There’s a lot going on in the news these days. So much that I have a hard time keeping up. No sooner do I start writing about the outrage of the day when they hit us with something else.
Despite all that, we need to take a moment to talk about nukes. It’s important.
After years of trying to roll back our nuclear arsenal, the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review is out and it’s full speed ahead baby!
Here's a link to the Huffington Post article.
To sum it up, we want more nukes, newer nukes, and more “usable” nukes. What could possibly go wrong?
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Why do they want them? The reasons they give are: Russia, China and North Korea.
Let’s look at Russia first. Russia is modernizing their military, which really shouldn’t be a surprise. After nearly collapsing in the 1990s they had nowhere to go but up.
There is some concern from Russia. Their recent moves have been aggressive and they seem to be “flexing their muscles” a bit. They’re not the big bad Soviet Union however and we still spend something like 7-8 times on defense than they do.
They might want to be big and bad, but they’re constrained by their budget and NATO.
The Pentagon, think tanks and defense hawks, aka “the usual suspects” are all in a huff about the Russian “Doomsday” nuclear torpedo that they are supposedly developing.
The rather benign sounding “Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System”, if it were actually built, would be more of a small, nuclear-powered, drone submarine than a torpedo. With a range of 5,400 nautical miles it could carry a large nuclear warhead (100 MT in some estimates) and hit coastal targets or possibly create a radioactive “tsunami”.
Now, I’m not sure if this thing is even real or something the Russians are trying to scare us with. Wouldn’t be the first time. So far I don’t think we’ve seen anything more substantial than drawings.
While certainly scary, I think it would be more of a weapon of last resort. Why send a slow, noisy, drone submarine when a ballistic missile can be there in 20 minutes?
Besides, it’s not like they’re messing with our elections or anything. Oh wait….
So much for Russia, on to China.
The nuclear review states that China is “modernizing and expanding its already considerable nuclear forces”.
Now this is the kind of thing that defense writers (and Congress) get all breathless over. While any expansion in nuclear weapons is cause for concern, I’m not going to freak out just yet.
China’s nuclear arsenal currently stands at somewhere around 260-270 warheads. That puts them ahead of the UK and just behind France in the nuclear club. Meanwhile we have roughly 6,800 warheads.
So far as I can see, Chinese nuclear posture is largely aimed at deterring us (and probably Russia) from using nukes on them. Being pragmatic, they don’t want to spend any more money than they need to on nuclear systems. Nuclear weapons are expensive and really not good for much except keeping the other guy from using his nukes.
In order for that to work, they need to make sure that enough of their nuclear force would survive a first strike to maintain a credible deterrent. Their nuclear posture is one of “assured retaliation”. They fear that we could try to take out their nuclear deterrent with a preemptive strike and then let our missile defenses stop whatever they might have left to retaliate with.
Note that their overall defense spending is roughly one third of ours. Not to say we don’t have anything to fear from China, but let’s keep this in perspective folks.
So let’s just suppose that those devious Chinese were to <i>double</i> their nuclear arsenal. That would still leave them with less than one tenth of what we have. Keep in mind that China also needs to deter Russia and India, two nearby nuclear powers that they have less than ideal relations with.
I’ll talk more about North Korea another time. I am certainly concerned, but I’m not wetting the bed just yet. Despite all their bluster, I believe North Korea is a rational actor. Evil, certainly, but not insane or suicidal.
After seeing what happened to Iraq and Libya after giving up their nuclear programs, North Korea views nuclear weapons as key to the survival of the regime.
In a perfect world I would definitely prefer North Korea not have nuclear weapons. That being said, I believe they can be deterred just like we deterred murdering bastards like Stalin and Mao. Nobody wants to be supreme dictator of a smoking crater.
You may disagree with me, that’s fine. Just realize that our options here are pretty much down to dealing with a nuclear North Korea or starting what would likely be a very messy conflict. Know what you’re getting into here. It probably won’t be a quick little surgical strike or a daring commando raid.
Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
Niccolò Machiavelli
What has me most troubled is the current administration regime pushing for more “low yield” nuclear weapons and lowering the threshold for their use.
Now I’m not too upset about us not adopting a “no first use” policy. Generally I think it’s best to not tie your hands like that. That assumes we had a sane administration, of course.
It has been our unstated policy for years that we could, and probably would, respond to a chemical or biological attack with nuclear weapons. I can’t prove it, but I believe we told Iraq that through back-channels prior to the 1991 Gulf War.
Where I see us lowering the bar is responding with nuclear weapons to something like a cyber attack or an attack on our command-control networks.
As I see the threshold for using nuclear weapons being lowered. I also see the line between nuclear and conventional weapons becoming blurred. When you have weapons with a yield as low as .3 kilotons, I fear it will be tempting to view them as just “heavier artillery”.
The administration claims that this will make nuclear war “less likely”.
War is peace, up is down, and that sound you heard was George Orwell banging on the lid of his coffin and yelling:
“1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale you twits! Not a bloody how-to manual!”
Oh, and the cost? Something like $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years. Good thing we’re not worried about the debt or anything.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Now to a defense hawk, it’s always 1938 and there’s always another Hitler getting ready to conquer the world. Kim is Hitler, as was his father, as was his grandfather, Saddam was Hitler (except when we liked him), Noriega was Hitler (except when we liked him), Gadaffi was Hitler. It’s Hitlers all the way down.
Believe it or not, every two-bit dictator isn’t the next Hitler and there are lessons to be learned from history besides Munich 1938.
Sometimes I think we’re on the road to 1914 and I can see Sarajevo in the distance….