US nuclear arms in Europe should now be removed: Senior expert
Press TV – April 19, 2012
A prominent international affairs expert says it is time for the United States to remove its tactical nuclear arsenal in Europe as the dangerous stockpiles “serve no legitimate strategic purpose.”
“[T]here is no good reason to keep them (the US tactical nuclear arsenal) there (Europe) and plenty of good reasons to remove them,” Stephen M. Walt wrote on the Foreign Policy website.
“It’s hard to imagine that these weapons are helping Dutch, German, or Turkish elites sleep soundly at night, or helping reassure their respective populations. If anything, local populations should worry about having these devices on their soil,” he added.
The senior international relations author described the situation as “rather ludicrous,” saying the theories that justified these weapons during the Cold War “never made sense” to him in the first place either.
“There is no threat of a conventional invasion of Western Europe, and thus no need to ‘link’ the US strategic deterrent to Europe’s defense via tactical weapons physically deployed on the continent,” he wrote.
Walt suggested that the US failure to discard the weapons will undermine the basic logic of nuclear disarmament, and threaten global efforts to “de-legitimize” nuclear weapons as status symbols, thereby dealing a blow to broader nuclear security objectives.
The persistence of the weapons, he added, will also question the pledges that the United States made when it signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Though there is no single agreed-upon definition of a tactical nuclear weapon, it is generally characterized by a lower yield and shorter range than a long-range (strategic) nuclear weapon. Tactical nuclear weapons are also sometimes referred to as battlefield nuclear weapons.
The US has not made public the number of its tactical nuclear weapons, but according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the US is believed to deploy approximately 500 tactical nuclear warheads, including about 200 B61 gravity bombs deployed in five NATO states (Belgium, Italy, Turkey, Germany, and the Netherlands).
The US also maintains approximately 700-800 additional tactical warheads in storage.
The original pretext offered by the US for deploying the tactical nuclear weapons in Europe was to deter a Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe.
US military leaders increasingly suggest that the European deployment serves no military purpose, and a growing group of NATO members, including host nations such as Germany and Belgium, have called for the removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe.
Given their small size and mobility, tactical nuclear weapons are also particularly vulnerable to loss or theft.
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The Occupied Mentality Syndrome
Saudi Arabia on the American chessboard – Part 2
By B. J. Sabri | American Herald Tribune | April 19, 2016
Since the Korean War, but particularly since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 until today, the United States has been steadily escalating its military presence in the Persian Gulf. Taking advantage of many colossal events of the past 36 years, [1] the hyper-empire has institutionalized its massive presence on land and sea, and expanded its objectives to include the unambiguous physical control of the area, as well as the clear understanding that local Arab governments should abide by them. The pretext is always the same: in “defense” of the national interests and security of the United States. From observing how the United States has been interacting with the governments of the region, and by judging from the size of its expeditionary force, we could reach a basic conclusion. The United States is occupying, de facto, the entire Arabian Peninsula. (Yemen, devastated by Saudi and American jets is yet to be conquered. Oman? Britain returned not as colonial ruler but as a soft occupying power.)
Under this articulation, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are virtually occupied countries. If we compare this type of occupation to the mandate and protectorate regimes of the past, the results might be identical—the nations affected by it lose sovereignty. When Arab governments comply with the objectives of a foreign power that station military forces on their national milieu, then that power controls them in multiple ways including how they react to policy deliberations and what decisions they intend to take on specific issues. A good method to verify the concept of effective occupation is this: take notice of what the United States says and wants, and then compare it to what the gulf rulers do in response. (I shall discuss this detail at some point in the upcoming parts.)
If the presence of US forces or other means of political pressure are a factor in Saudi Arabia’s interventionist Arab wars, then we need to debate this issue. However, from the history of resistance to colonialism, we learnt: if a powerful state imposes its order on a nation by military means or other forms of coercion, and if this nation does not resist that imposition, then a mental subordination to the powerful state will ensue. This is especially true in the case of Saudi Arabia. One single event, 9/11, has transformed it from a US “ally” into an instant political hostage of the American Empire. … continue
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