Surprise: Flying Nuclear Bombers Overhead Tends to Increase Tensions
Sputnik – 22.03.2016
The recent and historical record on US nuclear “signaling,” or flying nuclear armed aircraft over opposition nations, shows that it increases the risk of conflict and war.
In an editorial this week, military defense experts Adam Lowther and Chris Winklepleck argue that the strategic aircraft arm of the US nuclear triad provides unique “nuclear signaling” and serves a critical deterrence role in US military strategy.
Recent and historical evidence, however, shows that their claim lacks merit, as brandishing nuclear weapons only serves to exacerbate tensions and heighten the risk of conflict, former nuclear weapons expert at Los Alamos National Lab Jim Doyle writes for Defense News.
South Korea saw nuclear flyovers by the US in 2013 and 2016 using B-2 and B-52 aircraft, but the maneuvers have done nothing to diminish tensions on the Korean peninsula nor have they been a corrective to Pyongyang’s militaristic brinksmanship.
Recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests show that nuclear signaling does not achieve its desired effect. Reports out of Pyongyang suggest that US nuclear flyovers have been used instead by the Kim regime to increase domestic support for the dictatorship by confirming that a threat exists.
Specifically, the 2013 “long-range show of presence missions” by the US on the Korean peninsula was followed by North Korea’s restart of its Yongbyon nuclear reactor one month later. Following the second show of presence mission in 2016, DPRK conducted a fourth nuclear test explosion and expedited ballistic missile production and testing.
While military experts may write off aggressive North Korean military response as an anomaly, citing the country’s sometimes incoherent foreign policy, history points to the ineffectiveness of similar missions elsewhere.
On October 27, 1969, Doyle writes, the Nixon administration attempted to “signal” to the Soviet Union and the Viet Cong, in what became known as the “madman nuclear alert,” that Nixon was aggressive enough to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam if Moscow did not pressure the Hanoi government to seek peace. In that effort, 18 B-52s approached the USSR from the arctic. The posturing failed, heightening tensions with the Soviet Union, and doing nothing to resolve the Vietnam quagmire.
History shows that nuclear deterrence by means of mutually assured destruction is not an effective way to keep the peace, especially when global economic and political interests seek to end the threat of nuclear weapons. Research illustrates heightened tensions and conflict in the use of nuclear signaling. Nations seeking peace have no need to wield a larger club.
Photo – © Flickr/ Christopher Ebdon
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Book Review
UAE tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
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