nuclear weapon bak

819 bak

recall djt considers them a sunk cost and wondered why not use them?!

Newsmax host calls for “mass destruction” in Iran, including “a legitimate discussion of the threshold of a nuclear strike”: “That is the attitude we need to have to fight these savages”

07/09/26

Newsmax host calls for “mass destruction” in Iran, including “a legitimate discussion of the threshold of a nuclear strike”: “That is the attitude we need to have to fight these savages”

Written by Media Matters Staff

:{Published 07/09/26

Video

Citation

From the July 8, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline

CARL HIGBIE (HOST): But here's got to be the plan. You want to win? This is the cold hard truth. It's mass destruction. And newsflash, we're going to run out of 500 pound JDAMs before Iran runs out of people who hate us. War is hell. But if you're unwilling to be as ruthless as your enemy, you have already lost.

...

HIGBIE: There you go. Mass destruction. You need to hold — and this is what's really going to send the people screaming. Hold a meeting with global nuclear powers and make sure Iran sees you do it so they know what you're talking about. Have a legitimate discussion of the threshold of a nuclear strike. And again, let them — and like, oh, if you're gasping right now — I know. But when you've put friends in bags because of these people in Iran, you have a bit of different perspective on this. Look, if you're a purple-haired barista who's never even so much as had to pay rent because you live with your parents in their basement and you're writing articles for other liberals to read.

Let me see if I can find f's to give less about your opinions. But we have people in this country and even in this administration, believe it or not, who are so risk averse, I — like, it blows my I swear, if we had a zombie apocalypse, they would fund zombie rights groups while they ate their friends right in front of them. That is essentially what, like, gays for Palestine is. Those are the types of people who are opposing dealing with Iran correctly right now, by the way.

Look, if you are a mullah and, you know, floating around somewhere in a bunker and you see Trump talking to China and Russia about wind direction for potential fallout, that's going to deter about half of them. While this is happening end their infrastructure, power plants, bridges, water treatment. Look, they don't care about us. We shouldn't care about them. I don't — annihilate the power grid. And if they can't rebuild it, who cares? That's not our problem. That is the attitude we need to have to fight these savages. Look. I fought these people on an organic ground level. We spent just a ton of time studying their culture and what drives them. They are driven by an ideological takeover that there is no second place in. There's no negotiation. And after desperately trying to negotiate, finally, JD Vance, who was the lead on that, finally realized what's got to be done.

...

HIGBIE: Next, take what's yours.

...

HIGBIE: Yeah. That's the basis for most of their economy. Just take it. Oh, Carl, you're going to steal things from a sovereign country. You bet we are. That's exactly how war has worked for thousands of years. In fact, wars stopped acting like that, and they got softer, and then there were no winners. That's the only language these people speak. You want to know how they feel?

...

HIGBIE: Yeah. That's not going to fly. It's just not. But that's how they feel. And he wouldn't say that to my face, but that what they would do if they had our military. You start seeing, like, all these libs – they have to understand this. I don't know why they don't, but we're in it now. We're in this. Keep in mind, we bombed the ever loving daylight out of the Japanese, and they never gave up. And then we turn two of their cities into six foot thick sheets of glass. And now 80 years later, they're one of our best friends. They need to know, the Iranians need to know that President Trump has not taken that off the table. Now if you're sitting there thinking, oh, because this is a bit over the edge. Well, you go over there. I have, and I'm telling you, there's, like, 30 million people that most of whom want to kill you.

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yikes

https://www.alternet.org/doomsday-clock-90-seconds-midnight/

an 1 23

We are living in a time of unprecedented danger, and the Doomsday Clock time reflects that reality."

That's what Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists president and CEO Rachel Bronson said in a statement Tuesday about the historic symbol being set at 90 seconds to midnight, or global catastrophe, after three years at 100 seconds to midnight.

As the bulletin's annual statement explains, the clock—created in 1947—has reached its current position due to "an exceedingly dangerous nuclear situation," largely from Russia's war on Ukraine;inadequate global action to tackle the climate emergency; a "daunting array" of biological threats, exemplified by the Covid-19 pandemic; and "disruptive" technologies enabling the spread of disinformation.

"90 seconds to midnight is the closest the clock has ever been set to midnight, and it's a decision our experts do not take lightly," Bronson noted. "The U.S. government, its NATO allies, and Ukraine have a multitude of channels for dialogue; we urge leaders to explore all of them to their fullest ability to turn back the clock."

Watch the full announcement:

2023 Doomsday Clock Announcement

While the nearly yearlong Russian invasion—with fighting over a nuclear power plant and thinly veiled threats of using weapons of mass destruction—is a primary reason humanity is now closer than ever to apocalypse, experts from across the globe emphasized that it's far from the only threat.

The Elders chair Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, stressed that "the Doomsday Clock is sounding an alarm for the whole of humanity. We are on the brink of a precipice. But our leaders are not acting at sufficient speed or scale to secure a peaceful and liveable planet."

"From cutting carbon emissions to strengthening arms control treaties and investing in pandemic preparedness, we know what needs to be done," she said. "The science is clear, but the political will is lacking. This must change in 2023 if we are to avert catastrophe. We are facing multiple, existential crises. Leaders need a crisis mindset."

Finally, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson’s financial support for UANI closely tracks the Republican megadonors’ hawkish views toward Iran.In 2013, Sheldon Adelson told an audience at Yeshiva University that Obama should launch a nuclear strike on Iran and threaten that Iran will be “wiped out” if it doesn’t dismantle its nuclear program. The Adelsons were Trump’s biggest funders in the 2016 election and the GOP’s biggest funders in the 2018 cycle. They areexpected to contribute at least $100 million to Trump’s reelection efforts and Republican congressional candidates in the 2020 cycle.

**GOP mass exodus** continues.U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, a three-term Republican from Florida, has just announced he will retire at the end of his term and not seek re-election in 2020. He becomes the third Republican in less than a week to retire.

The extremist Tea Party Republican lawmaker has a horrific record, including suggesting the Second Amendment gives Americans the right to own the exact same weapons of war the U.S. Armed Forces have – which would include nuclear weapons. (It does not.)

new AN 819

...“That requires reversing the course of the U.S. in dismantling arms control agreements and proceeding — along with Russia — to develop ever more lethal and destabilizing weapons systems; and in not only refusing to join the world in trying to do something about the severe environmental crisis but even aggressively seeking to escalate the threat, a form of criminality with literally no historical antecedent,” he said.

Unfortunately, both those prospects look particularly dismal at the moment. The United States’ trade war with China is emblematic of its failure to come together in an aggressive way to address climate change, especially after President Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. And National Security Adviser John Bolton has been successfully pushing for the United States to pull out of arms control agreements and it is now believed that Russia is working on building nuclear-powered cruise missiles— to disastrous effect. At least until Trump is out of office — and perhaps not even then — it’s difficult to see how the United States will get its act together regarding these global threats.

“Not easy,” Chomsky said of reversing course, “but it can be done.”

He continued: “There have been other severe crises in human history, even if not on this scale. I’m old enough to remember the days when it seemed that the spread of fascism was inexorable — and I’m not referring to what is referred to as fascism today but something incomparably more awful. But it was overcome.”

...

Study of massive smoke cloud from 2017 wildfires offers terrifying hint of how even small nuclear war would escalate climate crises

Eoin Higgins / Common Dreams

Scientists warn a nuclear war could “cause climate change unprecedented in recorded human history and global food crises.”

4/19

New Nuclear Arms Race: As :{NATO:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Marks 70th Anniversary, Threat of Nuclear Confrontation Grows

Dealings with Saudis Raise Questions About Trump Administration Policy

The House Oversight Committee has opened an investigation. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) already commented that the investigation is “crucial” for understanding the Trump Administration’s aims.

Flynn was allegedly involved in the following proposal, per NBC News:

The proposal, which involved enlisting the U.S. nuclear power industry to build nuclear plants across the Middle East, wasbacked by a group of retired generals who formed a firm called IP3. Flynn described himself in financial disclosure filings as an “advisor” to a subsidiary of IP3, IronBridge Group Inc., from June 2016 to December 2016 — at the same time he was serving as Trump’s national security adviser during the presidential campaign and the presidential transition, the report says.

Not only was Flynn told he might have violated the law, the Trump administration’s pursuit of this nuclear tech transfer, Cummings said, appears “ongoing.”

These goals may even raise new speculation about why President Donald Trump, for instance, responded the way he did in the aftermath of Saudi Arabian agents’ assassination of journalist and permanent U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.

Rick Gates Knew About This, Too

Flynn’s aide Derek Harvey reportedly had a conference call with Trump friend Tom Barrack and former Trump campaign deputy chairman Rick Gates. Gates, it should be noted, was also deputy chair of the Trump Inaugural Committee, which is also under investigation by federal prosecutors. If Gates knew about it Special Counsel Robert Mueller likely knew about it.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/how-trumps-nuclear-doctrine-increases-the-chances-of-human-extinction/

...Trump has made some very significant policy decisions since entering office that have undermined nuclear non-proliferation on a global level. The two most notable examples include Trump’s withdrawal from a key bilateral nuclear weapons treaty with Russia and his decision to leave the Iranian nuclear deal.

Trump announced this January that he would initiate a six-month withdrawal process that would see the United States quitting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, claiming a number of violations by that country.

The United States has alleged that Russia has been violating the terms of the INF agreement for several years with the expansion and deployment of 2,000 km-range nuclear-capable ground-launched missiles, also referred to as SSC-8 by NATO.

These claims have been repeatedly rejected by Moscow.

In response to Trump’s announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin fired back by saying that the Kremlin would exit the Cold War-era treaty, which restricts both countries from deploying missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

The situation is compounded by the fact that the New START agreement, a separate bilateral treaty, which limits the stockpiles and launch platforms that both countries can deploy, is due to expire in 2021, with neither country is likely to renegotiate.

In light of these trends, during the 2019 UN Conference on Disarmament, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres encouraged the United States and Russia to extend the New START treaty, describing it as “one of the hallmarks of international security for 50 years.”

During his remarks, the Secretary-General went on to warn, “I will be blunt. Key components of the international arms control architecture are collapsing.”

Given the current policy direction, peace activists have been quick to point out that for the first time in half a century, U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals will not be bound to any bilaterally negotiated oversights.

This new terrain is of particular concern to disarmament experts who argue that the basis for global non-proliferation is contingent upon on the two nuclear superpowers’ (the United States and Russia) willingness to subject themselves to arms control and verification.

For the non-proliferation community, without proper rectification of the current trajectory, there is a real possibility that these two looming developments by themselves could provoke a new nuclear race.

However, the most serious threat to a renewed nuclear arms race is based on the unrivaled U.S. military hegemony, which seeks to modernize its nuclear weapons capacity by investing up to US$1 trillion over the next 30 years to build new nuclear bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

To make matters worse, the Trump administration took further steps to undermine nuclear non-proliferation with his decision to withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which represented the first major foreign policy reversal by his administration (aside from the Paris Climate Agreement).

Under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the president was required to certify Iranian compliance with the JCPOA nuclear deal. As part of the deal, Iran was subject to the most robust nuclear-verification systems anywhere in the world.

Certification was required every 90 days, and Trump twice affirmed Tehran’s compliance, but in May 2018 he refused to recertify.

Trump’s refusal was hinged on the fact that the JCPOA was restricted to Iran’s nuclear program and did not address wider security issues such as Iranian missile tests. As a result, the Trump administration seems to be more focused on weakening Iran’s perceived regional military influence rather than constraining the country’s nuclear program.

Many of Trump’s supporters believe that the United States can force Iran to make additional weapons concessions through the use of sanctions.

However, even some of Washington’s more conservative analysts argue that this is an unattainable goal since ballistic missiles are a central feature of Iran’s regional defense posture and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

In short, these aggressive and short-sighted policy gestures by Donald Trump have sparked serious concern among nuclear non-proliferation advocates that such decisions could trigger a chain reaction of nuclear proliferation in various non-nuclear states, most notably Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Korea, and Japan.

The renewal of the nuclear arms race carries the threat of our extinction.

“We are one mechanical, electronic or human error away from a catastrophe that could eradicate entire cities from the map,” Guterres noted while speaking at a disarmament conference in Geneva.

Nate Singham is based in São Paulo, Brazil, where he works as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

https://energypost.eu/nuclear-power-weapons-michael-shellenberger/

omfg

For decades, the nuclear energy industry denied any connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In recent years, however, writes Jim Green, nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia, the industry has turned around and started openly acknowledging that there is a connection, hoping that this will secure political support. Prominent nuclear activist Michael Shellenberger has even gone a step further, notes Green: he welcomes nuclear weapons proliferation as a contributor to world peace. This argument may well backfire: proliferation risks may well become a much greater concern in new nuclear energy projects.

In 2015, Nuclear Monitor published a detailed analysis of the many ways nuclear industry insiders and lobbyists trivialise and deny the connections between nuclear power (and the broader nuclear fuel cycle) and nuclear weapons proliferation.

Since then, the arguments have been turned upside down with prominent industry insiders and lobbyists openly acknowledging power-weapons connections. This remarkable about-turn has clear origins in the crisis facing nuclear power and the perceived need to secure increased subsidies to prevent reactors closing and to build new ones.

The new sales pitch openly links nuclear power to weapons and arguesthat weapons programs will be jeopardised unless greater subsidies are provided for the civil nuclear industry. The US Nuclear Energy Institute, for example, tried in mid-2017 to convince politicians in Washington that if the only reactor construction projects in the US ‒ in South Carolina and Georgia ‒ weren’t completed, it would stunt development of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

Decades of deceit have been thrown overboard with the new sales pitch linking nuclear power and weapons

The Nuclear Energy Institute paper wasn’t publicly released. But in the second half of 2017, numerous nuclear insiders and lobbyists openly acknowledged power-weapons connections and called for additional subsidies for nuclear power. The most important of these initiatives was a paper by the Energy Futures Initiative ‒ a creation of Ernest Moniz, who served as energy secretary under President Barack Obama.

Decades of deceit have been thrown overboard with the new sales pitch linking nuclear power and weapons. However there are still some hold-outs. Until recently, one nuclear lobbyist continuing to deny power-weapons connections was Michael Shellenberger from the ‘Environmental Progress’ pro-nuclear lobby group in the US.

Shellenberger told an International Atomic Energy Agency conference last year that “nuclear energy prevents the spread of nuclear weapons”. And he claimed last year that “one of FOE-Greenpeace’s biggest lies about nuclear energy is that it leads to weapons” and that there is an “inverse relationship between energy and weapons”.

Shellenberger’s backflip

In two articles published in August, Shellenberger has done a 180-degree backflip on the power-weapons connections. “[N]ational security, having a weapons option, is often the most important factor in a state pursuing peaceful nuclear energy,” Shellenberger now believes.

A recent analysis from Environmental Progress finds that of the 26 nations that are building or are committed to build nuclear power plants, 23 have nuclear weapons, had weapons, or have shown interest in acquiring weapons.

“While those 23 nations clearly have motives other than national security for pursuing nuclear energy,” Shellenberger writes, “gaining weapons latency appears to be the difference-maker. The flip side also appears true: nations that lack a need for weapons latency often decide not to build nuclear power plants … Recently, Vietnam and South Africa, neither of which face a significant security threat, decided against building nuclear plants …”

Of the 26 nations that are building or are committed to build nuclear power plants, 23 have nuclear weapons, had weapons, or have shown interest in acquiring weapons

Here is the break-down of the 26 countries that are building or are committed to build nuclear power plants according to the Environmental Progress report:

Thirteen nations had a weapons program, or have shown interest in acquiring a weapon: Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Japan, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE.
Seven nations have weapons (France, US, Britain, China, Russia, India and Pakistan), two had weapons as part of the Soviet Union (Ukraine and Belarus), and one (Slovakia) was part of a nation (Czechoslovakia) that sought a weapon.
Poland, Hungary, and Finland are the only three nations (of the 26) for which Environmental Progress could find no evidence of weapons latency as a motivation.

Current patterns connecting the pursuit of power and weapons stretch back across the 60 years of civilian nuclear power. Shellenberger notesthat “at least 20 nations sought nuclear power at least in part to give themselves the option of creating a nuclear weapon” ‒ Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, France, Italy, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Libya, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, West Germany, Yugoslavia.

Shellenberger points to research by Fuhrmann and Tkach which found that 31 nations had the capacity to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium, and that 71% of them created that capacity to give themselves weapons latency.

Nuclear weapons ‒ a force for peace?

So far, so good. The pursuit of nuclear power and weapons are often linked. That’s a powerful reason to eschew nuclear power, to strengthen the safeguards system, to tighten export controls, to restrict the spread of enrichment and reprocessing, and so on. But Shellenberger has a very different take on the issues.

Discussing the Fuhrmann and Tkach article (and studiously avoiding contrary literature), Shellenberger writes:

“What was the relationship between nuclear latency and military conflict? It was negative. “Nuclear latency appears to provide states with deterrence-related benefits,” they [Fuhrmann and Tkach] concluded, “that are distinct from actively pursuing nuclear bombs.”

“Why might this be? Arriving at an ultimate cause is difficult if not impossible, the authors note. But one obvious possibility is that the “latent nuclear powers may be able to deter conflict by (implicitly) threatening to ‘go nuclear’ following an attack. …”

“After over 60 years of national security driving nuclear power into the international system, we can now add “preventing war” to the list of nuclear energy’s superior characteristics. …”

“As a lifelong peace activist and pro-nuclear environmentalist, I almost fell out of my chair when I discovered the paper by Fuhrmann and Tkach. All that most nations will need to deter military threats is nuclear power ‒ a bomb isn’t even required? Why in the world, I wondered, is this fact not being promoted as one of nuclear powers many benefits?”

“The answer is that the nuclear industry and scientific community have tried, since Atoms for Peace began 65 years ago, to downplay any connection between the two ‒ and for an understandable reason: they don’t want the public to associate nuclear power plants with nuclear war.”

“But in seeking to deny the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, the nuclear community today finds itself in the increasingly untenable position of having to deny these real world connections ‒ of motivations and means ‒ between the two. Worse, in denying the connection between energy and weapons, the nuclear community reinforces the widespread belief that nuclear weapons have made the world a more dangerous place when the opposite is the case. …”

“Nuclear energy, without a doubt, is spreading and will continue to spread around the world, largely with national security as a motivation. The question is whether the nuclear industry will, alongside anti-nuclear activists, persist in stigmatizing weapons latency as a nuclear power “bug” rather than tout it as the epochal, peace-making feature it is.”

“After over 60 years of national security driving nuclear power into the international system, we can now add ‘preventing war’ to the list of nuclear energy’s superior characteristics”

Shellenberger asks why the deterrent effect of nuclear power isn’t being promoted as one of its many benefits. Nuclear weapons can have a deterrent effect ‒ in a uniquely dangerous and potentially uniquely counterproductive manner ‒ but any correlation between latent nuclear weapons capabilities and reduced military conflict is just that, correlation not causation.

On the contrary, there is a history of military attacks on nuclear facilities to prevent their use in weapons programs (e.g. Israel’s attacks on nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, and US attacks on nuclear facilities in Iraq in 2003). Shellenberger points to the same problem, asking whether latency could “also be a threat to peace?” and noting Israeli and US threats to take pre-emptive action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. He doesn’t offer an answer or explore the issue further.

Shellenberger argues that Iran should be encouraged to develop nuclear weapons. He cites long-term nuclear weapons proliferation enthusiast Kenneth Waltz, who claims that the “decades-long Middle East nuclear crisis … will end only when a balance of military power is restored”. He cites a German academic who argues that a nuclear-armed Germany “would stabilize NATO and the security of the Western World”. We “should be glad that North Korea acquired the bomb” according to Shellenberger. And on it goes ‒ his enthusiasm for nuclear weapons proliferation knows no bounds.

‘Shellenberger has gone down a rabbit hole’

Nuclear Monitor has previously discussed the litany of falsehoods in his writings on nuclear and energy issues. In his most recent articles he exposes himself as an intellectual lightweight prepared to swing from one extreme of a debate to the other if that’s what it takes to build the case for additional subsidies for nuclear power.

Remarkably, even Environmental Progress’ attorney Frank Jablonski appears not to agree with Shellenberger. Jablonski writes:

“From Shellenberger’s article you would conclude that, for any “weak nation”, or for the “poor or weak” persons within such nations, things are bound to improve with acquisition of nuclear weapons. So, for humanitarian reasons, the imperialistic nations and hypocritical people standing in the way of that acquisition should get out of the way. No. The article’s contentions are falsified by … logical untenability, things it got wrong, and things it left out. While Shellenberger’s willingness to take controversial positions has often been valuable, a “contrarian” view is not always right just because it is contrarian.”

Few would swallow Shellenberger’s arguments including his call to shred the non-proliferation and disarmament system and to encourage weapons proliferation

Sam Seitz, a student at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, argues that Shellenberger’s argument is “almost Trumpian in its incoherence”. He takes issue with Shellenberger’s claims that no nuclear powers have been invaded (“a pretty misleading statistic” and “wrong”); that battle deaths worldwide have declined by 95% (“fails to prove that nuclear weapons are responsible for this trend … as we are frequently reminded, correlation and causation are not equivalent”); that Indian and Pakistani deaths in two disputed territories declined sharply after Pakistan’s first nuclear weapons test in 1998 (“doesn’t account for non-nuclear factors like the role of outside mediation and domestic politics”); and that Nazi Germany invaded France because the French lacked a credible deterrent (“makes very little sense and conflates several things … also silly”).

Hostile response

Responding to Shellenberger’s more-the-merrier attitude towards nuclear weapons proliferation, pro-nuclear commentator Dan Yurman puts it bluntly: “Here’s the problem. The more nations have nuclear weapons, the more dangerous the world will be. Sooner or later some tin pot dictator or religious zealot is likely to push a button and send us all to eternity.”

Shellenberger’s about-turn on power-weapons connections provoked a hostile response from Yurman:

“Shellenberger has crossed a red line for the global commercial nuclear industry, which has done everything in its power to avoid having the public conflate nuclear weapons with commercial nuclear energy. Worse, he’s given opponents of nuclear energy, like Greenpeace, a ready-made tool to attack the industry. …

“In the end he may have painted himself into a corner. Not only has he alienated some of his supporters on the commercial nuclear side of the house, but he also has energized the nonproliferation establishment, within governments and among NGOs, offering them a rich opportunity to promote critical reviews of the risks of expanding nuclear energy as a solution to the challenge of climate change. …

“Shellenberger has gone down a rabbit hole with his two essays promoting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Given all the great things he has done to promote commercial nuclear energy, it is a perplexing and disturbing development.”

Power-weapons connections

No doubt there will be more acknowledgements of power-weapons connections by nuclear industry insiders and lobbyists. As Shellenberger notes, the nuclear ‘community’ today finds itself in an increasingly untenable position denying the connections.

There is a degree of domestic support for nuclear weapons programs in weapons states … but few people support generalised nuclear weapons proliferation and few would swallow Shellenberger’s arguments including his call to shred the non-proliferation and disarmament system and to encourage weapons proliferation.

Understanding of the power-weapons connections, combined with opposition to nuclear weapons, is one of the motivations driving opposition to nuclear power. According to Shellenberger, the only two US states forcing the closure of nuclear plants, California and New York, also had the strongest nuclear disarmament movements.

The growing acknowledgement ‒ and public understanding ‒ of power-weapons connections might have consequences for nuclear power newcomer countries such as Saudi Arabia

There is some concern that claims that the civil nuclear industry is an important (or even necessary) underpinning of a weapons program will be successfully used to secure additional subsidies for troubled nuclear power programs (e.g. in the US, France and the UK). After all, nuclear insiders and lobbyists wouldn’t abandon their decades-long deceit about power-weapons connections if they did not believe that their new argument will gain traction, among politicians if not the public.

The growing acknowledgement ‒ and public understanding ‒ of power-weapons connections might have consequences for nuclear power newcomer countries such as Saudi Arabia. Assuming that the starting point is opposition to a Saudi nuclear weapons program, heightened sensitivity might constrain nuclear exporters who would otherwise export to Saudi Arabia with minimalist safeguards and no serious attempt to check the regime’s weapons ambitions. Or it might not lead to that outcome ‒ as things stand, numerous nuclear exporters are scrambling for a share of the Saudi nuclear power program regardless of proliferation concerns.

More generally, a growing understanding of power-weapons connections might lead to a strengthening of the safeguards system along with other measures to firewall nuclear power from weapons. But again, that’s hypothetical and it is at best some way down the track ‒ there is no momentum in that direction.

And another hypothetical arising from the growing awareness about power-weapons connections: proliferation risks might be (and ought to be) factored in as a significant negative in comparative assessments of power generation options.

Editor’s Note

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter, where a longer version of this article was originally published.

https://www.alternet.org/trumps-getting-us-ready-fight-nuclear-war

many lnx

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/19/17873822/nuclear-war-weapons-bombs-how-kill

...

In February, Yochi Dreazen wrote for Vox that “a full-blown war with North Korea wouldn’t be as bad as you think. It would be much, much worse,” in part because “millions — plural — would die.”

As Dreazen recounts, the US would likely have to send in around 200,000 troops to destroy Kim’s nuclear arsenal. Seoul, South Korea’s capital, would soon — if not already — lie in ruins due to North Korea’s large artillery capabilities.

None of that may even be the worst part:

Bruce Klingner, a 20-year veteran of the CIA who spent years studying North Korea, told me that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had stood by in 2002 as the US methodically built up the forces it used to invade the country — and oust Hussein — the following year. He said there was little chance that Kim would follow in Hussein’s footsteps and patiently allow the Pentagon to deploy the troops and equipment it would need for a full-on war with North Korea.

“The conventional wisdom used to be that North Korea would use only nuclear weapons as part of a last gasp, twilight of the gods, pull the temple down upon themselves kind of move,” said Klingner, who now works for the conservative Heritage Foundation. “But we have to prepare for the real possibility that Kim would use nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict, not the latter ones.”

In effect, any attempt to overthrow the Kim regime would prompt North Korea to launch nukes at the United States. Washington would almost certainly respond in kind, leading to one of the worst wars in world history.

2) US vs. Russia war

Few experts discounted the idea that the US and Russia could yet engage in a nuclear war despite a decades-long standoff. After all, they’ve come close a few times.

Here are just two examples: In September 1983, a missile attack system made it seem like the US had launched weapons at the Soviet Union. One man, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, decided it was a false alarm and didn’t report the alert. Had he done so, Moscow likely would’ve responded with an actual nuclear strike.

Stanislav Petrov, a former Soviet military officer known in the West as “The man who saved the world’’ for his role in averting a nuclear war over a false missile alarm, died in May, 2015 at age 77.

Stanislav Petrov, a former Soviet military officer known in the West as “The man who saved the world’’ for his role in averting a nuclear war over a false missile alarm, died in May 2015 at age 77. Pavel Golovkin/AP

Two months later, a too-real NATO war game — Able Archer 83 — made the Soviets believe Western forces were preparing for an actual attack. Moscow put its nuclear arsenal on high alert, but ultimately, neither side came to nuclear blows.

Today, two main reasons explain why a US-Russia nuclear fight is a major concern.

The first is the most obvious: Moscow just has so many nuclear weapons. Russia is the only country that could match the US bomb-for-bomb in any conflict. The longer Moscow has its weapons, the thinking goes, the higher the chance it uses them on the US — or vice versa.

The second reason is the most troublesome: Washington and Moscow may be on a collision course. Russia is expanding further into Europe and encroaching on NATO territory. There’s even fear that Putin might authorize an invasion of a Baltic country that once was a part of the Soviet Union but is now in NATO. If that happens, the US would be treaty-bound to defend the Baltic country, almost assuredly setting up a shooting war with Moscow.

Experts disagree on what would happen next. Some, including the Trump administration, claim Russia would use nuclear weapons early in a fight as a way to “escalate to deescalate” — do something so brash at the start of a conflict that it has to end before it gets even worse. Others say Russia would use the weapons only if its forces are on the brink of defeat.

Magnets depicting Russian President Putin and President Trump on sale in Helsnki, Finland.

Magnets depicting Russian President Putin and President Trump on sale in Helsnki, Finland. Alexander Demianchuk\TASS via Getty Images

But Olga Oliker and Andrey Baklitskiy, experts on Russia’s nuclear strategy, wrote at War on the Rocks in February that Moscow’s “military doctrine clearly states that nuclear weapons will be used only in response to an adversary using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction,” or if the country’s survival is in doubt. In other words, they say Russia would only use nukes in retaliation or to avoid certain extinction.

Washington, of course, would likely respond with its own nuclear strikes after Moscow dropped its bombs. At that point, they’d be in a full-blown nuclear war with the potential to destroy each other and much of the world (more on that below).

3) India vs. Pakistan war

India and Pakistan have gone to war four times since 1947, when Britain partitioned what had been a single colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. The worry today, though, is that a fifth conflict could go nuclear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

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Main article: 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident

According to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN – on 19 January 2006, over 22 years after the incident – nuclear retaliation requires that multiple sources confirm an attack.^[7] In any case, the incident exposed a serious flaw in the Soviet early warning system. Petrov has said that he was neither rewarded nor punished for his actions.^[8]

Had Petrov reported incoming American missiles, his superiors might have launched an assault against the United States,^[2] precipitating a corresponding nuclear response from the United States. Petrov declared the system's indication a false alarm. Later, it was apparent that he was right: no missiles were approaching and the computer detection system was malfunctioning. It was subsequently determined that the false alarm had been created by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds above North Dakota and the Molniya orbits of the satellites, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite.^[9][10]

Petrov later indicated that the influences on his decision included that he was informed a U.S. strike would be all-out, so five missiles seemed an illogical start;^[1] that the launch detection system was new and, in his view, not yet wholly trustworthy; that the message passed through 30 layers of verification too quickly;^[11] and that ground radar failed to pick up corroborative evidence, even after minutes of delay.^[12] However, in a 2013 interview, Petrov said at the time he was never sure that the alarm was erroneous. He felt that his civilian training helped him make the right decision. He said that his colleagues were all professional soldiers with purely military training and, following instructions, would have reported a missile launch if they had been on his shift.^[2]

Petrov underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his judgment. Initially, he was praised for his decision.^[1] General Yury Votintsev, then commander of the Soviet Air Defense's Missile Defense Units, who was the first to hear Petrov's report of the incident (and the first to reveal it to the public in the 1990s), states that Petrov's "correct actions" were "duly noted".^[1] Petrov himself states he was initially praised by Votintsev and promised a reward,^[1][13] but recalls that he was also reprimanded for improper filing of paperwork because he had not described the incident in the war diary.^[13][14]

He received no reward. According to Petrov, this was because the incident and other bugs found in the missile detection system embarrassed his superiors and the influential scientists who were responsible for it, so that if he had been officially rewarded, they would have had to be punished.^{[1][8][13][14]} He was reassigned to a less sensitive post,^[14] took early retirement (although he emphasized that he was not "forced out" of the army, as is sometimes claimed by Western sources),^[13] and suffered a nervous breakdown.^[14]

In a later interview, Petrov stated that the famous red button has never worked, as military psychologists did not want to put the decision about a nuclear war into the hands of one single person.^[15]

The incident became known publicly in the 1990s upon the publication of Votintsev's memoirs. Widespread media reports since then have increased public awareness of Petrov's actions.^[16]

There is some confusion as to precisely what Petrov's military role was in this incident. Petrov, as an individual, was not in a position where he could single-handedly have launched any of the Soviet missile arsenal. His sole duty was to monitor satellite surveillance equipment and report missile attack warnings up the chain of command; top Soviet leadership would have decided whether to launch a retaliatory attack against the West. But Petrov's role was crucial in providing information to make that decision.^[17] According to Bruce Blair, a Cold War nuclear strategies expert and nuclear disarmament advocate, formerly with the Center for Defense Information, "The top leadership, given only a couple of minutes to decide, told that an attack had been launched, would make a decision to retaliate."^[18]

Petrov later said "I had obviously never imagined that I would ever face that situation. It was the first and, as far as I know, also the last time that such a thing had happened, except for simulated practice scenarios."^[17]

Later career

In the aftermath of the incident, the Soviet government investigated the incident and determined that Petrov had insufficiently documented his actions during the crisis. He explained it as "Because I had a phone in one hand and the intercom in the other, and I don’t have a third hand"; nevertheless, Petrov received a reprimand.^[4]

In 1984, Petrov left the military and got a job at the research institute that had developed the Soviet Union's early warning system. He later retired after his wife was diagnosed with cancer so he could care for her.^[4] A BBC report in 1998 stated Petrov had suffered a mental breakdown and quoted Petrov as saying, "I was made a scapegoat."^[19]

Petrov died on 19 May 2017 from hypostatic pneumonia, though it was not widely reported until September.^[20][21][22]

Awards and commendations

On 21 May 2004, the San Francisco-based Association of World Citizens gave Petrov its World Citizen Award along with a trophy and $1,000 "in recognition of the part he played in averting a catastrophe."^[23][24]

In January 2006, Petrov travelled to the United States where he was honored in a meeting at the United Nations in New York City. There the Association of World Citizens presented Petrov with a second special World Citizen Award.^[25] The next day, Petrov met American journalist Walter Cronkite at his CBS office in New York City.

That interview, in addition to other highlights of Petrov's trip to the United States, was filmed for The Man Who Saved the World,^[23][26] a narrative feature and documentary film, directed by Peter Anthony of Denmark. It premiered in October 2014 at the Woodstock Film Festival in Woodstock, New York, winning "Honorable Mention: Audience Award Winner for Best Narrative Feature" and "Honorable Mention: James Lyons Award for Best Editing of a Narrative Feature."^[27]

For his actions in averting a potential nuclear war in 1983, Petrov was awarded the Dresden Peace Prize in Dresden, Germany, on 17 February 2013. The award included €25,000.^[24][28] On 24 February 2012, he was given the 2011 German Media Award, presented to him at a ceremony in Baden-Baden, Germany.^[23][29]

On the same day that Petrov was honored at the United Nations in New York City, the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations issued a press release contending that a single person could not have started or prevented a nuclear war, stating in part, "Under no circumstances a decision to use nuclear weapons could be made or even considered in the Soviet Union or in the United States on the basis of data from a single source or a system. For this to happen, a confirmation is necessary from several systems: ground-based radars, early warning satellites, intelligence reports, etc."^[7] But nuclear security expert Bruce Blairhas said that at that time, the U.S.–Soviet relationship "had deteriorated to the point where the Soviet Union as a system—not just the Kremlin, not just Andropov, not just the KGB—but as a system, was geared to expect an attack and to retaliate very quickly to it. It was on hair-trigger alert. It was very nervous and prone to mistakes and accidents.... The false alarm that happened on Petrov's watch could not have come at a more dangerous, intense phase in U.S.–Soviet relations."^[17] At that time, according to Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB chief of foreign counterintelligence, “The danger was in the Soviet leadership thinking, ‘The Americans may attack, so we better attack first.’ ”^[30]

Petrov said he did not know whether he should have regarded himself as a hero for what he did that day.^[17] In an interview for the film The Man Who Saved the World, Petrov says, "All that happened didn't matter to me—it was my job. I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that's all. My late wife for 10 years knew nothing about it. 'So what did you do?' she asked me. 'Nothing. I did nothing.'"^[17]

1950s and 1960s

5 November 1956

During the Suez Crisis, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) received a number of simultaneous reports, including unidentified aircraft over Turkey, Soviet MiG-15 fighters over Syria, a downed British Canberra medium bomber, and unexpected maneuvers by the Soviet Black Sea Fleet through the Dardanelles that appeared to signal a Soviet offensive. Considering previous Soviet threats to utilize conventional weapons against France and the UK, U.S. forces believed these events could trigger a NATO nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. In fact, all reports of Soviet action turned out to be erroneous, misinterpreted, or exaggerated. The perceived threat was due to a coincidental combination of events, including a wedge of swans over Turkey, a fighter escort for the Syrian president returning from Moscow, a British bomber brought down by mechanical issues, and scheduled exercises of the Soviet fleet.^[4]

5 October 1960

Radar equipment in Thule, Greenland mistakenly interpreted a moonrise over Norway as a large-scale Soviet missile launch. Upon receiving a report of the supposed attack, NORAD went on high alert. However, doubts about the authenticity of the attack arose due to the presence of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in New York as head of the USSR's United Nations delegation.^[5][6][7]

24 November 1961

Staff at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters (SAC HQ) simultaneously lost contact with NORAD and multiple Ballistic Missile Early Warning System sites. Since these communication lines were designed to be redundant and independent from one another, the communications failure was interpreted as either a very unlikely coincidence or a coordinated attack. SAC HQ prepared the entire ready force for takeoff before already-overhead aircraft confirmed that there did not appear to be an attack. It was later found that the failure of a single relay station in Colorado was the sole cause of the communications problem.^[5]

27 October 1962

Main article: Cuban Missile Crisis

At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet patrol submarine *B-59* almost launched a nuclear-tipped torpedo while under harassment by American naval forces. One of several vessels surrounded by American destroyers near Cuba, B-59 dove to avoid detection and was unable to communicate with Moscow for a number of days.^[8] USS *Beale* began dropping practice depth charges to signal B-59 to surface, however the Soviet submarine took these to be real depth charges.^[9] With low batteries affecting the submarine's life support systems and without orders from Moscow, the commander of B-59 believed that war may have already begun and ordered the use of a 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo against the American fleet. The submarine political officer agreed, but commander of the sub-flotilla Vasili Arkhipov persuaded the captain to surface and await orders.^[10][11]

On the same day, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, and another U-2 flown by United States Air Force Captain Charles Maultsby strayed 300 miles (480 km) into Soviet airspace. Despite orders to avoid Soviet airspace by at least 100 miles (160 km), a navigational error took the U-2 over the Chukotka Peninsula, causing Soviet MiG interceptors to scramble and pursue the aircraft.^[4][12] American F-102Ainterceptors armed with GAR-11 Falcon nuclear air-to-air missiles (each with a 0.25 kiloton yield) were then scrambled to escort the U-2 into friendly airspace.^[13] Individual pilots were capable of arming and launching their missiles.

9 November 1965

The Command Center of the Office of Emergency Planning went on full alert after a massive power outage in the northeastern United States. Several nuclear bomb detectors—used to distinguish between regular power outages and power outages caused by a nuclear blast—near major U.S. cities malfunctioned due to circuit errors, creating the illusion of a nuclear attack.^[4]

23 May 1967

A powerful solar flare accompanied by a coronal mass ejection interfered with multiple NORAD radars over the Northern Hemisphere. This interference was initially interpreted as intentional jamming of the radars by the Soviets, thus an act of war. A nuclear bomber counter-strike was nearly launched by the U.S.^[14]

1970s and 1980s

9 November 1979

15 March 1980

One of four Soviet missiles launched from a submarine near the Kuril Islands was detected by an American early warning sensor and determined to be heading towards the United States.^[5]

26 September 1983

Main article: 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident

Several weeks after the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over Soviet airspace, a satellite early-warning system near Moscow reported the launch of one American Minuteman ICBM. Soon after, it reported that five missiles had been launched. Convinced that a real American offensive would involve many more missiles, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Air Defense Forces refused to acknowledge the threat as legitimate and continued to convince his superiors that it was a false alarm until this could be confirmed by ground radar.^{[7][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]} Two months later, parts of the Soviet government misinterpreted the Able Archer 83 NATO simulation of escalation to DEFCON 1 as a possible ruse of war to obscure preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike.^[25]

Post-Cold War

25 January 1995

Main article: Norwegian rocket incident

Russian President Boris Yeltsin became the first world leader to activate a nuclear briefcase after Russian radar systems detected the launch of a Norwegian Black Brant XII research rocket being used to study the Northern Lights.^[26] Russian strategic ballistic missile submarines were put on alert in preparation for a possible retaliatory strike.^[27] When it became clear the rocket did not pose a threat to Russia and was not part of a larger attack, the alarm was cancelled. Russia was in fact one of a number of countries earlier informed of the launch; however, the information had not reached the Russian radar operators.^[5]

References

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/north-korea-reportedly-duped-trump-it-ramps-production-nuclear-fuel-they-are

Despite President Donald Trump's confident declaration after meeting with leader Kim Jong-un that North Korea's nuclear threat has passed, NBC News reported Friday that multiple intelligence community officials believe the rogue regime is, in fact, ramping up its production of nuclear fuel.

"There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea," Trump said after the Singapore summit. "Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!"

Even this unrealistic assessment was quickly countered by his own declarationthat, in fact, North Korea remains a nuclear threat

. But now NBC News finds that not only does the country's standing nuclear arsenal remain, "North Korea was stepping up its production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons" even while the negotiations were ongoing.

As many observers noted, just meeting with the regime was something of a concession, since North Korean leaders have long sought to be seen as equal with the United States on the world stage. Trump also, completely unnecessarily, praised Kim effusively, despite the fact that he is a murderous dictator.

But perhaps most strikingly, Trump decided to cancel the upcoming joint U.S. military exercises with South Korea, a major win for the Kim regime, even while the president received no tangible concessions in return.

The country has paused testing of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, the officials told NBC News, but it is apparently not working to decrease its weapons stockpiles. The officials believe, in fact, that it is working to conceal its military capabilities from the Americans.

"There is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the U.S.," one official reportedly said.

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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-**michael-lewis**

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Meanwhile, inside the D.O.E. building, people claiming to be from the Trump administration appear willy-nilly, unannounced, and unintroduced to the career people. “There’s a mysterious kind of chain from the Trump loyalists who have shown up inside D.O.E. to the White House,” says a career civil servant. “That’s how decisions, like the budget, seem to get made. Not by Perry.” The woman who ran the Obama department’s energy-policy analysis unit recently received a call from D.O.E. staff telling her that her office was now occupied by Eric Trump’s brother-in-law. Why? No one knew. “Yes, you can notice the difference,” says one young career civil servant, in response to the obvious question. “There’s a lack of professionalism. They’re not very polite. Maybe they’ve never worked in an office or government setting. It’s not hostility so much as a real sense of concern with sharing information with career employees. Because of that lack of communication, nothing is being done. All policy questions remain unanswered.”

The D.O.E. has a program, for example, to provide low-interest loans to companies to encourage risky corporate innovation in alternative energy and energy efficiency. The loan program became infamous when one of its borrowers, the solar-energy companySolyndra, was unable to repay its loan, but, as a whole, since its inception in 2009, the program has turned a profit. And it has been demonstrably effective: it lent money to Tesla to build its factory in Fremont, California, when the private sector would not, for instance. Every Tesla you see on the road came from a facility financed by the D.O.E. Its loans to early-stage solar-energy companies launched the industry. There are now 35 viable utility-scale, privately funded solar companies—up from zero a decade ago. And yet today the program sits frozen. “There’s no direction what to do with the applications,” says the young career civil servant. “Are we shutting the program down?” They’d rather not, but if that’s what they are going to do, they should do it. “There’s no staff, just me,” says the civil servant. “People keep bugging me for direction. It’s got to the point I don’t care if you tell me to tear the program down. Just tell me what you want to do so I can do it intelligently.” Another permanent employee, in another wing of the D.O.E., says, “The biggest change is the grinding to a halt of any proactive work. There’s very little work happening. There’s a lot of confusion about what our mission was going to be. For a majority of the workforce it’s been demoralizing.

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