Titan II Nuclear Missile in Silo (Image from Flickr)Gordon Adams & Richard Sokolsky, Defense One: Obama Is About To Launch A New Nuclear Arms Race. There’s a Better Way.
The United States is on the cusp of launching an unnecessary, expensive, and potentially dangerous plan to modernize its strategic nuclear forces, helping stimulate what is being called a “new nuclear arms race.” Before Washington starts down this path, it needs to step back and ask, “How much is enough?” or, as the Cold War adage went, “How high do we need to make the rubble bounce? The United States can deter any country from using nuclear weapons against America and its treaty allies with a nuclear force that is far smaller, less destabilizing, and less expensive than the one the Pentagon is planning to build.
This October will mark the 30th anniversary of the Reykjavik Summit, where President Ronald Reagan and then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came close to abolishing nuclear weapons. Six years ago, President Barack Obama made the same commitment. But today, a quarter-century after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States is planning to spend $1 trillion over the next three decades to replace or upgrade virtually all of its strategic nuclear weapons. At the same time, Russia also has undertaken ambitious plans to upgrade its strategic nuclear forces with new multi-warhead missiles, aircraft, submarines, and even a rumored nuclear underwater drone.
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WNU Editor: Does the U.S. have the funds ($1 trillion) to cover this program ... apparently it does. Is the U.S. exploring other options .... no. But in all fairness to the White House .... the Kremlin is following this same expensive policy.
6 comments:
This type of story is all too familiar. The Soviet Union in the 1970's - 1980's funded all sorts of agit-prop western groups to oppose all of Carters and Reagans arms programs. Theater nuclear weapons, MX, Star Wars, Ohio class boomers all saw opposition groups inAmerica and Europe funded by the Kremlin. Today I expect Beijing is also funding these fools.
It is obvious both Beijing and the Kremlin are engaged in vast modernization and deployments of new strategic weapons programs designed to defeat Americas 1960-1980's era nuclear weapons. These authors should be teed up for an IRS and counter intelligence investigation.
With one important difference: the Kremling is still one step behind in term of technology.
World leaders should impose sanctions on america
Comment on Anon 1....
Your assumption that the Soviets were using US anti-nuclear activists for their purposes is BS. I was intimately involved in that movement in the time period you mention. Including Federal District court twice. I was knowledgeable and squarely against the Tridents and other weapons of mass destruction.
My how times have changed. With a lying and deceiving N.Korea, and their disgusting nanny China, and the neo Soviet Russia, and their common pal , Iran, we must rearm and replenish and modernize our delivery systems and stockpiles. To not do so in this modern climate would be to leave the free world disarmed against the greatest threats since modern civilization.
They have a common denominator. They only respect strength.
We must bring our political divisions together to prepare for this new Cold War.
MAD must be maintained.
To the assertion the KGB didn't subvert anti-nuclear groups, well see here
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-01-12/local/me-18953_1_soviet-union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_influence_on_the_peace_movement
and here
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1982/05/moscow-and-the-peace-offensive
and here
http://usnavyvet2002.blogspot.com/2009/02/so-did-gru-and-kgb-fund-anti-war.html
and here
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/how-the-russians-practice-disinformation/
The literature on Soviet suborning of your movements is strong as its based upon archive documents from the KGB after the fall of the Soviet Union.
You'd have to be gullible in the extreme to think they have changed their ways.
The bottom line is this, the Russians and Chinese are engaged in a large modernization program of their ICBM's targeted at the US. Who benefits from US anti-nuclear protests? Who benefits if the US sticks to weapons designed almost 70 years ago while China and Russia field hypersonic warheads designed to defeat any ABM system?
"Western intelligence agencies have been rather more skeptical of the extent of direct Soviet or Communist influence on non-aligned peace organisations. In 1967, a CIA report on the US peace movement observed that "the Communist Party of the USA benefits from anti-US activity by Peace groups but does not appear to be inspiring them or directing them."[25] After demonstrations against NATO missiles in West Germany in 1981, an official investigation turned up circumstantial evidence but no absolute proof of KGB involvement. Western intelligence experts concluded that the movement in Europe at that time was probably not Soviet-inspired.[12]
In 1983, MI5 and MI6 reported to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on Soviet contacts with the peace movement, based on the testimony of KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky. According to Christopher Andrew's official history of MI5, Gordievsky's evidence indicated that there was little effective contact between either the KGB or the Soviet embassy and the peace movement.[26]"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_influence_on_the_peace_movement
Russia long ago upgraded to the Topol-M and the Irskander to counter US BMD.
China is finishing upgrading it's counter with modern MIRV's but will be keeping the same "throw weight" as part of it's policy of "Minimally Assured Destruction".
The US program, which is $1 trillion over 30 years, ( chump change for US weapons projects), is for upgrading it's gravity bombs to the same guidance standards as it's conventional GBU's , and making them small enough to fit in the F-35's internal weapons bays.
The article is mostly hype, with very little analysis, trying to turn a molehill into a mountain, selling the Old Cold War fears and prejudices, because face it, fear sells and only old people read newspapers.
The only coverage this "weapons" program is getting in Russian and Chinese media follows two strains,
"Why is the US wasting money on gravity bombs?"
And various analysis's pointing out that Some US Military Strategists still think that they can "use" nuclear weapons in a limited strike if they are accurate enough and small enough, and how "dumb" is that?
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