Archive for Arms Proliferation
“It’s Not What He Said!”
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Obama and Clinton Team Up Against Nukes
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been dreaming of this kind of foreign policy initiative since I was a teenager in the Reagan years. Want to make America and the rest of the world safer? Reduce the number of nuclear weapons on the planet.
Times UK: President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent.
The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each, The Times has learnt. Key to the initiative is a review of the Bush Administration’s plan for a US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a project fiercely opposed by Moscow.
Mr Obama is to establish a non-proliferation office at the White House to oversee the talks, expected to be headed by Gary Samore, a non-proliferation negotiator in the Clinton Administration. The talks will be driven by Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Reason #2,432,129 Not To Bomb Iran
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The Iranians are gearing up for a big Presidential election, too. In Summer of 2009, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will likely stand for re-election. The Iranian parliament, no friend to the bellicose President, has elected one of his most vocal opponents, Ali Larijani, to be their Speaker. In case you’re not aware, it’s not the President who holds the foreign policy reigns in Iran. That role goes to the Supreme Leader, held since 1989 by Ali Khamanei. However, the President is in charge of a lot, and Ahmadinejad is evidently taking the rap for a 25% rise in inflation.
Ali Larijani ran for President against Ahmadinejad in 2005. Ali’s no Boy Scout, being a well-connected censor and assassin among other things, but he appears to have a very different stance on nuclear development than does Mahmoud.
AFP: “[Larijani] typifies an increasingly prominent group in Iranian politics who remain rigidly loyal to the principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution but are distinctly lukewarm over the presidency of the ultra-conservative Ahmadinejad.
The divisions between the two were laid bare in October when Larijani resigned his post as top nuclear negotiator amid speculation that he was ready to take a slightly more pragmatic line in the standoff with the West.
Larijani also indicated his parliament would be closely supervising the work of Ahmadinejad’s government, which has been criticised by reformists and conservatives alike for controversial economic policies.”
Survival Under Atomic Attack
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Back in February my wife & I were visiting Los Angeles. After spending our first morning on the west coast getting used to the time difference, gawking at the old neighborhood where I grew up and checking out just how much the place had changed in the twelve years since I’d been there, we hooked up with my aunt and uncle. My grandmother had passed away not too long ago, and they were over at her house in Long Beach cleaning it up and getting it ready to go back on the market. There were many books among the items that were left in the house, and one of them was this fascinating relic of the Cold War, a nearly sixty year old booklet entitled Survival Under Atomic Attack.
To be honest, the first thought I had when I saw this was “Holy crap, I can’t wait to share this with ScruHoo readers!” So I finally got around to scanning the booklet and uploading it for general consumption. More, including a PDF file containing scans of the booklet itself, after the jump.
Care About Nuclear Proliferation? Who’s Your Candidate?
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Despite that interminable feeling, there won’t be any more Bush in 11 months, and it’ll be up to President Clinton, President McCain, or President Obama to deal with stuff like this:
All info from Global Security Newswire.
“Masked men yesterday abducted two Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission officials in the country’s politically unstable northwest border region, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Feb. 7).
“They were technicians from the PAEC, they were whisked away early Monday morning,†said local police chief Akbar Nasir.” – link
Dangerous people are pursuing nuclear technology. Our United States history of safeguarding our nuclear program and not seeking any meaningful reduction in nuclear proliferation will eventually come to bite someone on the ass. One piece of good news is coming from the U.S., thirty years too late though it is:
“The United States is expected to press for a fissile materials cutoff treaty this week at the United Nations, while China and Russia plan to push for a competing pact that would ban a space arms race, the Washington Times reported”
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“The fissile materials ban would prohibit the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.”
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“Opposition to such a treaty is expected from China, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Syria”- link
Meanwhile, a report on Iran’s weapon capability is hung up, and the culprit may be politics instead of facts:
“The International Atomic Energy Agency could delay a highly anticipated report on Iran’s nuclear program because of disputes between technical staffers and agency head Mohamed ElBaradei, Agence France-Presse reported.”
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“There were disagreements between ElBaradei and his technical staff. ElBaradei is pushing for one thing, while the people who went on a technical visit to Iran during January disagree,†said one Western diplomat.”
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“I’ve heard that some of [ElBaradei’s] technical staff are not happy,†a second diplomat said. “There’s a concern that most of the big issues are going to be declared as resolved when there’s still a feeling that they’re anything but.†– link
So nuclear technology is loose in Pakistan while the Bush administration rattles our United States Military saber at the Iranians, who may or may not have a program. The IAEA report is now delayed because of disagreements, so it’s hard to have confidence that it will be the fullest possible picture of Iran’s real capability. I’m not sure who El-Baradei is getting political pressure from, but I can guess a few of them might be Bush, Rice, Gates, and Cheney.
Missing Nukes: Treason of the Highest Order
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Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya at Global Research writes “According to a wide range of reports, several nuclear bombs were “lost†for 36 hours after taking off August 29/30, 2007 on a “cross-country journey†across the U.S., from U.S.A.F Base Minot in North Dakota to U.S.A.F. Base Barksdale in Louisiana. [1] Reportedly, in total there were six W80-1 nuclear warheads armed on AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles (ACMs) that were “lost.†[2] The story was first reported by the Military Times, after military servicemen leaked the story.
It is also worth noting that on August 27, 2007, just days before the “lost” nukes incident, three B-52 Bombers were performing special missions under the direct authorization of General Moseley, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. [3] The exercise was reported as being an aerial information and image gathering mission. The base at Minot is also home of the 91st Space Wings, a unit under the command of Air Force Space Command (AFSPC).
According to official reports, the U.S. Air Force pilots did not know that they were carrying weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Once in Louisiana, they also left the nuclear weapons unsecured on the runway for several hours. [4]
U.S. Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Requirements, Major-General Richard Y. Newton III commented on the incident, saying there was an “unprecedented†series of procedural errors, which revealed “an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards†[5]
These statements are misleading. The lax security was not the result of procedural negligence within the U.S. Air Force, but rather the consequence of a deliberate tampering of these procedures.
If a soldier, marine, airman, or sailor were even to be issued a rifle and rifle magazine — weaponry of a far lesser significance, danger, and cost — there is a strict signing and accountability process that involves a chain of command and paperwork. This is part of the set of military checks and balances used by all the services within the U.S. Armed Forces.
Military servicemen qualified to speak on the subject will confirm that there is a stringent nuclear weapons handling procedure. There is a rigorous, almost inflexible, chain of command in regards to the handling of nuclear weapons and not just any soldier, sailor, airman, or marine is allowed to handle nuclear weapons. Only servicemen specialized in specific handling and loading procedures, are perm certified to handle, access and load nuclear warheads.
Every service personnel that moves or even touches these weapons must sign a tracking paper and has total accountability for their movement. There is good reason for the paperwork behind moving these weapons. The military officers that order the movement of nuclear weapons, including base commanders, must also fill out paper forms.
In other words, unauthorized removal of nuclear weapons would be virtually impossible to accomplish unless the chain of command were bypassed, involving, in this case, the deliberate tampering of the paperwork and tracking procedures.
The strategic bombers that carried the nuclear weapons also could not fly with their loaded nuclear weaponry without the authorization of senior military officials and the base commander. The go-ahead authorization of senior military officials must be transmitted to the servicemen that upload the nuclear weapons. Without this authorization no flights can take place…”
You really, really should consider reading the whole article.
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Really…
Hillary: Nuke the bastards
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It got interesting after the CNN/YouTube debate when Hillary went after Obama for wanting to meet with countries not currently on our Christmas card list. Sen. Clinton (D-NY) seemed to grab onto the yokes of the presidency with her sullen wisdom on what not to do, what not to want. And now an Obama-Clinton dust up on nuclear weapons.  From said same sullen senator: “Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons. Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons.”
Thank you, Mrs. Clinton for the Cold War history lesson! And since you had those eight years in the White House (happening after the Cold War), of course you’re right! If the Pashtoons or Taliban give us enough trouble, we can nuke the bastards if we want to. I mean, they won’t all be in one place, but why else do we have such a big ass nuclear arsenal?
Rest of the field: stop the tough ass non-sense talk. You know you don’t have a chance in hell of setting off a nuclear weapon in Afganistan or Pakistan without setting off World War X. You can’t do it for the very reason you decry George Bush’s nuclear strategy: there is such a thing as mutually assured destruction. You can’t deter madmen with madness. That requires them to be sane in order to work. Haven’t you already thrown in the towel on that one?
North Korea Shuts Down Reactor
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This is great news coming out of the years-long, six-nation diplomatic effort to get North Korea out of the nuclear fuel business:
Associated Press: “United Nations inspectors have verified that North Korea has shut down its sole functioning nuclear reactor, the chief of the watchdog agency said Monday, confirming the isolated country had taken its first step in nearly five years to halt production of atomic weapons.
South Korea sent more oil to the North on Monday to reward its compliance with an international disarmament agreement.”
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“The two shipments are part of 50,000 tons of oil that the North will receive for the reactor shutdown. Under a February agreement at international arms talks, North Korea will receive a total equivalent of 1 million tons of oil for dismantling its nuclear programs.A North Korean diplomat said Sunday that his country was willing to discuss disclosing the full extent of its nuclear programs as well as disabling them as long as the U.S. removed all sanctions against the impoverished country.”
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“The North said it shut down the reactor, which generates plutonium for atomic bombs, on Saturday. It was the first on-the-ground achievement toward scaling back the country’s nuclear ambitions since an international standoff began in late 2002.”
Kudos to everyone involved in this complicated process. It goes to show that diplomacy, no matter how uncomfortable or frustrating, is alive and well in the post-9/11 world. If only the Bush administration would use more of it.
Regardless, it’s wonderful news.
Damned Idiots!!!!
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It is true that this country once fought and won a two front war in World War II (not by itself silly!). And it is true that we prevailed in a near fifty year struggle against Soviet Communism (not by ourselves silly!). So, are we trying to re-live old glories by pissing off Russia to the point that they feel strategically threatened enough to reignite the arms race? To Wit: 1) We’ve way over expanded NATO right up to the Russian border. Most of the new NATO countries can’t possibly contribute to other countries’ defense much less their own. So what are we doing? 2) We want to launch a missile defense system over Eastern Europe. The reaction from Russia is to test a new ICBM with multiple warhead capability and state their intention to retarget their nuclear arsenal to Europe (symbolic yes, but a step backward nonetheless). 3) We defend this action with the ludicrous assertion that we want to defend Europe against an Iranian or North Korean missile. You know, I don’t think you defend yourself very well against rouge states by isolating Russia. They are heavily involved in our diplomatic efforts with both countries.
We have a supposed Russian expert as our Secretary of State! Did any of this reaction come as a surprise? Russia, like many countries that have since told us where we could go, supported us after 9/11. Let’s not forget that they have almost the equivalent oil production as Saudi Arabia. I don’t mean to suggest that Russia can do whatever it wants. But how can we sustain a War on Terror and a renewed Cold War? As if the credibility gap couldn’t get any wider! Let’s keep an eye on the G-8 conference when Bush and Putin meet. I have little faith in this faith based foreign policy.
