There's a Reason They Called it MAD.

They were all the rage in my day. Tactical nuclear weapons, mini-nukes, or "those little bags of instant sunshine."

Somewhere around here I've got a then-"secret" field manual laying out how these weapons were to be used in the event of a massive Soviet invasion of western Europe.  All eyes were on the Fulda Gap, two corridors through which it was expected a flood of Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks would pour into the central German plain and then on to the English Channel.  The idea was that those corridors provided convenient "choke points" where massed Soviet tanks and vehicles might be eliminated with tactical nukes delivered by NATO fighters including Canada's CF-104 Starfighters.

It was a dangerous gambit. There were so many unknowns. Would it encourage the Soviets to use similar weapons to annihilate NATO bases and our forces in the field?  Might an exchange of low-yield nukes escalate into a full-blown, civilization ending exchange of ICBM volleys?  The theory, as I understood it at the time, was a hope that using nukes to block a Soviet surprise attack would buy both sides two, maybe even three days to cool down and negotiate some way out of Armageddon.

With time the luster of tactical nuclear weapons faded.  Sure there were still arsenals of B-61 gravity bombs (above) scattered about. There still are. Most of the other stuff - the atomic cannon, the nuclear depth charge, that sort of thing has gone.

That sleeping giant is stirring again and, in a world already facing a variety of potentially existential threats, it does feel like "piling on."



Russia, meanwhile, is fielding new nuclear delivery systems of its own.  Among them are a robotic nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarine that could travel very deep, very fast, over very long-ranges, navigating its way into America's coastal ports and naval bases. There's also, according to Putin, a nuclear powered, nuclear armed cruise missile. There's a new nuclear submarine-launched Russian missile and Putin has just pledged to develop a new intermediate-range nuclear missile. How does that grab ya?

Fortunately we've got a very rational, very stable genius in the White House. Thank God and the United States of America for that.

A Blast From the Past. Remember the "Peace Dividend"?

The world but especially the Western alliance breathed a huge sigh of relief at the collapse of the former Soviet Union in late 1991. Over the following years, nation after nation dialed back their military preparedness, declaring what was then called a peace dividend. Defence budgets fell from about 4% of GDP to around 1.5%, in some cases (Canada) even less. The future would be one of fewer guns and ever more butter. The nuclear Sword of Damocles had been sheathed.

Yet, instead of being appropriately grateful for our blessing, we did little to build a lasting peace. What we did was to siphon up the former Warsaw Pact states into our alliance, NATO, and then march our armies literally up to Russia's doorstep. Yeah, that Russia, the nation and people who still had vivid memories of the last time armies from Western Europe massed their tanks along the borders of the Rodina.

Triumphalism was the order of the day, especially in Washington. We, i.e. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, had crushed the Soviet menace until it collapsed under its own weight. Instead of being grateful for having averted a war we celebrated having won a war.

This is a too common failing of the United States. They're pretty good at winning battles, campaigns, but they've been utterly inept at the next step, the important phase, winning the peace. Once the smoke clears and the barrels cool, they go all ADHD.

There's a price to be paid for this neglect. Ours has been a resumption of that Cold War we talked ourselves into believing had been won. Now the emphasis is on every one reinflating their military budgets, again practicing Armageddon-grade warfare, and feverishly re-arming.

For America, this has taken the form of an additional $300-billion of military funding. That's just to top it off. We're told that money will go to refurbish an American military worn out by its endless wars in the Middle East/South Asia. That doesn't sound especially alarming but maybe that money is earmarked for something less benign.

An op-ed in Aviation Week by US defence analyst Robert Stallard contends that $300-billion is going elsewhere - into preparations for waging war with China and/or Russia. Stallard suggests the big winners will be space warfare (the ability to defend your own space assets while obliterating your adversary's), cyber-warfare (you'll just have to wait to see what the three players have in mind), and black projects, stuff that won't even be showcased to Congress. Some of these programmes such as hyper-velocity and directed-energy (set phasers to "obliterate") are already under development and have been considered in a few published articles of unknown reliability.

I would like to call it Cold War II but it doesn't seem to be a noticeable departure from the thinking of Cold War I. It may be merely a continuation of our incredibly dangerous past following a quarter-century of relative dormancy. One thing is certain. Whatever it is, "it's on."

Shame on us for having so negligently bequeathed this future to our kids and grandkids. This did not have to be.

Coming Clean, It's Good for the Soul.

After half a century of persistent fudging the Pentagon has officially admitted the undeniable - Israel has an arsenal of nuclear weapons and all the high tech gear to best use them.

That revelation might not matter much to most of us but, to the US government, it has serious military and foreign policy ramifications.

...the confirmation of this poorly kept secret opens a troublesome can of worms for both the US government and our closest ally in the Middle East. Official acknowledgement poses questions and contradictions that cry out for closer inspection. For many years, the United States collaborated with Israel’s development of critical technology needed for advanced armaments. Yet Washington pushed other nations to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires international inspections to discourage the spread of nuclear arms. Israel has never signed the NPT and therefore does not have to submit to inspections.

Washington knew all along what the inspectors would find in Israel. Furthermore, as far back as the 1960s, the US Foreign Assistance Act was amended by concerned senators to prohibit any foreign aid for countries developing their own nukes. Smith asserts that the exception made for Israel was a violation of the US law but it was shrouded by the official secrecy. Since Israel is a major recipient of US aid, American presidents had good reason not to reveal the truth.

The newly released report—“Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations”—describes Israel’s nuclear infrastructure in broad terms, but the dimensions are awesome. Israel’s nuclear research labs, the IDA researchers reported, “are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.” Indeed, the investigators observed that Israel’s facilities are “an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories.”

In other words, going back well before the 80s, Israel and the US have been one collaborative lab for developing advanced weapons of mass destruction and yet the US Congress wouldn't hesitate if it only could to attack Iran for basic nuclear processing far short of any weaponized materials.

Update - for anyone interested in Israel and how it came to amass so many nuclear weapons, Foreign Policy has a fascinating whodunnit, "What lies beneath Numec?" that focuses on a uranium processing plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania in the 60s,  and how it came to misplace hundreds of pounds of highly enriched, weapons grade uranium. It's made more intriguing by the fact that Numec's founder, Zalman Shapiro, had close connections to Israel's defence and intelligence establishments.

China's Nuclear Hair Trigger

China is just one of several countries with arsenals of nuclear weapons.  Yet, unlike the others, the unusual structure of China's military forces may leave the country much more prone to nuclear escalation from a conventional war.

" [A] new study, previously only available in Chinese, appears in the latest edition of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE. The authors believe that this is the first comprehensive non-governmental study on how China’s nuclear-war plan was developed...
 “The basic dilemma for the war planners stems from the deployment of the two types of missiles on the same Second Artillery bases with fundamentally different capabilities and purposes,” Lewis and Xue say.

The article notes that Beijing’s nuclear missiles exist to deter a nuclear first strike on China, and are only to be used in extremis. At the same time, the conventional weapons on the formerly all-nuclear bases must be ready to strike first and hard. Targeted enemies and their allies will not immediately be able to distinguish whether any missiles fired are conventional or nuclear.

This means that those enemies may justifiably launch on warning and retaliate against all the command-and-control systems and missile assets of the Chinese missile launch base and even the overall command-and-control system of the central Second Artillery headquarters. In the worst case, a self-defensive first strike by Chinese conventional missiles could end in the retaliatory destruction of many Chinese nuclear missiles and their related command-and-control systems.

That disastrous outcome would force the much smaller surviving and highly vulnerable Chinese nuclear missile units to fire their remaining missiles against the enemy’s homeland,” Lewis and Xue warn. “Escalation to nuclear war could become accelerated and unavoidable.” Policies that have led to conventional and nuclear weapons doubling up at the same base could cause, rather than deter, a nuclear exchange.

If a dust-up did occur between Chinese and Western forces, some missile strikes could well be possible.   China, for example, has a missile specifically designed to attack and utterly destroy American fleet aircraft carriers.   Those carrier battle groups also deploy with their own nuclear weapons.   If a force detects an incoming missile attack but is unable to determine whether it's a nuclear strike, the commander could be sorely tempted to conclude it is just that and respond in kind.

The Tacs Stay - Bring On the F-35s

The Cold War in Europe is a thing of history but the deadliest weapons developed to fight it are still there.  Hundreds of B-61 nuclear bombs will remain in Europe, stored at supposedly secure bunkers at NATO and US airbases, mainly in Germany.

The B-61 (shown above) is a really versatile weapon.  It can withstand speeds of up to Mach 2, it can be dropped from as low as 50-feet, and it can be configured to deliver a nuclear blast of between 1 and 340-kilotons.  There's even a 'bunker busting' version that might be just dandy for vaporizing some less-than-friendly country's underground nuclear installations.

This bomb was developed in the 60's but, thanks to the Americans' Operation Enduring Stockpile (no, I didn't make that up) they're still going strong.  The Pentagon even has a planned 2-billion dollar update planned for the remaining stocks.  But wait, there's more!   The B-61 is also being modified to make it compatible with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the very ship we've signed on to buy.

Marry a nuclear bomb to the F-35's stealth technology and you've got quite a package - an intruder aircraft capable of getting into the enemy's backyard undetected to nuke the hell out of something before the other side even knows it's there.

You see, all this nonsense about the F-35 defending Canadian airspace is pablum for the gullible.   As the Australians discovered, the F-35 is all but worthless as an air defence fighter.  One mission and it's gone.   BUT - as a bomb sled using stealth to penetrate the other guy's air defences, it seems to have some utility.

Is there some reason nobody on Parliament Hill is asking these questions.

Israel Set to Take Nukes to Sea? Pakistan Nuke Proliferators Back in Business?

Israel is reported to be preparing to deploy nuclear-armed Dolphin submarines to the Iranian coast.  The Xinhua News Agency and Global Security Newswire say Israel is mating nuclear warheads to its submarine-launched cruise missiles in preparation for the mission.    Germany has supplied three of the subs to Israel and is to deliver two more in the next two years.

"Israel has never spoken about the role of its submarines, whether they are for patrol or attack missions, but internationally they are thought as being part of Israel's deterrence," said Yiftah Shapir, who heads the Military Balance Project at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.



"From my perspective it doesn't matter what their role is. As soon as it's believed to be one or the other then that's what counts," Shapir said.

The United States, meanwhile, is attempting to determine whether proteges of Pakistan nuclear weapons scientists AQ Khan might be going operational again.   The Washington Times quotes US intelligence analysts as saying that a number of countries could be attempting to recruit key members of the former proliferation ring.

"...Khan spent several years under house arrest in Pakistan following the breakup of his operation. Some 50 to 100 members of the smuggling ring never faced criminal charges, though U.S. spy agencies placed these individuals on multiple watch lists and carried out electronic and physical monitoring of those judged to pose the greatest threat. It is these free individuals that are the cause of worry to some U.S. spy officers.



Nonproliferation expert David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said issue experts had been concerned for years about the failure to prosecute some smuggling ring associates.


"One of the things that emerged in the prosecution [of the Khan ring] is that these guys don't know any other business," Albright said. "There has been a constant worry that the second and third tier of the Khan network would resume the illicit business of the network."


"So few people were ever prosecuted and you get the sense that this network was never truly disrupted, ripped out root and branch," he added.

A Nuclear Option for the Gulf Oil Leak?

According to The New York Times, some oil experts have been giving serious thought to using nuclear devices to seal off the Deepwater Horizon wellhead.

"...The idea has gained fans with each failed attempt to stem the leak and each new setback — on Wednesday, the latest rescue effort stalled when a wire saw being used to slice through the riser pipe got stuck.

“Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapon system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil,” Matt Simmons, a Houston energy expert and investment banker, told Bloomberg News on Friday, attributing the nuclear idea to “all the best scientists.”

Or as the CNN reporter John Roberts suggested last week, “Drill a hole, drop a nuke in and seal up the well.”

Sounds pretty wild, doesn't it? It might sound a little less bizarre to those who realize that nuclear oil mining was once considered a serious prospect for the Athabasca Tar Sands. In fact, at one point, the US government had a deal with the then Ritchfield Oil Company to produce and deliver a nuclear device for testing at the Tar Sands. They had even decided to fly it to northern Alberta claiming the risk of a mishap causing an accidental surface detonation was acceptable.

The history of nuclear oil mining plans for the Tar Sands is detailed in William Marsden's book, "Stupid to the Last Drop" Random House Canada, 2007. The idea was dropped in the 60's not because of environmental concerns but thanks to the development of cheaper oil drilling projects in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. In 1973, the US Navy Secretary obtained Canadian patent 933087 for a "Nuclear Explosive Method of Stimulating Hydrocarbon Production from Ptroliferous Formations (tar sands)."

Shoving the Genie Back In The Bottle

With all the problems facing the world - global warming, resource exhaustion, freshwater depletion and desertification, species extinction, overpopulation and migration, terrorism and security - you would think there wouldn't be room for anymore. But there is.

Also on today's menu is nuclear proliferation and, according to a report in today's Washington Post, it's a problem on the verge of getting out of control:

"At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.

At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts."

The list includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. There are already seven nuclear plants underway in Egypt and Turkey. Even Yemen wants one.

"We are concerned that some countries are moving down the nuclear [weapons] path in reaction to the Iranians," a senior U.S. government official who tracks the spread of nuclear technology said in an interview. He declined to speak on the record because of diplomatic sensitivities. "The big question is: At what point do you reach the nuclear tipping point, when enough countries go nuclear that others decide they must do so, too?"

Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and a winner with the IAEA of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for his work preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, has likened the pursuit of "latent" nuclear capability to buying an insurance policy.

"You don't really even need to have a nuclear weapon," ElBaradei said at a recent international conference of security officials in Munich. "It's enough to buy yourself an insurance policy by developing the capability, and then sit on it. Let's not kid ourselves: Ninety percent of it is insurance, a deterrence." I

Although they don't like to admit it, it was the original nuclear weapons powers that made a joke out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty under which lesser nations were supposed to give up the right to nukes while the nuclear weapons states undertook to disarm. With decades of indifference to their NPT obligations by the United States, CCCP/Russia, China, France and Britain, the rest of the world saw no reason they shouldn't ignore the treaty either. Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea so far and there'll undoubtedly be more to come.

I suppose a recommitted nuclear disarmament agreement might be theoretically possible but don't count on it. There's a global arms race underway involving the US, China, India and Russia that will almost certainly preclude any agreement on disarmament by the nuclear powers.

We're Getting All Mushie About Pakistan Again

It has to be tough to be Pervez Musharraf. He seems to live in a world where people are either his avowed enemies or just tolerate him, sort of.

One thing about the guy is that he gets everybody nervous, really nervous at the first sign of instability in his administration. The fact is, he's always made us nervous. Six years ago, on November 5, 2001, Gwynne Dyer explained why:

"...General Richard Meyers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday that he is 'concerned' about Pakistan's stability and the safety of its nuclear arsenal. The Indian government said nothing at all, but you can guess what it is thinking.

It is thinking that if Pakistan should fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists as the result of a revolt against Musharraf, most probably from within his own armed forces, then India will have to 'preempt' - destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons on the ground before it can launch them - within the first hours after a new regime comes to power in Islamabad. And Washington, of course, is thinking exactly the same thing.

Seymore Hersh has just published a report in the New Yorker magazine, strenuously denied by the Pentagon (but then it would deny it, wouldn't it?) that the United States already has a secret plan to destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons immediately if they seem likely to fall into fundamentalist hands.

This is insanely dangerous stuff even if it is true, as every one assumes, that the preemptive attack would be carried out using only conventional, not nuclear weapons. Pakistanis in all walks of life... ...see their nuclear weapons as their last and maybe their only safeguard against far more powerful India.

A bungled or partial preemption would probably end with the new regime in Pakistan launching its [remaining] nuclear weapons ...while it still could. The targets could be Indian nuclear bases and cities, or even US troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

How real is the danger? It's not so much the civilian fundamentalists demonstrating against the West in the streets who pose the danger, but the generation of fundamentalist officers, brought into the armed forces by the late General (and President) Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s, who have now risen to command key army formations. Together with many senior officers of Inter-Service Intelligence - [the agency] that basically created the Taliban, ...they comprise a large fundamentalist presence inside the only Pakistani institution that really works."

And that's why we're getting all Mushie about Paksitan again because, in the six years since Dyer penned this particular column, things there haven't gotten a bit better.

Hey Steve, Tell George to Trash the Nukes

Two Canadian senators are calling for the federal government to get serious about nuclear disarmament, starting with the U.S.

Senators Romeo Dallaire and Douglas Roche say Canada should pressure Washington to honour its disarmament promises under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to sign the comprehensive test ban treaty.

The original nuclear club, all of which have permanent seats on the UN Security Council - the US, Russia, France, Britain and China - committed to eliminating their nuclear stockpiles in conjunction with other nations promising not to acquire nuclear weapons. The big nations have made an utter mockery of their promises yet have no qualms about upbraiding small nations that breach their commitments.

The Bush regime has announced plans to develop and test and brand new array of nuclear weapons. America is also fueling a number of arms races around the world, including Russia, China and India.

Now I know Tories don't like Canadians speaking out about their American Idols but c'mon. If we can't speak to Washington, London, Paris, Moscow and Beijing, who can? Besides, wouldn't it be refreshing to see Harper show some interest in peace and a bit less in war?

The Nuclear Threshold

Little Bundles of Instant Sunshine

During the height of the Cold War a lot of attention was paid to the "Nuclear Threshold", the point at which the actions of one side would cause the other side to resort to its nuclear arsenal, the point of MAD or "mutually assured destruction", the end of everything.

Back then it was recognized that even tinkering with the nuclear arsenal could destabilize the balance of terror. During his term, Jimmy Carter considered the neutron bomb, a bomb designed to be very heavy on radiation and very light on blast. The idea was that you could use it on an advancing Soviet army, for example, without causing massive destruction and radioactive contamination of the site. The same thing for civilian targets. You could effectively depopulate a city but leave the buildings undamaged.

The neutron bomb was feasible but it was wisely rejected. Saner minds realized it would make nuclear weapons more tempting to use which would cause the other side (the Soviets) to be even more paranoid about an American first-strike.

That's what can happen when you tinker with a nuclear arsenal. It causes everyone else to speculate on what you're up to. It can also cause them to begin building up their own nuclear muscle just in case their worst suspicions become reality. The simple point is we don't need to get Russia or China acting on their worst suspicions.

Now George W. Bush is doing it up real fine. He's doing it up on foreign policy. He's doing it up on defensive systems. He's doing it up on offensive systems too. Let's see - we've got a guy who seems to be unstable staring us in the face and he's brandishing a new shield and a big, new sword. What could he be up to?

It's not what George Bush is up to, it's the perception he gives that is the greatest danger. He's gone unilateral, withdrawn from the nuclear treaty, begun deploying a missile defence system worldwide, and is about to begin production on a new generation of nukes. Add to this his proven willingness to conquer other countries on flimsy pretexts and that he has proclaimed a doctrine of unprovoked, preventative war to ensure that his country enjoys, in perpetuity, "strength beyond challenge."

Now I don't like math any more than the next guy but, pretend you're Moscow or Beijing, and run those six factors through an equation and see what you come out with. Hell, they've even talked about first strike being a valid option. They've talked about using nuclear weapons against Iran's bunkers.

This is the most bellicose president, possibly since 1812, certainly in the past half-century of American history. He's also deceitful, naive, impulsive and ill-informed - putty in the hands of others. Now, factor that into your equation.

Somebody has to pull this clown back from the edge. That has to start by derailing Bush's plan for a new generation of nukes. There's nothing wrong with the existing arsenal. They're reliable and devastating as ever. The new nukes Bush is after would simply make them easier and tidier to use, one warhead at a time. The rest of the world isn't fooled by this. Why should the American Congress allow themselves to be drawn into this lunacy? Why should we all be plunged into another Cold War?