Tobin Harshaw, Bloomberg: Why the U.S. Should Move Nukes Out of Turkey
A week ago, the question of whether the U.S. should continue to station nuclear missiles in Turkey was of interest only to a passel of national-security geeks and nonproliferation advocates. One failed coup later, the discussion has spread to CNN, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere. Who's winning the debate?
The U.S. has an undisclosed number of B61 tactical nuclear bombs -- probably around 50 -- in bunkers at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. The U.S. Air Force has operated out of Incirlik for years, more so recently in the fight against Islamic State across the nearby borders of Syria and Iraq.
The B61 is a variable-yield device, meaning the size of the nuclear explosion can be adjusted as low as 0.3 kilotons or as high as 340. (The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, by comparison, was 15 kilotons.) Such "dial-a-yield" capability is valuable to U.S. deterrence strategy because it remains at least theoretically plausible to potential adversaries that the U.S. would actually use one in a limited nuclear war. (Nobody even remotely imagines that the U.S. would use a massive warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile other than in an existential fight against a major power such as Russia.)
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WNU Editor: It is time to take these weapons out. The original reason on why these weapons were deployed in Turkey in the first place are long gone. The Soviet Union no longer exists .... and in the event of a nuclear conflict or nuclear strike .... would probably not be even used.
1 comment:
Should we move these weapons out of Turkey? This is a bit like asking, "should we eat," "should we drink water," "should we work", or a host of other stupid questions. I had the thought of this actually before coup as it is easy to understand that Turkey is very unstable. In the aftermath, getting these nukes out should have been the top priority.
Given Turkey's instability, surely there is a plan in place to do this and to set the plan in motion at a moment's notice. Turkey's reaction to this would need to be taken into account. By now Turkey likely views these nukes as theirs and would likely fight anyone who tries to remove them. As such, the operating plan to get these weapons out would need to be done quickly and secretly. Again, surely there's a plan in place. Unfortunately given the general incompetence of the US government a reasonable person should not have confidence such a plan exists or even if it did that they could carry it out.
While I do expect president Trump to try and address these issues, the problem is to massive for him to fix it all in two terms. As such, others will need to build upon his work and hopefully, in time, America can be a prosperous successful country with a military capable of handling modern threats in accordance to modern tactics and strategies.
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