[Occupymendocino] [Fwd: Is U.. Nuclear Policy Risking Nuclear War?]

[agnes at mcn.org]

This is essential reading as the new cold war with Russia heats up.
Agnes

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Is U.. Nuclear Policy Risking Nuclear War?
From:    "John Lewallen" <lewallen at mcn.org>
Date:    Thu, May 8, 2014 1:10 pm
To:      "John Lewallen" <lewallen at mcn.org>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------



Philo, CA, May, 2014

Dear friend,

          Nuclear war would be the ultimate environmental catastrophe, so
we can't let it happen. Here's an article I just wrote to
stimulate some critical attention to nuclear confrontation
today. Please circulate or print it at will.

--John Lewallen (707)895-2996





Is U.S. Nuclear Weapons Strategy Risking Nuclear War?



--by John Lewallen



As the United States engages in economic warfare with Russia over the fate
of the Ukraine, and continues the escalating encirclement of Russia and
China with nuclear and other weapons designed to carry out a nuclear
first-strike against these nations, it's time for all of us to take a
close look at U.S. nuclear weapons strategy. Is the current U.S. nuclear
strategy of seeking nuclear weapons dominance by developing and deploying
weapons which increasingly threaten Russia and China with a nuclear
first-strike protecting the United States? Or, is the relentlessly
escalating threat of surprise nuclear attack against Russia and China
forcing their nuclear commanders to prepare to strike the United States
with a preemptive nuclear attack?

          "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," by Keir A Lieber and Daryl
G. Press, in the April, 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, the
journal of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, describes a
U.S. nuclear weapons strategy focused on gaining "first-strike
capability," the ability to destroy all of an adversary's
nuclear forces, eliminating the possibility of a retaliatory
strike. While confronting the Soviet Union, wrote Lieber and
Press, the U.S. "expanded its nuclear arsenal, continuously
improved the accuracy and lethality of its weapons aimed at
Soviet nuclear arms, targeted Soviet command-and-control
systems, invested in missile-defense sields, sent attack
submarines to trail Soviet SSBNs (nuclear-armed submarines), and
built increasingly accurate multiwarhead land- and
submarine-launched ballistic missiles as well as stealth bombers
and stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles.Since the Cold War's
end, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has significantly improved."

          The Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy made
clear that the United States "is openly seeking primacy in every
dimension of modern military technology, both in its
conventional arsenal and in its nuclear forces." Lieber and
Press confirm what critics have been saying about U.S.
deployment of missile defense systems: ".even a multilayered
system with land-, air-, sea-, and space-based elements, is
highly unlikely to protect the United States from a major
nuclear attack.If the United States launched a nuclear attack
against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left
with a tiny surviving arsenal-if any at all. At that point, even
a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might
well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes,
because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and
decoys left."

          I believe that this U.S. attempt to gain nuclear weapons primacy
is a catastrophically dangerous impossibility which makes
hostages out of all of us, and threatens the destruction of the
Earth's biosphere. Any thermonuclear strike would cause
unimaginable death and environmental destruction from the blast,
heat and radiation, affecting the entire world. A December, 2013
report by Physicians for Social Responsibility estimated that a
nuclear war between India and Pakistan using only 0.5% of the
world's nuclear weapons would put two billion people at risk of
starvation. The only sane nuclear war strategy is prevention.

          Nuclear weapons confrontation is the great equalizer. Even a
single nuclear weapon could cause crippling destruction to any
nation. As Lieber and Press note, neither Russia nor China can
keep up with the expensive U.S. proliferation of nuclear weapons
and delivery systems. However, they can prepare a few weapons
which could survive a nuclear first-strike and destroy the
United States.

          The reality of high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse
weapons, designed to destroy all computer chips in line of sight
of the blast, is completely ignored by the strategic analysis
presented by Lieber and Press. In 1997, hearings held by
Representative Curt Weldon in the U.S. House of Representatives
revealed that the U.S. and Russia both have developed a
top-secret arsenal of nuclear weapons designed to "lay down" a
powerful electromagnetic pulse, destroying electronic
civilization on Earth and in space over huge areas. Nuclear
electromagnetic pulse weapons could be deployed in satellites,
which need not be accurate to cause massive destruction of
computer chips. There is no nuclear first-strike strategy which
could protect us from high-altitude nucear electromagnetic pulse
attack.

          Perhaps the most frightening misconception in the article by
Lieber and Press is the assertion that "The United States has a
first-strike capability against China today and should be able
to maintain it for a decade or more." China under Chairman Mao
began a top-secret nuclear weapons program after the U.S. had
threatened China with nuclear attack three times. China's
nuclear weapons strategy is intensely focused on preventing
nuclear threats from the United States. As described in China's
Nuclear Weapons Strategy: Tradition within Evolution (Lexington
Books, 1988), Chinese nuclear strategy is informed by the
ancient Chinese classic, The Art of War by Sun Tsu, emphasizing
secrecy, deception, and the development of economic
interdependency with the United States to avoid nuclear war.
China almost certainly has a lot more nuclear strike ability
than the eighteen nuclear missiles kept unfueled in silos which
they have revealed.

          With the United States now entering a more confrontational mode
with both Russia and China, it seems vital to global survival
that we all study ways to keep this confrontation from
escalating to nuclear war. All students of nuclear weapons
strategy agree that if there actually is a nuclear war, the
nuclear power which strikes first will gain overwhelming
advantage. Though few believe that banning nuclear weapons is a
realistic possibility, there are many words and deeds which move
the world's nations either away from, or toward, actual nuclear
war. I believe the U.S. should renounce first-strike nuclear
warfare and abandon its suicidal attempt to achieve nucear
primacy by increasing nuclear threat, and move toward a world
which accepts our oneness as a human race in the need to prevent
nuclear war.



--John Lewallen edited and published the Weldon Committee congressional
hearings on high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse warfare in the
book High-Altitude Nuclear War (Nuclear Press, 2002). His email is
<lewallen at mcn.org>.


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