Trump has not said how he plans to spend the $54 billion military increase, leading some analysts to call it “a budget in search of a strategy.” How would costly weapons help in Yemen, facing famine because U.S.-armed Saudi Arabia is blockading its port?

Mr. Trump welcomes a nuclear arms race and says he wants to be “top of the pack.” In conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he rejected Putin’s proposal to extend the START Treaty capping U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals at 1,500 nuclear weapons. Those already represent levels of destructiveness that would devastate both nations and endanger life on Earth. Russia might put its forces on launch-on-warning, increasing the risk of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.

Trump’s proposal is as dangerous as it is cruel. Congress should reject it.

Russia appears to have been involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee. The deeper issues, however, go beyond partisan politics.

At the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, James Baker, assured the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, that NATO would not absorb former Warsaw Pact states. The most recent NATO summit was held in Warsaw. We plan to deploy advanced weapons in Poland.

While Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, the United States was involved in an intense political crisis in Ukraine, which had been a republic of the now extinct Soviet Union. Ukraine’s president at the time, Viktor Yanukovich, an unsavory leader by any standards, was close to Moscow. Washington supported a revolution by Yanukovich’s political opponents, Western-oriented free market advocates. They prevailed. Ukraine’s pro-Russian eastern population revolted, and Russia then seized Crimea and interfered in eastern Ukraine. Five thousand Ukrainian forces — anti and pro Russian — have been killed, along with 2,000 civilians.

Victoria Nuland, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, was caught on tape designating one Ukrainian leader as “the guy”; he became Prime Minister.

To be sure, both the U.S. and Russia have interfered in many countries, but when it comes to former Warsaw Pact states and especially to former Soviet republics, the moral issues of democracy — or hypocrisy — are overshadowed by extreme risk.

As the West incorporates former Soviet republics into NATO, as it has the Baltic states, it becomes obliged to defend them with nuclear weapons. In turn, Russia is moving toward nuclear launch on warning, with greatly increased danger of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation. The next President will need to manage tensions with Moscow to avoid a new arms race.

For Speak Your Mind, this is David Keppel.

August 6 and 9 mark the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 130,000 men, women, and children, horribly wounding others. Speaking in Hiroshima in May, President Obama called for “a moral revolution” to rid the world of nuclear weapons, saying “technological progress without an equivalent program in human institutions can doom us.”

Yet President Obama’s own administration has failed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to move toward nuclear disarmament.

Instead the U.S. is embarking on a trillion dollar nuclear weapons modernization program. Senate Republicans forced Obama into this program, otherwise refusing to ratify the START II treaty with Russia.

Arms control advocates are trying to stop the most dangerous of the new nuclear weapons, which will be more usable and thus more likely to be employed. The Long-Range Standoff Weapon, a cruise missile, increases the risk of accidental nuclear war, as an adversary could mistake one of our conventional missiles for a nuclear attack.

Let us support the president’s call for a “persistent effort” for a nuclear-free world. It is a stand for safety and sanity.

The article says that President Obama’s lieutenants argue that smaller and more reliable nuclear weapons will make their use less likely, reasoning that doesn’t make sense to me. I believe that developing such flexible weapons will make their use more likely, as the weapons will fill niches not covered previously. General James Cartwright, a retired vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, agrees that “what going smaller does is to make the weapon more thinkable.”

And Andrew Weber, a former assistant secretary of defense, said that “It’s unaffordable and unneeded.”

Of course, Russia and China are very much opposed to the new developments, and their opposition adds to nuclear tension and increases the possibility of a new arms race.

In 2009, in his first year in office, Mr. Obama pledged that he would take steps toward a nuclear-free world and “reduce the role of nuclear weapons.” The Nobel committee cited his pledge in awarding him the Peace Prize.

Mr. Obama is reversing his earlier position by increasing the role of nuclear weapons in his military arsenal. His new position is just plain wrong. We must oppose these misguided and dangerous weapons.

Source

William Broad and David Sanger, “Race for Latest Class of Nuclear Arms Threatens to Revive Cold War,” The New York Times, Jan 11, 2016.

Yet the Pentagon has been testing a precision nuclear warhead that can be delivered by cruise missile.

Former Defense Secretary William J. Perry has warned that the cruise missile might sway a future president to contemplate “limited nuclear war.” Worse yet, because the missile comes in nuclear and non-nuclear varieties, a foe under attack might assume the worst and overreact, initiating nuclear war.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has decided to deploy heavy U.S. weapons in Eastern Europe. To do so would break a crucial pledge the United States made at the end of the Cold War that we would not expand NATO and would not place our weapons near the Russian border. Putting such weapons in nations such as Hungary – whose right wing government has fascist overtones – is morally debatable and strategically dangerous. Russia is sure to react asymmetrically, perhaps moving closer to nuclear launch-on-warning.

In the 21st century, which faces climate chaos and social and political turmoil, we must modernize our thinking, not our nuclear weapons.

Sources

https://www.globalzero.org/get-the-facts/FAQs#sthash.mIHjyUut.dpuf

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/as-us-modernizes-nuclear-weapons-smaller-leaves-some-uneasy.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/opinion/breaking-the-taboo-on-the-use-of-nuclear-arms.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/world/europe/us-fortifying-europes-east-to-deter-putin.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

The nuclear deal faces a September vote in Congress. If there were a veto-proof majority in Congress for a resolution of disapproval, the deal would be dead and the United States would be barred from complying with the terms we just negotiated.

A senior German official, Philipp Ackermann, recently said that it would be a catastrophe for Congress to kill the deal. Other nations would not go back to sanctions, while “The chance of Iran going back to the negotiating table would be effectively zero.” Iran would be free from the deal’s rigorous nuclear terms. In short, we would be in a crisis leading to war. Yet bombing would only drive Iran’s nuclear program underground and convince Iran it must have a nuclear deterrent.

Indiana Senator Dan Coats opposes the agreement, while Senator Joe Donnelly, long considered a swing vote, has announced his support, as have former Senator and Foreign Relations Committee chair Richard Lugar and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. Senator Donnelly is to be commended for a courageous decision.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/08/world/document-iranletteraug2015.html

https://twitter.com/TheIranDeal

https://www.irandealfacts.org/

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/iran-deal-german-philipp-ackermann-response-121100.html

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demands that Congress kill the agreement and increase sanctions. Mr. Netanyahu claims the alternative to this “bad” deal is not war but “a better deal.”
Republicans, and Democrats such as Indiana’s Senator Joe Donnelly, are supporting a bill that – even after revisions — recklessly endangers the agreement.

Some of the best informed Israelis, however, acknowledge that diplomacy is achieving what war cannot. Ron Ben-Yishai, the senior military analyst for Israel’s most mainstream newspaper, Yedioth Aharonot, wrote: “We could not have achieved a better outcome even if Israel, the United States, and other countries had carried out military strikes on the nuclear sites in Iran.”

If the U.S. and Israel reject the concessions that Iran has made, other powers would resume business with Iran – without the limits that the deal provides. The pressure for a U.S. or Israeli strike would grow.

Bombing could set back Iran’s program at most five years; the negotiated agreement lasts ten. Even repeated bombing would make Iran more, not less likely, to build a nuclear weapon deep underground to deter future attack.

Citizens should encourage Senators to withstand the pressures of right wing billionaires and instead support diplomacy. Senator Donnelly, as a moderate Democrat, is key.

Sources:

https://972mag.com/israel-media-survey-iran-deal-not-so-bad-after-all/105259/
https://972mag.com/netanyahu-resurrects-no-partner-excuse-for-iran-deal/105357/
https://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/irannuclear-deal32015reduced.pdf
https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2015-02-11/Voting-Up-or-Down-on-an-Iran-Nuclear-Deal-Not-as-Easy-as-123