects. But then Silvestre Reyes, senior member of both the Armed Services and Select Intelligence Committees, thinks “al-Qaeda” is comprised of Shi’ites, so go figure.

Finally, in addition to retrofitting crummy Abeer rockets with nuclear bombs—if you believe this, I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn—Shahzad’s “source” would have us believe “al-Qaeda [is] organizing all segments of the Iraqi resistance under its umbrella. It has already declared an ‘Emir of the Islamic Emirates of Iraq’ comprising Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din and Ninawa, and in other parts of the governorate of Babel. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi has been declared the emir of the state.”

In other words, the Iraqi resistance has fallen under the sway of “al-Qaeda,” a prospect that suits the neocons just fine, as it provides ample justification to keep the “war against terrorism” going strong for a few more generations, never mind Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England’s assertion that “to ensure that warfighters and taxpayers receive maximum benefit from on-going initiatives, it would be highly desirable to complete current projects by the summer/fall of 2008.”

Obviously, Mr. England didn’t check with the neocons before he sent out his memorandum, a career-busting move if ever there was one.

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05130027.htm
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U.S. missile plan triggers NATO tensions
05 Mar 2007 17:50:51 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Mark John

BRUSSELS, March 5 (Reuters) - A U.S. plan to base a missile defence system in eastern Europe triggered friction among NATO allies on Monday as the Czech Republic rejected criticism of talks with Washington over its possible participation.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek defended his country's deliberations on hosting the radar component of such a shield after Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn attacked the U.S. plan as threatening to cause new tensions with Russia.

"As for the 18 European Union member states who host U.S. military bases, it is not up to them to comment on the existence of such a presence in the Czech Republic," Topolanek told reporters after talks at NATO headquarters.

Along with the Czech-based radar system, the United States also wants to site a missile battery in Poland as part of a shield that would shoot down missiles fired by what Washington calls "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.

NATO countries agreed at a summit last November to pursue low-level discussions on whether the alliance should take part in such a shield but no decisions are expected any time soon.

Many European allies are concerned about the huge potential cost, while others fear it will damage European ties with Russia and question whether a threat from long-range missiles exists.

"INCOMPREHENSIBLE"

"For me it is incomprehensible that after the end of the 20th century and the fall of the Berlin Wall anyone should start escalating again," said Luxembourg's Asselborn of concerns that the plan could prompt Moscow to point more missiles at Europe.

"We'll have no stability in Europe if we force Russia into a corner ... We should help Poland and the Czech Republic to rally around a European position," he told reporters before EU foreign ministers briefly discussed the issue in Brussels.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the Czech and Polish ministers told their counterparts deliberations in their countries were still at a preliminary stage. He said the issue should be a matter for NATO and the NATO-Russia Council.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the Poles and Czechs wanted to coordinate their response to the U.S. proposal with their European partners.

An opinion poll last week showed nearly two thirds of Czechs opposed hosting the radar system. The Prague government is due to respond in coming weeks to the U.S. request to open talks on the system. It has spoken in favour, but may face problems getting any proposal through parliament.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he was confident that divisions among allies could be resolved.

"It will be an interesting debate and one that will end in consensus," he told a joint news conference with Topolanek.

Britain has voiced an interest in taking part in any U.S. system but other allies are far from sure they want a role.

German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung called last week for talks on a NATO-wide shield but Social Democrat junior partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition have warned any such move could start a new Cold War with Russia.

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http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/...ilateral_matter

NATO chief considers US bases in Central Europe bilateral matter

Mar 5, 2007, 18:15 GMT

Prague - The talks about Central European bases for a planned US missile shield are a bilateral matter, NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters after meeting Czech premier Mirek Topolanek in Brussels on Monday, CTK reported.

NATO's top man assured the Czech prime minister that the alliance will discuss the US military installations in Central Europe in coming weeks and months.

According to CTK, the secretary general said that the talks between the US and two Central European NATO members speeded up the alliance's talks about its own territorial anti-missile defence.

The NATO Riga summit last year entrusted Scheffer with opening a debate on the alliance's missile shield, he said. However, Scheffer added he is not able to estimate how long that will take.

While Poland officially agreed to further talks on placement of a US military installation on Polish soil in late February, the Czech government plans to do so by the end of March.

According to earlier statements by Topolanek and Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Alexandr Vondra, the Czech Republic is expected to enter into further talks with US about the radar station.

However, the deployment of foreign troops on Czech soil has to be approved by both chambers of the Czech parliament and the Czech president.

The junior coalition Greens, whose six votes in the lower house are needed in order for the deployment to pass, demand that the US radar station be placed under a NATO command in the future.

Unless the US guarantees this in an international treaty, the party's members of parliament will not vote for the deployment, said Ondrej Liska, a Green MP and deputy chairman for foreign affairs.

The Czech coalition is currently negotiating whether to include the NATO condition in its official response, Liska told Czech TV on Sunday.

While the senior coalition Civic Democratic Party and the junior Christian Democrats support the US radar base in the Czech Republic, senior opposition Social Democrats said they may change their negative stance if the radar base were part of a NATO defence system.

According to press reports, the vote in parliament will take place around year's end or early next year.

The radar facility is part of the controversial US missile defence system dubbed 'Son of Star Wars.' The radar and tracking station would be in the Czech Republic and the actual missile interceptor based in Poland.

The US officially asked the Czech Republic to host the radar base in a military zone, 50 kilometres south-west of Prague, after the centre-right cabinet passed a confidence vote on January 19.

The social democratic and communist parliamentary opposition opposes the base and are seeking a referendum on the matter unlike coalition parties.

According to public opinion polls, a majority of Czechs have so far opposed the radar station. Russia has fiercely criticised the planned US missile base in the Czech Republic and Poland.


© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/05/...ile-Defense.php

German EU presidency calls for calm debate on U.S. anti-missile program
The Associated Press
Published: March 5, 2007

BRUSSELS, Belgium: German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday called for a calm debate within the European Union, the NATO alliance and with Russia on a U.S. plan to develop an anti-missile shield in Europe, reflecting misgivings about the proposal in some European countries.

Steinmeier, whose country holds the EU presidency, made the call amid growing concerns in Moscow and in the EU over Washington's talks with the Czech Republic, Poland and Britain about those countries hosting radar bases and interceptor missiles as part of the plan.

"What we have to do now is to discuss this calmly within NATO and the EU and ... to talk to the Russians," Steinmeier told reporters at EU foreign ministers talks.

He said the Czech and Polish foreign ministers informed their EU counterparts of the U.S. plan, but added neither country had yet made a decision.

The U.S. plan was "incomprehensible," Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said, adding money spent on a European missile defense system could be better spent elsewhere.

"We will have no stability in Europe if we push the Russians into a corner. Here, one has to help the Poles and the Czechs to show solidarity with a European position."

But Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who was in Brussels on Monday to discuss the issue with NATO officials, said if NATO countries agree on identifying threats to its security, they should also agree on a common solution to eliminate them.

He also took a swipe at the critics of his government's intention to have a U.S. radar system placed in the Czech Republic, saying it was up to the Czechs and the Americans to agree on details of the plan.

"I do not think that each and every country with a U.S. defense base should have its say on whether or not there should be a base in the Czech Republic," he told reporters.

But according to a recent poll, 61 percent of Czechs oppose Washington's proposal to locate a radar station in a military area southwest of Prague.

Several EU nations, including France, also have voiced concern that such a system could hurt European ties with Moscow.

The Russians have strongly criticized the plan to place a radar system in the Czech Republic and a missile interceptor site in Poland.

Washington has offered assurances that the installations would be meant to deal with a potential threat from Iran, not Russia.

A top Russian general was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying Monday that his nation's air force would be capable of easily knocking out U.S. missile defense sites in Europe.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance was discussing the U.S. missile defense system plans, but reiterated that placing a U.S. radar in the Czech Republic was a bilateral issue.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he expected the Czechs and Poles to come to a decision "in cooperation" with their EU counterparts.

"This is not a European initiative, and I think we have to make that clear. It is an initiative that comes from the United States," Solana said.

Britain is also in talks with the United States about the deployment. On a visit to NATO headquarters Thursday, the director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering, said Washington also wants to base an anti-missile radar in the Caucasus, a move likely to intensify Russian concerns.

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7...amp;language=EN
-- ---

Russia to Counter US Buildup

Moscow, Mar 4 (Prensa Latina)

Russia readies to respond the eventual installation of a US anti-Missile Defense system in the Caucasus, said Russian AF Chief, Army Gen. Vladimir Mijailov.

Mijailov countered trough RIA Novosti statements by US Anti-Missiles Agency Director, Gen. Henry Obering, who said it would not be a bad idea to install the radar somewhere in the Caucasus.

He regretted the plans to install US offensive weaponry in Ukraine and other ex Soviet republics but Russia has the S-400 missiles to guarantee anti-air and space safety.

Russian AF Chief of Staff Boris Cheltsov said the technology will be operational next July and it will be supplied to the entire anti-air defense system.

On the Caucasian candidate to install the US radar, the vice president of the Russian Academy for Geopolitical Problems, Ret. Gen. Leonid Ivashov mentioned Azerbaijan and Georgia.

John Rood, US undersecretary of State for International Security, said 15 countries are linked to the US anti-missile system by either hosting key parts or by studying the proposal.

Among them he mentioned Britain, Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, India, Japan, Holland, Taiwan, Ukraine, Poland and Czech Republic.

Russian concern with the buildup near its east and western borders led to its 189 billion dollar worth defense investment.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...;articleId=4991
-- -- -- --

“Nuclear Primacy" is a Fallacy
by Valery Yarynich and Steven Starr

Global Research, March 4, 2007
Intelligent.ru, 2006 (Russian)

It is of the utmost importance that both the U.S. and the Russian Federation permanently demonstrate to the satisfaction of each other that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

The March/April 2006 edition of Foreign Affairs featured an article by Lieber and Press, entitled “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”, which stated, “It probably will soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.” The authors conclude: “the age of MAD [Mutual Assured Destruction] is nearing an end.”

Because the article was published by the Council on Foreign Relations, it was viewed as an outline of the official position of the Bush Administration. Hence it has drawn sharp and widespread criticism throughout Russia .

We believe such reactions can lead to a deterioration of relations between the U.S. and the Russian Federation , particularly in the area of nuclear arms control. This is both unfortunate and unnecessary, because the “Nuclear Primacy” argument is based upon flawed logic and questionable methodology.

The conclusions reached by Lieber and Press about a U.S. “Nuclear Primacy” over Russia and the corresponding results of their calculations in tables are erroneous. Although their set of initial data is sufficiently full and correct (Russian nuclear forces and American offensive means), both their model and method of assessing final results are incorrect. We share their concern about the (potential) danger of such a phenomenon as U.S. “Nuclear Primacy” over Russia , but nevertheless we believe that it is absent today and cannot exist in the future.

Our arguments are as follows.

One should not estimate the strategic military results of a massive nuclear strike without first conducting a preliminary assessment of the ecological consequences of such an attack, because these consequences can be clearly unacceptable for both an attacker and the world as a whole. Lieber and Press ignored this consideration.

An ecological examination must include an assessment of all possible aspects of this attack, including the consequences of: hundreds of American nuclear warheads detonating on Russian soil; the destruction of thousands of Russian nuclear warheads and the corresponding secondary effects; the interception of Russian retaliation warheads by U.S. Ballistic Missile Defenses (BMD); and the explosions of Russian warheads on American territory, if U.S. BMD failed. In any case, the results of this examination must be made public, because the final decision about their admissibility must belong to the people rather than to a handful of politicians and high-ranking military officers.

Lieber and Press examine only one scenario: a Surprise Attack at Peacetime Alert levels (SAPTA). Although they concede that this event is not “likely”, they use this variant as the basis for all their serious conclusions. We will not talk about the moral and ethical reasons, but rather focus upon the political and military-technical issues which render this approach unworkable.

First, to implement SAPTA the National Command Authority (NCA) must have in place a set of legislatively approved special conditions authorizing this action. No such set now exists.

Secondly, the NCA is obliged to inform the nation about this critical decision before a first strike is launched. This must be done if only to provide a time-buffer in which its citizens could implement some measures of protection against the possible negative consequences of the attack.

Third, in order to conduct a first strike it is necessary to implement a number of organizational and technical procedures within the strategic nuclear forces. This is because in peacetime there are numerous procedural and technological blocks in place which are designed to protect nuclear weapons against human error, accidents and sabotage. In order to remove such barriers as a preliminary step towards launching a nuclear first strike, it would require the participation of a significant number of crews on duty working at different operational levels.

The implementation of all the above mentioned circumstances as preparations for a “surprise” first strike would be technically impossible to hide. Therefore, the opposite side would have a certain amount of time to raise the combat readiness of its strategic nuclear forces. If Russia did that, then, as Lieber and Press recognize themselves, nuclear retaliation is inevitable.

Lieber and Press also assume that the Russian Early Warning System will be completely unable to reveal a massed American attack capable of destroying all Russian nuclear forces. “A critical issue for the outcome of a U.S. attack [they say] is the ability of Russia to launch on warning (i.e., quickly launch a retaliatory strike before its forces are destroyed). It is unlikely that Russia could do this.”

We believe this important conclusion demands more serious calculations than the mere statement that “it is unlikely”. It's necessary to prove that the Russian EWS will be completely incapable of revealing such massed American attack which is capable of destroying all Russian nuclear forces.

Admittedly, the Russian EWS is now weakened. However, if it is able to detect even a small part of the American attack, then it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Russia will react by utilizing the policy of Launch on Warning (LoW), i.e., launching its missiles before the attack is confirmed by nuclear detonations. The number of nuclear warheads in a Russian LoW strike will be far more than in case of a pure LuA (Launch under Attack) variant.

Thus, the implied ecological admissibility of a nuclear strike, the procedural and technical complexities of ordering and executing a surprise attack, and the assumed full inability of Russian EWS together constitute too many assumptions to be built into such a definitive definition of “Nuclear Primacy”.

A more detailed and technical version of the Foreign Affairs article can be found in the spring 2006 edition of International Security (see “The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”). Yet even in this longer version of their article, a language of assumptions remains the characteristic feature of the methodology of Lieber and Press.

For example, they write, “The Russian early warning system would PROBABLY not give Russia 's leaders the time they need to retaliate; in fact it is questionable WHETHER it would give them any warning at all. Stealthy B-2 bombers COULD LIKELY penetrate Russian air defenses without detection. Furthermore, low-flying B-52 bombers COULD fire stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles from outside Russian airspace; these missiles — small, radar-absorbing, and flying at very low altitude — would LIKELY provide no warning before detonation.” We think this isn't the language of serious proofs, especially on such an important theme.

Lieber and Press state that, “Our model does not prove that a U.S. disarming attack against Russia would necessarily succeed. Nor does the model assume that the United States is likely to launch a nuclear first strike. Even if U.S. leaders were highly confident of success, a counterforce strike would entail enormous risks and costs.” We must ask: if this is so, then how can they predict that “a surprise attack at peacetime alert levels would have a reasonable chance of success”?

As for our own assessment of the model, which is described in detail in International Security, it is as follows:

The authors have used an analytical type of model, in which a studied process is imitated with the help of formulas. However, it is well known among experts that creating a more or less correct description of a nuclear war through an analytical model is a hopeless task.

It is necessary to take into account an enormous number of different factors. Even if someone is able to offer a formula (or set of formulas) for each of these factors, it will be impossible to combine them as a whole within the framework of such a complex process.

In any case, such an “analytical conglomeration” will be incredibly difficult to accurately evaluate. We believe a statistical imitation model (SIM) is the preferable medium for such studies.

Apparently, Lieber and Press understood this difficulty very well, for there are only two simple formulas in their calculations: one formula to determine a “lethal range” against a given Russian target, and a second formula to calculate a “single-shot probability of kill” for the selected American warhead. They model only an immediate process of destroying Russian targets, and only for concrete types of “warhead-target” pairs. The authors offer an artificial picture such as the following: American warheads “lie” near Russian targets, and at “X” moment all of them are detonated simultaneously. It isn't clear from their explanations how individual assessments are combined to tables of results for all Russian nuclear forces.

Therefore, one can say that the authors tried to imitate only the small, final part of the huge process of a nuclear war. Many other serious elements also remained beyond the scope of their research. One should not assume that there will be a 100% probability of such events as:

a) the strict implementation of launch order by all American duty crews in full accordance to the selected structure of a nuclear first strike (and this structure itself also isn't clear in the given case); i.e., a human factor may be decisive for the real size of an American first strike. Will ALL American duty crews be able to push the button against Russia on one of the cloudless days of peacetime?

the inability of the Russian side to use either a LoW or LuA response. Each of many possible variations of a first strike must take this likelihood into account. For example, if all American warheads are launched simultaneously, then they reach targets at different times, and Russia can use information about nuclear explosions for its response. On the contrary, if the structure of the first strike provides a synchronous arrival at Russian targets, then the total flight time required for the American strike is sufficiently large enough to allow Russia a better possibility to detect the initial U.S. launches;

c) the somnolence of all Russian nuclear forces. As we have noted, the slightest sign of a U.S. preparation for a first strike will immediately lead to an increase of combat readiness of at least some part of Russian strategic nuclear forces. Thus, the probability of their survival will be far greater than in case of the variant offered by Lieber and Press;

d) the destruction of the Russian nuclear command and control system (C3). The authors believe that this system will be completely neutralized. However, some portion of the Russian C3 could survive to launch all remaining missiles even after absorbing a U.S. first strike.

It is extremely important to note that the method of “fixed” assessment of results used by Leiber and Press is essentially incorrect. They contradict themselves. On the one hand, they discuss a “95 percent confidence interval” for all these calculations. On the other hand, they say nothing about “non-typical” results within the remaining 5%. However, these “non-typical” results are far more important for a correct assessment of a risk of a first strike than all others listed in Table 4 (Model Results) and in Figures 1-3.

Usually, for ordinary studies of a process with an accidental nature, it is correct to utilize the most probable results for assessment, and ignore the non-typical ones. Lieber and Press transmit this correct rule to their modeling of a nuclear war. This is a serious methodological mistake.

The absolutely unique consequences of nuclear war dictate the need for a quite opposite approach: we are obliged to estimate a risk through the most unacceptable results, even if they are non-typical. Lieber and Press must study this 5% in the first place, but instead they ignore them! This calculation involves the death of many millions of people and quite possibly the destruction of civilization — it cannot be made lightly.

They write, “some probability of nuclear retaliation far below 100 percent should deter almost any prospective attacker. They [critics] err, however, by assuming that any level of first-strike uncertainty will create a powerful deterrent effect. There is no deductive reason to believe that a country with a 95 percent chance of successfully destroying its enemy's nuclear force on the ground will act as cautiously as a country that only has a 10 percent chance of success.”

In our view, this is the main error of Lieber and Press. The decisive factor is the EXISTENCE ITSELF of unacceptable results of retaliation, independent of their probability and size. This is because the individual probability of unacceptable results among all possible results of modeling does not play the decisive role; ANY of the calculated results IS possible if a real nuclear war occurs; i.e., IS, but not ARE, because a real nuclear war is possible only one time.

In 1987, American experts stated that, “Dramatically different outcomes might not be downright unlikely, but only less than the expected outcome. The expected outcome, thought the most likely, might nonetheless be unlikely . . . most sinister of all, but almost surely present, are the ‘unknown unknowns' of which operational planners are not even aware.” (Managing Nuclear Operations, by A.Carter, J.Steinbruner and C.Zraket, 1987, p.612)

Finally, Lieber and Press too often refer to history to confirm the correctness of their conclusions. As they suggest, the experience of the Cold War gives them the right to believe that “the possibility of a U.S. nuclear attack should not be entirely dismissed.” We think, however, that historical parallels are always dangerous. But in the given case they are absolutely inadmissible. At least, such conclusions should not be used as the basis for a scientific argument.

OUR CONCLUSION:
We believe the noted shortcomings of both the mathematical modeling and the approach to the assessment of modeling results are enough to consider the main conclusion of Lieber and Press as incorrect. The U.S. cannot eliminate Russian nuclear forces by means of a surprise attack without causing unacceptable damage to itself. We are confident that neither the U.S. nor Russia will obtain “Nuclear Primacy” in the future.

However, in order to adequately resolve this ultimate question, a joint working group of American and Russian official experts should be organized to model all possible present and future scenarios of a nuclear war. Such joint modeling is possible, with the help of already known data plus conditional ones, without inflicting any damage on the national security of both countries. And the results of this cooperation must be open to the public.

It is of the utmost importance that both the U.S. and the Russian Federation permanently demonstrate to the satisfaction of each other that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.