With the world’s largest, most destructive arsenal of nuclear weapons,
the United States poses an enormous risk not just to peace, but to the
survival of much of the human race. That’s only a problem, of course, if
the US starts using that arsenal.
Which is where formal US nuclear doctrine would come in. There have been
debates for decades on whether the US should adopt a “no first use”
policy, officially ruling out the idea that the US would launch a
nuclear attack without first being attacked with a nuclear weapon.
Morally, this ought to be obvious, but every attempt to adopt such a policy has been opposed, with Joint Chiefs commander Gen. Joe Dunford the latest to come out against the idea, saying promising not to nuke other nations in a first strike would “simplify an adversary’s decision-making.”
Dunford went on to argue that there are “a few situations” where he
believes the president should retain the option to launch nuclear first
strikes, though he did not say what those situations were. Given the
potentially disastrous consequences of such a strike, it is unsurprising
that many i Congress are pushing to limit the risk of the president
being able to do that unilaterally.
“Morally, this ought to be obvious…”
For the US, maybe it’s morally obvious because the US has such a huge numerical advantage over all its perceived enemies in terms of conventional weapons. However, for any other nuclear power, especially Russia, it would be highly moral to use nukes against US first because they would otherwise be obliterated.
Russia vs the US is like a 100lb lady with a pistol vs a 200lb male rapist who also has pistol, with the pistols representing nukes. Her only chance is to fire her ‘nuke’ quickly – or else.
However, a doctrine of No First Use is only words on paper or words coming out of a politician’s mouth unless backed up by deeds. The important deed as Daniel Ellsberg points out in The Doomsday Machine is eliminating First Strike CAPABILITY, the capacity to strike first and destroy the adversary and a sufficient amount of his deterrent for the attacker to survive a diluted response or take out the remaining missiles to a sufficient degree to allow survival.
So when Liz Warren, a total phony if ever there was one, advocates No First Use, it means nothing.
Only Russia and the US have First Strike Capability although it could spread to China. It is time for the US and Russia Presidents to sit down and eliminate this dangerous capability. That could have been the fruit of Trump’s promise to “get along with Russia.” Too bad he did not have the balls and support to do it. But we should keep pressing for it along with an end to hair trigger alert. Right now only Tulsi Gabbard among the Presidential candidates has policies consistent with this.
The only way you can ensure no first-strike is to get rid of these infernal weapons–invented by our very own country.
Bombs bursting in air and the rockets red glare….yeah, just great.
The first scientists who understood that the discovery of nuclear fission meant nuclear weapons were Germans.
I understand the Germans were working on nukes and, at least this is what I’ve read, Adolf pulled the rug out from under that project, probably because he did not think it would work.
Neutron-induced fission of uranium nuclei was discovered at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin in 1938. However, it was the Hungarian Szilard who probably was the first to realize that fission might be used for a bomb even before uranium fission was discovered. You may not believe this but Szilard was granted a British patent in 1934 to use fission to make a bomb! He assigned the patent to the British Admiralty on condition that it be kept secret! (1)
The first German scientist who realized that the newly discovered neutron-induced fission of a uranium isotope might actually be used for a bomb seems to have been Paul Harteck at the University of Hamburg. In 1938 he asked the Heereswaffenamt for funding to make one. He understood that highly enriched U235 was needed. Together with the physicist Groth he started a study for enriching U235 with centrifuges. They did not succeed but the Dutch did after WW2. (2)
The German bomb project was led by Werner Heisenberg who claimed after the war that he was only building a nuclear reactor in a cave at the town of Haigerloch (that is now a museum; I have been there). It came to nothing largely in part because Hitler was not interested.
Nuclear bomb-making ideas got to us in 1939 when the Dane Niels Bohr who had been informed by the German scientists Meitner and Frisch about the monstrous amount energy which could be had from the fission of 1 gram of U235. The first scientist who was informed here was the Italian Fermi.
(1) The Dutch electronics firm Philips got a patent for producing energy from fission.
(2) But they never made bomb-grade U235
If you mean getting rid of First Strike capability as Ellsberg suggests, you are right. But it can be done without going to no nukes which is a long arduous process. And if in our purity we insist only on that we may not survive to get to zero. But we shall certainly die pure.
In fact that is one of the big problems with much of the anti-nuke movement. It is utopia or nothing. The proper way is to tackle the emergency and buy time to get to zero – and negotiating an end to hair trigger alert and an end to First Strike Capability opens the very kind of negotiations needed to get to zero.
See: https://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2019/01/17/dismantling-the-doomsday-machines/
Missile defense systems allow a potential first strike to be militarily thinkable. Destroy the vast majority of an adversary’s deterrent capability in an overwhelming first strike and then use the missile defense system to mop up any remaining retaliatory missiles (over someone else’s territory).
Only the US is pursuing this capability at the moment.
This is crazy, but it’s born out of the old US first strike policy during the cold war, where the Soviets had an overwhelming conventional advantage during the first phase of WWIII. Now Russia is at a disadvantage against NATO, and they say they will strike first with tactical nuclear weapons. Why Washington continues the same old line, who knows. Probably insanity.
I am sure the general meant “second strike” because we did the first strike some decades ago. The second time is easier, and practice makes perfect.
Third strike.
any first strike or even a limited second strike by either Russia or the USA would be absolutely devastating not only to humanity with hundreds of millions killed within a few hours, but cataclysmic for the world climate, plunging the entire Northern Hemisphere into a nuclear winter. This is known absolutely and without any question among scientists and scholars.
These Elites have known this too since the late 1970s, at least! and yet people in the pentagon and their supporters throughout all the political and economic classes in the US and the military-industrial complex talk like this is somehow sane planning and a realistic course of action. They are beyond idiotic, they are cretins and criminals.
They should all be locked up for their insanity, the keys thrown away, and all nuclear weapons banned forever by the human race.
It gets tiresome to argue against this kind of insanity, and be repeating myself, after 40+ years. geez
Putin said, the streets of Leningrad 50 years ago taught him one thing.. if a fight is inevitable, strike first. So.. this is where Russia is being shoved into… a potentiality that they are forced to eliminate a threat to their survival near their borders.. Russia is giving up hope concerning America.
Trouble is, a first strike far from eliminating a problem, merely adds a greater one.
Problem is, those “elites” are actually international crime syndicates masquerading as governments. They’ve always profited from war and think they can retreat to their bunkers until the nuclear dust settles. Little do they know that it will actually be curtains for the human race and only their self-replicating AI robots will survive. Maybe that’s what was intended all along.
Their life is so pathetic and vile, they think living in a bunker would be ok.
I kinda like the idea of them living in a bunker for the rest of their lives. It’s the nuclear war part I have a problem with.
He means if we start losing the Empire. Pathetic.
It would end the Global Warming debate……
First strike was the US answer to the massive superiority of the Soviet Army, which could have rolled over Europe to the Channel in just days.
Today? It is hard to imagine a similar reason, but the old Cold Warriors remember that once upon a time they “needed it.”
Soviet superiority is a myth, created by commuphobes like Patton and Churchill. There was, and is, a strong anti-communist militancy in the west. They brought the Korean, and Vietnam wars, and even now threaten Venezuela for the same reason. By the time the Soviet came to Berlin, their bolt was shot. Enter the Dulles era.
You are correct Dave. The USSR never had the military dominance that was claimed by the cold war advocates. This was bs put forward by the MIC and its bought and paid for sycophants in the Pentagon, State Department and the Red House…. sorry I meant the White House.
When the Soviet Union fell apart, much was revealed and much was ignored. But it was very clear that the threat from the USSR was hugely exagerated. Ron Paul illustrated the truth when he said: “you could see all the glum faces in Congress when the Soviet Union fell.”.
Their thought process was obvious: ” What are we going to do now?”
But they came up with an answer: “how about a never ending war on terror?. And so, we have it.
I recall an engineer whom was part of a team which installed a state of the art IBM mainframe in Moscow, around 1972. It went into a brand new building, work slowed when they needed an additional electric outlet in the wall. The building electrician arrived with a wooden box of tools, and a sheet of tin. He proceeded to fabricate the electric box from the the tin, and tinsnips. He allowed for the screw tabs, but since he had no pairs of like screws, he had to tap disparate holes to hold the plug. Right, this country was gonna blitzkrieg western Europe.
Straight out of Dr. Strangelove. Where do they find ghoulish ogres like Dunford?
I know where they are on Sundays…
If Jesus meant what he said, “he who lives by the sword will die by the sword”, it doesn’t look good for the US. That might be why the government is full of pseudo Christian crazies.
“That’s only a problem, of course, if
the US starts using that arsenal.”
Jason, that is a ridiculous statement! The USA constantly threatens, invades, attacks, occupies countries all over the globe, besides the vicious sanctions and economic blockades.All are war crimes, most of the “wars” are of choice, none of the “defense” is defensive.
Throughout the Cold War, the main reason there was no Armageddon was the MAD, each side knowing that if it unleashed a nuke the other would follow, and so on. Even “ordinary people” can easily find out what would happen now by checking out recent The Real News Network interviews with Daniel Ellsberg and /or his book “the Doomsday Machine”. Withdrawing from the INF and developing “usable nukes” is not a military policy, it is preparing for gross destruction under any circumstances of threat to use. Deterrence was the only purpose of nuclear retention. Even US generals must know that.
It’s hard to argue that we are not absolutely insane.
More one upmanship by another DC death cultist.
I was getting tired of this planet anyway.
Thus is all the reaction to Russian technological edge in new gen weaponry. The massive increase in Pentagon budget — if examined by category — is all going to catch up with Russia. Supersonic misiles, submarine drones, etc.
The miney comes also with recommendations to remove many layers of bureacracy in order to speed up the process. But even in the category of submarine drones, only large ones are to be built. It is a quick response, probaly interrim, as US has no minituaruzed nuclear reactirs, to create a small version of Russian Poseidon probe. It is 100 times smaller then a standard submarine nuclear power generatior. Smaller, faster and capable of operating in deeper waters.
We have an arms race going on — instead of getting together to talk about how to eliminate dangers of confrontation. Clearly, it will mean addressing capabilities that can result in short response times, and less time to assess situations.
But this is not likely to happen. It appears we are determined to develop counter measures or parity in some technologies. With the money we do not have.
Lose lips sink ships. And lose talk by generals is madness.
Until that moment is reached, the US will continue implementing regime change and imposing sanctions.
The former has been attempting with help of proxy armies and minimal US military involvement. That’s might seem to be the average Yank’s preference, but they’re beginning to learn new words and phrases such as casus belli or false flag and less inclined to support foreign entanglements. As if the national conscience is heeded.
Until the global financial system collapses, countries with highly educated populaces such as Russian and India will seek momentum across education and technology spheres to capture product markets heretofore previously belonging to western multinationals.
When countries such as Turkey and India announce weapons purchases from Russia they accomplish at least two goals:
1) Continued US de-dollarization.
2) An integrated defense strategy and further prospects of increased reciprocal trade with Russia.
I would bet North Korean President Mr. Kim Jong-Un has been giving this more thought recently. The CIA’s actions re North Korea’s Spanish embassy probably only adds to his Mr. Kim’s resolve.
Whatever level of comity Messrs. Kim and Trumps had two weeks ago is being sorely tested.
It would seem President Trump’s presidential decision making is increasing subcontracted.