{"id":7115,"date":"2017-01-05T12:16:25","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T19:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=7115"},"modified":"2017-01-05T12:16:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-05T19:16:52","slug":"ignored-russias-legitimate-nuclear-fears-and-how-us-provocative-nuclear-strategies-could-lead-to-armageddon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=7115","title":{"rendered":"Ignored: Russia’s Legitimate Nuclear Fears and How US’ Provocative Nuclear Strategies Could Lead to Armageddon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When you unilaterally cancell the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, openly aim for nuclear primacy and turn your back to a detente it sounds a lot like a recipe for disaster<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jonathan Marshall<\/a> \"Subscribe<\/a><\/div>\n
(Consortium News<\/a>) \"Subscribe<\/a><\/div>\n

Wed, Jan 4, 2017<\/span> | 2,025<\/span> 16<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Originally appeared<\/a> at Consortium News<\/b><\/div>\n
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The conflicts between Washington and Moscow keep on growing: Ukraine and Syria, rival war games, \u201chybrid\u201d wars and \u201ccyber-wars.\u201d Talk of a new Cold War doesn\u2019t do justice to the stakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy bottom line is that the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War,\u201d\u00a0declares<\/a>former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry.<\/p>\n

If a new Trump administration wants to peacefully reset relations with Russia, there\u2019s no better way to start than by canceling the deployment of costly new ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.\u00a0One such system went live in Romania this May<\/a>; another is slated to go live in Poland in 2018. Few U.S. actions have riled President Putin as much as this threat to erode Russia\u2019s nuclear deterrent.<\/p>\n

Only last month, at a meeting in Sochi with Russian military leaders to discuss advanced new weapons technology,\u00a0Putin vowed<\/a>, \u201cWe will continue to\u00a0do all we need to\u00a0ensure the\u00a0strategic balance of\u00a0forces. We view any attempts to\u00a0change or\u00a0dismantle it, as\u00a0extremely dangerous. Our task is to\u00a0effectively neutralize any military threats to\u00a0Russia\u2019s security, including those posed by\u00a0the\u00a0newly-deployed strategic missile defense systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Putin\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0unnamed countries \u2014 obviously led by the United States \u2014 of \u201cnullifying\u201d international agreements on missile defense \u201cin an effort to gain unilateral advantages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moscow has reacted to this perceived threat with more than mere words. It is developing new and deadlier nuclear missiles,\u00a0including the SS-30<\/a>, to counter U.S. defenses. It has\u00a0rebuffed new arms control negotiations<\/a>. And it has provocatively stationed nuclear-capable\u00a0Iskander missiles<\/a>\u00a0in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad to \u201ctarget . . . the facilities that . . . start posing a threat to us,\u201d as\u00a0Putin put it last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If a new arms race is underway, it\u2019s not for lack of warning. The Russians have voiced their concerns about missile defenses for years and years, without any serious acknowledgment from Washington. From their vantage point, the apparent bad faith of successive U.S. administrations, Democratic as well as Republican, is a flashing red light to which they had to respond.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s Nightmare<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the earliest days of President Reagan\u2019s Strategic Defense (\u201cStar Wars\u201d) Initiative to make ballistic missiles \u201cimpotent and obsolete,\u201d an alarmed Moscow has viewed U.S. efforts to build a missile shield as a long-term threat to their nuclear deterrent.<\/p>\n

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Emigrate While You Still Can! Learn More…<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In 2002, President Bush one-upped Reagan and\u00a0unilaterally canceled the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972<\/a>. He did so after Russia\u2019s foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, publicly pleaded with Washington not to terminate this landmark arms control agreement.<\/p>\n

Writing in\u00a0Foreign Affairs<\/em>\u00a0magazine<\/a>, Ivanov warned that such a move would set back recent progress in Russian-U.S. relations and destroy \u201c30 years of efforts by the world community\u201d to reduce the danger of nuclear war. Russia would be forced, against its desire for international cooperation, to build up its own forces in response. The arms race would be back in full force \u2014 leaving the United States less secure, not more.<\/p>\n

But with Russia still reeling from the neoliberal \u201cshock therapy\u201d that it suffered through during the 1990s, the neoconservatives (then in charge of U.S foreign policy) were confident of winning such an arms race. In 2002, President Bush adopted a National Security Strategy that explicitly called for U.S military superiority over every other power. To that end, he called on the Pentagon to develop a ground-based missile defense system within two years.<\/p>\n

Since then, that program has lined the pockets of major U.S. military contractors without achieving any notable successes. Critics \u2013 including the U.S. General Accountability Office, National Academy of Sciences and\u00a0Union of Concerned Scientists<\/a>\u2013 have\u00a0blasted the program<\/a>\u00a0for failing more than half of its operational tests. Today, after the expenditure of more than $40 billion,\u00a0it enjoys bipartisan support mainly as a jobs program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Russia fears, however, that it\u2019s only a matter of time before the U.S. perfects its missile shield technology enough to erode the deterrent capabilities of Moscow\u2019s nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

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Promoting U.S. Nuclear Primacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

That specter was highlighted in 2006 when two U.S. strategic arms experts\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0in the pages of the establishment-oriented Foreign Affairs that the age of nuclear deterrence \u201cis nearing an end. Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. . . . Unless they reverse course rapidly, Russia\u2019s vulnerability will only increase over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, added, \u201cWashington\u2019s pursuit of nuclear primacy helps explain its missile defense strategy.\u201d Missile defense, they pointed out, is not the same as population defense. No conceivable defense could truly protect American cities against an all-out attack by Russia, or even China. Rather, a leaky shield \u201cwould be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one \u2014 as an adjunct to a U.S. first-strike capability, not as a standalone shield.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China),\u201d they explained, \u201cthe targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if to make that scenario a reality, the Bush administration soon announced plans to install an anti-missile base in Poland and a radar control center in the Czech Republic \u2014 ostensibly to counter a nuclear threat from Iran. No matter that Iran had neither nuclear weapons nor long-range ballistic missiles \u2014 or that Washington had rebuffed Russia\u2019s offer to cooperate on building missile defenses closer to Iran. No, Moscow was supposed to believe President Bush\u2019s assurance that \u201cRussia is not the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Republican hawks in Congress didn\u2019t get the message<\/a>. Said Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, \u201cThis is not just about missile defense; this is about demonstrating to Russia that America is still a nation of resolve . . . and we\u2019re not going to let Russian expansionism intimidate everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet when Russian officials reacted with alarm, and warned of the potential for a \u201cnew Cold War,\u201d\u00a0American news accounts<\/a>accused them of being \u201cbellicose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama Blows Up the Reset Button<\/strong><\/p>\n

Taking office in 2009, President Obama promised a new era of nuclear sanity. Again, the Russians pleaded for an end to the missile defense program in Eastern Europe. Privately, they expressed a\u00a0new and genuine concern<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 that a future U.S. administration could secretly fit interceptor rockets with nuclear warheads and use them to \u201cdecapitate\u201d Russia\u2019s top leadership with \u201cvirtually no warning time.\u201d Russia\u2019s response: retaliate at the first sign of an incoming strike, without hesitating to check if it\u2019s a false alarm.<\/p>\n

Obama and his team didn\u2019t heed the warnings. Instead, they snubbed Putin \u2014 and the entire Russian leadership \u2014 by marching ahead with the missile shield deployment in Eastern Europe, still insulting Moscow\u2019s intelligence with the pretense that it was a defense against Iran.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s \u201creset button\u201d was the\u00a0first casualty<\/a>\u00a0of his nuclear policy. In 2011, a despairing President Dmitry Medvedev\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0that Russia would have no choice but to respond exactly as Putin has done, by upgrading the offensive capabilities of Russian nuclear missiles and deploying Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad. Still to come may be a Russian withdrawal from the New START treaty, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed as her greatest accomplishment in the field of arms control.<\/p>\n

President Obama never intended to expand his limited missile defense program into an existential threat to Russia\u2019s nuclear deterrent, but he opened that door. Exactly as Moscow has long feared, hawks in Congress now are chomping at the bit to spend what it takes to build an\u00a0all-out missile defense system<\/a>, which former Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned would be \u201cenormously destabilizing not to mention unbelievably expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

One\u00a02003 study<\/a>\u00a0pegged the possible cost of a full defensive shield covering the United States at more than $1 trillion. But that\u2019s a small price compared to what could happen if a jittery Russian military command, armed to the teeth with nuclear missiles set on hair-trigger alert to counter a successful U.S. first strike, receives a false warning of just such an attack.\u00a0Such a scenario has happened more than once<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of these days such a mistake may prompt an all-out Russian nuclear launch \u2014 and then, not even a full missile defense will spare the United States, and much of the world, from devastation.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you unilaterally cancell the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, openly aim for nuclear primacy and turn your back to a detente it sounds a lot like a recipe for disaster Jonathan Marshall (Consortium News) Wed, Jan 4, 2017 | 2,025 16 Originally appeared at Consortium News The conflicts between Washington and Moscow keep on growing: Ukraine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7116,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[104,105],"tags":[1401],"class_list":["post-7115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-videos","tag-ignored-russias-legitimate-nuclear-fears-and-how-us-provocative-nuclear-strategies-could-lead-to-armageddon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/5299756-3x2-940x627.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2SfUR-1QL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7118,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115\/revisions\/7118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}