Tag Archives: nuclear weapons

tactical nuclear weapons

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Center for Public Integrity has an article explaining how a war involving tactical nuclear weapons could play out. The problem, beyond the obvious horrible human and environmental toll they would take, is that they would likely be the link in escalation from conventional war to civilization-annihilating total thermonuclear war. Please no.

Had such an invasion ever come, the commanders in the field, given authorization to use nuclear weapons to avert defeat, would retreat after deployment. (Soviet plans for war were to specifically attack tactical nuclear sites.) The war would then either end in hours with an exchange of ICBMs, or with a ceasefire negotiated to prevent armageddon.

Defense intellectuals describe the steps between peace and thermonuclear oblivion through an “escalation ladder,” with the leadership of both countries at war taking actions that invite the other country to either escalate, by increasing the stakes and tensions, or de-escalate, by backing away from further conflict. Tactical nuclear weapons are the rung separating conventional battle from a nuclear war.

Soviet leaders developed their nuclear weapons and doctrine as a response to U.S. nuclear war planning, and awareness of U.S. nuclear deployments to Europe. Both the U.S. and USSR assumed that once tactical nuclear weapons were used, it was more likely that thermonuclear exchange, not deescalation, would follow.

Center for Public Integrity

So the strategy was to out-crazy the other side. We rolled the dice on that risky strategy and won, but roll the dice enough times and everyone on both sides will lose.

The best thing that could possibly come out of this horrible Ukraine war, once the dust settles, would be renewed arms control negotiations. I am not too hopeful for that because the world seems to be in a very cynical place right now.

the war in Ukraine

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I keep saying I don’t want to analyze fast moving current events, but I can’t help it. Here are a few things I want to say. It’s March 5, 2022 as I write this.

First, Putin’s actions are deplorable and inexcusable in terms of the human suffering they are causing and in terms of the very real risk of nuclear war they entail. Nothing I say below changes this. To say any of the points below excuse Putin’s actions would be like Hitler saying “Stalin did it first”. (Stalin slaughtered millions of Ukrainians before Hitler slaughtered millions of Ukrainians and Poles, among many others. Tens of millions of wrongs obviously don’t make a right. They add up to pure and unfathomable evil. Putin is putting himself in this category although he is only slaughtering human beings by the hundreds or thousands so far. But we are one nuclear exchange away from a body count even Hitler and Stalin might not have been able to fathom.)

There is a lot of obvious propaganda coming from the Russian side. There are a lot of lies (many so obvious they are just dumb) posted on social media by random people for random reasons. But there is also obvious spin coming from the U.S. government, and our media and public is buying into it without question. You don’t have to support Putin to just be a little skeptical about what you are hearing and ask who you are hearing it from and what their motivations might be. We are hearing that the war is going unexpectedly badly for the Russians. We are hearing that Russian morale is low. We are hearing and seeing videos of ordinary people stopping tanks and standing up to soldiers. We are hearing that Russia has not established air superiority. We are hearing that Putin is irrational or mentally ill. There may be kernels of truth to any and all of this, but it is all coming from U.S. government/military/intelligence sources and being parroted uncritically by our media. Government officials at all levels are giving interviews with very similar talking points, suggesting to me that it is a coordinated intelligence effort. Major newsrooms are either in on the propaganda effort (as it is clear to me they were on the Iraq weapons of mass destruction debacle), or they just don’t have other sources of news so all they can do is repeat what they are hearing from the government and each other.

Take any article on the situation and replace Russia or Putin with the United States, then replace Ukraine with Iraq. The world could have justified imposing “crippling sanctions” on the U.S. for that illegal “war of choice”. They don’t do that because they don’t have the political, military, or financial power to get on the wrong side of the United States, and we abuse that power.

Russia clearly felt threatened by that U.S. war, and by the NATO wars on Libya and even going back to the 1990s NATO war on Serbia.. The Afghanistan war seemed like a justified defensive action at the time even though it seems pointless in retrospect, but it was in Russia’s backyard and they could easily feel threatened. The U.S. has intervened in Syria, brought former Soviet countries into NATO, and almost certainly interfered in Ukrainian elections. Again, try to put ourselves in their shoes and we would be outraged to find that Russia had interfered with a Canadian or Mexican election let alone formed a military alliance with those countries. And remember when they formed a military alliance with Cuba and a nuclear war almost happened? Even the 1991 Gulf War must have been threatening to Russia as it seemed so overwhelming and came at a time of Russian weakness. Looked at another way, that war seemed at the time like a case where a sovereign UN member state was invaded by its neighbor, and the world came together to make it clear that would not be tolerated. Maybe this should have been the principle ever since then, rather than expansion of a (perceived) aggressive alliance in Eastern Europe. (Sorry Taiwan, this doesn’t help you.)

Now add U.S. politicians openly calling for Putin’s assassination, and imagine how outraged we would be if that rhetoric were reversed. Add the CIA openly salivating over the idea of a prolonged insurgency. Don’t think about a repeat of the death squads that caused so many civilians in Iraq and throughout Latin America to be tortured and disappeared, as the U.S. embraced right-wing elements and looked the other way in an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend mentality.

I won’t second guess our political and military leadership in their response to this acute crisis, although the idea of NATO countries openly leaving guns and tanks on the border of Ukraine and Poland seems like a serious escalation to me. I assume the U.S. and NATO are openly sharing intelligence and advising the Ukrainian military on maneuvers. What are the chances there are really no CIA paramilitary or U.S. special forces in Ukraine? At least no tactical nuclear weapons have been deployed that we know of, and no naval confrontations have occurred.

Once this crisis passes and the dust settles, assuming it eventually does, maybe a group of courageous politicians could get together and make a serious renewed effort at arms control and risk reduction. That would be the absolute best outcome we can hope for from this crisis.

If you are experiencing a nuclear explosion press 1

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As I was doom scrolling yet again to check if the nuclear missiles are incoming, I came across this helpful website from ready.gov.

If you are experiencing a nuclear explosion and are still able to walk, first you should go to your basement and stay there for at least 24 hours. That makes sense to me. Second, and this is a little weird, you should take a shower if you can. I guess some people have showers in their basements. Third, and this is where it gets really weird, you should stock your basement with a vintage hand-cranked videocassette player and a VHS copy of the 1983 made-for-TV movie The Day After, starring 1983 John Lithgow, who was already not young, playing a plucky ham radio operator who will tell you what is going on. Finally, and this is where it gets unbelievable, you should call your health care provider.

Hello, this is your United States health care provider. Listen carefully as menu options keep changing. If you do not have insurance, press 1 and a recorded voice will tell you to go fuck yourself. If you have insurance, press 2.

Congratulations, you have pressed 2 indicating you have some type of health insurance. If you have a pain in the ass or balls, this may require specialist attention. If your health insurance does not cover this, press 1. Otherwise press 3.

Congratulations, you have pressed 3, indicating you have half decent health insurance. If you are experiencing A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION right now, press 4.

You have pressed 4, indicating you are experiencing or have experienced A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION. If your flesh has not melted from your bones and your bones turned to ash and blown away on the blast wave like in the opening scene of Terminator 2, please press 5 or stay on the line and a scheduling specialist may assist you.

Congratulations, you have pressed 5 indicating that you have experienced A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION but are somehow still alive and in urgent need of medical attention. We’re sorry, all our scheduling specialists are currently assisting other callers. Your call is important to us. The next appointment with your health care provider is in 6 months. But your health care provider’s schedule is only posted for the next 3 months, whatever that means. No, we won’t call you. You can try to call us in 3 months. Or you can try to call us every day and check if we have a cancellation. No, we won’t call you about that either. If you have a problem with that, you can just go ahead and press 1.

No, don’t be stupid and confuse this with The Day After Tomorrow.
Now that’s some dark shit. And we don’t need evil robots because we have politicians. Politicians, let’s keep this only in the movies okay?

February 2022 in Review

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The horrible war in Ukraine is obviously the most frightening and depressing thing going on as of early March 2022, both in terms of human suffering and the risk of nuclear war. But I prefer to avoid commenting too much on fast moving current events. I’ll just say that if the world can get past the acute crisis and maybe start talking seriously about arms control again, that could be a possible silver lining. But it seems like we are months or years away from that point. So I’ll pick something else below.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Philadelphia police are making an arrest in less than 40% of murders in our city, not to mention other violent crimes. Convictions of those arrested are also down. Some of this could be Covid-era dysfunction. But there is a word for this: lawlessness.

Most hopeful story: “Green ammonia” offers some help on the energy and environmental front.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I found a 1992 Saturday Night Live skit about the Olympics more entertaining than the actual Olympics. May Phil Hartman rest in peace. I checked on Dana Carvey and he is 66 and doing okay.

“not an inch to the East”

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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.

what would a practical modern arms control framework look like?

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I am concerned that nuclear war is becoming more scary and thinkable all the time, and politicians are focused elsewhere. One thing the U.S. can do is just be less scary. We need to put ourselves in others’ shoes and realize that they find us threatening, don’t fully trust us, and feel they have to be prepared to defend themselves against us. Being less threatening does not have to make us appear weak – we can let people know we are strong and ready to defend ourselves and our allies if attacked, while reassuring others that they are in no danger if they don’t threaten us. This seems like a basic playground philosophy, but I don’t see our warmongering politicians talking this way.

War on the Rocks has a wonky article on what a modern arms control framework could look like. Let’s pull back a little bit and work on peace and risk reduction.

In my book, Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace: The Rise, Demise, and Revival of Arms Control, I propose that we embrace an ambitious goal of extending the three norms of no use, no testing, and no new proliferation to the 100th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Imagine, if you can, a world in which nuclear weapons have not been used on battlefields for 100 years, and a world in which nuclear weapons have not been tested by major and regional powers for almost five decades. Imagine, too, that North Korea remains the last nuclear-armed state. Now imagine the perceived utility of nuclear weapons in 2045. How many potential mushroom clouds would be required for deterrence? How high would the barriers be against use and testing? …

A seven-nation forum consisting of the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Britain, and France would be hard to steer, but the nuclear dangers we now face are interconnected and unwieldy. When the nature of a problem seems intractably complex, the wisest course might just be to expand the scope of the problem. Even as the four pairs compete, they have the most to lose if key norms are broken and the most to gain if they are extended. Existing bilateral conversations on nuclear risk reduction would, of course, continue, but there are no effective channels of communication and substantive exchanges between India and China and between India and Pakistan, where border clashes are becoming more intense. A non-hierarchical, seven-nation approach to norm building might just succeed. All seven have significant concerns about the intentions and capabilities of states with the most dynamic nuclear modernization programs. Each state has its own reasons to engage, as well as to be wary. If other states are willing to sit at the table, it becomes harder for anyone to hold out.

War on the Rocks

The article gets much more specific from there, and is worth a read. Joe Biden should read it. If his major legislative accomplishments are likely to be behind him by the end of 2022 as we expect, he could try to leave the world a legacy on nuclear arms control, climate change, pandemic preparedness and biological weapons control in his remaining 2-6 years in office. He wouldn’t need direct support from the U.S. Congress, although we have learned that without the executive and legislative branches moving in lockstep, international agreements are not always durable and other countries will conclude they can’t rely on us. Still, any forward progress on any of these issues would be a significant contribution to the future of our nation and our global civilization.

really big bombs

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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.

Kissinger on the Terminator scenario

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Henry Kissinger, whether you think he is a particularly moral person or not, is known to possess a pretty sharp mind. He’s 97 though, so one could question if it is still as sharp as it was. Anyway, he is worried about the combination of advanced nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence.

“For the first time in human history, humanity has the capacity to extinguish itself in a finite period of time,” Kissinger said.

“We have developed the technology of a power that is beyond what anybody imagined even 70 years ago.”

“And now, to the nuclear issue is added the high tech issue, which in the field of artificial intelligence, in its essence is based on the fact that man becomes a partner of machines and that machines can develop their own judgement,” he said.

France 24

What. you don’t read France 24? This is the beauty of RSS feeds, you just get random stuff coming in from many directions, probably still biased to your personal predilections, but at least the odd random view that you have to give some thought. I also have a few sketchy sources (talking to you Breitbart) intentionally coming in that make me uncomfortable.

New Start extended for five years

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Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have just done a very good thing in extending the New Start treaty for five years.

The treaty, signed in 2010 by the US president Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, who was president of Russia at the time, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance.

The Guardian

The numbers seem somewhat underwhelming to me (as in, a modest reduction in an enormous nuclear arsenal), but the important thing is the willingness to cooperate to reduce risk, and the message that sends to the rest of the world. The world has gone from believing a nuclear free world might be possible, to trying to avoid proliferation while modestly reducing what nuclear-armed countries already have, to trying to slow the rate of proliferation while “modernizing” or increasing what nuclear-armed countries already have, to teetering on the brink of an all-out arms race. Now we have gone back to the “maintain what we have”, which is still incredibly cynical, but the trend has turned back in the right direction. Accidents, proliferation, unstable nuclear-armed states (I’m talking to you Pakistan), and terrorism are all still very frightening, and there is no margin for error even with one relatively small event one time. The ocean liner captain has seen the iceberg, let up on the steam, and turned the wheel an inch to the left. Is it in time to avoid collision?

November 2020 in Review

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Only one month to go in this tumultuous year. In current events, the U.S. election was obviously a major historical event, and Covid-19 continued to spiral horribly. But my loyal readers (all 3-10 of you worldwide…) don’t need me to cover current events.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: It seems likely the Clinton-Bush-Obama-Trump U.S. foreign wars may just grind on endlessly under Biden. Prove us wrong, Joe! (I give Trump a few points for trying to bring troops home over the objections of the military-industrial complex. But in terms of war and peace, this is completely negated and then some by slippage on nuclear proliferation and weapons on his watch.)

Most hopeful story: The massive investment in Covid-19 vaccine development may have major spillover effects to cures for other diseases. This could even be the big acceleration in biotechnology that seems to have been on the horizon for awhile. These technologies also have potential negative and frivolous applications, of course.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: States representing 196 electoral votes have agreed to support the National Popular Vote Compact, in which they would always award their state’s electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. Colorado has now voted to do this twice. Unfortunately, the movement has a tough road to get to 270 votes, because of a few big states that would be giving up a lot of power if they agreed to it.