How the tentacles of the US military are strangling the planet
By Vijay Prashad | Asia Times | October 3, 2018
In June this year in Itoman, a city in Okinawa prefecture, Japan, a 14-year-old girl named Rinko Sagara read out of a poem based on her great-grandmother’s experience of World War II. Rinko’s great-grandmother reminded her of the cruelty of war. She had seen her friends shot in front of her. It was ugly.
Okinawa, a small island on the edge of southern Japan, saw its share of war from April to June 1945. “The blue skies were obscured by the iron rain,” wrote Rinko Sagara, channeling the memories of her great-grandmother. The roar of the bombs overpowered the haunting melody from the sanshin, Okinawa’s snakeskin-covered three-string guitar. “Cherish each day,” the poem goes, “for our future is just an extension of this moment. Now is our future.”
This week, the people of Okinawa elected Denny Tamaki of the Liberal Party as the governor of the prefecture. Tamaki’s mother is an Okinawan, while his father – whom he does not know – was a US soldier. Tamaki, like former governor Takeshi Onaga, opposes the US military bases on Okinawa. Onaga wanted the presence of the US military removed from the island, a position that Tamaki seems to endorse.
The United States has more than 50,000 troops in Japan as well as a very large contingent of ships and aircraft. Seventy percent of the US bases in Japan are on Okinawa island. Almost everyone in Okinawa wants the US military to go. Rape by American soldiers – including of young children – has long angered the Okinawans. Terrible environmental pollution – including the harsh noise from US military aircraft – rankles people. It was not difficult for Tamaki to run on an anti-US-base platform. It is the most basic demand of his constituents.
But the Japanese government does not accept the democratic views of the Okinawan people. Discrimination against the Okinawans plays a role here, but more fundamentally there is a lack of regard for the wishes of ordinary people when it comes to a US military base.
In 2009, Yukio Hatoyama led the Democratic Party to victory in national elections on a wide-ranging platform that included shifting Japanese foreign policy from its US orientation to a more balanced approach with the rest of Asia. As prime minister, Hatoyama called for the United States and Japan to have a “close and equal” relationship, which meant that Japan would no longer be ordered around by Washington.
The test case for Hatoyama was the relocation of the Futenma Marine Corps Air Base to a less populated section of Okinawa. His party wanted all the US bases to be removed from the island.
Pressure on the Japanese state from Washington was intense. Hatoyama could not deliver on his promise. He resigned his post. It was impossible to go against US military policy and to rebalance Japan’s relationship with the rest of Asia. Japan, but more properly Okinawa, is in effect a US aircraft carrier.
Japan’s prostituted daughter
Hatoyama could not move an agenda at the national level; likewise, local politicians and activists have struggled to move an agenda in Okinawa. Tamaki’s predecessor Takeshi Onaga – who died in August – could not get rid of the US bases in Okinawa.
Yamashiro Hiroji, head of the Okinawa Peace Action Center, and his comrades regularly protest against the bases and in particular the transfer of the Futenma base. In October 2016, Hiroji was arrested when he cut a barbed-wire fence at the base. He was held in prison for five months and not allowed to see his family. In June 2017, Hiroji went before the United Nations Human Rights Council to say, “The government of Japan dispatched a large police force in Okinawa to oppress and violently remove civilians.” Protest is illegal. The Japanese forces are acting here on behalf of the US government.
Suzuyo Takazato, head of the organization Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, has called Okinawa “Japan’s prostituted daughter.” This is a stark characterization. Takazato’s group was formed in 1995 as part of the protest against the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen based in Okinawa.
For decades now, Okinawans have complained about the creation of enclaves of their island that operate as places for the recreation of American soldiers. Photographer Mao Ishikawa has portrayed these places, the segregated bars where only US soldiers are allowed to go and meet Okinawan women (her book Red Flower: The Women of Okinawa collects many of these pictures from the 1970s).
There have been at least 120 reported rapes since 1972, the “tip of the iceberg,” says Takazato. Every year there is at least one incident that captures the imagination of the people – a terrible act of violence, a rape or a murder.
What the people want is for the bases to close, since they see the bases as the reason for these acts of violence. It is not enough to call for justice after the incidents; it is necessary, they say, to remove the cause of the incidents.
The Futenma base is to be relocated to Henoko in Nago City, Okinawa. A referendum in 1997 allowed the residents of Nago to vote against a base. A massive demonstration in 2004 reiterated their view, and it was this demonstration that halted construction of the new base in 2005.
Susumu Inamine, former mayor of Nago, is opposed to the construction of any base in his city; he lost a re-election bid this year to Taketoyo Toguchi, who did not raise the base issue, by a slim margin. Everyone knows that if there were a new referendum in Nago over a base, it would be roundly defeated. But democracy is meaningless when it comes to the US military base.
Fort Trump
The US military has a staggering 883 military bases in 183 countries. In contrast, Russia has 10 such bases – eight of them in the former USSR. China has one overseas military base. There is no country with a military footprint that replicates that of the United States. The bases in Japan are only a small part of the massive infrastructure that allows the US military to be hours away from armed action against any part of the planet.
There is no proposal to downsize the US military footprint. In fact, there are only plans to increase it. The United States has long sought to build a base in Poland, whose government now courts the White House with the proposal that it be named “Fort Trump.”
Currently, there are US-NATO military bases in Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria, with US-NATO troops deployments in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The United States has increased its military presence in the Black Sea and in the Baltic Sea.
Attempts to deny Russia access to its only two warm-water ports in Sevastopol, Crimea, and Latakia, Syria, pushed Moscow to defend them with military interventions. A US base in Poland, on the doorstep of Belarus, would rattle the Russians as much as they were rattled by Ukraine’s pledge to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and by the war in Syria.
These US-NATO bases provide instability and insecurity rather than peace. Tensions abound around them. Threats emanate from their presence.
A world without bases
In mid-November in Dublin, a coalition of organizations from around the world will hold the First International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases. This conference is part of the newly formed Global Campaign Against US/NATO Military Bases.
The view of the organizers is that “none of us can stop this madness alone.” By “madness,” they refer to the belligerence of the bases and the wars that come as a result of them.
A decade ago, a US Central Intelligence Agency operative offered me the old chestnut, “If you have a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” What this means is that the expansion of the US military – and its covert infrastructure – provides the incentive for the US political leadership to treat every conflict as a potential war. Diplomacy goes out of the window. Regional structures to manage conflict – such as the African Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – are disregarded. The US hammer comes down hard on nails from one end of Asia to the other end of the Americas.
The poem by Rinko Sagara ends with an evocative line: “Now is our future.” But it is, sadly, not so. The future will need to be produced – a future that disentangles the massive global infrastructure of war erected by the United States and NATO.
It is to be hoped that the future will be made in Dublin and not in Warsaw; in Okinawa and not in Washington.
This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute, which provided it to Asia Times.
‘We’d take out Russia’s nukes,’ US NATO envoy says, claiming ‘banned’ missiles are being developed
RT | October 2, 2018
The US would look into ways of “taking out” new Russian missiles if they become operational, the US envoy to NATO said, accusing Moscow of developing a weapon that “violates” the Soviet-US nuclear arms treaty.
US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison didn’t miss an opportunity to fire a warning shot in the direction of Russia when accusing it of building new nuclear missiles that would allegedly be pointed at Europe. Should such missiles be completed, she said at the Tuesday briefing, “at that point, we would be looking at the capability to take out a [Russian] missile that could hit any of our countries.”
Hutchison then doubled down on the threat, saying: “Counter measures [by the United States] would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty.” She added: “They are on notice.”
Hutchison was referring to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which bans the use of all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, that have ranges of between 500km and 5,500km. The US has claimed that Moscow is not complying with the INF treaty, an accusation that Russia has repeatedly rejected.
“We have been trying to send a message to Russia for several years that we know they are violating the treaty, we have shown Russia the evidence that we have that they are violating the treaty,” Hutchison maintained.
The Russian Foreign Ministry blasted the statements made by the US envoy as “aggressive and destructive,” adding that they will get a detailed response from Russian military experts. NATO doesn’t understand the degree of its responsibility and the danger posed by such aggressive rhetoric, the ministry said.
Hutchison’s comment came several weeks after President Donald Trump signed the US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2019. The document contains, among other things, allegations that Moscow violated the INF Treaty.
Moscow, in turn, accuses the US and “some of its allies” of knowingly violating the INF by deploying Mk-41 launching systems close to Russian borders. These can be easily repurposed for firing banned ground-based cruise missiles, it says, while Washington denies the accusations.
Under the 2019 NDAA, US legislators allocated $58 million to counter Russia’s alleged non-compliance with the INF Treaty. The measures to counter the alleged activities include a “research and development program on a ground-launched intermediate-range missile,” which, somehow, should not itself violate the treaty.
Russian lawmakers have also promised countermeasures. “If the missile announced by Congress indeed makes it into the American arsenal, we will have to develop and adopt the same thing. Russia has the military and technical capacities for that,” Viktor Bondarev, the head of the defense committee of Russia’s Federal Council, has said.
UK to keep forces in Germany after Brexit, plans to expand presence outside borders
Press TV – October 1, 2018
British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson says UK forces stationed in Germany will continue to stay in the country after Britain’s pending exit from the European Union (EU).
“We are increasing our British points of presence across the world,” Williamson told the Telegraph on Sunday as he announced the UK’s new military strategy in the Arctic. “We will not be closing our facilities in Germany, and instead use them to forward base the Army.”
There are 185 British Army personnel and 60 Ministry of Defense (MoD) staff currently based in the 45-square mile Sennelager Training Area in near the western city of Paderborn.
The UK and the US-led NATO military alliance have been using Sennelager as an expansive live firing training area over the past years.
The personnel would continue to occupy the adjacent Athlone Barracks for housing and schooling, the MoD said in a statement.
The British army would also keep control over the Ayrshire Barracks in Mönchengladbach, which can house around 2,000 military vehicles. They will also maintain a presence at the German Wulfen Defence Munitions Storage Facility, which holds operational ammunition.
According to the MoD statement, British military personnel will also stay in Germany to support NATO’s other critical infrastructure and assets such as the combined river crossing unit based in Minden.
Williamson also announced that that London was planning to send around 800 troops to Norway as a warning shot to Russia.
The decision was part of the UK’s plan to step up its military presence in the Arctic region in order to address concerns about growing Russian aggression “in our back yard,” he said.
The UK Royal Navy and its Norwegian counterpart have already purchased a large fleet of US-made P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft to stop what they call Russia’s growing submarine activity near their territorial waters.
“We see Russian submarine activity very close to the level that it was at the Cold War, and it’s right that we start responding to that,” Williamson said.
North, South Korea begin removing landmines along border: Seoul
Press TV – October 1, 2018
Seoul says North and South Korea have begun removing landmines along their fortified border in a confidence-building measure under a new agreement reached between the two neighboring states in Pyongyang last month.
South and North Korean troops removed some of the landmines in the Joint Security Area (JSA) in their shared border village of Panmunjom on Monday, according to a statement by the South’s Defense Ministry.
The ministry further said the two sides had agreed to cleanse the JSA of landmines within 20 days.
The JSA is the only spot along the 250-kilometer Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) where troops from both Koreas are face to face. The area is staffed by United Nations peacekeepers.
The measure is part of a deal reached between defense ministers of the two neighbors on the sidelines of a summit last month between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the South’s President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang.
The two sides had also agreed to remove guard posts and weapons from the JSA to follow the removal of the mines, with the troops remaining there to be left unarmed.
Seoul and Pyongyang have already dismantled propaganda loudspeakers and some guard posts along their border.
De-mining projects are also set to begin on Monday in Gangwon Province in eastern South Korea to pave the way for teams to search for the remains of soldiers killed in the 1950-1953 Korean War, the ministry added.
South Korea and its ally, the US, are estimated to have planted over a million landmines south of the DMZ, while North Korea has laid more than 800,000 ones on its own side.
De-mining experts say both neighbors poorly managed their mines and have no precise data on how many landmines they have planted and in what specific locations.
Last month’s deal also provides for the establishment of buffer zones along the land, sea and aerial boundaries where live-fire drills and military flights would be forbidden.
Anti-US base candidate wins Okinawa governor elections
RT | September 30, 2018
A staunch opponent of the planned relocation of a US military base within Okinawa Island, where the issue sparked major public protests, has beaten a government-backed competitor in the local governor elections.
Denny Tamaki, a former opposition lawmaker and the son of a US marine, has got a win against Atsushi Sakima, the former mayor of a local city of Ginowan, who was backed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The vote was largely determined by the issue of the relocation of the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which has been a source of controversy for the locals over the years.
Tamaki vowed to continue fighting against relocation of the US base from the crowded town of Ginowan to the less populated coastal region of Nago, which would put corals and dugongs, the endangered marine mammals, at risk, according to environmental activists. He also pledged to follow the steps of the former Okinawa governor Takeshi Onaga, who had been an outspoken opponent of the relocation until his death in August that prompted early gubernatorial elections.
His major rival in the four-person race, Sakima, also supported the closure of the existing Futenma base but did not clarify his stance on the issue of relocation. Tamaki, meanwhile, vowed to continue fighting for the base to be relocated off the island.
Tamaki’s victory is considered to be a blow to Abe’s plans as the prime minister is pushing for the controversial base relocation plan despite vehement opposition from the locals, the Japanese media report. Okinawa, which amounts to less than one percent of the Japanese total land area, hosts about a half of the 50,000 American troops in Japan.
The US presence on the island has long been a source of discontent for the locals. Okinawans have raised concerns about machinery mishaps, noise, sexual assaults against Japanese women, and even some deadly incidents – all of which triggered massive protests. Onaga also repeatedly clashed with the government over the relocation issue in particular.
In 2015, he revoked an approval for the construction works issued by his predecessor. His decision was overruled by the central government, which went ahead with the project. In August, the local government retracted the permission again. Since then, the work has been suspended.
Following Onaga’s death in August, 70,000 people protested the Japanese government’s plan to relocate the US air base. Participants also held a one-minute silence to pay respect to the late governor.
US creating basis for regional conflagration in Middle East: James Petras
Press TV – September 29, 2018
The United States is creating the basis for the regional conflagration in the Middle East by fortifying its circle around Iran, American writer and academic James Petras says.
The US State Department has endorsed the proposed sale of more than 800 tactical missiles to Bahrain amid the Al Khalifah regime’s heavy-handed crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners and political dissidents in the tiny Persian Gulf country.
The approval includes Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) Unitary Rocket Pods and Army Tactical Missiles System (ATACMS) Unitary missiles for an estimated cost of $300 million, the Arabic-language al-Khaleej al-Jadeed news website reported on Saturday.
“Well, it’s part of the US setting up the aggressive policy; mainly it is directed against the government in Iran. And it’s largely responsible for encouraging this aggression with the addition of its support of Israel and Saudi Arabia,” Professor Petras said.
“It’s creating the basis for the regional conflagration. I don’t think anyone is aware of any danger to the small (Persian) Gulf state. They’re mainly there to serve the US, and to enrich the oligarchies that run those countries,” he added.
“They have no defensive function. They have no positive role to play. And they are forever condemned for their repression of their dissident populations,” the analyst said.
“So I think this is an act by the Trump administration to fortify its circle around Iran. It’s likely to force Iran to increase its defenses and its alliances in the region,” he added.
“I don’t think it has any positive function for the US to continue meddling the Middle East and causing new wars, new terrorists, and new instability in the region,” the academic concluded.
The Debate – Israel Anti-Iran Stunt
PressTV | September 28, 2018
The Israeli Prime Minister has addressed the UN General Assembly. Anything unique about his address: the props were there, but there were more of them, and the target of the props: Iran, Iran, Iran. Was he successful in his pitch, that Iran had a Secret Iranian Nuclear Facility? We will look at his statements on Iran, how he said Iran “took this radioactive material and spread it around Tehran like Nutella, when it is Israel that possesses Nuclear weapons and yet it won’t allow for any inspections.
Watch Live: http://www.presstv.com/live.html
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North Korea Supports Seoul’s Idea to Hold First Inter-Parliamentary Meeting
Sputnik – 27.09.2018
North Korea supported on Thursday South Korea’s initiative to organize the first bilateral inter-parliamentary meeting before the end of the year.
The Yonhap news agency reported that the meeting was suggested by Speaker of the South Korean National Assembly Moon Hee-sang.
“The role of the Koreas’ parliaments and political parties is very important in implementing the April and September inter-Korean summit agreements. In this regard, we agreed to the offer in principle,” Chairman of the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly Choe Thae-bok said in a letter to Moon, which was quoted by the agency.
According to the news outlet, the date of the meeting is expected to be set during high-level government negotiations in the near future.
Earlier in September, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un held the third inter-Korean summit, during which the two sides reached a number of agreements on Pyongyang’s military and nuclear facilities and the connection of two of Korea’s roads and railways. Pyongyang and Seoul also signed an accord aimed at the enhancement of mutual trust.
Illegal US Nuclear Weapons Handouts
By John Laforge | CounterPunch | September 27, 2018
The US military practice of placing nuclear weapons in five other countries (no other nuclear power does this) is a legal and political embarrassment for US diplomacy. That’s why all the governments involved refuse to “confirm or deny” the practice of “nuclear sharing” or the locations of the B61 free-fall gravity bombs in question.
Expert analysts and observers agree that the United States currently deploys 150-to-180 of these nuclear weapons at bases in Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Turkey and Belgium. The authors of the January 2018 report “Building a Safe, Secure, and Credible NATO Nuclear Posture” take for granted the open secret that nuclear sharing is ongoing even though all six countries are signatory parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
In a paper for the journal Science for Democratic Action, German weapons expert Otfried Nassauer, director of Berlin’s Information Center for Transatlantic Security, concluded, “NATO’s program of ‘nuclear sharing’ with five European countries probably violates Articles I and II of the Treaty.”
Article I prohibits nuclear weapon states that are parties to the NPT from sharing their weapons. It says: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly….” Article II, the corollary commitment, states says: “Each non-nuclear weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly … or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices….”
What nuclear sharing means in practice
The five NATO countries currently hosting US H-bombs on their air bases are officially “non-nuclear weapons states.” But as Nassauer reports, “Under NATO nuclear sharing in times of war, the US would hand control of these nuclear weapons over to the non-nuclear weapon states’ pilots for use with aircraft from non-nuclear weapon states. Once the bomb is loaded aboard, once the correct Permissive Action Link code has been entered by the US soldiers guarding the weapons, and once the aircraft begins its mission, control over the respective weapon(s) has been transferred. That is the operational, technical part of what is called ‘nuclear sharing.’”
This flaunting of the NPT is what peace activists on both sides of the Atlantic refer to when calling the US bombs in Europe “illegal.” Nassauer notes, “The pilots for these aircraft are provided with training specific to use nuclear weapons. The air force units to which these pilots and aircraft belong have the capability to play a part in NATO nuclear planning, including assigning a target, selecting the yield of the warhead for the target, and planning a specific mission for the use of the bombs.”
“NATO nuclear sharing,” Nassauer writes, “was described in 1964 by one member of the US National Security Council … as meaning that ‘the non-nuclear NATO-partners in effect become nuclear powers in time of war.’ The concern is that, at the moment the aircraft loaded with the bomb is on the runway ready to start, the control of the weapon is turned over from the US, a nuclear weapon state, to non-nuclear weapon states. … To my understanding, this is in violation of the spirit if not the text of Articles I and II of the NPT.”
How Do the US and its Allies Explain their Lawlessness?
An undated, 1960s-era letter from then-US Secretary of State Rusk explained the US ‘interpretation’ of the NPT. The pretext for ignoring the treaty’s plain language, the Rusk letter “argues that the NPT does not specify what is allowed, but only what is forbidden. In this view, everything that is not forbidden by the NPT is allowed,” Nassaure explained.
In its most absurd section, Rusk simply denies the treaty’s obvious purpose and intent. “Since the treaty doesn’t explicitly talk about the deployment of nuclear warheads in countries that are non-nuclear weapon states,” Nassaure writes, “such deployments are considered legal under the NPT.”
It is so easy to show that the United States and its nuclear sharing partners are in violation of the NPT, the governments involved work hard pretending there is nothing to worry about, no lawbreaking underway, no reason to demand answers. This is why so many activists across Europe have become nonviolently disobedient at the air bases involved.
The transparent unlawfulness of NATO’s nuclear war planning is also the reason why prosecutors in Germany don’t dare bring serious charges against civil resisters; even those who have cut fences and occupied hot weapons bunkers in broad daylight. Some Air Force witness might testify at trial that US nuclear weapons are on base.
John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.
The Demise of Arms Control Draws Near: No Light at the End of the Tunnel
By Andrei AKULOV | Strategic Culture Foundation | 26.09.2018
There have been ups and downs in the relationship between Russia (the Soviet Union) and the US, but both nations have become accustomed to the fact that their arsenals of offensive nuclear weapons are under the control of an agreement to prevent an arms race in this area. Some type of treaty has been in place since the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was concluded in 1963. Since 1972, when the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) agreement was signed, there have always been negotiated constraints on nuclear arsenals. But today, there are ominous signs that the system that has worked so well to push the superpowers back from the brink of the nuclear abyss is being unraveled.
Andrea Thompson, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, speaking before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Sept. 18, claimed that Russia’s new strategic weapons that were announced by President Vladimir Putin last March were an obstacle to Washington’s agreement to extend the New START treaty. She also asserted that the issue has not been discussed through the formal New START process. She did not explain why not. The official said the final decision had not been made as yet and, “All options are on the table.” The same applies to the other remaining treaties that Washington is accusing Moscow of violating.
The options under consideration are: withdrawing from the New START; renegotiating the provisions related to the verification process; or signing another treaty instead, such as the 2002 Moscow Treaty or the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). The undersecretary said that the US administration wanted Russia’s recently unveiled strategic nuclear weapons to be included in the count.
Negotiations are possible over the issue of the new weapons that are being tested or are already part of Russia’s arsenal. Moscow has been calling for a strategic dialog for quite some time, and Russia is not to blame because Washington is reluctant to start the process, whatever its motivation. A duplication of the 2002 treaty is unacceptable. It has already been finalized. No such radical reduction is possible without other nuclear states joining in, and they are not doing so. It’s really hard to understand why the undersecretary would bring this up, knowing perfectly well the proposal would have no chance.
David Trachtenberg, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, also insists that the extension of New START was uncertain, despite the fact that on-site inspections and monitoring were useful.
The Senate hearings showed that the lawmakers are divided on the future of arms control and are prone to putting the blame on Russia for violating each and every agreement in existence without taking a proper look at what the US is doing. There is slim chance of an extension of the New START and hardly any prospects for a new deal.
The New START will expire in 2021 unless extended by agreement of the US and Russian presidents or replaced by a follow-on treaty. The US and Russian presidents discussed the New START during a phone conversation in January and at the Helsinki summit in July, where the Russian leader suggested that the parties thoroughly review all the components of the arms-control regime, including New START and the INF treaty, the 2011 Vienna Document on confidence-building measures in Europe, and the Open Skies Treaty. After meeting Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia’s Security Council, US National Security Adviser John Bolton said the extension of the New START was far from a slam-dunk decision. Meanwhile, the United States is moving ahead and designing a new ground-based missile that is in open violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty.
The long-range Kalibr sea-based cruise missile that was added to the arsenal of the Russian armed forces in late 2017 would violate the presidential nuclear initiatives (PNIs) of 1991 if it were equipped with a nuclear payload. Technically, it is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead but it does not. Russia’s non-strategic arsenal is large and sophisticated enough as it is — there is no need to violate its obligations under the PNIs. The US has a great numerical advantage in sea-based long-range missiles, and there is no verification mechanism in place to ascertain whether or not they are equipped with nuclear warheads.
The US has always been reluctant to discuss ways to enhance the PNIs by adding verification measures. The long-range cruise-missile capability demonstrated by Russia’s Navy during the Syrian conflict came as a surprise, but this does not mean it is a violation. Things change and it’s only natural to adapt to a new reality. It’s widely believed that the best way to tackle the problems related to national security is through talks, but the US administration and many people in Congress see it differently.
There is something important to remember — the US sea-based nuclear-tipped TLAM/N missiles are still part of the US arsenal, and there is no way to make sure they are not clandestinely installed on nuclear attack submarines. This issue could be discussed separately from the strategic nuclear agenda. The problem cannot be neglected. No one is standing in the way of launching a dialog. President Bush and President Gorbachev managed it. In theory, President Trump and President Putin could do the same thing, but the American leader should be prepared to be attacked for dealing with Russia. Those in America who stand in the way of an arms-control dialog between the two leading nuclear powers are actually undermining the country’s security, but they will do it anyway in order to pursue their own political ends, because they are filled with hatred against both the US president and Russia.
The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review states that the United States will pursue a nuclear-armed, submarine-launched cruise missile in order to “provide a needed nonstrategic regional presence, an assured response capability.” How does this jibe with the fact that the PNI is still in effect? It looks like the initiatives’ future is as uncertain as the fate of other treaties.
Of course Russian strategists have never forgotten that the US still has 50 empty silos ready to hold ICBMs, with several hundred additional warheads that are also in storage and could potentially be loaded.
There are only three years left until the New START expires. The experience of history demonstrates that that is hardly enough time to prepare a new treaty that actually has no chance of being ratified by the Senate in an era when the overall bilateral relationship is at its lowest ebb. The US still has no clear idea of what its future nuclear triad will be like. Discussions are underway. All we know is that it is investing more than $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize its aging nuclear forces, which will include new ground-based missiles, new missile submarines, and a new bomber.
No major arms-control treaty will be concluded until the administration and Congress know exactly what components will be included in the arsenal and what programs are to be implemented to achieve the established goals —once all the assessments and estimations are complete and the guideline documents in place. Thus, an automatic five-year extension is the only hope for the New START’s survival. That could be accomplished through a simple executive agreement. Without a New START in effect, other agreements, such as the INF Treaty and the PNIs, have no chance. The very real prospect of an end to arms control and the non-proliferation regime is looming. That’s something leading experts in Russia were warning about as far back as 2015. Very serious discussions must be launched right now in order to prevent such a scenario. It’s a scary prospect!
The good news is that the patient can still be saved. There is still a little time left, although not much. There are no options but for Russia and the US to put their differences aside, forget about Ukraine, Syria, trade wars, and other issues that divide the two nations and concentrate on ways to save arms control or whatever is left of it. With their relationship at its lowest point since the end of the Cold War, it is even more vital to keep the nuclear risks in check and prevent a new nuclear arms race. Russia (Soviet) and US officials have always emphasized that any plan that keeps nuclear weapons under control and subject to proper verification procedures is a better option than an unfettered arms race. The US administration and its lawmakers seem to disagree.
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Who Runs Our World?
Netanyahu addresses US Congress
By Richard Hugus | January 4, 2019
Our world is run by oligarchs, the holders of vast wealth from monopolies in banking, resource extraction, manufacturing, and technology. Oligarchs have such power that most of the world doesn’t even know of their influence over our lives. Their overall agenda is global power — a world government, run by them — to be achieved through planned steps of social engineering. The oligarchs remain in the background and have heads of state and entire governments acting in their service. Presidents and prime ministers are their puppets. Bureaucrats and politicians are their factotums.
Who are politicians? Politicians are people who work for the powerful while pretending to represent the people who voted for them. This double-dealing involves a lot of lying, so successful politicians must be good at it. It’s not an easy job to make the insane agenda of the powerful seem reasonable. Politicians can’t reveal this agenda because it almost always goes against the interests of their constituents, so they become adept at sophistry, mystification, and the appearance of authority. For example, wars for Israel have been part of the agenda of the powerful for years. Since 2001, wars for Israel have been sold as “the war on terror” and lots of lies had to be made up as to why the war on terror was a real thing. The visible faces promoting the war on terror were neoconservatives in the US, almost all of whom were advocates for Israel, or Zionists. Zionists are not the only members of the oligarchy, but they seem to be its lead actors. ... continue
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