Tag Archives: cold war

nuclear reactors on the moon

Leave a reply

According to Breitbart (yes, I occasionally peruse Breitbart to see what propaganda spin they are putting on current events and because they occasionally pick up on a story others do not), Russia and China are considering a joint moon research base powered by a nuclear reactor. NASA is also considering a research base powered by nuclear power. This makes sense to me in a technological sense. What is concerning is the end of an era of international cooperation symbolized by the International Space Station, which Russia has said it is backing out of this year. An international moon base would just make a lot of sense rather than competing national bases.

Now, for some fun science fiction references. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s 1993 novel Red Mars, which I enjoyed unlike his recent book Ministry for the Future which I couldn’t finish, the first thing humanity does when it gets to Mars is build a nuclear reactor.

In the 1968 Godzilla entry Destroy All Monsters, it is assumed that by the year 1999 humanity will have settled their differences and established an international moon base led by a world government. This is important because they will need to cooperate to deal with threats such as aliens and monsters.

And finally, let’s just watch the Russian space station Mir blow up in the 1998 movie Armageddon. In 1997, there really was an explosion and fire aboard the actual Mir, which the cosmonauts present were able to put out. In 2001, most of the station was intentionally burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, and the rest allowed to crash into the Pacific Ocean. The Mir was originally a Soviet project. NASA had plans to put up its own competing space station, but after the fall of the USSR the two countries agreed to cooperate on the International Space Station instead. Seems long ago now.

Operation Atlantic Resolve

Leave a reply

We hear that the U.S. is mobilizing about 3,000 reservists for deployment to Europe. I wondered how troop levels now compare to the past. Here are a few facts and figures:

  • In the late 1950s, the U.S. had about 450,000 troops in Europe. (from The Week)
  • For “most of the Cold War”, the U.S. had around 330,000 and NATO as a whole around 900,000. The Warsaw Pact had around 1.2 million. (same source as above)
  • After 1991, U.S. troops were reduced to around 66,000. (same source as above)
  • In 2018, it was around 65,000. This is a bit surprising to me – so even though “Operation Atlantic Resolve” started when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, troop levels were still maintained around where they were during the supposedly peaceful 1990s.
  • Currently in 2023, the U.S. has around 100,000 troops in Europe. (Politico)
  • I tried to figure out how many troops Russia has in Ukraine, but I found this number elusive. CNN says around 500 battalions, and just from random web searching a battalion varies but could be something like 500 soldiers. So multiply these very rough numbers you get 250,000 troops.

So the headline about 3,000 reservists seems like a pretty small number in the grand scheme. What are the troops in Europe actually doing. Going back to the The Week article (from 2022):

The US will establish a permanent headquarters of the US 5th Army Corps in Poland, acting as a forward command post and army garrison headquarters. There will be an additional brigade stationed in Romania to enhance Nato forces across the eastern flank, alongside other manoeuvrable US army units. The US will also increase deployments of special operations forces, armoured vehicles, aviation and air defence to strengthen the security of the region.

The emphasis is on combined operations with other Nato allies, using forces that have enhanced flexibility and combat readiness. The US will also deploy two additional F-35 fighter bomber squadrons to the UK and two additional destroyers at Rota naval base in Spain.

The Week

November 2022 in Review

Leave a reply

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Asteroids could be used as a weapon.

Most hopeful story: A review of Limits to Growth suggests our civilization may be on a path to stagnation rather than collapse. Or, we may be on the cusp of a fantastic science ficition future of abundance brought to us by solar energy, asteroid mining (there are those asteroids again!), and biotechnology.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I tried to put myself in Russia’s shoes and explain the Ukraine conflict, mostly to myself.

March 2022 in Review

Leave a reply

The Ukraine war grinds on as I write on April 7, with the Russian military seemingly pulling back from some areas while slaughtering civilians (hostages?) farther east and south. I proffered some limited views on the situation and media coverage of the war during the month, but I won’t go into it below.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: What causes violence? It’s the (prohibition and war on) drugs, stupid. Or at least, partly/mostly, the drugs.

Most hopeful story: There are meaningful things individuals can do to slow climate change, even as governments and industries do too little too late. For example, eat plants, limit driving and flying, and just replace consumer goods as they wear out. I’m mostly on board except that I think we need peace and stability for the long term survival of both our civilization and planetary ecosystem, and we are going to need to travel and get to know one another to give that a chance.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Ready.gov has posted helpful information on what to do in case of a nuclear explosion.

“not an inch to the East”

Leave a reply

Here is some more historical background on the promises made by NATO at the end of the cold war. One lesson Trump taught me is that U.S. Presidents don’t feel bound by promises made by their predecessors to foreign parties (examples: Trump pulling out of climate change and nuclear arms control agreements, the W. Bush overthrow of Iraq and Obama of Libya). And the U.S. Congress does not feel bound by promises made by Presidents (examples: the original Kyoto climate change pledge). But this has been going on for a lot longer than the Obama/Trump era, since at least the end of the cold war. And you could go back in history and look at promises made to Native Americans and Mexico among others and conclude that talk has always been cheap. It’s not just the U.S. of course – here is an article about promises made by Russia and others to Ukraine in exchange for giving up the nuclear arsenal it inherited at the end of the cold war. And of course you could go back to promises made by Hitler and Stalin that most likely neither ever intended to keep.

I guess a lesson that could be learned by the political class is that you don’t make deals in exchange for a promise of some future action beyond the political lifetime of the party you are making a deal with. You need something tangible in return in the short term in exchange for whatever you are giving up. It seems like a sad, cynical world sometimes.

Chomsky on the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine

Leave a reply

People are wondering why Russia is manufacturing an acute crisis where one does not seem to be necessary. It seems to me that Vladimir Putin has chosen to bring a simmering 30-year issue to a head. There may be no particular reason for the timing, other than Putin getting older and a largely hostile U.S. administration in place. I think there is also the case of a poor, weak but historically powerful country pouring a lot of money into its military to look tough to a domestic audience. Noam Chomsky explains some of the history:

For obvious reasons, German reunification within a hostile military alliance is no small matter for Russia. Nevertheless, Gorbachev agreed to it, with a quid pro quo: No expansion to the East. President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed. In their words to Gorbachev: “Not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction…”

President H.W. Bush pretty much lived up to these commitments. So did President Bill Clinton at first, until 1999, the 50th anniversary of NATO; with an eye on the Polish vote in the upcoming election, some have speculated. He admitted Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO. President George W. Bush — the lovable goofy grandpa who was celebrated in the press on the 20th anniversary of his invasion of Afghanistan — let down all the bars. He brought in the Baltic states and others. In 2008, he invited Ukraine to join NATO, poking the bear in the eye. Ukraine is Russia’s geostrategic heartland, apart from intimate historic relations and a large Russia-oriented population. Germany and France vetoed Bush’s reckless invitation, but it’s still on the table. No Russian leader would accept that, surely not Gorbachev, as he made clear.

As in the case of deployment of offensive weapons on the Russian border, there is a straightforward answer. Ukraine can have the same status as Austria and two Nordic countries throughout the whole Cold War: neutral, but tightly linked to the West and quite secure, part of the European Union to the extent they chose to be.

truthout.org

The U.S. has effectively told Russia it will not defend Ukraine militarily unless there is an attack on a neighboring NATO country, and saying there will be “severe consequences” in the form of economic sanctions only. It’s hard for the U.S. to back off any further in the midst of the acute crisis. After the crisis passes however, we could slowly back off and just choose to be less threatening. Move troops and weapons away, pull “trainers” and covert operatives out of Ukraine, and eventually make an announcement that NATO expansion is definitively over. Putin won’t live forever, neither will the Clintobushobamabiden dynasty, and if we are lucky maybe the stars will align at some point with leadership on both sides willing to make peace.

the 30-year anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union

Leave a reply

A big milestone of 2021 was the 30-year anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991. I was born in 1975, so I was 16 when this occurred. I didn’t have a good understanding of it at the time, and I am not sure the average person has a good understanding of it today. As I read about it now, Russia, somewhat oddly, essentially declared independence from itself (aka, the Russian empire, aka the Soviet Union), and Mikhail Gorbachev found himself in charge of a political entity that no longer existed. I have vague memories of Boris Yeltsin and tanks in the streets of Moscow. I have no memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This suggests to me my parents and teachers did not spend much time talking to me about current events, or talking to each other about current events within ear shot. Maybe I can do a bit better with my children, while trying not to make the world seem too depressing.

Is the cold war over? Not really. There are many, many ways its legacy affects us today. The most obvious ones are all the nuclear weapons the U.S. and Russia have pointed at each other, nuclear proliferation around the world, and the tensions at the Russia-Ukraine border. Less obvious but crucially important is the extreme free market propaganda that constrains possibilities for the U.S. and economic and political systems around the world to this day. First, I think globalization had a lot to do with cold war propaganda. The U.S. invested heavily in industrializing and trading with Japan and South Korea after World War II at least in part to keep them out of the Soviet orbit. At first, the exports the U.S. was buying were a tiny trickle compared to the economy. The policies were so successful though, that those economies grew to rival and out-compete U.S. industry. The propaganda suited U.S. multinational corporations just fine because it provided access to cheap labor and lax environmental regulations abroad, while keeping the U.S. market wide open. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore copied the model with spectacular success, and then China copied it on a massive scale, and the system the U.S. had created swallowed it (the tail wagged the dog, the pig swallowed the python? I struggled to come up with the right animal-based metaphor here). Certainly, this economic growth lifted a lot of people out of poverty in Asia. It is somewhat ironic though that the biggest beneficiary turned out to be a (nominally, at least) Communist empire.

Back to those U.S. corporations and the propaganda that suits them. To this day, they are able to use that Cold War anti-tax, anti-regulation propaganda to scare the public into voting against “socialist” policies that would benefit the vast majority of citizens and even the economy as a whole, but would trim the profits of a tiny minority running mega-corporations. Commie red policies like having health care, education, and child care systems that are not failures and that would allow the U.S. to stop falling toward the bottom and eventually getting shit out of its peer group of advanced nations (I think I got that metaphor about right!) The mega-corporations can then invest a small fraction of their profits to ensure election of politicians who will continue to spew the propaganda and in some cases even actively work to undermine voting itself. This is a cycle that is going to be very hard to break, if it can be broken.

really big bombs

Leave a reply

Here are some facts and figures from an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

  • The nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 and 20 kilotons.
  • The largest nuclear weapon tested by the United States was Castle Bravo, at 15 MT, in 1954. It was bigger than the scientists calculated it was going to be, and produced more fallout.
  • The largest weapon tested by the Soviet Union was Tsar Bomba at 50 MT in 1961. They actually designed the bomb to be 100 MT and intentionally exploded it only halfway.

You can make bigger nuclear bombs by using smaller ones (relatively speaking) to set them off. There seems to be almost no theoretical limit to how high you could go.

At a secret meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, Teller broached, as he put it, “the possibility of much bigger bangs.” At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons. Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day, but other scientists at the meeting recorded, after Teller had left, that they were “shocked” by his proposal. “It would contaminate the Earth,” one suggested…

It is hard to convey the damage of a gigaton bomb, because at such yields many traditional scaling laws do not work (the bomb blows a hole in the atmosphere, essentially). However, a study from 1963 suggested that, if detonated 28 miles (45 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, a 10,000-megaton weapon could set fires over an area 500 miles (800 kilometers) in diameter.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Bombs this big have no strategic or practical use, they tell us. I don’t find this comforting. It just takes one madman to not get that and try something reckless one time, and our civilization is gone.

Taiwan war early warning?

Leave a reply

The belligerent rhetoric over Taiwan seems to have ramped up suddenly (I’m writing on Saturday morning, October 9). See for example this article in Eurasia Review (a publication I know nothing about this publication, couldn’t find out much about it online, and it raises some propaganda alarms as I read it. It credits “VOA” as the author of the piece, which would make it official propaganda assuming it is true.

U.S. officials have expressed growing alarm in recent days, describing China’s behavior toward Taiwan as increasingly aggressive and belligerent. The concern has been heightened by repeated aerial incursions, with Beijing sending more than 150 military jets into Taiwanese airspace over several days.

Eurasia Review

Here’s an article from something called “The Conversation” which also sets off my propaganda alarms. But Wikipedia describes it as “a network of not-for-profit media outlets that publish news stories on the Internet that are written by academic experts and researchers, under a free Creative Commons licence, allowing reuse but only without modification.”

Taiwan’s porcupine doctrine has three defensive layers. The outer layer is about intelligence and reconnaissance to ensure defence forces are fully prepared. Behind this come plans for guerrilla warfare at sea with aerial support from sophisticated aircraft provided by the US. The innermost layer relies on the geography and demography of the island. The ultimate objective of this doctrine is that of surviving and assimilating an aerial offensive well enough to organise a wall of fire that will prevent the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from successfully invading.

The Conversation

Sounds like a fun video game, or an unbelievably hellish reality. Let’s not let this happen.

The Moscow Midterms?

Leave a reply

Back in April 2018, Clare Malone from Five Thirty Eight wrote a sort of speculative fiction piece about how Russian intelligence agents could attempt to hijack the November (2018) U.S. midterm elections. Now that we have just found out a lot more facts about how they did in fact successfully influence the 2016 election, this is no longer so speculative.

In my view, interfering with another country’s election is something more than an act of intelligence gathering but something less than an act of war. We can act all shocked and surprised that a hostile foreign intelligence agencies would dare to interfere with our elections. But the fact is, hostile foreign intelligence agencies do this, and the U.S. has done it to others, particularly during the Cold War and particularly in the developing world, a lot. So we don’t exactly have the moral high ground. Shame on the FBI and our other counter-intelligence agencies for letting the Russians get away with this. Then again, going back to the Cold War, we should remember this is the KGB and they have always had our number.

So we now know that Russian intelligence interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they communicated with members of Trump’s campaign team. The evidence for these things is clear, disinformation and propaganda to the contrary. It remains to be seen whether there is clear evidence that people in the Trump campaign new they were talking to Russian agents and actively accepted their help or even helped them. If this can be shown, then the people involved are enemies of our country and need to be treated as such. And if Trump himself was involved or knew his campaign was involved, he is an enemy of the country and needs to be treated as such.

Now, if this evidence is produced, it seems unlikely that the immoral, cowardly farce that the Republican party has become will act on the evidence if they are in charge. At that point, I think the rule of law will truly be lost. Trump’s people might be convicted, he might pardon them, and Congress might stand by and let it happen. If the Democrats are in charge and this evidence is produced, I hope they have the courage to impeach. Impeachment would make sure the evidence sees the light of day in full public view, even if a cowardly Republican Senate ultimately refused to convict. So this midterm election really is important, and it really is critical that our government do a competent job of counterintelligence leading up to it.