De Bretton-Gordon: Bringing back nuclear armageddon in the US, UK and France by means of the Mutually Assured Destruction acronym
While Biden’s recent comments invoking Armageddon may not be based on new intelligence on Putin, they reflect the long-simmering unease over the Russian leader’s nuclear threats and should serve as an impetus to bring back long-term nuclear arms control. Biden tried to kick-start this issue by extending the New START nuclear treaty with Russia.
NATO must tell Russia that if it moves its tactical nuclear weapons out of its current location to threaten Ukraine, NATO will take them out as well as make clear that any attack on the nuclear power stations will have an equal and greater response.
De Bretton-Gordon: It is all about scale – strategic nuclear weapons are basically Armageddon. According to the Federation of Nuclear Scientists, the US, Britain and France all have over 6,000 warheads each, which is enough to change the planet. This acronym is MAD and it is called Mutually Assured Destruction.
These warheads are fitted to Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) which can travel thousands of miles and are aimed at key sites and cities in the US, UK, France and Russia.
Tactical nuclear weapons meanwhile are much smaller warheads with a yield, or explosive power, of up to 100 kilotons of dynamite – rather than roughly 1,000 kilotons for strategic warheads.
Nuclear weapons blowing up power stations wouldn’t create a blast similar to a weapon detonation but could spread radioactive debris and cause problems with local water supplies.
Do we really need a nuclear war? De Bretton-Gordon: How Russia is moving towards a global nuclear conflict and how NATO can trigger Article 5
De Bretton-Gordon: This is difficult to tell for certain, but my assumption is that Russia’s strategic weapons and ICBMs are probably in good condition and always ready. It is only Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons which now give it parity with the US and NATO militarily, so I expect them to be well looked after.
This is likely not the case for the tactical weapons. The missiles and warheads are in good shape but the vehicles they are mounted on are in poor shape, I believe. This is a reasonable assumption based on the state of the equipment on display in Ukraine.
The range of the launchers is only up to 500 kilometers, so they’d need to travel hundreds of miles to get into a position where they can launch an attack. But from a mechanical perspective it’s unlikely, in my opinion, that they would get that far.
Also, it is likely these weapons rely on microprocessors and other high-tech components which are in very short supply in Russia – given international sanctions and the heavy use of precision guide missiles by Russia, which also use these parts.
At the heart of this move is attacking civilians rather than opposition forces. This manifests itself with attacks on hospitals, schools and ‘hazardous’ infrastructure, like chemical plants and nuclear power stations. They can become nuclear or chemical weapons if they are attacked.
The Russians hope that if the Ukrainian people give up, the military will quickly follow, which, in my opinion, is a highly flawed assumption – both are showing a lot more mettle than the Russians.
All this would head west across Europe according to the meteorology at the moment. This could be seen as an attack on NATO and trigger Article 5 – where an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all allies – which would allow NATO to strike directly back at Russia.
I do not believe in the use of strategic nuclear weapons. This is a war nobody can win, and at the moment it does not seem likely that this regional conflict in Europe would lead to a global nuclear war which could destroy the planet for many generations.
The checks and balances are there in the Kremlin as well as White House and 10 Downing Street, so we aren’t plunged into a global nuclear conflict on a whim.
US officials have said that they do not think that Russia is moving or preparing tactical nuclear weapons, which can be small enough to target soldier formations or big enough to destroy a city.
I believe that the Russians developed unconventional warfare tactics in Syria. Russian forces entered Syria’s civil war to support President al-Assad’s regime. Assad would not be in power if he hadn’t used chemical weapons.
The massive nerve agent attack on August 21, 2013 on Ghouta stopped the rebels overrunning Damascus. The four-year conventional siege of Aleppo was ended by multiple chlorine attacks.
And it does not appear that Putin has any morals or scruples. Russia attacked hospitals and schools in Syria which it is repeating again in Ukraine. Unconventional warfare aims to break the will of civilians to resist, and Putin appears to be happy to use any means and weapons to achieve this.
However Soviet doctrine, which the Russians still seem to be following, allows local commanders to use tactical nuclear weapons to stave off defeat, or loss of Russian territory.
The attempted annexation of four districts through the current sham referendums makes the likelihood of tactical use very high, if these places are attacked. Local commanders are expected to defer to Putin first before pressing their own equivalent of a red button.
Military sources in Western countries say that Putin is getting involved in close battles, and giving low-level commanders orders. This is extraordinary because it shows that President Putin doesn’t trust his generals and that the command and control system is broken.
Even in an attack on a power station one assumes Putin would be involved, as the West would likely construe it as an improvised nuclear weapon and act accordingly.
The primary utility would be part of the final effort by Mr. Putin to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe some of the most sensitive discussions inside the administration.
It is striking to recall that many seven months ago, some considered Putin to be a genius. That myth has turned to dust. The man who helped suppress uprisings, entered wars and tried to manipulate elections across the planet now looks cornered.”
But Biden’s comments also show that, in one way at least, Putin’s nuclear threats have worked: They have left his adversaries unsure how he might behave.
There simply isn’t much – if any – precedent in the last six decades of a president so bluntly warning of looming catastrophe. The President moved sharply away from thecoordinated effort to calmly warn against saber rattling, but not rhetorically escalate anything, because of the differences in tone between Biden and his national security officials.
He talks a lot about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons and biological or chemical weapons because of his military’s performance.
Even though a press pool is allowed in for some remarks, presidents are often less guarded during political fundraising events because cameras are usually not on. So it’s possible that the President’s comments – his most stark on the nuclear question since the war in Ukraine started – might not have happened in a more conventional setting like a news conference. The White House has always walked back presidential remarks on foreign policy, especially if it means the US would respond to a China invasion of Taiwan.
“I’m trying to figure out what is Putin’s off ramp,” Biden said. Where is he able to find a way out? Where does he find himself in a position that he does not not only lose face but significant power within Russia?” “I said so.” Biden said.
In his lecture at the American University in Washington in 1963, Kennedy talked about the perils of weapons that could end the world, and he also emphasized the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis.
brinksmanship should never be allowed again because of the chance of annihilating humanity in a nuclear exchange. In 1985 Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev stated that a nuclear war could not be won and must never be fought.
President Putin and Russia have shown absolutely no interest in any kind of meaningful diplomacy. And unless and until they do, it’s very hard to pursue it,” Blinken said.
Biden appeared to be making an argument which Putin will be aware of, that the idea of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine doesn’t make sense and should be avoided at all costs.
Nuclear weapons are not good for self-defense because they are too terrible to be used, and any nation that does would be publishing their own death warrant.
How the U.S. Response to President Donald J. Biden’s Speech During the Second Cuban Missile Crisis was Scarce and Insane
Mr. Biden told the crowd at the second of two fund-raisers he attended that they have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
His comments underscore the most important mission of his presidency – shepherding the world through the most dangerous nuclear brinkmanship in 60 years.
Biden’s blunt assessment caught several senior US officials by surprise, largely due to that lack of any new intelligence to drive them and the grim language Biden deployed.
But White House officials closely watched – and studied for clues – Putin’s speech last week – and much like his speech just prior to the invasion, it raised alarms. It’s been an element of several internal discussions in recent days, highlighting that while the world may brush off the latest in months of Putin statements seemingly detached from obvious reality, the Biden “doesn’t have that luxury,” one official said.
Biden’s remarks serve as a window into a very real, very ongoing discussion inside his administration as the seek to calibrate the response to that environment.
His remarks are usually a short 10 minute talk but over the years they’ve gone on for half an hour or more. After the press conference, Biden takes questions from the donors.
Aides back in Washington were first made aware of Biden’s comments through news reports and dispatches from the press pool in the room.
The use of Armageddon by the President illustrated that there is no escalation ladder for nuclear weapons, tactical or otherwise. Any move in that direction sets off a cascading response that only has one outcome.
Several officials pointed out that Putin’s saber rattling is not new, and that US officials have been grappling with the threats and potential for their use since the first days of the war.
One official characterized the speech as “insane,” and while that bolstered the US view of Russian weakness and isolation, it also further increased concern about Putin’s willingness to escalate beyond the level of a rational actor.
White House officials decided not to speak to the public on Thursday, and there are no plans to speak in public on Friday. If Biden wants to address it himself, it will be apparent when he departs for his Maryland event later in the morning, one official said.
The most significant element is that US officials have not seen a change in posture or intelligence that raises the threat level above where it has been.
There have been direct communications to Moscow in the last several weeks detailing the scale of the US response should Putin decide to go down that path. Those details remain closely held, and officials say that won’t change any time soon.
The Day After Reagan: The Rise and Fall of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement (START) I, and the End of the Cold War
Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” Follow him on the internet. His views are his own in this commentary. There are more opinions on CNN.
Fears of nuclear war then accelerated. In the 1980s, then-President Reagan’s bellicose rhetoric and a series of quick successions of Soviet leaders kept Americans on edge. When ABC broadcast the movie, “The Day After,” in 1983, which depicted a fictional war that escalates to nuclear Armageddon, millions of viewers were terrified. Reagan wrote in his diary that it had left him depressed. One teen told a reporter after watching the film, “I thought the show wasn’t as scary as thinking about it afterwards, and wondering if we’re all going to die.”
Although Reagan spent his first term railing against any negotiations with the Soviets, he later bucked conservative opposition to sign the historic Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement (INF) in 1987. The emergence of Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev changed international dynamics and his embrace of reform and peace opened the door to the treaty, which led to the elimination of entire classes of missiles.
Soviet aggression didn’t make things easier. Carter admitted in December 1979 that his opinion of the Russians had changed a lot since they invaded Afghanistan. Carter had already signed the SALT II treaty in June 1979 after seven years of negotiations, but he asked the Senate to postpone action on it after the Soviet invasion. The treaty was never signed by Congress, but the US voluntarily observed the limits for several years.
A massive international nuclear freeze movement that began during the 1980s created renewed pressure for elected officials to engage in negotiations again.
In 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, President George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev signed Strategic Arms Reduction Treat (START) I, which made deep cuts in each nation’s nuclear arsenal.
In the year of Donald Trump, he pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement, which is why Iran has increased its nuclear arms program. In 2019, the United States also withdrew from the INF Treaty. One year later, Trump did the same with the Open Skies Treaty, which had enabled participants to conduct surveillance flights to foster transparency and reduce the risk of war.
With Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons, it is time to start a new era of arm controls. As Gorbachev said upon signing the INF treaty, “The treaty whose text is on this table offers a big chance at last to get onto the road leading away from the threat of catastrophe. The promise of a fulfilling andhappy life without fear and with no waste of resources of mass destruction is what holds out for our children and grandchildren, so it is our duty to take full advantage of that opportunity and move together to a Nuclear-free world.
Reagan and Gorbachev both agreed that the world would be safer if the weapons were deployed.
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Biden’s fist bump with Mohammed bin Salman and energy use in the US and Europe – a lesson learned from the past
Yes, we’ve been here before, at least if you take President Joe Biden at his word. If things continue the way they are going, the US has a direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon, Biden said at the New York City event. The president said, “I don’t think there is any such thing as the ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
“So much for cozying up to the Saudis – President Joe Biden’s much-hyped fist bump with Mohammed bin Salman during a trip to the Middle East back in July has turned into something of a slap across the face from the crown prince,” wrote David A. Andelman.
In the US, gasoline prices have started rising after weeks of declines, adding to the burdens Democrats face in trying to hold onto control of Congress in the midterm elections a month from now.
Europe is in an energy crisis with Russia drastically reducing its export of natural gas to the continent. As a result, Germany is among the nations that have instituted tough new curbs on energy use, wrote Paul Hockenos.
“Step into my Berlin office today and you’ll find everybody is wearing sweaters – I wear two, with wool socks and occasionally a scarf. … At home, my little family has sworn off baths (swift showers please), and lights are on only in the rooms we’re occupying. We’ve invested in a wool curtain inside our apartment’s front door to keep out the draft.”
“My friend Bill … hasn’t turned his heating on yet this year – no one I know has – and wears a sweater at home. He also has a new method of showering: one minute under warm water, turns it off, lathers up, and then rinses off.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/09/opinions/biden-eye-opening-warning-weekly-column-galant/index.html
Inflation, Wage Warning, and the Social Costs of the 21st Century: A CNN Opinion Series on America’s Future Starts Now
It works in reverse too. Just ask Linda Stewart, a New Mexico educator in her 60s who decided to retire one year into the pandemic lockdown. “Finances would be a little tight for a while, but some outside projects would supplement my income, so I felt confident I would be able to handle it,” she wrote in a new CNN Opinion series, “America’s Future Starts Now,” which explores the key issues in the midterm campaigns.
Inflation began to take a toll and money was getting tight by the time of the second year of lock down. Soon I was in the red each month, just trying to keep up. It takes a certain amount of gas and groceries to make a decent meal, so it would be best to cut back on some items and cook them at home.
I stopped driving for things other than essentials. And with the continuing drought here in the Southwest, utility bills went through the ceiling. In the winter I didn’t water my garden, but instead turned the furnace down and the air conditioning up. I used to run the dishwasher once a week and wash my clothes in cold water.
There are no quick, easy solutions to the inflation spike because Americans are most concerned about the economy. The second part of CNN Opinion’s new series was about helping people cope with higher costs.
The Federal Reserve Bank is raising interest rates at a rapid pace to conquer inflation. Levanon stated that the tight labor market and the rapid wage growth it has spurred was causing inflation to become more entrenched. To curb the rise in prices, “the Federal Reserve is likely to drive the economy into a recession in 2023, crushing continued job growth.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/09/opinions/biden-eye-opening-warning-weekly-column-galant/index.html
Putting a man’s foot in the haystack: The misfortune of Herschel Walker during the October 10th Hurricane
People need time to figure out how to get there, pack up their belongings, and find a place to live in the midst of heavy traffic. A false sense of security, as well as others who were in the areas of Florida hardest hit by Hurricane Ian, may not have had any personal experience with such powerful storms. For millions of people who moved to Florida over the past few decades, it’s likely that this is true.
There are many other factors that may have suppressed evacuated in some of the hardest hit areas, as well as the lack of sufficient time to evacuate. Some websites crashed before the storm arrived, due to people not knowing about their evacuated areas, Cuite and Morss wrote.
Geoff Duncan, a Republican and the current lieutenant governor of Georgia, is unsure about Herschel Walker’s prospects in the upcoming election. The Republican Senate candidate has denied reports alleging he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009.
The October surprise has upended the political landscape, throwing one of the nation’s closest midterm races into turmoil five weeks before Election Day, but it never had to be this way. Just as there should not be two Democrats representing a center-right state like Georgia in the US Senate, the Republican Party should not have found its chance of regaining a Senate majority hanging on an untested and unproven first-time candidate.”
Walker won his Senate primary because of who he is. He trounced his opponents because of his performance on the football field 40 years ago and his friendship with former President Donald Trump – neither of which are guaranteed tickets to victory anymore.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/09/opinions/biden-eye-opening-warning-weekly-column-galant/index.html
A medical student fired for teaching organic chemistry is a bad idea, not a good idea: How to warn your professors about the risks of investing
Students who want to join medical school must take a tough organic chemistry course. Maitland Jones Jr., a master of the field and textbook author, taught the course at NYU – until 82 of the 350 students taking it “signed a petition because, they said, their low scores demonstrated that his class was too hard,” Jill Filipovic noted.
“There are real consequences … to making higher education primarily palatable to those paying tuition bills – particularly when it comes to courses like organic chemistry, which are intended to be difficult. Future medical students need a strong science background in order to succeed as doctors. Whether or not Jones was an effective teacher is up for debate, but in firing him NYU is avoiding important questions about the line between academic rigor and student well-being with potentially life and death matters at stake.
Some of the student complaints may have been valid, noted Filipovic, but she added that the case “raises important questions, chief among them how much power students, who universities seem to increasingly think of as consumers (and some of whom think of themselves that way), should have in the hiring, retention and firing of professors…”
The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Kim Kardashian almost $1M for failing to disclose that she was paid to promote a cryptocurrencies.
There are always new coins and projects with insufficient warnings about the risks of investing. How do you tell winners and loseers in a fast changing market? It’s easy to imagine how a confident tweet by a celebrity could have a significant impact on a new investor.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/09/opinions/biden-eye-opening-warning-weekly-column-galant/index.html
How likely is a nuclear weapon to kill you? A micromort analysis of Noah’s late-night television show and his nuclear war legacy
The formula for late-night television was in place until recently. “On the air after 11 p.m. with a charismatic host, some comedy, a desk, a guest or two, maybe a band and then ‘Good night, everybody!’” Late-night shows seemed to be holding their own despite the rise of cord-cutting and the move to streaming.
Carter pointed out that Noah has excelled in comedy and is leaving on a high note. In succeeding Jon Stewart as the show’s host, Noah “had a different beat in his head from the start. He wanted to refashion the show with a broader comedy vision, one looking outside at the world, instead of mainly in the US, and all of which was based on Noah’s South African born global perspective.
What is the chance that your hobby will kill you? This isn’t something you need to think about if you’re into, say, knitting, but most base jumpers will have felt the niggling fear that each jump could be their last. We know that some hobbies are riskier than others.
The reason we have micromort estimates for these activities is because we have pretty good data on how people die. Other risks are much harder to quantify. It is possible that you will die in a nuclear war. It’s not something that most people want to contemplate, but we know that the risk isn’t zero. Nuclear weapons were used to kill people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and since then there have been a handful of close calls. During the Cuban missile crisis, John F. Kennedy estimated that the chance of a nuclear conflict was “between one in three and even.” The prospect of a nuclear war has once again arisen with the war in Ukranian and Putin’s provocative rhetoric. It’s not uncommon for nuclear war to come up with the same question: How likely is a nuclear weapon to kill me?
Micromorts can help us here too. Thinking about the prospect of nuclear war in terms of personal risk might sound callous, but getting to grips with probabilities might help us make better decisions about our own lives and also provide hints about how we can avoid nuclear conflicts in the future.
There are researchers who are trying to assign probabilities to future events. The topic of superforecasting really took off in the mid-2010s, after Canadian academic Philip Tetlock wrote an influential book on it. The general gist is that even experts in a particular field are quite bad at knowing what will happen in the future, but some people are unusually good at making verifiable predictions across a broad range of topics. Governments are interested in tapping into the expertise of these people to make smarter policy decisions.
Early on in the war in Ukraine, one set of superforecasters was particularly interested in trying to figure out the likelihood that the conflict would escalate into a nuclear war that would kill someone in London. Most of the forecasters involved are part of a group called Samotsvety that has a strong track record at predicting future events. The Samotsky group won the top forecasting competition in 2020, in which teams are asked to predict future scenarios such as the number of O-1 US visas granted to Chinese nationals, and the combined revenues of the top tech firms. The group is currently in the top spot in the ongoing competition and won the competition again in 2021. In late February, the forecasters bet around $14,000 that Russia would invade Ukraine by the end of the year. They ended up winning just over $32,000.
Putin was speaking at a news conference in Bishkek. He implied that a nuclear strike applied to the control points would deprive the enemy of their control systems and even prevent a strike on them.
Some background: On Wednesday, Putin acknowledged that the conflict is “going to take a while,” as he also warned of the “increasing” threat of nuclear war.
If Russia doesn’t use them first under any circumstances, we wouldn’t be able to be the second to do so in case of an attack on our territory, he said.
Biden administration officials have previously claimed that Moscow was warned of the consequences of using a nuclear weapon in the war.
If we are talking about the disarming strike, think about emulating the best practices of our American partners for ensuring their security. We are only thinking about it. No one was shy when they talked about it out loud in previous times and years,” he said.
“If a potential adversary believes it is possible to use the theory of a preventive strike, and we do not, then this still makes us think about those threats that are posed to us,” he added.
On Monday, Russia unleashed a fresh wave of drone and missile attacks targeting energy infrastructure across Ukraine. The strikes caused widespread power failures in several regions, according to the Ukrainian president.
The Russian-U.S. dialogue in the wake of the Russian-Russian war in Ukraine: lessons from the first decade of nuclear arms control negotiations
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement will formally end inspections under an agreement known as the New START treaty (Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms). The inspection programme had allowed scientists on both sides to verify that the other was complying with the agreement. The move comes amid soaring tensions between Russia and the West over the war in Ukraine.
However, the national academies of Russia and the United States have continued their nuclear arms-control dialogue, in which I am a participant. We’ve explored a lot of the key issues that would be required to be addressed in the next round of nuclear arms-control negotiations. We have not found it very productive to talk about who is right and who is wrong in the war, but the dialogue is ongoing and both governments have asked us to continue.
Many relationships he’s had with Russian scholars, nuclear scientists and military officials, have been destroyed because of the war in Ukraine, which has given rise to a level of hostility between the two nuclear powers that hasn’t been seen in 50 years. He says that the situation is becoming precarious, but there are still reasons for hope.
Almost all communication between the US and Russia is cut off. The conversations that I used to have with my Russian colleagues are now not happening because the Russians have told people involved in its nuclear weapons complex not to participate.
If you look at the nuclear landscape, you have more hostility between the United States and China. You have North Korea with a burgeoning nuclear arsenal, you have India and Pakistan with growing nuclear arsenals and you have Iran, with the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, right at the edge of a nuclear-weapons capability. It’s a much darker nuclear picture that it was even a decade ago.
A. In my office, an assistant of mine once put up little labels to show parts of the bookshelves and especially the drawers in my files. And my wife came down and saw “genocide,” “torture,” “massacre,” “terrorism,” you know, “bombing civilians,” and she said, how can I be married to somebody who has files like this in the office? A group of her friends came down with a fire and wreaked havoc on my office. But that has been my life since I started work at the RAND Corporation in 1958. I think about nuclear war because I care about how the world would be affected by it and I want to prevent it.
Q. Robert McNamara, who was secretary of defense during the Cuban missile crisis, once said, “The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.” Why haven’t we seen nuclear weapons used since 1945?
A. We have seen nuclear weapons used many times. And they’re being used right now by both sides in Ukraine. They’re being used as threats, just as a bank robber uses a gun, even if he doesn’t pull the trigger. If you can get your way, you are lucky. And we’ve done that dozens of times. But eventually, as any gambler knows, your luck runs out.
Living as though it’s my last: a gift from a friend to an ill-affected world, and from cancer to joy and gratitude
It’s great. I was told that I had three to six months to live after having a secondCT and M.R.I. a couple weeks later. It can be said that it’s good to live every day as if it’s the last, but that’s not practical. Living this month as though it’s my last is working out great for me and I can recommend it. I thought it was pretentious to say publicly, you know, well, I have pancreatic cancer.
But my sons both thought I should share the news with friends, and that was also an opportunity to encourage them to continue the work for peace and care for the planet. As I said, my work of the past 40 years to avert the prospects of nuclear war has little to show for it. But I wanted to say that I could think of no better way to use my time and that as I face the end of my life, I feel joy and gratitude.