Win a Nuclear War? Really?

Neocons Firmly Believe They Can Win a Nuclear War against Russia and China
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, May 05, 2017
“The problem is that the world has listened to Americans for far too bloody long.” — Dr. Julian Osborne, from the 2000 film version of Nevil Shute’s 1957 book, On the BeacTheir insane plan is as follows: Washington will ring Russia and China with anti-ballistic missile bases in order to provide a shield against a retaliatory strike from Russia and China. Moreover, these US anti-ABM bases also can deploy nuclear attack missiles unknown to Russia and China, thus reducing the warning time to five minutes, leaving Washington’s victims little or no time in which to make a decision.
The neoconservatives think that Washington’s first strike will so badly damage the Russian and Chinese retaliatory capabilities that both governments will surrender rather than launch a response. The Russian and Chinese leaderships would conclude that their diminished forces leave little chance that many of their ICBMs will be able to get past Washington’s ABM shield, leaving the US largely intact. A feeble retaliation by Russia and China would simply invite a second wave US nuclear attack that would obliterate Russian and Chinese cities, killing millions and leaving both countries in ruins.
In short, the American warmongers are betting that the Russian and Chinese leaderships would submit rather than risk total destruction.
There is no question that neoconservatives are sufficiently evil to launch a preemptive nuclear attack, but possibly the plan aims to put Russia and China into a situation in which their leaders conclude that the deck is stacked against them and, therefore, they must accept Washington’s hegemony.
To feel secure in its hegemony, Washington would have to order Russia and China to disarm.
This plan is full of risks. Miscalculations are a feature of war. It is reckless and irresponsible to risk the life of the planet for nothing more than Washington’s hegemony.
The neoconservative plan puts Europe, the UK, Japan, S. Korea, and Australia at high risk were Russia and China to retaliate. Washington’s ABM shield cannot protect Europe from Russia’s nuclear cruise missiles or from the Russian Air Force, so Europe would cease to exist. China’s response would hit Japan, S. Korea, and Australia.
The Russian hope and that of all sane people is that Washington’s vassals will understand that it is they that are at risk, a risk from which they have nothing to gain and everything to lose, repudiate their vassalage to Washington and remove the US bases. It must be clear to European politicians that they are being dragged into conflict with Russia. This week the NATO commander told the US Congress that he needed funding for a larger military presence in Europe in order to counter “a resurgent Russia.”
Let us examine what is meant by “a resurgent Russia.” It means a Russia that is strong and confident enough to defend its interests and those of its allies. In other words, Russia was able to block Obama’s planned invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran and to enable the Syrian armed forces to defeat the ISIS force sent by Obama and Hillary to overthrow Assad.
Russia is “resurgent” because Russia is able to block US unilateral actions against some other countries.
This capability flies in the face of the neoconservative Wolfowitz doctrine, which says that the principal goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any country that can serve as a check on Washington’s unilateral action.
While the neocons were absorbed in their “cakewalk” wars that have now lasted 16 years, Russia and China emerged as checks on the unilateralism that Washington had enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What Washington is trying to do is to recapture its ability to act worldwide without any constraint from any other country. This requires Russia and China to stand down.
Are Russia and China going to stand down? It is possible, but I would not bet the life of the planet on it. Both governments have a moral conscience that is totally missing in Washington. Neither government is intimidated by the Western propaganda. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said yesterday that we hear endless hysterical charges against Russia, but the charges are always vacant of any evidence.
Conceiveably, Russia and China could sacrifice their sovereignty for the sake of life on earth. But this same moral conscience will propel them to oppose the evil that is Washington in order not to succumb to evil themselves. Therefore, I think that the evil that rules in Washington is leading the United States and its vassal states to total destruction.
Having convinced the Russian and Chinese leaderships that Washington intends to nuke their countries in a suprise attack (see, for example, http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/04/us-forces-preparing-sudden-nuclear.html ), the question is how do Russia and China respond? Do they sit there and await an attack, or do they preempt Washington’s attack with an attack of their own?
What would you do? Would you preserve your life by submitting to evil, or would you destroy the evil?
Writing truthfully results in my name being put on lists (financed by who?) as a “Russian dupe/agent.” Actually, I am an agent of all people who disapprove of Washington’s willingness to use nuclear war in order to establish Washington’s hegemony over the world, but let us understand what it means to be a “Russian agent.”
It means to respect international law, which Washington does not. It means to respect life, which Washington does not. It means to respect the national interests of other countries, which Washington does not. It means to respond to provocations with diplomacy and requests for cooperation, which Washington does not. But Russia does. Clearly, a “Russian agent” is a moral person who wants to preserve life and the national identity and dignity of other peoples.
It is Washington that wants to snuff out human morality and beome the master of the planet. As I have previously written, Washington without any question is Sauron. The only important question is whether there is sufficient good left in the world to resist and overcome Washington’s evil.

Obama Increases The Arms Race With Russia And China

United States’ first ‘smart’ nuclear bomb signals new arms race with China and Russia: analysts

MINNIE CHAN
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 18 August, 2016, 11:23am
UPDATED : Thursday, 18 August, 2016, 11:22pm

Washington’s green light for a new generation of steerable and smart tactical nuclear weapons may signal the start of a new US nuclear arms race with China and Russia, military analysts say.

Russia and China are believed to have been developing similar weapons for decades, but Chinese experts are apparently keen to learn the lessons of the former Soviet Union’s failed attempt to keep up with the United States in the cold war.

Why did China release rare videos of its successful anti-missile system tests?

Tactical nuclear weapons, known as non-strategic nuclear weapons, are designed to support naval, land and air forces in areas close to friendly forces and perhaps even on contested friendly territory.
The new US weapon, the B61-12, is America’s first guided, or “smart” nuclear bomb. It weighs 350kg and can penetrate fortified structures several metres underground.

Unlike banned weapons of mass destruction, the B61-12 is designed to be carried by high-speed stealth fighter jets to hit targets precisely with limited damage to structures and lives nearby.
Song Zhongping, a retired instructor for the People’s Liberation Army’s former strategic missile force, said one of China’s main challenges was the carrier vehicle.

“Like many other nuclear powers, China started developing similar tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) many years ago. It has had nuclear technology for decades,” Song said.

“The main difficulties China’s TNW development faces now are how to increase precision and what kinds of carriers the mini-weapons will use.”

Song said China’s technology lagged the US and Russia, but he declined to give details of the types Beijing was developing.

The US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced early this month that the B61-12 had completed a four-year development and testing phase and was in production engineering. Full-scale production was expected to get under way in 2020.

US President Barack Obama announced that 180 of the weapons would be deployed in five European countries, despite appeals last month from 10 senators urging restraint on nuclear weapons spending.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the reports that the US was getting ready to produce the B61-12, except that the Kremlin was still assessing its threat.

But Senator Viktor Ozerov, of the Russian Federation Council’s Defence and Security Committee, warned that the country’s nuclear specialists would “carefully study the level of threat and take measures to minimise it, if needed”, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Professor Jonathan Holslag, head of research at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, said the B61-12 “increased America’s options to carry out strikes against potential adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran”.

“The B61-12 has to be seen in this context … to have more escalation possibilities in between a conventional war and a nuclear Armageddon,” Holslag said.

“We are already in a nuclear arms race, not of the magnitude of the cold war … Contrary to the cold war, it is not the size of the weapon stocks that matter, but its survivability and accuracy.”

Is China militarising space? Experts say new junk collector could be used as anti-satellite weapon
Shanghai-based military expert Ni Lexiong said America’s announcement to develop the controversial bomb suggested the Pentagon was preparing for potential regional conflicts, such on the Korean peninsula with North Korea, or even in the South China Sea with China.

“It’s rare for the US to announce the deployment of such a controversial weapon. It’s possible the US is going to use the B61-12 in case there is a regional conflict,” Ni said.

“But I don’t exclude the possibility that the US wants to increase its nuclear deterrence by announcing such a shocking project. It’s such a costly project.”

Both Ni and Song said they believed China would not follow in Moscow’s footsteps in keeping up with the US in the arms race as Beijing still remembered the lessons learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union collapsed after engaging in a costly and destructive arms race with the United States while its military worked to suppress anti-communist elements and extend its power in eastern Europe.

“Beijing still sticks to the rule left by Mao Zedong that ‘China should develop and own nuclear weapons, but no need to keep so many… [just] enough to cause deterrence,” Ni said.

The B61-12 weapon has been dubbed the most expensive US nuclear bomb, costing about US$11 billion for 400 bombs. It is at the heart of an ongoing modernisation of America’s nuclear arms, projected to cost US$1 trillion over the next 30 years.

Holslag said the production of the super bomb would be limited by the huge cost.

This Is Babylon The Great? (Revelation 18)

 

The U.S. Is Running Part of Its Nuclear Forces on 8-Inch Floppy Drives

By Grant Burningham On 5/25/16 at 6:57 PM

U.S. Technology Department of Defense

The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a startling report on the state of the government’s information technology infrastructure on Wednesday. According to the report, the Department of Defense (DOD) “coordinates the operational functions of the United States’ nuclear forces, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers, and tanker support aircrafts” with a 1970s computer system that uses 8-inch floppy disks.

The total amount that the government requested for information technology services in 2017 is $89 billion. The government plans to spend the vast majority of this IT budget on operations and maintenance, the report says.

Keeping up old systems, it seems, is getting more and more expensive. Even as the overall budget for IT systems in government is rising, the amount of money being spent on upgrading systems is declining, down $7.3 billion from 2010, according to the GAO report. The rest is being spent on ancient relics that still power important systems.

Ever seen one of these? The Strategic Automated Command and Control System for U.S. nuclear weapons at the Department of Defense still uses them. gao.gov 
 
In some cases, agencies have been forced to hire retired employees to maintain systems that are decades out of date.

At the Department of the Treasury, for instance, the Individual Master File, the “authoritative data source for individual taxpayers where accounts are updated, taxes are assessed, and refunds are generated,” was programmed to run in assembly language, an expensive, hard to maintain programming language that runs on an IBM mainframe.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) tracks “claims filed by veterans for benefits, eligibility, and dates of death,” using COBOL, a computer language several decades beyond its prime.

While the DOD is planning to upgrade the system that uses floppy disks by the end of 2017, both the Treasury and the VA don’t have any plans to replace their systems, which means more maintenance costs in the long run, the report says.

The report recommends that Office of Budget Management call on individual agencies to identify and prioritize legacy information systems that are in need of replacement or modernization.

North Korea To Expand Its Nuclear Arsenal (Daniel 7:7)

North Korea calls for expansion of nuclear arsenal

Tony Munroe, Reuters

KCNA/ReutersKim Jong Un addresses commanding officers of the combined units of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in this photo released April 2, 2014.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an expansion of the size and power of his country’s nuclear arsenal, state media said on Wednesday, a week after a nuclear test that drew condemnation from its neighbors and the US.

Last week’s nuclear test was North Korea’s fourth, although the United States and experts doubt the North’s claim that it was of a more powerful hydrogen bomb, as the blast was of about the same size as that from an atomic bomb test in 2013.

“(Kim) called for bolstering up both in quality and quantity the nuclear force capable of making nuclear strikes at the US-led imperialists any time and in any space … if they encroach upon the sovereignty of the DPRK and make threatening provocations,” the official KCNA state news agency said.

The North’s official name is Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Kim “set forth the important tasks to be fulfilled to bolster up the nuclear force,” it said, and called for the “detonation of more powerful H-bomb in the future.”

Kim was speaking at a ceremony to award scientists and others behind last week’s nuclear tests, which North Korea has been touting in state media as a major achievement.

In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese nuclear experts have warned that North Korea may have 20 nuclear warheads and the capability to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to double its arsenal by 2016. That estimate exceeded most previous US assessments, which ranged from 10 to 16 bombs at the time.

On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously to pass legislation that would broaden sanctions over North Korea’s nuclear program.

(Reporting by Tony Munroe; Editing by Dan Grebler)

The World’s Nuclear Arsenals Expand (Revelation 16)

 
India expanding nuclear arsenal: U.S.

Updated: October 6, 2015 00:26 IST | Narayan Lakshman

A senior U.S. administration official this week clubbed India along with Pakistan, North Korea and Iran in a reference to nations that were expanding their nuclear weapons capabilities amidst global proliferation concerns.

Speaking at a conference in Oslo, Norway, Frank Rose, Assistant Secretary of State at the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, said a few days ago, “… India and Pakistan are adding to their arsenals; North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes remain a concern to all; and Iran, despite the landmark nuclear deal, continues its ballistic missile programs.”

Mr. Rose said that given these nations’ nuclear ambitions, along with the fact that Russia and China were modernising their nuclear forces, it would take more than simply banning nuclear weapons to prevent their proliferation and “effectively deter multiple adversaries with varying capabilities.”
As it stands the agreement for declared nuclear powers to supply India with uranium fuel and reactor capabilities has ground to a halt pending talks between U.S. nuclear corporations and the Indian government, negotiations that have foundered on at least two clauses of India’s nuclear liability law.

The Nuclear Arsenal of Babylon the Great (Daniel 7)

Welcome to American Nuclear Weapons 101

Land of the free, home of the nukes?
Tom NicholsDana Struckman
October 3, 2015

Why does the United States have a nuclear arsenal, and what is it supposed to do?
That’s actually a complicated question, especially in the 21st century. Even during the Cold War, there were strong divisions among American strategists about the purpose of nuclear weapons. For some, they existed only to deter nuclear attacks on the United States; for others, they were the military equalizer between an outgunned West and a gigantic Communist alliance. How did we get the nuclear deterrent we have, and where should we go from here?

The Past:

The U.S. nuclear force today is the cumulative result of a number of decisions made over 70 years. At the dawn of the Cold War, bombers were the backbone of the American nuclear deterrent, since there was no other way to deliver a weapon over long distances. The Soviets also developed long-range bombers, but they were considerably inferior to their U.S. counterparts, and had to traverse two oceans before reaching North America.

At first, the United States tried to use its nuclear advantage to contain Soviet expansion by threatening to use nuclear force in response to almost any Soviet aggression anywhere. This was the Eisenhower-era policy of “Massive Retaliation,” but this was a less a strategy than a sign of desperation. There was no way for the U.S. and its allies to confront the massive conventional superiority of the Soviet Union (and, for a time, its huge Chinese communist ally) in Europe or Asia with conventional force. Outgunned and outmanned, the Americans threatened to respond “at times and in places of its own choosing” with nuclear arms, but Washington never made clear what would trip this nuclear trigger, and in the end, Massive Retaliation, while an early attempt to induce uncertainty in the enemy, was a hollow threat once the Soviets could respond in kind.

From the 1950s to the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union both diversified their strategic forces. Both sides soon developed long-range missiles, but the earliest versions were in perhaps the worst possible configuration: huge warheads on top of relatively inaccurate missiles sitting outside on launch pads. These bombers and missiles out in the open were sitting ducks, which made them a strong and destabilizing temptation for an enemy first strike.

In the 1960s, the superpowers started burying their missiles in the ground and hiding them underwater. Survivability was the key to stability: if neither side could be assured of neutralizing the other with a sudden attack, neither would risk suicide. This created the condition American strategists called “mutual assured destruction,” a phrase they chose in part because of the evocative acronym it created. The United States spread its ICBMs out over vast spaces in the American West, but the Americans took advantage of their maritime prowess to create a powerful sea-going deterrent as well (as did the Soviets, but in smaller numbers). These changes meant that both sides soon had a “secure second-strike capability,” or the guaranteed ability to strike back after being hit first.

By 1967 the U.S. arsenal hit a peak of some 32,000 weapons, from small bombs to blockbusters. This array of forces reflected the war that U.S. leaders and strategists expected to fight. During the Cold War, the United States and its NATO allies assumed, sensibly, that no matter what started an East-West confrontation, the conflict would migrate to the inter-German border, the “Central Front,” in Europe. The Soviets, the reasoning went, would have every incentive to shift any conflict away from areas where they were weaker or less capable (such as Asia or the Middle East) and take it to the area where they enjoyed huge conventional superiority.

Once war was underway in Europe, NATO would be forced to surrender whatever was at issue to get the Soviets to release their grip on Western Europe. Nuclear weapons provided the West with its only chance of stopping such an attack. Small, short-range weapons (“tactical” nuclear arms) would be fired from everything ranging from bazookas to artillery, destroying the advancing Soviet tank armies and halting the invasion in its tracks. The goal was to convince the Soviet Union that nothing could be gained from aggression, since every scenario would lead back to a major nuclear exchange.

But did the Americans really intend to use nuclear arms, or were they trying to deter the Soviets from using nuclear force against the U.S. and NATO? The U.S. answer was to build a nuclear force configured for both deterrence and nuclear war-fighting. In fact, by the late 1960s, the American position was something of a paradox: the only way to convince the USSR that we wanted no part of a nuclear war was to have a logical plan for fighting one, and to maintain a credible force that could execute that plan. The U.S. triad thus shifted somewhat from a rationale of survivability and toward increasing options for nuclear use in a variety of scenarios ranging from limited strikes to all-out war. That force, and its multiple options, remains largely in place today.

The Present:

Today, the Cold War – or at least the most recent Cold War – is over. What does the U.S. strategic deterrent look like today, and what purpose should it serve in our national security?

First, it’s important to note that the dilemma of Massive Retaliation persists, in a way, to this day. What can the U.S. nuclear force, designed for World War III, do against a smaller nation that might be considering the use of, say, chemical weapons, or a single tactical bomb in a regional confrontation? Is the United States actually ready to employ nuclear strikes across North Korea or Iran?

Second, although the U.S. force is much smaller than it was during the Cold War (with, for example, only 450 land-based silos instead of 1000), it is still configured for a major nuclear conflict with a peer competitor. By treaty with the Russians, we can only have 700 launchers – that is, any mix of submarine or land-based missiles, along with bombers – and they can only carry a total of 1550 warheads. How should we arrange our forces within those limits?

The United States has conducted three reviews of its nuclear forces – in 1994, 2002, and 2010 – and each time concluded that it needs to retain the triad. But does America still need long-range bombers? Should it get rid of the land-based ICBMs, and move most of its missiles underwater, as some have argued? How many submarines, and with how many weapons on each, do we need? Does NATO still need tactical nuclear weapons, now that the Atlantic Alliance is the conventionally superior power and Russia is the inferior regional power?

The Future…Hard Choices Ahead:

Today, the U.S. nuclear deterrent is facing hard choices about modernization. The Air Force and Navy are drawing up plans for new bombers and a new generation of submarines. The American tactical arsenal will be modernized, at great cost. In effect, the result will be a smaller version of our Cold War nuclear deterrent, an idea that would have been harder to sell until the reemergence of Russia as a severe threat to U.S. security. But with the costs projected to reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars, it’s time to ask if our previous strategies and nuclear force structure make sense.
The next administration will have to do its own review of U.S. nuclear posture when it comes into office after 2017. Will it start from the ground up, or will it merely ratify decisions made in the 1960s and the 1970s? There’s no rule that says that previous answers are the wrong answers, but every planner knows that there’s always an insidious and difficult enemy when drawing up future forces: bureaucratic inertia.

Tom Nichols is Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College and an adjunct at the Harvard Extension School. His most recent book is No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security (University of Pennsylvania, 2014) You can follow him on Twitter:@RadioFreeTom.
Dana Struckman (Colonel, USAF, ret) is Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College. On active duty, he was a missileer and also worked in ICBM testing and acquisition. Additionally, he commanded a U.S. ICBM missile squadron at Minot AFB, North Dakota. The views expressed solely those of the authors.

Korean Horn Confirms Its Nuclear Progress (Dan 7:7)

  
North Korea confirms new and improved nuclear weapons in the works

SEPTEMBER 18, 20158:40AM
MEGAN PALINnews.com.au

AUSTRALIA is an “easy target” for a potential nuclear attack from North Korea, although as a sparsely populated country, it’s unlikely we’ll be bombed directly.

That’s the view of Australian National University Korea expert Leonid Petrov, who told news.com.au that the secretive state would be able to make enough weapons-grade plutonium to create a nuclear bomb each year.

And he said their weapons could reach Australia, although, as we don’t have a huge strategic importance or many military operations, they are more likely to target South Korea, Japan and the USA.

North Korea mothballed the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in 2007 under a six-nation aid-for-disarmament accord, but began renovating it after its last nuclear test in 2013.

This week, the country’s Atomic Energy Institute said that the Kim Jong-un regime had been improving the quantity and quality of its nuclear weapons and confirmed the Yongbyon nuclear complex — including a five-megawatt reactor — was now fully operational.

Mr Petrov, the Australian National University’s Korean studies researcher, said that meant North Korea was now producing weapons-grade plutonium — used in nuclear bombs — at the facility as part of its nuclear weapons program.

“Plutonium materials are perfect materials for nuclear bombs,” Mr Petrov said.

“North Korea claims the primary purpose is economic for electricity but it doesn’t deny the plutonium material can be used for nuclear bombs, which they are happy to use in case of invasion, which they claim constantly.”

The facility is capable of producing about 6kg of plutonium per year — enough for one nuclear bomb.

“The nuclear weapons program is a domestic message that North Korea is at constant threat of invasion from South Korea and the USA,” Mr Petrov said.

North Korea has been subjected to tough economic sanctions over their controversial nuclear programs, their latest move understood to be an attempt to pressure Washington into restarting talks that could lead to concessions.

The announcement regarding the revitalisation of the Yongbyon nuclear complex comes just one day after North Korea threatened to launch satellites into orbit, a move criticised by the US, Japan and other countries as being long-range missile testing in disguise.

Ballistic missile tests are banned under UN security council resolutions.

“The news of the facility came hand in hand with the announcement that another rocket is going to be launched sometime soon to deliver a satellite into orbit, but it’s more likely [Pyongyang is testing] the engine boosters, potentially carrying the pay loads,” Mr Petrov said.

“So far North Korea has several dirty bombs: nuclear devices that can be detonated, but they’re pretty bulky — their size and weight is not useful in a combat, tactical situation.

“They need the carriers and delivery method, otherwise the bulky nuclear bombs are useless and that’s why they experiment with long range missiles.”

The expected missile launches will coincide with the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ party on October 10.

“What they’re doing now is to miniaturise the devices so the size and weight can be mounted on missiles, such as rockets, that deliver warheads to the targets that are threats,” Mr Petrov said.
He added Australia was unlikely to be a target for North Korea in a nuclear attack, despite our huge land mass.

But he said we “wouldn’t go unscathed” in the event of a nuclear explosion in another country.
“We have citizens residing and working and travelling all over Asia,” Mr Petrov said.

“Australia is definitely going to be impacted by any significant escalations of tensions in Korea.
“A nuclear strike hasn’t been seen since 1945 at end of World War II when Japan was bombed. “But the existence of nuclear bombs means the threat of strikes always exists and the consequences would be catastrophic.

“If the conflict in Korea is triggered, and there is a full on nuclear combat situation … we’re likely to be involved in the conflict.”

South Korea’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that the firing of a long-range missile would represent a “serious” violation of UN resolutions.

North Korea has staged several successful nuclear tests, in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, “the only guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is their total elimination”.

“A mistake, reckless shot, miscalculation of information or poor judgment might lead to uncontrolled escalation of tensions in Korea where the hostilities may cause the situation to easily get out of control,” Mr Petrov said.

“Once it’s at that stage it may lead to potential nuclear disaster.

“The threat continues and is not diminished.”

The Great Korean Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7:7)

 
How Large Is North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal?

Kim Jong-un’s government continues to work on its nuclear program, a major source of tension in Asia.

The secretive nation has previously ruled out an Iran-style deal to shut down its nuclear program, apparently concluding that it has more to gain from developing more nuclear warheads and longer-range missiles. The recent announcement that the country’s main nuclear facility is once more operating normally has led to renewed focus on Pyongyang, writes John Power for The Diplomat.
Official announcement that plutonium reactor is back online

State media announced the news on Tuesday, confirming that the facility’s plutonium reactor is now back online. The report from the Korean Central News Agency is corroborated by satellite imagery seen by the Institute for Science and International Security, which claimed that the reactor was functioning again in April.

International denuclearization talks led to the shutting down of the Yongbyon nuclear complex in 2007. A group of nations including the United States, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan brought North Korea to the negotiating table in an attempt to improve regional security.

Talks ultimately failed, and Pyongyang reiterated its commitment to its nuclear program. In 2013 a period of increased tensions with South Korea led North Korean officials to declare that Yongbyon would be brought back online.

North Korea makes regular threats about nuclear strikes

North Korea is known for its aggressive rhetoric, and Tuesday’s statement was no different. The head of the atomic energy agency threatened the use of nuclear weapons at “any time” against the U.S., which he blamed for engaging in “reckless hostile policy.”

For a long time, North Korea watchers were unsure whether Pyongyang had nuclear weapons. That question was answered by the country’s first nuclear test in 2006, but doubts remain to this day over how many warheads the Kim regime currently possesses.

Opinions vary widely, with unnamed Chinese experts cited by The Wall Street Journal claiming in April that North Korea may have as many as 20 warheads. In contrast the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University believes Pyongyang has between 10-16 devices.
According to Jeffrey Lewis, founder of Arms Control Wonk.com, a dozen warheads is a likely number. “I just estimate based on the amount of plutonium — call it a dozen weapons with a fair amount of uncertainty,” he said.

Pyongyang could have more weapons-grade material than previously thought

However it should be pointed out that Lewis’ estimate does not include the uranium enrichment program that Pyongyang also maintains. He describes it as a “major unknown.”

Experts say that uranium enrichment facilities are easier to hide than their plutonium equivalents. Precise estimates of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities are impossible due to highly restricted access to the country and the lack of knowledge of its technical know-how.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, who has visited Yongbyon on several occasions, spoke out on the issue in April.

“Developing these estimates is not an exact science,” he told the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. “There are huge uncertainties in estimating the enrichment capacity that is likely present at covert sites. One particular problem is the difficulty in assessing how much indigenous capacity North Korea has to make the key materials and components for centrifuges.”

Can North Korea be tempted to give up its nuclear program?

Should North Korea be able to continue work on its missile programs, its existing stockpile of nuclear devices would be able to strike targets further afield. Pyongyang already has missiles capable of striking any point in South Korea, and experts believe that it may not be too far away from developing a missile that can hit Japan.

Kim Jong-un continues to invest heavily in the program, to the detriment of the North Korean economy. The signing of the recent nuclear deal with Iran raised hopes that a similar deal could be reached with North Korea, but that appears to be impossible.

The situation of the two countries is very different given Iran’s oilfields and large consumer market, whereas North Korea does not have as much to gain from reentering the world economy. The fact remains that North Korea has invested a greater proportion of its economic output in nuclear weapons than Iran did, making the program harder to give up.

While the Kim regime may be one of the longest-surviving dictatorships of recent history, officials are still terrified of losing power. The threat of nuclear strikes at times appears to be the regime’s only chip in negotiations with the outside world, and as such it is difficult to envision a voluntary agreement to give them up.

The Third Horn Will Become The Third Largest (Daniel 8)

  

Report: Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could become the world’s third-biggest

By Tim Craig August 27 Follow @timcraigpost

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A new report by two American think tanks asserts that Pakistan may be building 20 nuclear warheads annually and could have the world’s third-largest nuclear stockpile within a decade.

The report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Center concludes that Pakistan is rapidly expanding its nuclear capabilities because of fear of its archrival, India, also a nuclear power. The report, which will be released Thursday, says Pakistan is far outpacing India in the development of nuclear warheads.

Analysts estimate that Pakistan has about 120 nuclear warheads, while India has about 100.
In the coming years, the report states, Pakistan’s advantage could grow dramatically because it has a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium that could be used to quickly produce low-yield nuclear devices.

India has far larger stockpiles of plutonium, which is needed to produce high-yield warheads, than Pakistan does. But the report says India appears to be using most of its plutonium to produce domestic energy.

Pakistan could have at least 350 nuclear weapons within five to 10 years, the report concludes. Pakistan then would probably possess more nuclear weapons than any country except the United States and Russia, which each have thousands of the bombs.

“The growth path of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, enabled by existing infrastructure, goes well beyond the assurances of credible minimal deterrence provided by Pakistani officials and analysts after testing nuclear devices,” the report states.

Pakistani military officials were not available to comment on the report when it was made available to journalists Wednesday.

Western officials and analysts have struggled for years to get an accurate assessment of Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities. Several Pakistani analysts questioned the findings of the report, saying it is based on a faulty assumption that Pakistan is using all of its existing stockpiles of fissile material to make nuclear weapons.

Mansoor Ahmed, a nuclear expert at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, said he suspects that a more accurate assessment of Pakistan’s capability is that it can develop no more than 40 to 50 new warheads over the next several years.

Ahmed, however, doesn’t dispute that Pakistan’s military is seeking to expand its nuclear capabilities.
“This report is overblown,” said Ahmed, who was recently named a nuclear security fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “However . . . what the world must understand is that nuclear weapons are part of Pakistan’s belief system. It’s a culture that has been built up over the years because [nuclear weapons] have provided a credible deterrence against external aggression.”

France has about 300 warheads and the United Kingdom has about 215, according to the Federation of American Scientists. China has approximately 250.

The report was written by Toby Dalton, co-director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Program, and Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Center.

Pakistan is believed to use plutonium as well as highly enriched uranium to create nuclear warheads. Dalton noted that Pakistan recently added a fourth plutonium production reactor at its Khushab Nuclear Complex.

“We assume, maybe correctly, maybe inaccurately, with the fuel coming out of the four reactors, they are processing it as rapidly as possible to get the plutonium out,” Dalton said.

India and Pakistan, which have fought three major wars, became declared nuclear powers in 1998. Since then, Western leaders have been increasingly alarmed about the potential for a nuclear exchange between the rivals.

India has adopted a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons. Pakistani leaders have repeatedly declined to take a similar stance, saying they might be forced to resort to using the weapons should India’s larger army ever invade Pakistan.

India views nuclear weapons “as a political tool, a prestige item, not something you use on a battlefield,” Krepon said. In Pakistan, he said, nuclear weapons are seen as “things you have to be willing to use” to guarantee stability.

But Krepon and Dalton said there is still time for Pakistan to slow down the development of its nuclear arsenal. If it does, they said, the international community should consider what steps it can take to recognize it as a responsible nuclear state.

Futility Of Trying To Stop The Pakistani Horn (Dan 8:8)

US slams Pakistan for nuclear arsenal boast

By Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN | 29 Aug, 2015, 12.09PM IST

The censure came after Pakistan’s geriatric NSA Sartaj Aziz boasted that Pakistan was a nuclear weapons power that was capable of defending itself against India.

WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s nuclear sabre rattling earned for it a mild reprimand from the Obama administration even as military generals in Rawalpindi told the country’s politicians that India is their principal ex ternal threat and they need more money to counter it.

Border tension between India and Pakistan figured in the daily US state department briefing on Thursday with a spokesman cautioning Islamabad for talking loosely about using nuclear weapons to counter India.

“We want to see tensions decrease, and speculation about potential use of nuclear weapons certainly isn’t doing anything to help it, if in fact those comments were made,” spokesman John Kirby said.
The censure came after Pakistan’s geriatric NSA Sartaj Aziz boasted that Pakistan was a nuclear weapons power that was capable of defending itself against India, even though New Delhi has made no nuclear threats and has a no-first use policy when it comes to nuclear weapons use.

Kirby essayed the familiar salutary advice to a country that is home to a wide range of terrorists and terror groups, some of them designated by the UN and US.

“(US) secretary (of state, John) Kerry has said repeatedly that he wants the two nations to continue to work together, with constructive dia logue, to resolve their issues, and we understand that there are issues that are longstanding,” Kirby told reporters. “But that’s what really needs to happen, is sitting down, dialogue, cooperation, talking through these things, and trying to work through some meaningful solutions.”

Earlier in the week, the state department had repeated the familiar mantra that such talks were something the two sides needed to undertake and no mediation can be expected from a third party .
Pakistan has been trying hard to attract international attention and mediation into the Kashmir dispute while not giving up on its patronage of terrorist groups such as LeT and its avatars and helping militants infiltrate into India. Earlier this week, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi took its complaints to the UN even though Pakistan protects UN designated terrorists such as Hafiz Saeed.
On Friday , Pakistani media reported that in a briefing at the joint staff headquarters, the generals told members of Pakistan’s senate defense committee that India was buying $100 billion worth of weapons over the next five years aimed primarily at Pakistan, and they needed more money to counter that.

Pakistan To Become The Third Largest Nuclear Power (Dan 8:8)

 
Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be world’s third largest in a decade, say US think-tanks
Aug 27, 2015 22:37 IST

Washington: Pakistan is on course of having about 350 nuclear weapons in about a decade, the world’s third-largest stockpile after the US and Russia and twice that of India, two major American think-tanks said on Thursday

“In the next five to 10 years, Pakistan could have a nuclear arsenal not only twice the size of India’s but also larger than those of the United Kingdom, China, and France, giving it the third-largest arsenal behind the United States and Russia,” said a report by two renowned scholars Tom Dalton and Michael Krepon.

The 48-page report titled ‘A Normal Nuclear Pakistan’ by the Stimson Center and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says that the growth path of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, enabled by existing infrastructure goes well beyond the assurances of credible minimal deterrence provided by Pakistani officials and analysts after testing nuclear devices.

“If Pakistan continues on its current path, and if there is no reassessment of its presumed need to compete effectively with India, in 10 years time Pakistan could possess a nuclear arsenal nearing 350 weapons (or at least a stockpile of fissile material sufficient for an arsenal of this size),” the report said.

“If Pakistan has defined production requirements for approximately 20 nuclear warheads annually against an India that competes haphazardly, it is unlikely to diminish annual production requirements for an India that competes seriously,” it said.

Consequently, if New Delhi picks up the pace of this competition and Rawalpindi responds accordingly, Pakistan’s future nuclear stockpile could grow well beyond 350 nuclear warheads.
“If deterrence fails, it appears that Pakistan has no intention of ‘losing’ a nuclear war with India,” it said.

By staying on its present course, Pakistan faces very long odds against entering the nuclear mainstream, the report noted.

NSG members – especially its non-nuclear-weapon state members – are likely to view Pakistan’s rapid growth in fissile material stocks and warheads as contrary to the norms of responsible nuclear stewardship, it said.

A nuclear future in which Pakistan seeks to exceed or at least match or offset the growth in India’s nuclear and conventional military capabilities appears far bleaker for Pakistan than for India, the two think tanks said.
PTI

Babylon Must Prepare For WWIII (Dan 7:7)

Top GOP Lawmaker: US Must Consider Building New Nukes

Troubling times today for the Cold War-era weapon could mean certain dangers for the near future.
By Paul D. Shinkman Jun 23, 2015

America needs to replace a rotting arsenal of nuclear weapons and counteract an increasingly boisterous Russia, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday. For these reasons, it must consider the long-taboo prospect of building new nukes.

“Can we have a national conversation about building new nuclear weapons?” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said in remarks at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. “That’s something we haven’t been able to even have a conversation about for a while, but I think we’re going to have to.”

Just last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his plans to boost the former Soviet power’s nuclear arsenal with 40 new missiles. The plan follows a string of provocative comments from top Russian officials who consider a nuclear weapon the most effective method of countering what they consider NATO’s provocative actions in Eastern Europe.

“Russia obviously retains the right if needed to deploy its nuclear weapons anywhere on its national territory, including on the Crimean Peninsula,” Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Russian Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, said in early June.

Thornberry said Tuesday this is more than enough justification for considering a new supply of offensive nukes.

His comments join a chorus of nuclear experts who have become increasingly concerned about the role the weapon that defined the Cold War will play in the coming years. Much of the nuclear material in the U.S. arsenal will expire roughly between 2020 and 2030, without a clear plan for their replacement. Meanwhile, post-Cold War disinterest in defense-related nuclear jobs, and inattention from the departments of Defense and Energy have led to a gradual aging of the nuclear workforce, further endangering America’s chances of keeping up with potential foes.

“Our nuclear deterrent has been so safe, so reliable that we have come to take it for granted, and the people who make it possible,” Thornberry said. “We have lost people, engineers in the nuclear complex, to go to work in the energy industry, partially because they had to shoo rats off their lunch in some of the facilities in which they were working.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, during official talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, left, in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday, May 30, 2015.

“I still worry that we are asking labs to do the impossible, which is to keep complex machines running at peak condition forever,” Thornberry added. “And I’m just not sure that can happen.”
Thornberry considers nuclear deterrence “the foundation upon which all our other defense-based activities are based.” Yet the priority for nuclear maintenance and funding has slipped under recent presidents, including Obama. In 2009, the newly elected president called nuclear weaponry “the most dangerous legacies of the Cold War” and said the U.S. would reduce its stockpile over the following four years. He believed he would be able to complete a new arms reduction treaty with Russia by the end of that year.

Obama has since reportedly shifted his position slightly, prioritizing funding in 2014 for nuclear weapons maintenance over nonproliferation efforts worldwide, and followed through this year on a plan to rebuild much of America’s nuclear arsenal.

But the glamour and intrigue of working on nuclear weapons during the Cold War has become tarnished since the collapse of the Soviet empire. A 2008 Department of Defense study found trends through the 1990s indicated a steady increase of the average age of an employee working on nuclear programs, due largely to a shrinking force, employees who were willing to work beyond retirement age and lack of recruitment. Those who joined in 1985 at age 35, for example, would be close to retirement age at the time of the report.

“The continued aging of this large cohort of the nuclear workforce poses strategic challenges for maintaining and transferring critical nuclear deterrence skills to a new generation,” the report stated.
Overhauling the program became a principal effort of then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, mere weeks before he resigned in late November, and following a string of cheating and abuse scandals within the nuclear weapons branches of the military. A perception that the nuclear arms of the military were obsolete – particularly land-based silos, but also nuclear missile-equipped submarines and bombers – contributed at least in part to these shortcomings.

Acting U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf conducts a press briefing at the State Department on April 8, 2015, in Washington, D.C. Harf spoke on various topics including the Iran nuclear deal.

As a result of “troubling lapses and poor morale in our nation’s nuclear forces,” Hagel ordered reviews into these units, and promised new funds for incentives to improve morale and for higher ranking officers to oversee the force.

Hagel had historically prioritized improvements to the nuclear force going back to his tenure in the U.S. Senate. His home state of Nebraska, like Thornberry’s Texas, hosts multiple nuclear research facilities with reactors.

The Defense Department is not, however, the only collection of organizations to advocate for a sharper edge to America’s nuclear arsenal. A group of think tanks led by the Center for Strategic and International Studies have cited U.S. nuclear shortcomings, and advocated for newer weapons that could better counter an attack from, say, Russia.

Were Russia to deploy one of the smaller, more accurate weapons it claims it is developing, the U.S. might feel forced to “self-deter” and not fire back with the larger weapons to which it is limited, for fear of causing disproportionate collateral damage.

America needs to replace a rotting arsenal of nuclear weapons and counteract an increasingly boisterous Russia, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday. For these reasons, it must consider the long-taboo prospect of building new nukes.

“Can we have a national conversation about building new nuclear weapons?” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said in remarks at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. “That’s something we haven’t been able to even have a conversation about for a while, but I think we’re going to have to.”
Just last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his plans to boost the former Soviet power’s nuclear arsenal with 40 new missiles. The plan follows a string of provocative comments from top Russian officials who consider a nuclear weapon the most effective method of countering what they consider NATO’s provocative actions in Eastern Europe.

“Russia obviously retains the right if needed to deploy its nuclear weapons anywhere on its national territory, including on the Crimean Peninsula,” Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Russian Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, said in early June.

Thornberry said Tuesday this is more than enough justification for considering a new supply of offensive nukes.

His comments join a chorus of nuclear experts who have become increasingly concerned about the role the weapon that defined the Cold War will play in the coming years. Much of the nuclear material in the U.S. arsenal will expire roughly between 2020 and 2030, without a clear plan for their replacement. Meanwhile, post-Cold War disinterest in defense-related nuclear jobs, and inattention from the departments of Defense and Energy have led to a gradual aging of the nuclear workforce, further endangering America’s chances of keeping up with potential foes.

“Our nuclear deterrent has been so safe, so reliable that we have come to take it for granted, and the people who make it possible,” Thornberry said. “We have lost people, engineers in the nuclear complex, to go to work in the energy industry, partially because they had to shoo rats off their lunch in some of the facilities in which they were working.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, during official talks with Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif, left, in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday, May 30, 2015.

“I still worry that we are asking labs to do the impossible, which is to keep complex machines running at peak condition forever,” Thornberry added. “And I’m just not sure that can happen.”
Thornberry considers nuclear deterrence “the foundation upon which all our other defense-based activities are based.” Yet the priority for nuclear maintenance and funding has slipped under recent presidents, including Obama. In 2009, the newly elected president called nuclear weaponry “the most dangerous legacies of the Cold War” and said the U.S. would reduce its stockpile over the following four years. He believed he would be able to complete a new arms reduction treaty with Russia by the end of that year.

Obama has since reportedly shifted his position slightly, prioritizing funding in 2014 for nuclear weapons maintenance over nonproliferation efforts worldwide, and followed through this year on a plan to rebuild much of America’s nuclear arsenal.

But the glamour and intrigue of working on nuclear weapons during the Cold War has become tarnished since the collapse of the Soviet empire. A 2008 Department of Defense study found trends through the 1990s indicated a steady increase of the average age of an employee working on nuclear programs, due largely to a shrinking force, employees who were willing to work beyond retirement age and lack of recruitment. Those who joined in 1985 at age 35, for example, would be close to retirement age at the time of the report.

“The continued aging of this large cohort of the nuclear workforce poses strategic challenges for maintaining and transferring critical nuclear deterrence skills to a new generation,” the report stated.
Overhauling the program became a principal effort of then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, mere weeks before he resigned in late November, and following a string of cheating and abuse scandals within the nuclear weapons branches of the military. A perception that the nuclear arms of the military were obsolete – particularly land-based silos, but also nuclear missile-equipped submarines and bombers – contributed at least in part to these shortcomings.

Acting U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf conducts a press briefing at the State Department on April 8, 2015, in Washington, D.C. Harf spoke on various topics including the Iran nuclear deal.

As a result of “troubling lapses and poor morale in our nation’s nuclear forces,” Hagel ordered reviews into these units, and promised new funds for incentives to improve morale and for higher ranking officers to oversee the force.

Hagel had historically prioritized improvements to the nuclear force going back to his tenure in the U.S. Senate. His home state of Nebraska, like Thornberry’s Texas, hosts multiple nuclear research facilities with reactors.

The Defense Department is not, however, the only collection of organizations to advocate for a sharper edge to America’s nuclear arsenal. A group of think tanks led by the Center for Strategic and International Studies have cited U.S. nuclear shortcomings, and advocated for newer weapons that could better counter an attack from, say, Russia.

Were Russia to deploy one of the smaller, more accurate weapons it claims it is developing, the U.S. might feel forced to “self-deter” and not fire back with the larger weapons to which it is limited, for fear of causing disproportionate collateral damage.

“The United States is not well postured for this type of nuclear employment scenario,” according to a CSIS report. “Its Cold War-era nuclear weapons were designed for a global conflict involving thousands of high-yield weapons in a massive exchange. The United States needs to develop and deploy more employable nuclear weapons, ones that enable the United States to respond directly and proportionately to an adversary’s employment of a nuclear weapon.”

A solution within the U.S., however, will be difficult, particularly at a time of budget constraints, the looming threat of across-the-board cuts known as sequestration, a demands for upgrades from across the military services’ aging fleets.

“Technologically, financially, expertise-wise, it’s not going to be easy,” said Thornberry. The focus, he added, must be on educating both the public and Congress about the potential threat, and giving a “head start” to the next president.

Babylon’s Nearly Fatal Errors (Ezekiel 17)

  

Eric Schlosser recounts the United States’ clumsy history with nuclear weapons. And it’s terrifying.

by Joe Posner and Estelle Caswell on June 16, 2015

Human error is, well, human. Most systems people design break from time to time. Including the United States’ nuclear weapons systems:

The shocking stories in the video come from investigative reporter Eric Schlosser’s book Command and Control, in which he uncovered a “litany of errors” that go way, way beyond the official record of 33 serious accidents, known as “broken arrows.” Even the first test, 70 years ago this July 16, flirted perilously close with disaster.

Schlosser spent 6 years “in the most crazy nuclear shit imaginable” – and the revelations in the book about times we almost “destroyed a large part of the Florida coast” are seemingly endless.

Most discussion about nuclear weapons today has to do with a potential deal with Iran promising not to build a weapon. Discussion of the US missiles that were meant to be replaced 30 years ago, aging wiring, and control systems that run on floppy-disks have remained safely on the sidelines of the conversation.

If you’re worried you’ll never sleep again, it’s worth remembering that none of the nuclear weapons the US has built – 70,000, by Schlosser’s count – has fully detonated by accident. But if the US has come this perilously close, one can only imagine what might be going on in Russia, India, or Pakistan.

How close did the US come? Watch on our YouTube page.

The Nuclear Horns of the East (Dan 7:7)

  

North Korea’s Serious New Nuclear Missile Threat

by Peter Huessy
June 11, 2015 at 5:00 am

North Korea appears to have made significant progress in extending its capability as a nuclear-armed rogue nation, to where its missiles may become capable of hitting American cities with little or no warning.

What new evidence makes such a threat compelling?

North Korea claims to have nuclear warheads small enough to fit on their ballistic missiles and missiles capable of being launched from a submerged platform such as a submarine.

Shortly after North Korea’s April 22, 2015 missile test, which heightened international concern about the military capabilities of North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged China and our regional allies to restart the 2003 “six-party talks” aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula and reining in North Korea’s expanding nuclear missile program.

There are some “experts,” however, who believe that North Korea’s threat is highly exaggerated and poses no immediate danger to the United States. Consequently, many believe that, given China’s oft-repeated support for a “nuclear weapons free” Korean peninsula, time is on America’s side to get an agreement that will guarantee just such a full de-nuclearization.

But, if North Korea’s technical advances are substantive, its missiles, armed with small nuclear weapons, might soon be able to reach the continental United States — not just Hawaii and Alaska. Further, if such missile threats were to come from submarines near the U.S., North Korea would be able to launch a surprise nuclear-armed missile attack on an American city. In this view, time is not on the side of the U.S. Submarine-launched missiles come without a “return address” to indicate what country or terrorist organization fired the missile.

The implications for American security do not stop there. As North Korea is Iran’s primary missile-development partner, whatever North Korea can do with its missiles and nuclear warheads, Iran will presumably be able to do as well. One can assume the arrangement is reciprocal.

Given recent warnings that North Korea may have upwards of 20 nuclear warheads, the United States seems to be facing a critical new danger. Would renewed negotiations with China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea really be able to address this threat?

Two years ago, Andrew Tarantola and Brian Barrett said there was “no reason to panic;” that North Korea was “a long way off” — in fact “years” — before its missiles and nuclear weapons could be “put together in any meaningful way.”

At the same time, in April 2013, an official U.S. assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency stated the U.S. had “moderate” confidence that “North Korea had indeed developed a nuclear device small enough to mount on a ballistic missile.”

That was followed up two years later, on April 7, 2015, when the commander of Northcom, Admiral Bill Gortney, one of the nation’s leading homeland security defenders, said the threat was considerably more serious. He noted that, “North Korea has deployed its new road-mobile KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile and was capable of mounting a miniaturized nuclear warhead on it.”[1]

At a Pentagon press briefing in April, Admiral Cecil Haney, Commander of the US Strategic Command and America’s senior military expert on nuclear deterrence and missile defense, said it was important to take seriously reports that North Korea can now make small nuclear warheads and put them on their ballistic missiles.[2]

And sure enough, in April, North Korea launched a ballistic missile from a submerged platform. Media reaction to the North Korean test has been confused. Reuters, citing the analysis of two German “experts,” claimed the North Korean test was fake — a not-too-clever manipulation of video images.

The Wall Street Journal, on May 21, 2015, echoed this view, noting: “[F]or evidence of North Korea’s bending of reality to drum up fears about its military prowess,” one need look no further than a consensus that North Korea “doctored” pictures of an alleged missile test from a submarine. This, they claimed, was proof that the “technology developments” by North Korea were nothing more than elaborately faked fairy tales.

However, Israeli missile defense expert Uzi Rubin — widely known as the “father” of Israel’s successful Arrow missile defense program — explained to this author that previous North Korean missile developments, which have often been dismissed as nothing more than mocked-up missiles made of plywood, actually turned out to be the real thing — findings confirmed by subsequent intelligence assessments.

Rubin, as well as the South Korean Defense Ministry, insist that on April 22, the North Korean military did, in fact, launch a missile from a submerged platform.[3]

What gave the “faked” test story some prominence were the misunderstood remarks of the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral James Winnefeld. He had said, on May 19, that the North Korean missile launch was “not all” that North Korea said it was. He also mentioned that North Korea used clever video editors to “crop” the missile test-launch images. Apparently, that was exactly what the editors did. The Admiral, however, never claimed in his speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies there had been no successful missile test.[4]

The same day, a high-ranking State Department official, Frank Rose — Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance — told a Korean security seminar on Capitol Hill that North Korea had successfully conducted a “missile ejection” test, but from an underwater barge rather than a submarine.[5]

To confuse matters further, additional pictures were released by the South Korean media to illustrate stories about the North Korean test. Those pictures, however, were of American missiles, which use both solid and liquid propellant; as a result, one photo showed a U.S. missile with a solid propellant smoke trail and one, from a liquid propellant, without a smoke trail. These photographs apparently befuddled Reuters’ “experts,” who may have jumped to the conclusion that the photos of the North Korean test were “faked,” when they were simply of entirely different missile tests, and had been used only to “illustrate” ocean-going missile launches and not the actual North Korean test.[6]

According to Uzi Rubin, to achieve the capability to eject a missile from an underwater platform is a significant technological advancement. The accomplishment again illustrates “that rogue states such as North Korea can achieve military capabilities which pose a notable threat to the United States and its allies.”

Rubin also stated that the North Korean underwater launch test was closely related to the development of a missile-firing submarine, “a first step in achieving a very serious and dangerous new military capability.”[7]

Admiral Winnefeld and Secretary Rose, in their remarks, confirmed that the North Korean test was not the “dog and pony show” some have claimed. In other words, the U.S. government has officially confirmed that the North Koreans have made a serious step toward producing a sea-launched ballistic missile capability.

While such an operational capability may be “years away,” Rubin warns that “even many years eventually pass, and it will also take many years to build up the missile defenses, so we had better use the time wisely.”[8]

Will diplomacy succeed in stopping the North Korean threats? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to think it worth a try; so he began the push to restart the old 2003 “six-party” talks between the United States, North Korea, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, to bring North Korea’s nuclear weapons under some kind of international control and eventual elimination.

After all, supporters of such talks claim, similar talks with Iran appear to be leading to some kind of “deal” with Tehran, to corral its nuclear weapons program, so why not duplicate that effort and bring North Korea back into the non-nuclear fold?

What such a “deal,” if any, with Iran, will contain, is at this point unknown. Celebrations definitely seem premature. If the “deal” with North Korea is as “successful” as the P5+1’s efforts to rein in Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons program, the prognosis for the success of diplomacy could scarcely be more troubling.

Bloomberg’s defense writer, Tony Carpaccio, reflecting Washington’s conventional wisdom, recently wrote that of course China will rein in North Korea’s nuclear program: “What might be a bigger preventative will be the protestations of China, North Korea’s primary trade partner and only prominent international ally. Making China angry would put an already deeply impoverished, isolated North Korea in even more dire straits.”

North Korea’s Nuclear Program (Dan 7:7)

 

U.S. believes N. Korea has secret nuclear facilities

2015-06-08 08:12
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North Korea is believed to have secret nuclear facilities unknown to the outside world in addition to those at the country’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex, the State Department said in a report.

The department’s 2015 Report on Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control,

Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments also said that Pyongyang appears to have no intention to comply with its denuclearization commitments.

The Yongbyon complex houses the North’s 5-megawatt reactor and other facilities that have provided the communist regime with weapons-grade plutonium, with which the regime has conducted three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

The North also has a light water reactor under construction and uranium enrichment facilities at the complex that could provide the country with a second source of fissile material that can be used in building nuclear bombs.

In addition to these facilities at Yongbyon, the communist nation has long been suspected of running clandestine nuclear facilities in other parts of the country, such as additional uranium enrichment facilities.

“The United States believes there is a clear likelihood of additional unidentified nuclear facilities in the DPRK,” the State Department report said, referring to the North by its official name: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The report also noted that the North restarted the 5-megawatt reactor in 2013 and that the light water reactor under construction could give the North “a justification to possess uranium enrichment technology that could potentially be used to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons.”

“The United States consistently urged North Korea to respond to diplomatic efforts to create the conditions necessary for the resumption of the six-party talks, premised on a demonstrated DPRK commitment to make meaningful progress toward denuclearization,” the report said.

“DPRK statements and activities during the reporting period did not signal any intention or commitment to denuclearization.”

Armageddon Shall Happen (Revelation 16)

Nuclear Weapons: Making Us Feel Secure by “Threatening Armageddon”

“We prepare for our extinction in order to assure our survival” – Jonathan Schell (American author)

By Jim McCluskey
Global Research, May 26, 2015

Laying the Foundations for Preemptive Nuclear War Against Iran

The terrifying film ‘The man who saved the world’ has been showing in London. Stanislaw Petrov, who appears himself in the film, was the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Russian early warning system when the electronic alarms blared deafeningly and insistently in his command centre. All checks confirmed that there was no malfunction. They confirmed a nuclear attack from the US was on its way. It was not possible to wait for radar confirmation of the incoming ballistic missiles because by that time it would be too late to retaliate. Petrov knew that if he reported the alarm to the high command they would immediately order a retaliatory strike1 initiating a global nuclear war and the end of most of the human race. On his own imitative he decided that he did not trust the computers and did nothing.

The author Steve Taylor, in his book ‘The Fall’, expresses the view that the human race became, to a significant degree, insane about six thousand years ago when we introduced warfare as a way of ‘solving’ disputes. It is difficult to deny that it is insane to set up a system in which it is down to the humanity of one man to save the planet. The insanity is compounded when we realise that, rather than learning from the past, we have perpetuated the same mad system. We even call it MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).

Over a thousand nuclear weapons are held, right now, ready for launch at the press of a button. Missiles travel at more than fifteen thousand miles an hour so we are entirely dependent on computers to warn of an attack. We know that computers malfunction. But those manning the early warning centres are rigorously trained to follow orders to the letter. They have a protocol and they are trained to follow it robotically. It seems most unlikely that the next time the alarms go off there will be a Stanislaw Petrov present with the immense courage to go against his training. Putting his humanity first under enormous pressure to obey orders was heroism of the highest order. This was recognised when he was honoured at the United Nations and it is reiterated by Kevin Costner in the film (Stanislaw Petrov is a fan of Costner and Costner is a fan of Petrov so they met when Petrov visited the US). Introducing Stanislaw to his film crew Kostner said ‘I act heroes. Here is the real thing’.

There will be a next time. Unbelievably, in spite of this terrifying experience, we continue to perpetuate the same arrangement; with missiles ready for immediate launch at the press of a button and the only way of deciding to do this is on the basis of incoming electronic signals from a system which we know cannot be trusted!

The threat is escalating

The more nuclear weapons states there are the more likely that the weapons will be launched by accident or malfunction. The number has been escalating since the US used nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945. Already there are nine; US, Russia, China, UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Inevitably the leaders of other states want them. The leaders think it gives them status. According to a Sunday Times report Saudi Arabia has given Pakistan billions of dollars in subsidized oil, while the latter has unofficially agreed to supply the Gulf state with nuclear warheads2. An anonymous British military official told the Sunday Times “The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers — Turkey and Egypt — may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race”2

Yet not all states want to take the nuclear path. A wide range of countries capable of building nuclear weapons, including many living in actual or potential “conflict zones,” have elected not to pursue this option, including Japan and South Korea. Countries such as South Africa and Ukraine have dismantled existing arsenals.

Deterrence

The logic of the deterrence concept leads to more and more states wanting nuclear weapons. If one state needs a deterrent then, of course, other states need a deterrent. It also leads to the ones which have these weapons upgrading and extending them since it is thought that the more in number and the more in destructive power your arsenal is the more it will be an effective deterrent.

Apart from the appalling risks from malicious and inadvertent use, misunderstandings and terrorist attacks, there are major safety risks. A recent Whistleblower, a Royal Navy submariner, William McNeilly, exposed the safety risks in an 18 page report and says the Trident deterrent is a ‘Disaster Waiting To Happen’. He tells us “ We are so close to a nuclear disaster it is shocking, and yet everybody is accepting the risk to the public.” He also tells us that poor security checks could leave the door open for the “worst terrorist attack the UK and world has ever seen”.

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty

In an attempt to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to get rid of the existing ones The Nuclear Non proliferation Treaty (NPT) was drawn up and came into force in 1970.

The NPT is an international treaty of which a primary goal is to rid the world of nuclear weapons. A treaty review conference is held every five years and this year it extended from 27th April to 22nd May. This treaty is the only binding international commitment to the goal of nuclear disarmament of all states. 190 states are now party to the treaty. Four UN member states have never joined the NPT: India, Israel, Pakistan and South Sudan.

Nuclear states who are signatories to the treaty undertake to pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals. The UK has been legally bound by the treaty since 1970. In spite of this the signatories to the Treaty, including the UK, essentialy ignore the obligation they have incurred.

In view of the refusal of the nuclear states to disarm the matter was taken to the International court of justice for an Advisory Opinion on the obligations of the states which have signed up to the treaty. Their opinion was unequivocal. They declared ‘There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control’. Can’t be much clearer than that.

Never mind. In terms of getting the nuclear states to honour their obligations to humanity and their treaties, the recent NPT Review Conference has been another disastrous failure. It contains no meaningful commitments on nuclear disarmament. Our leaders are following their own power/influence focussed agenda and are ignoring the wishes and wellbeing of the people just as they did with the Iraq war.

The primary nuclear weapons states, all founder members of the United Nations Security (!) Council, are doing the exact opposite of ridding us of this curse. They are all rebuilding their nuclear arsenals; US, Russian, China, UK and France. The determination of the main ‘Security’ Council state leaders to ignore the wishes and real security of peoples of the world has become clear as a result of the 2015 NPT Conference. The leaders of these states are parking their humanity and putting their power politics before the safety of the people. The enormity of this crime is arguably even greater than that of Blair and Bush in starting the Iraq war.

It is even more clear now, after this conference, that the non-nuclear weapons states must make nuclear weapons illegal without the participation of the nuclear weapons states. And this is what they are doing.

A crime against humanity

There are 193 states in the United Nations. So there are 184 states which do not have nuclear weapons. Realising the intransigence of the nuclear states many of the non-nuclear states decided on another approach to having them banned. The existence of nuclear weapons threatens the commission of crimes against humanity. They are weapons for committing genocidal-scale attacks on civilian populations. There have now been three conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons (in Oslo, Nayarit and Vienna). At these the non nuclear and less wealthy states were able to have a much greater impact than at the NPT conferences which were dominated by the nuclear states 159 states supported a joint statement on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons arguing that nuclear weapons have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and must never be used again under any circumstances. These states have affirmed that elimination is the only way to prevent use.

Having nuclear weapons is, of itself, a crime against humanity. It implies the willingness to use them ‘if our vital interests are threatened’ as ex-Prime Minister Blair put it in his 2006 White Paper, ‘The future of the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent’. It is also criminal because it puts us all at totally unnecessary risk. As President John F Kennedy put it:

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

This is as true now as it was when he declared it.

The Humanitarian Pledge

The non-nuclear states are putting the interests of humanity before power in the teeth of opposition from the nuclear states.

Consequently the major outcome of the 2015 NPT is the Humanitarian Pledge which has over 100 endorsements3by states round the planet. It was proposed by the Austrian government and includes the pledge to join efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons in light of their unacceptable humanitarian consequences and associated risks.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) tells us,

‘Based on the evidence of the humanitarian impacts from any nuclear weapon detonation and an acknowledgment of the increasing risk of use of nuclear weapons, the humanitarian pledge reflects a fundamental shift in the international discourse on nuclear disarmament over the past five years…
The wide and growing international support for this historic pledge sends a signal that a majority of the world’s governments are ready to move forward with the prohibition of nuclear weapons, even if the nuclear weapon states are not ready to participate.’

The executive Director of ICAN, Beatrice Fihn, said from the conference,

“Regardless of what has happened here today, the humanitarian pledge must be the basis for the negotiations of a new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons. It has been made clear that the nuclear weapon states are not interested in making any new commitments to disarmament, so now it is up to the rest of the world to start a process to prohibit nuclear weapons by the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

What citizens must do

600 million people demonstrated round the world to stop the Iraq War. But the war happened. Blair and Bush were determined that it would. The leaders had their own agenda. The lust to kill won out. It has been said that one of the reasons that this massive demonstration was not successful is because it only happened once. Stopping the rabid militarists and MAD yielders of nuclear weapons will require massive people-power. And protesting will have to be relentless; it must persist until the goal is achieved. Mass demonstrations cannot happen everyday but they could happen once a month. They can be supplemented by vigils, acts of civil disobedience, bombarding the media with letters and articles promoting the passion of the people for peace. We are many and they are few.