Czech journalist Milan Vodicka explains in a guest editorial in the NYT why he is skeptical about Barack Obama’s plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Seriously, I don’t mean to suggest that we should just drop the idea of disarmament; I merely have some practical objections. … Nuclear weapons, whether used by terrorists or nuts, are actually the greatest threat to civilization today. No one knows what to do about them. Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate them. George W. Bush wanted to take preventive action by locking up every potential suspect. President Obama wants to pull the nuclear carpet out from underfoot.
But we should keep certain facts in mind. The Cold War didn’t escalate into a hot one because there were nuclear weapons and the certainty of mutual destruction. Yes, we live in a different era. But what will happen when someone secretly builds a bomb? Will that person rule the world? What will others do?
The problem with guaranteeing universal disarmament is this: the only arsenal any nation has complete and certain knowledge of is its own. Technical surveillance, UN inspections and assessments can provide some information on the armaments of other countries. But in the last analysis, the only country that Barack Obama can strip of nuclear weapons with complete certainty is the United States. So any attempt to get to Zero Weapons runs up against the information horizon problem. You can only add up what you know. The fact that your arsenal is at Zero and every other country reports Zero doesn’t necessarily mean you’re there.
In those long ago graduate school seminars on deterrence I remember in particular the talks on the “stability of deterrence”. With nuclear weapons less is not necessarily better. At a stable level of deterrence all parties refrain from war out of the knowledge of certain destruction. Facing guaranteed obliteration, the theory was that no rational aggressor could conceive of “winning” in any meaningful sense, and peace was preserved. But if nuclear weapons were progressively reduced ceteris paribus, then counterintuively one could theoretically reach a point when the prospect of destruction was no longer certain. Then, a sufficiently aggressive enemy might take the chance of initiating a war, even one involving a nuclear weapons, on the calculation that he could survive the effects and “win” in some meaningful sense.
One of the reasons that large scale conventional warfare disappeared from 1945 onward was the fear that it could escalate into an all-out nuclear exchange. Vast armies simply could not clash in the shadow of the bomb. The Strategic Air Command’s motto that “peace is our profession” was not, as some imagined, a statement of military idiocy, but the condensed expression of the paradox of deterrence, one which Joni Mitchell missed when she wrote “and I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shotgun in the sky, turning into butterflies above our nation.” Had they turned into butterflies at that instant, the last sight of the crowd at Yasgur’s Farm might well have been the incoming re-entry streaks of Soviet ICBMs.
In the paralyzing shadow of nuclear weapons the only warfare possible was a series of limited proxy conflicts we remember as the Cold War; vast, destructive, brutal, prolonged; yet for all its defects not a repetition of the carnage of 1939-45. Today we live at the edge of that world on the verge of another. It is a world where the know-how to create atomic bombs has become, or will soon become, nearly universal. It is also a world where deterrent predecessors of nukes — armies of millions which were commonplace seventy years ago — no longer exist. Nukes abolished standing armies. When we abolish the nukes, what remains? International law? In that world, was does building down to Zero imply?
There was probably only one point in the last sixty three years when the world was truly at Zero, when Fat Man detonated over Nagasaki. At that moment, the US was out of bombs and the world nuclear stockpile was at Zero. Japan surrendered in the mistaken belief that Truman had more — and in a way he did because while knowledge to create the Bomb exists, even Zero wavers under the ghost of the nukes only a manufacturing lead time away. America had nukes even when it didn’t have them. In a world where the knowledge to build atomic bombs is nearly universal, everyone will have them to some degree, even when they don’t. How would a US administration respond, for example, on the Day After Zero, if Kim Jong Il’s successor suddenly announced that he had kept some back? Or that North Korea would resume building them unless provided with money? Would the “International Community” enforce Zero by conventional warfare? Would they risk putting large conventional forces in the field against a country possessing one or two A-bombs? Or would countries under threat initiate a rebuild plan of their own? Japan is widely believed to have the capability to build weapons very quickly. Will the precurors to weapons be outlawed too and how far back? Those are some of the questions Vodica asks and which Barack Obama has not yet answered. The Czech journalist ends by wondering whether the devil we know isn’t better than the devil we don’t.
I know why Barack Obama chose Prague as the place to present his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. It’s the capital of a country where wars have begun and ended, from the Thirty Years War to World War II. And Mr. Obama is right when he says that one nuclear weapon detonated in one city, whether New York or Prague, could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And he is correct when he says that people are entitled to live without fear.
So I’m crossing my fingers that President Obama will succeed. But living in Prague — the city where great wars have begun and ended — has taught me to feel safer with nuclear weapons than without them.
“Safer” is a relative term. We were never completely safe during the Cold War, just “safer” or perhaps ‘luckier’. I wonder whether, despite BHO’s vision, we can ever truly be safe from ourselves.
I’ll surrender the Bomb when Hotspur gets his wish: gunpowder is eliminated.
We should start small and then get to the big stuff.
Optimistic Prague
1957, January 17.
Nine o’clock exactly.
Sun-bright dry cold, no lies,
dry cold rose-pink,
sky-blue dry cold.
My red moustache nearly freezes.
The city of Prague is etched on cut glass
with a diamond point.
If I touch it, it will ring:
gold-edged, clear, white.
It’s exactly nine o’clock
on all the towers and my watch.
Dry cold sun-bright, rose-pink,
sky-blue dry cold.
It’s exactly nine o’clock.
This minute, this second,
not a single lie was uttered in Prague.
This minute, this second,
women gave birth without pain,
and not a single hearse
went down a single street.
This minute
all the charts climbed
in favour of the sick.
For a moment
all the women were beautiful, all the men wise
and the manikins weren’t sad.
Now
children answered all the questions in school
without stammering.
Now
there was coal in all the stoves,
heat in all the radiators,
and the dome of the Black Tower
was covered with gold once more.
For a moment
the blind forgot their darkness,
the hunchbacks their humps.
For a moment
I didn’t have any enemies,
and no one hoped
the old days would return.
Now
Wenceslaus got off his bronze horse
and mixed with the crowd –
no one could tell who he was.
For a moment you loved me
like you’ve never loved anyone …
This minute, this second,
sun-bright dry cold, no lies,
dry cold rose-pink,
sky-blue dry cold.
The city of Prague is etched on cut glass
with a diamond point.
If I touch it, it will ring:
gold-edged, clear, white.
/Nazim Hikmet, January 1957
The reasoning behind eliminating nuclear weapons is exactly the same as with gun control, and the results will be exactly the same as well.
Honest, peaceful, law-abiding people and nations will comply, while the vicious, amoral thugs will have all the weapons they want.
I don’t know why some people are unable to get that through their heads.
This is right up against DRRumsfeld’s Unknowns: Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns.
What about the wild card who has a nuke nobody knows about? Maybe 2 or 3? Remember the Lybian surprise? nobody knew Ghaddafi was working on one.
Its fine to do this as a thought exercise, but fundamentally it’s lives and survival. The world needs to get the idea that these things can be toxic. Somebody on another thread said that a developer of nukes needed to lose the site of the development. Permanently. I agree.
On a tangential subject, I recently heard a discussion on the subject of the impact of an EMP weapon over say Omaha. All of the electrical systems die just then. Cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, TV, computers everything dependant on a printed circuit or a solid state device would be irrevocably over. There would be no electricity, period.
The implications for such an attack on a fully developed civilization are horrendous. The argument postulated 60 to 70 percent deaths in the first year. If you are 30 miles from your family, they might as well be on the moon. Bicycles and horses would become golden. Think about the upper half of the US in Jan/Feb with no electricity.
I suspect that the physics of such a weapon are not a great mystery, the delivery system only requires an orbital vehicle and relatively simple controls.
No answers, just worries.
Great stuff Starling.
The concept of the zero goes a long ways back in time
A thousand years and more or so they state
When Hindoo mathematicians figured out the paradigm
That nothing was a number just like eight
Since that time we’ve had a few advances ‘long the way
And Roman numbers simply bit the dust
We don’t use C for hundred like that anymore today
‘Cause zeros made the old systems a bust
But zeros had their problems too as Jap pilots soon found
They had no armor or self sealing tanks
A couple fifty cals and they were headed for the ground
And grinning Navy pilots whistled thanks
A zero is a nothing just an empty circled space
A little like the brain of people who
Believe that we can opt out of the nuclear arms race
And live in peace like nuns and Buddhists do
So anyone who thinks that zero is the perfect place
To be in this cruel world of men insane
Will have to look the few and scarred survivors in the face
And say I tried a peaceful world to gain
And just because it didn’t work’s no reason not to try
We’ve proven that we’re better far than they
It’s just too bad so many of you really had to die
But did you think ‘twas zero that we’d pay?
People who push for unilateral nuclear disarmament live in an idealistic world that denies the existence of people willing to commit nuclear blackmail against you, with no compunction of nuking you. That is delusional and suicidal thinking.
People who keep their nuclear deterrent ready, with as much security and safeguards as they can devise, with constant reviews, are realistic and have a survival instinct. They may not like nuclear weapons, and they may want them eventually dismantled, but they are realists and understand that within us all lies the ideal and holy. They also know that the beast dwells there and must be constantly watched.
We have opened the box and we all have the knowledge. We need to live with it. We cannot go back.
…There is a fantasy indulged in by recent former virgins by which some of them, regretful, disappointed and perhaps, sore, swear off sex and buy into the impossibility that they might revirginize themselves by dint of strong will and rededication. Who in this life doesn’t wish a do-over ? But elementary schools are vicious places and the word gets out….folks in the know aren’t buying it.
..I suspect this nuclear revirginization is, as are many of our miracle mans quests, meant to appeal to the fantacists in his camp.
..Just as we did not believe Saddam didn’t have WMD’s, no one will believe us even if it were true.
..Folks in the know ain’t buying it.
Herb @ 4:
“…I recently heard a discussion on the subject of the impact of an EMP weapon over say Omaha. All of the electrical systems die just then. Cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, TV, computers everything dependant on a printed circuit or a solid state device would be irrevocably over. There would be no electricity, period.”
Uhm, no. This is a myth. I cannot tell you why I know that but…. it is. Now, some systems may not work anymore but your car will and so will the military’s weapons. Your computer will probably be dead. The grid will still work. It takes really large hits from lightening all the time – takes a licking and keeps on ticking.
wretchard has it right. We can never reliably get to zero. So, why try? I think it is a ploy from The Won as so many other things have been. What about the current Homeland Security report touting anyone for small government, Ron Paul or 2A rights as ‘possible’ domestic terrorists? What are they setting up there? Where is The Won really heading? All this talk of nuclear disarmament for the world is window dressing and nothing more.
Here is how I see this:
If 0bama is serious and wants to disarm the world of nukes then he cannot see the logical fallacies of his “plan” and is not very smart. This ranges in a continuum from the first point to this:
0bamas talk of nuke disarmament is then a smoke screen for something else which is probably not very pleasant.
The conclusion is then that he is either dumber than a box of hammers all the way to he is a deceptive and possibly evil narcissist who has nefarious plans for us all. NONE of the answers is a good one.
(Apologies, sort of, to The Fixx)
Maybe, someday
Saved by zero
I’ll be more together
stretched by fewer
Thoughts that leave me
Chasing utter
My dreams disown me
Loaded with danger
Maybe I’ll win
Saved by Zero
Holding onto
Wends that teach me
I will conquer
Space around me
Maybe I’ll win
Saved by zero
Maybe I’ll win
Saved by zero
Robohobo @ #9:
I think that you have covered all of the possibilities. However, the only one that makes sense is the latter. IF the “won” really wants to get rid of all U.S. nukes, he does so out of a hate for American values and a desire that we will be at the mercy of others. I am not so sure that he really wants to do away with our nukes because that would limit his power vis-a-vis other nations. At some point, controlling the U.S. won’t be enough for this narcissist.
How would you verify such a protocol?
And what about delivery sytems? Would that mean the end of any aircraft that could be used as a transcontinental bomber? Ballistic missile subs? Missiles in silos?
As I understand it, we are down from a high of about 50,000 warheads to less than 10,000 now (speaking of the US) of all types. Some of the warhead “pits” of plutonium/uranium have been burned as fuel, some still exist as parts. Getting down under 1,000 would be the next step.
Do we get to keep warhead parts?
How do we get under 100?
Who inspects? Who enforces?
This sort of protocol could be doable, but it would take years to work out the details; that is, it would be extrememly complicated. This is just someone’s “inner white liberal” talking out loud. I believe it is just President Obama’s ongoing attempt to gain the moral highground for American foreign policy, so he can do something else tangible that we would probably also not particularly like that would be easier to accomplish.
The trick to building nukes in various irrational countries is that, when you do, the plan is to do the ol’ end around and try to sneak one (a nuke) into one of the rational countries and detonate it to bloody one of those bigger boys’ nose.
The problem with irrational countries building nukes is that they cannot resist the temptation that the nuke now represents: prestige, a bargaining chip, and the power to bully its neighbors. Nations with nukes start to see the deterrent effect of nukes and with that a reluctance to use them or let them out of their country.
Arms races occur when a nation w/out a nuke wants to balance the scales, but irrational countries may provoke a response from those who don’t want to wait and see what an irrational country will do once its gets nukes, so they will act before that time happens. Israel already has disarmed 2 countries trying to get nukes, and they will act before Iran, that most irrational of countries, succeeds.
this will probably result in a more conventional war in the region and those irrational countries who have nukes (Pakistan, North Korea) will probably get too hot-headed and start a nuclear exchange with India, and/or North Korea and Japan, Taiwan etc.
Nations seeking to preserve their security in an environment of those irrational countries will be caught up in a nuke exchange, because irrational countries are too immature as nations to persevere and keep to what was their original plan all along: sneaking a nuke or two into U.S. and Europe to bloody their noses.
By then, nukes will be too few and far between for Iran or N. Korea to consider the sneak plan, because they will be on the defensive. Anyway, I predict the sneak plan into U.S. or Europe will fail.
Perhaps irrational countries should spend more time reading about Saul’s entreaties to G-d for the tribes of Israel to become a nation, only to be rejected by G-d because G-d judged them unready: too immature to become a nation.
then there is the Illiad, same thing.
Anyway, when those nuclear exchanges occur, I don’t want to hear anyone from the left to start complaining: (which they will do, of course): because the irrational is the Bhaal of the left. It has been worshipped in their absurd and putrid art for at least a century, and they have made themselves all slaves to it. As though it (the irrational) were the alpha and omega of all they chose to value. This will be the end result of what they have sought and wrought on the world.
The Tower of Confusion
We
Hope
For the
Day when
We are free
———————
No more bad
No more fears
No more terror
No more bombs
No more tyranny
No more ugliness
No more animosity
No more destruction
No more subjugation
No more catastrophes
No more nefariousness
No more disparagement
No more evilheartedness
————————————————————
Once man tried to find his way to God
He built a tower to reach Him
And believed that it would
Lead him up to heaven
Only later he saw
It took him to
Some place
He didn’t
Desire
To go
That
Is
Where ferry-forded fools arrive after they forget that freedom comes from a fight
Against the force that prowls about the world for the ruin of souls.
It is a struggle we should not seek, but neither should we flee in fright
When evil stands staunchly between us and our God-intended goals.
———
If he’d have let the apple be
And left the knowledge on the tree
We’d live in peace together now
And violence we’d disavow
But we don’t get to rewind time
So we must live with hate and crime
To wish for more is fine, I guess
As long as we don’t acquiesce
To those who seek a perfect place
By building Babel into space.
— —
L3
Q: “What sort of a man is Rick?”
A: “He’s like any other man…only more so”
Q: “What sort of energy is Nuclear Energy?”
A: “It’s like any other energy…only more so”
Nuclear energy is like any other energy that can be harnessed and controlled by humankind: it’s a blessing or a curse depending on the use to which some one cares to put it.
Nuclear energy could be lighting a thousand American cities with matchless efficiency. It isn’t, because some Americans are ashamed that it was once used to create a democracy.
Here’s a truism: Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Likewise, it isn’t the existence of nuclear weapons that ought to frighten us, but rather the existence of barbaric, antique, fantasy-driven regimes which might use them irrationally.
Does anyone really lose sleep at night imagining that France or India will nuke them? (Well, aside from Pakistan).
In all honesty, what would make you feel safer:
A: A World where the Western democracies possesed no nukes
B: A World where the regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and Syria were overthown and being replaced by democracies ala Japan post World War II.
Why waste time ridding the World of nuclear weapons. Why not do something really productive and rid the World of tyranny.
American Thinker has a very nice article on the Homeland Security Report.
I heard once that there has never been an operational weapon developed that has not been used. Talk of reaching zero is so far removed from reality is barely warrants a comment at all, especially when some truly rogue nations and movemnets are working at breakneck speed to develop them.
A nuke fell on my head
Now thousands and thousands are dead
I wished for years these were unjust fears;
But in the end, came a might wind, and radiation all around,
Burying my head in the ground wasn’t really all that sound,
For I died on my knees like a coward.
9. Robohobo
You make the claim that EMP over Omaha, (also known back in my day in intelligence as Mecca)
would not have the effect we think it would but that you cannot tell us why. Trust me you say.
Let me say this. If you cannot cite a source AND you have signed a secrecy oath then you have violated that oath by simply putting out the fact that in some manner certain circuits have been hardened. That is not good.
So we are left without a source ,calling you a liar, or reading you divulge something that is prohibited by your secrecy agreement and violating the law.
And what of the fact that both the Sovs and the Chinese have mapped and invaded many of our electrical grid and planted termination programs within them. That takes away EMP which I don’t think they want to use anyway.
Why?
We may have drawn down nuclear arsenals but there is still the capability to destroy all life on this planet many times over. We really never left MAD.
You source please?
American Thinker’s link to DHS report on how radical returning US soldiers pose a thrreat and how they simply haven’t coalesced onto a rabble in arms to launch an attack inside the US.
Now I’ve got to get to a Tea Party.
http://tinyurl.com/d49k7x
Pirates attack U.S. cargo ship but fail to get aboard
Story Highlights
The Liberty Sun, a U.S.-flagged cargo ship, attacked by pirates
Pirates weren’t able to make it aboard the ship
Coalition ship escorting cargo ship as it continues to Mombasa, Kenya
“Now
there was coal in all the stoves,
heat in all the radiators,”
I think this has to be rewritten.
Now,
All the Coal Stoves have a coal gasification plant attached;
With all impurities selectively removed.
The flames burn blue and even the CO2
Is selectively removed
And put someplace safe
where it will stay
forever.
Alternatively:
Now it is sunny,
So even the Solar Collectors are working,
And though there is no wind,
Even the windmills give up their power.
With these changes, Mr. Hikmet, I would give your poem an A+ (despite the bourgeois sentimentality). Without the changes, I’m sorry, it gets a D- and you get the work camp.
Likewise, Habu,
The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real
(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.
Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.
(U) Disgruntled Military Veterans
(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.
9 Robohobo:
What Habu said.
And:
Even if the physical transmission grid survived,(s/s control systems not directly connected to transmission would be shot) what happens to commerce and the healthcare system w/o computers? You want heart surgery without automatic controls? Cars older than somewhere in the 80′s might work.
Our society is dependant on systems we cannot recreate in out back yards. As late as the 1920′s tinkerers could do almost anything in their shops. Now, not so much.
We are too fragile.
20. hdgreene,
You are a vile, O2 Wasting, CO2 emitting affront to Gaia.
May you exhale no more.
Or Fart.
Freedom projects as far as the freedom fighter can project force greater than the would-be tyrants and criminals, and no further.
Pax Romana followed the roads its Legions marched, and withdrew when the Legions withdrew.
Pax Brittanica followed the wind and musket, and retreated when the locals got muskets too.
Philadelphia sounded its bell but was built with its cannons, and the 20th C. Pax Americana extended to all parabolic arcs. It will withdraw when we put our nukes aside, just as all Peaceful umbrellas have retreated before when force of favor is less that force of tyranny.
———-
This is stupidity of the grandest order, for it is failure not of intellect but of willingness to see the world for what it is; to see people for what they are. This is betting our lives, and all our civilization, on the delusion that Homer and Shakespeare were wrong in their diagnosis of what ails the world.
Dolphins Block Idiot Somali Pirates
The Chinese merchant ships escorted by a China’s fleet sailed on the Gulf of Aden when they met some suspected pirate ships. Thousands of dolphins suddenly leaped out of water between pirates and merchants when the pirate ships headed for the China’s.
The suspected pirates ships stopped and then turned away. The pirates could only lament their littleness before the vast number of dolphins. The spectacular scene continued for a while.
Dolphins, Protectors of Chi-Coms
Hey Doug, shouldn’t you have your own blog, rather than post stuff to Wretchard’s comments? They’re rarely on topic. You can just link to it in your name (as I have, by example).
Tax Day Tea Party
Godspeed and good luck today
On February 15th, 2009, all of us were going about our lives. Many of us were feeling the pinch via the bad economy, most of us were reaching the boiling point with regards to frustration with a Government that appears to be completely out of control.
On February 19th, Rick Santelli, via national news television, said what millions of Americans wanted to say, and he said it in a way that represented a rally call. Whether or not Rick really meant what he said is not relevant, what IS relevant is that fact that so many of us heard it, and were ready to react.
So here we are… just under two months later and looking at a Historic day ahead of us. Today we’ll be protesting nationwide in almost 800 cities. Many of these protests will see thousands of Americans pour into the streets, some will see tens of thousands.
Our estimates show that we’ll easily be in the six figures when all is said and done.
Tomorrow, April 16th, will represent a new day for the freedom movement. New leaders will come into play, new coalitions will form, new tax groups will be born, and a new energy will surround us all across the country. Tomorrow, a completely new face will be put on a movement that has suffered at the hands of attempted top down control and old school political hacks over the years. The individuals and groups that have attempted to control the freedom movement have literally been shoved out of the way by tens of thousands of Americans, and it happened in just nine weeks.
Brock,
A couple were relevant to W’s next two posts, which have comments blocked.
Some of the others, guilty as charged.
Lastly, The Importance of getting out for the Tea Parties takes precedence over etiquette imo.
ps,
I posted your great “25. Brock:” comment at the Elephant Bar even tho it was off topic.
Well done, Wretchard.
The difficulty is political, cultural. We have reached a point where the prospect of nuclear-freedom has reached an unprecedented level of plausibility in the minds of much of the public because of the retreat of the Soviet missile threat. We have underestimated the impetus which the Fall of the Wall gave to the Peace Movement: what justification now for world-killing arsenals now that the Bear has vanished into history?
This is reflected in the culture. The word “enemy” is forbidden in elite circles; the very concept is denied legitimacy. Towering US military power is paradoxically its greatest argument: who would challenge us? The jihadis, they say, are a subject for Interpol, or an “intelligence” problem (never mind that they have no idea what “intelligence problems” mean). Every accusation levelled against the Kalashnikov-wielding barbarians is somehow reflected back on its author, who is vilified as a fascist, or some other relic of Leninist thought. That is, even the most cartoonish evil, whose every detail offends against the self-professed moralisms of these evil- and enemy-deniers, cannot be recognized for what they are.
And into this mix strides Obama, and another “world without nukes” hymn. This, of course, has absolutely no chance of happening; the military will educate Obama, who will see the wisdom. And yet, Obama’s proclamations, which will continue, will provide the Left with more ammunition, an official umbrella under which they will continue to pursue this goal, in a world without apparent strategic threats.
This combination represents an increased, not a decreased, danger to our national security, not because it will lead to US self-denuclearization, but because it gives powerful support to the incorrect thesis: there are no enemies but domestic political enemies. This thesis, if believed by enough citizens, is perhaps more dangerous than an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The Will is lacking, and it is eroding.
To use a nuke as an EMP weapon doesn’t require getting it into orbit, detonation at 300 miles would cover the contiguous 48 states, almost all of Canada, and all of Mexico. Even at 30 miles, the radius of effect is 480 miles.
If you are targeting a metro area, you wouldn’t even necessarily need a nuke.
Not to put such a fine point on it but for anybody to get anything 300MI over Omaha from any likely launch position would take an all but orbital capable vehicle.
It is conventional wisdom that the Bomb prevented the cold war going hot but there is at least an equally strong argument the opposite way. Without the Bomb in 1945 the USSR was no threat whatsoever to the US & the US only a minor one to the USSR. There was no real conflict between them, The propaganda is that the USSR would have tried to occupy all of western Europe but purely on logistics that would be improbable. Perhaps without the cold war France & Italy might have voted communist but so what – they would have been French & Italian communists just as Tito & Mao were Yugoslav & Chinese communists. The Russians did keep an enormous army in Eastern Europe which was the justification for western fears but the USSR thought this was its only counter to the threat od American Bombs. Both sides held knives to each other’s throats because both feared to be the first to sheath them but neither would have been scared if the weapons hadn’t been so sharp.
…Pernicious doggerel is WORSE than nuclear war. In the name of humanity……..have you no shame ?
I believe the conventional wisdom.
For a change.
Please, Craig. And we are to suppose also that the USSR had to occupy and Stalinize Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslavkia, the Baltic states & etc. because the Soviets feared a resurgence of Germany? Come on man, the hour is late: do your homework.
Foreign leaders are getting wise to the Chosen One, refer to:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/world_agenda/article6098836.ece
Key quote:
“The American President’s call “to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare” was hot air, Mr Sarkozy’s diplomatic staff told him in a report. “It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States,” they said. Most of Mr Obama’s proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, the leaked report said.”
With Obama it’s all empty rhetoric and posing for infantile leftists. Soon, only the MSM will be cheering for him.
Our economy is in the toilet and our enemies are about to strike. That last thing we need right now is an empty suit for a President.
I didn’t say because of a resurgence of Germany – quite the opposite – I said it was because of the threat of the US Bomb. And yes if you accept it was in their national interest to keep an army threatening western Europe as a deterrent then clearly that had to occupy the easternn European countries.
In the same way the US decided, correctly, it was in their interest to interfere with Cuba’s sovereign right to have Russian atom bombs pointing northward.
Craig @35…
Only ONE man made the essential decisions: Stalin.
He never paid attention EVER to your calculus.
Your entire line of reasoning is based on a collective, rational, practical and non-ideological elite consensus.
Consensus has no meaning under an absolute despot.
Go fish: take another tarot card.
Neil Craig,
Dan@38 already beat me to the punch. You need to do your homework. The Soviet Union maintained a huge standing army in East Germany after the US demobilized from WW-II. The Soviets maintained numerical advantages by as much as a factor of four in many conventional weapon systems, e.g. main battle tanks. Victory for the Soviet Union was virtually assured if the next European war had been purely conventional.
WW-III would have happened in the 1960-1970s. The only thing that prevented it was mutual assured destruction from nuclear weapons.
By the way, maintaining that huge conventional army in Eastern Europe was one of the many reasons why the Soviet Empire imploded.
If Stalin had never made any calculation of the rational & practical interests of the country he was running he would not have lasted 5 minutes. No leader would. There is an old saying “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” & Stalin’s was, quite obviously, more uneasy than most.
Re: 9. Robohobo– I very much hope you are correct that serious EMP damage is a myth. While it is true that myths can be widespread and persistant, try doing a search for Carrington Effect, Solar Storm, and/or EMP. A tremendous amount has been written. I hope it’s all a myth. However, there was a documented solar storm in 1859 that slammed what little electronics the world had at the time. Are we immune to this now? Could not a properly placed nuclear device do much more? It seems to me I read an article in the Wall Street Journal a year or so ago by some high level US government functionary warning seriously about EMP attacks. Why should we trust your assertion if you can’t support it?
Eggplant a 4 to one advantage is impreesive.
Nonetheless to conquer western Europe the USSR would have had to conquer an immense land area – 1000 miles to the Spanish border. This would have been against a substantial technological superiority on the US side; an at least equal capacity to produce new tanks; a need to keep the locals down; & a probable lack of enthusiasm among Russian troops (see the history of Alexander).
It would have been a desperate throw by Stalin & indeed he never tried it.
You are right that after Russia achieved nuclear parity they could have demobilised. Unfortunately government bureaucracies, once established, develop their own momentum, even here. You are also right that that failure to demobilise played a major part in the USSR’s failure to modernise & eventual collapse.
In early 1941, Stalin apparently didn’t think that Operation Barbarossa would attempt to topple him, despite the reports of his spies.
Perhaps Stalin thought his own wife posed more of a threat to him.
EMP was observed during the Starfish Prime nuclear weapon’s test (google it).
The arguments are compelling that nuclear weapons saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives by forcing Japan to surrender in WW-II. Also the arguments are compelling that nuclear weapons prevented the Cold War from going hot during the 1960-1970 period and precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. However what is not compelling is whether all of the prior war inhibiting benefit of nuclear weapons will go away after the Islamic world starts using nuclear weapons in regional wars and through terrorism. If Wretchard’s Three Conjectures prove correct then the billion+ Moslems who end up being incinerated by nuclear weapons will have been a very stiff price to pay for the millions of American, Russian and Japanese who were earlier saved by nuclear deterrence.
Concerning the other topic:
A 4-to-1 conventional weapon advantage can only be justified if a state intends to wage aggressive war. It can’t be justified by a purely defensive strategy.
2 Starling, thank you. Beautiful.
6 Walt. One of your best yet!
Started to write about how to live without electricity, let alone refrigeration and a water supply and a functioning medical-industrial complex. Ack. Will re-read the poems instead.
@30 Doug
Whazzup with those blocked comments, eh? I was looking forward to seeing Belmonteer comments on Rick Perry’s 10th Amendmend stance.
Triton
Oh, P.S., Safe Travels, Wretchard… keep Hitch under control this time…
The problem with the war inhibiting effects of nukes is it is like the Russian Roulette inhibiting effects of actually having a bullet in the chamber. Everybody sensible is detered bit it only has to go wrong once.
Alexis you are right – Stalin got it drasticly wrong. Hardly surprising he didn’t trust the US later when he found they were making the Bomb & not mentioning it to their ally.
Eggplant there is evidence Japan wanted to surrender before the Bomb was dropped, their sole condition being that they get to keep their Emperor. If so the fact that they did keep him suggests the war may have been being prolonged till the Bomb was ready.
Stalin knew about the Bomb almost from its inception as code name “Tube Alloys” in Britain.
Really – what about Stalin’s gobbling half of Poland after he tricked Hitler into invading first? The taking of the Baltic countries? The doctrine of world revolution? The negotiations over the Curzon Line in Poland and the status of the previous government in exile there? What about the Greek Communist partisans? The failure to evacuate Iran and Korea? The arming of the Chinese Communists and the launching of the Vietnam War?
And so on and so on and so on. Really you should read books *about* the Soviet Union, and not books about how America caused the Soviet Union to do what it did. Anyway I’m done with this conversation: you sir are an idiot.
I need some guidance as to site protocol.
Our host posted two informational post but left no comments open. He stated he would be gone several days by which time the last thread we are commenting on will be on life support.
Is it allowable to move into talking about the subjects he brought up in the informational posts? I mean several are very hot topics. Any guidance?
Starling, thank you for sharing that. Even as a bout of stomach flu is relenquishing its two-day domination, that poem touched me as no other poetry has for years.
Dan I don’t think Hitler was anybody’s innocent patsy. Ig you accept the idea that nations have national self interest the UUSR certainly had a national interest in taking over the Baltic states before Hitler did & using them as a springboard to invade them. World revolution may be a dreadful thing but Jefferson didn’t think so when when the French overthrew their king. On balance Stalin was a lot more willing to sell out foreign revolutionaries than the US was – we can arfue whether that makes him better or worse. The Curzon line was the genuine ethnic border od Poland (Curzonwho produced it was a British mimister in WW1 not a Russian of WW2. That Polish government had helped Hitler carve up Czechoslovakia at Munich – they were a bunch of racist thugs who just happened to be om our side. The Greek partisans were some of those foreign revolutionaries Stalin sold out. Iran was occupied by both Russia & the western countries by invading it because it was useful, just as blatantly as as the balitc states. The USSR did pull out, whereas America was their till Khomeni. The Chinese communists got much less help from Russia than Chaing got gtom America. I son’t think you want to bring up Vietnam if you want to blame Stalin got being either an aggressor or got killing millions.
If you read this thoughtdully you will see I am not calling Stalin a nice guy – he wasn’t – but that he wasn’t seeking a fight with bigger countries & that the Russians did have very legitimate reason to fear the Bomb too.
Eggplant rmember that the US had an infinitely more than 4 to 1 advantage in nukes at the start. Come to that they had a better ratio than that invading Grenada.
Like Dan@51, I’m also done with the conversation.
Concerning the main topic, i.e. a world without nuclear weapons, I see two probable end points:
1) Through economic collapse, resource depletion and regional nuclear war, the world is knocked back to the 18th century where we simply lack the technical and economic means of having nuclear weapons.
2) A world government (a UN/NATO on steroids) takes over and creates a nuclear monopoly and ruthlessly incinerates anyone who opposes this monopoly.
Option 1) is obviously terrible so why not go for Door #2? The problem with Option 2) is that most of the human race is not susceptible to democracy and those states that are democratic have been undermined by Gramscian ideology. Consequently this “world government” would probably be totalitarian based upon some Hitler/Stalin variation or a corporate plutocracy or some sort of pseudo-communist oligarchy such as the one that rules China. One might opt for the corporate plutocracy but you could find yourself living in some Upton Sinclair nightmare as an industrial slave living in a workers barracks, wearing a corporate uniform, fed Soylent Green and working continuously at dull repetitive labor until euthanized. Option 1) might(?) actually be preferable.
“Whazzup with those blocked comments, eh?”
I’m thinking he’s afraid we’re going to start calling for an armed insurrection and overthrow of the government of the United States in his absence, since the discussions have been verging on that several times over the last week or more.
Given that, I’m all for your posting comments on hot topics, Habu.
Where-ever Wretchard’s gone, I look forward to him getting us a message of “send lawyers, guns and money” if it gets too-too, or he’s permanently disappared by the black helicopters.
I said I was done, but on the question of whether Stalin was actually afraid of 3.8 million Allied forces vs. his 8.5 million “Allied” forces in Europe in 1945: after the Nagasaki bomb, the US had no others, and USSR had already lost 9 million combat dead and approximately 20 million civilian. What political sense would it have made for the US and the UK and France – how could they have communicated to their constituencies, all pro-Stalin – that war with the Soviet Union, who had just provided the bulk of the manpower against Hitler and had actually taken Berlin, was now necessary, including nuclear war? The US and British fought only 1/4 of the Wehrmacht, who were wrongfooted by excellent planning prior to D-Day, and were barely saved from the mistakes of Montgomery by the audacity of Patton; at the same time, the NKVD ensured that no matter the casualties the Soviets would destroy Germany with a 12 million man army. Subsequently to V-E Day the Red Army executed the massive blitzkrieg against Japanese forces in Manchuria that they had intended to launch against Nazi Germany, taking Eastern territory as large as Western Europe in 2 weeks.
Now. Let’s say I have 4 nuclear weapons, 2.8 million of my own soldiers and a combined approximately 2 million of my Allies’ facing just over 8 million of my other Ally’s, while approximately 3 million of that Ally’s other troops are wiping out the Japanese and threatening to invade the Japanese home islands. I’ve been watching my Ally for approximately 9 months prevent all communication on the status of the nations occupied by Germany; instead the Red army has gone in and executed the previous government and/or laced the institutions with NKVD, who go quietly about liquidating any intelligence agencies. At Yalta I have already effectively ceded the Ally the political initiative; after all, Eastern Europe is even further away from Western Europe. If I look at a politically color-coded map, suddenly, within 2 years, the Eurasian landmass goes from approximately 30% Red to approximately 50%; I am still thousands and thousands of nautical miles from the front and the enemy whom my armies have been organized to fight and who they have fought is absolutely crushed.
Also, my great and prescient friend Winston Churchill has communicated to me as early as 1944 the problems of victory, foremost of which is how to prevent the Soviet Union from continuing to roll through Western Europe when the American electorate and citizen armies immediately start saying “gee whiz do I have be here anymore? Hitler’s dead!”
What do you think – do you really think, and do you believe Stalin really thought – that the Allied armies intended to attack the USSR, and that was really the reason the Red Army remained in all those countries, converted them into Soviet satellites through Ivan Serov’s NKVD, and fed the Red Army bases of millions of infantry and tank divisions? Why would you think such a thing? America’s interest was always to Go Home, but it could not do so if it would leave the British Expeditionary and French rump forces to hold the line against Stalin in Western Europe. Had it not just watched the Soviet Union before its very eyes take every Eastern and Central European state?
And the Shah? You’ve got to be kidding me: we “stayed” in Iran by preventing its destabilization under the idiot spoiled brat Mossadeq and *inevitable* subsequent devouring by the Soviet Union – just as we began backing Israel only after the 1967 war, which the Soviets had provoked.
For some reason the USSR and its various strategies remain unknown, just as the whole concept of an inherently aggressive revolutionary state is apparently inconceivable no matter how evidenced and eloquently described. It is a curious problem, and is salient to this thread because it is the misinterpretation of historical dynamics such as this – not “fear” – that actually provide the most powerful anchor to idiocies as “nuclear disarmament.”
Or how about this one: quick, who started World War 1? If you answered “the imperial system,” congratulations: you are a Leninist dupe. The real answer is: the Kaiser’s Germany. You would not believe how much pseudo-intellectual crap would instantly cease to exist if people simply accepted that self-evident fact. It is *this* bacteria above all others that accounts for our present intellectual diseases.
Nahncee:
I would oppose an insurrection. In our political system, our Constitution and our laws are supposed to be the allies of the dissenter. So long as we obey the laws and project power in a nonviolent manner, there are distinct limits to what the federal government can do against us.
Whatever my misgivings about using tea parties as a protest against domestic taxation rather than foreign tyranny by the UN, Saudi Arabia, et cetera, I do appreciate the organizational significance of tea parties. It is important to take back the streets from the Left, and if the tea parties can be part of that, they can help shift the winds of American culture.
Just as we need to be on guard against overt defeatism, we also need to be on guard against agents provocateurs who, in the guise of claiming to be dissidents, will propose something illegal and thus give the Obama administration a pretext to come down with an iron fist.
The Obama administration will make mistakes. It is important to capitalize upon them. Were the Obama administration to act illegally, the opposition must find a legal strategy to oppose such action. To do that, the opposition must stay intact.
I for one find those that believe the states that have stated that they are not building nukes but are, could be trusted to agree to eliminate theirs and follow-through, just a tad bit naive.
dan said:
“after the Nagasaki bomb, the US had no others”
A minor quibble: We actually had one plutonium core left for another Fatman bomb at the time of Japan’s surrender. We had many empty Fatman bomb cases. These bomb cases were called “pumpkins”. Some of these pumpkins were converted into conventional weapons and dropped on Japan shortly before Japan surrendered. Some of these remaining pumpkin bomb cases and the plutonium core were used in later nuclear weapons tests.
A few points relevant to the discussion:
About heedless disarmament:
(1) The physics of Nuclear weapons cannot be kept secret; they are fundamental truths of the universe, which can be worked out by any intelligent being anywhere in the universe. The theoretical basis began to be worked out within decades after Roentgen’s discovery that a lump of pitchblende had fogged a film plate. But the power of the nucleus was already suspected and intuited years earlier as scientists pondered the Sun’s steady energy output over the staggering span evidenced by the Earth’s geologic strata. The details of the TECHNOLOGY of nuclear weapons is more or less within the power of any country – faster with a large industrial base, but nonetheless susceptible to a poor but determined group.
(2) There are lots of folks in the world who do not share U.S. tender sensibilities about the sanctity of life or fairness or acceptable losses. Most Americans don’t seem to realize or remember that Stalin’s USSR lost something on the order of 20 MILLION citizens – about half military half civilians – as Hitler’s armies ravaged a third of the country. The USSR rebounded, and drove the Nazis back all the way to Berlin, in less than four years. Keep in mind that this followed almost two decades in which Stalin had ruthlessly murdered millions of his citizens in the process of forcing collectivization upon them. So the leaders of the Soviet Union (and anyone else paying attention) saw a dramatic demonstration that a country can lose a substantial fraction of its population, and YET TRIUMPH against its enemies. Combine this with a fanatical culture that equates martydom with victory, and you have a caculus that is beyond the reasoning of most Liberals.
About EMP (electromagnetic pulse) effects:
(1) As Alvin reported in post No. 44, the electronic grids (power lines, generating facilites, relay stations, etc.) and telegraph systems began to suffer outages and overloads as soon as they were constructed. These resulted from their absorption of the microwave energy generated by charged particles (solar wind) hitting the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The most familiar manifestation of that is the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis – the Northern Lights and Southern Lights.
(2) Nuclear weapons are known to emit a strong electromagnetic pulse at the moment of detonation – electromagnetic energy over a huge range of frequencies from microwave through visible light to X-rays and Gamma radiation. In a low-altitude atmospheric detonation, most of that is absorbed by the atmospheric gasses, And the effects are “line-of-sight” so even an H-Bomb (thermonuclear) blast will not disrupt electronics over the horizon.
(3) A detonation above the atmosphere allows for a wider area, but the atmosphere STILL absorbs and attenuates much of the range of frequencies. More significantly, the effects of ANY nuclear blast drop off with the square of distance (inverse-square law) just like any other energy-source. These two items mean that only a HUGE bomb (such as a thermonuclear weapon) would generate a sufficiently strong pulse to melt electronic systems protected by the Earth’s atmosphere.
(4) Satellites, because of the miniaturization of their circuits, tend to be the most vulnerable to EMP. We are very dependent on communications satellites, and those cannot be cheaply “hardened” or replaced.
(5) The energies generated by solar storms are many tens of thousands of times greater than those of even thermonuclear bombs.
In the 1980′s I produced several non-classified information programs for the government about nuclear weapons – civil defense, medical effects of ionizing radiation, EMP, etc. I am not a scientist, so I had many conversations with scientists who were technical consultants for this project. From their information (and a lot of reading since) I can’t dismiss EMP as a vulnerability, but I seriously question whether a handful of fission bombs detonated above the atmosphere would plunge the country into the stone age. I suppose that a thermonuclear bomb could be launched on a rocket but it would take something like the Atlas V. The Russian Tsar Bomba weighed 27 tons; a typical fission bomb (for instance, one MIRV warhead) is likely just a few hundred pounds.
Of course, all bets are off in case of a massive attack. I think we’re in far greater danger from the panic and disruption that would follow from just a few dirty bombs going off here and there. Jeez. Any puke with a few thermite grenades or RPG’s can destroy a power station or a gas storage facility.
Mad Fiddler said:
“But the power of the nucleus was already suspected and intuited years earlier as scientists pondered the Sun’s steady energy output over the staggering span evidenced by the Earth’s geologic strata.”
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) was the first scientist who began with the observation that the Sun was pumping out about one kilowatt/m^2 at the Earth’s orbital radius, then calculated the control surface around the Sun and the total power being generated. He also knew the Sun’s total mass based upon orbital mechanics. Lord Kelvin then calculated how long the Sun could produce this level of power assuming the Sun’s energy came from ordinary chemical reactions. He determined in the late 19th century that the Sun could only do this for a few thousand years before exhausting its fuel supply and realized that the Sun had an unknown power source.
Life as we know it would be impossible without the Sun’s energy. However the Sun’s nuclear energy comes from a proton-proton fusion reaction that is technologically impossible to reproduce on a large scale, i.e. in a reactor or a weapon. The ability to promptly produce large amounts of nuclear energy from a small device comes from a quirk in the Laws of Physics.
It is conceivable that a universe could exist where its Law of Physics enabled stars to burn hydrogen but disallowed the technology for nuclear weapons or controlled nuclear fusion. This possibility has significant implications vis-a-vis the anthropic principle and the possibility that our Universe is a designed artifact. There is the argument that a technological civilization can survive beyond its star system of origin only if it can master nuclear power technology. Consequently only civilizations with sufficient wisdom to master this technology but NOT destroy themselves with it are enabled to have any influence upon other civilizations in the galaxy. The implications that this could be designed into the Laws of Physics are very profound.
Mad Fiddler also said:
“… the leaders of the Soviet Union (and anyone else paying attention) saw a dramatic demonstration that a country can lose a substantial fraction of its population, and YET TRIUMPH against its enemies. Combine this with a fanatical culture that equates martydom with victory, and you have a calculus that is beyond the reasoning of most Liberals.”
Add to this that most liberals will react in strong opposition to anyone who comprehends the danger of a nuclear armed fanatical culture devoted to suicidal martyrdom. Thus you have the symbiosis from hell of moonbats and Islamic fascism.
Eggplant @62 said:
There is the argument that a technological civilization can survive beyond its star system of origin only if it can master nuclear power technology. Consequently only civilizations with sufficient wisdom to master this technology but NOT destroy themselves with it are enabled to have any influence upon other civilizations in the galaxy.
Time for you to turn this into a sci-fi novel!
Habu @ 52
I share your wish to comment, and usually I am not put off by a few off-topic comments. However, regarding the topics in question at the moment, I have chosen to assume Richard has a paticular motive for having no comments and to honor his wish until he opens the subjects up for comments.
Best wishes,
Jim
What if that’s the last thing the black helicopter people did — close down Belmont Club comments — before they disappeared him?
(BTW – given the current feverish swamps of the internet, perhaps I need to mention that I’m joking.)
Time for some role playing and game theory. Who should Israel bomb (hold hostage) if they are incinerated (since they will have weapons long after their families and country are gone, just as we (used to))? Call it MADv2. Only works if they tell us and we are arguably morally complicit (sins of omission and not).
LOL for Nanchee @ 56. I was thinking the same exact thing…
And what about this: Texas should build it’s own thermonuclear H-bomb.
Think about it!
- Gov. Perry can finally start giving Iran and Pakistan the middle finger they so rightly deserve.
- Our MAD deterrence will suddenly return to pre-November 4th levels.
- The phrase “Don’t mess with Texas” will take on unprecedented significance.
But I can imagine the Leftist outcry – “While Iran is interested only in peaceful nuclear energy, those Right Wing Extremists are dangerous and cannot be allowed to get the Bomb!”
ABC Reports Obama ‘Unaware of Tea Parties’…
PJ Media Reports Marxist Dimwit Unaware of “Capitalist System”
I’ve read all the comments here, some of them more than once. Much of the commentary has left me more pessimistic than otherwise. A couple of observations emerged as I was reading:
1. Intelligence may be inimical to our long term survival. Advanced civilizations that develop WMD may use political and deliberative skills to prevent their use, but such prevention can never be assured. A first strike may come from a third world country lacking such skills, but it is still the fruits of advanced technology that limit our survivability.
2. Technology lost from major conflagrations is not easily recovered, and may not be recoverable at all. Petroleum obtained using the tools of the early 20th century has been used up. Petroleum that is available today is beyond the reach of the tools used 100 years ago. To recreate such tools today probably requires access to resources that are available only using today’s tools. IOW, wars and other conflicts may indeed push civilization back to life as it was 150 years ago. If they succeed, the path to recovering to 21st century life may be necessarily foreclosed.
Enough available Domestic Petro to Weather the storm of transition if we Drill Drill Drill, and build out refineries and pipelines.
Nukes and Coal should be used for electricity to save precious petro.
65. Jim Nicholas
Jim, thanks for the guidance. I haven’t ventured into those areas because as you stated , our host is a very bright man and he’ll let us know when he wants feedback.
He does a great job and doesn’t need any grief .. I know ..I gave him some once and he put me in timeout with cause. This old dog can learn.
56. NahnCee
Yep I think you’re right on the money. I mean leaving me alone unsupervised and I could get us on the Attorney General and Homeland Security lists of bad, bad, boys and girls.
Habu@ 73, NahnCee @ 56,
You know sometimes, when the Justice Department or Homeland Security come a knockin, they don’t arrest you or do anything that you may any judicial recourse for. They just use veiled threats that can scare the holy crap out of you, or cause a lot of expensive trouble from which will leave you hopefully eventually exonerated, but bankrupt. There are many means of intimidation left to them particularly the way O and his friends are playing the game.
That is why O and his willing cohorts are such a nightmare.
From the Financial Times, no new rag but a solid paper. The link provides more.
Is America the new Russia?
By Martin Wolf
Published: April 14 2009 21:47 | Last updated: April 14 2009 21:47
Is the US Russia? The question seems provocative, if not outrageous. Yet the person asking it is Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In an article in the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Prof Johnson compares the hold of the “financial oligarchy” over US policy with that of business elites in emerging countries. Do such comparisons make sense? The answer is Yes, but only up to a point.
http://tinyurl.com/cznwck
74. Unsk
Good observations. I use to be in the business. As a consequence I have taken steps to never be a pauper. And the government can only use those tactics so much before there is push back, not from any individual but from the sans culottes who will coalesce. And that is occuring daily with an increased cadence and intensity.
My first wife attempted to blackmail me when I was working for the CIA. I went to work and told my boss. End of story. She never opened her mouth again except to say she would leave our home immediately, agree to a divorce and demand nothing. Fortunately I also have friends in high places who, I am sure, will be happy to act like they’ve never met me …. in the end we’re all in it alone together. Helluva world, but exciting.
…but back to the thread..our host pointed to this:
“But we should keep certain facts in mind. The Cold War didn’t escalate into a hot one because there were nuclear weapons and the certainty of mutual destruction. Yes, we live in a different era. But what will happen when someone secretly builds a bomb? Will that person rule the world? What will others do?
Reminds me of the old saying.
In the land of the blind , the one eyed man is king …….. Fer sure dude if only one country has the bomb …they rule.
Habu @ 72
Yes, you have learned a lot–and passed it on to us at the Belmont Club.
Thanks,
Jim
I think the discussion of the effect of MAD should also include consideration of the proposition that, although MAD inhibited open state-v-state warfare, it stimulated other kinds of warfare and that – possibly – those alternative weapons became the main firepower in a new strategy: to win without firing a shot.
As an example: I personally believe Spetznas moved Iraqi WMD into Syria or even Belarus – or a convenient river or Gulf. If this is the case, consider the amount of political damage inflicted on Bush, his supporters, his whole Gestalt – and, by extension, the USA.
Consider whether the mass capital flight which the chairman of the house sub-committee on capital markets told to C-SPAN is real, and whether it was engineered by state actors.
Consider the cyberpower apparently wielded by our enemies, and the apparently sudden acquisition of strategic rockets by our obnoxiously avowed enemies.
Consider the Chinese trade imbalance, manufacturing capability, and financing of our tremendous debt.
Consider Russia’s multiple recent demonstrations of European energy.
Consider the number of conflicts we are obliged to engage in, the spread of our forces, the suddenness of this and the timeframe and investment and national will required to repair this circumstance.
What if the Soviets and Chinese have been training to win a nuclear war for 60 years, sit atop and command hardened immiserated and indoctrinated populations ultimately controlled by what are in effect human zombies?
What if the Islamic groups are mere delivery systems – i.e., you put a gun in their hands, and they will shoot?
What if the enemy has built up so much force redundancy, and honeycombed so much intelligence personnel, and insinuated so much “knowledge” that is actually active measures – that the USA is ennervated to such an extent that it cannot even recognize it? Cannot even recognized that the USA is separated from its traditional ally Europe, that even within its own borders its natural and traditional “conservative” forces are isolated?
As Lenin and the Bolsheviks taught: the purpose is to politically isolate the regime, and cause the elite to react with defeatism even as they are under attack.
It is probably worth remembering that Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ were themselves the product of the Kaiser’s intelligence services – were actually the first, and therefore the precedent, for such warfare.
This is all to say: what if nuclear weapons are just a distraction, as in the Cuban Missile Crisis? What if they have *always* just been a distraction?
In the mid 1980′s we had a former GRU/KGB general, Anatoliy Golitsyn, defect. By 1990 he had written a book, New Lies for Old . It was “THE PLAN” the Soviets had for putting the West to sleep and then over time taking it over. His presentation has so far proved quite acccurate. One reviewer had this to say.
“Is Anatoliy Golitsyn right? Moreover, is Perestroika little more than a false front for the “dead” Soviet Union. This top-ranking KGB GRU defector reveals the long-term gameplan and disinformation campaign for the now “dead” Soviet Union. Analysts have pointed out that Golitsyn had an incredibly high degree of accuracy in his predictions in New Lies for Old. What distinguishes the bloodless 1991 coup in Moscow from all the other coups? Basically, the same people are running the show. Perestroika was little more than an image-cleaning act for the Evil Empire, which was designed to give an outward appearance of democratic reforms. The new veneer of the CIS and the Russian Federation erased the evil empire perception of the Western masses. Coincidentally, it set the stage for Trilaterialist and internationalists in the west to send billions in foreign aid and Western military cuts. The KGB set the stage for the coup-d’etat in 1991. Since then the KGB repositioned itself above the Communist Party and has only tightened its grip and hold over the Soviet sphere. This book is just the tip of the iceberg. If you really want to do your homework on Perestroika and the ‘fate’ of the Soviet Union… I’d recommend reading Golitsyn’s other book, The Perestroika Deception. Also, I recommend The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia-Past, Present, and Future by Yevgenia Albats and Red Cocaine by Joseph Douglas. Popular books in the limelight like the Mitrokin Archive are interesting, but aren’t hitting the nail on the head about Perestroika.
Reading a primer on Marxism-Leninism ideology such as Marxism by Thomas Sowell or Understanding the Times by David Noebel might help you see how Perestroika fits in with communist ideology. You’ll see that the act of the Communists supposedly going capitalist is compatible with Marxist-Leninism and fits in perfectly with the Marxist dialectal view of history (synthesis of communism/capitalism.) The important thing for the ruling elite is that they secure their power in the New World Order. I’ll leave you with a quote by Mikhail Gorbachev in speech to the Politboro in 1987: “Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about glasnost and perestroika and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal change within the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.”
The new gameplan for the collectivists and their New World Order is Fabianism (e.g. Fabian school of Economics,) which works gradually-inch-by-inch-at advancing international socialism and working towards the leviathan of total world government.”
Having spent many many years working against the KGB I can say that in the 70′s and 80′s they had us outmanned 10 to 1. Read this now “old book” and test it’s relevence to where we are today. It will turn you graveyard serious that we are indeed in great peril, much more so than the average citizen can even begin to comprehend.
I attempted to write the opening paragraph of the above offering from memory…ugh
Golitsyn came to us in the early 1960′s,not the 80′s. No doubt it was in the 80′s before I heard about him since turning Sovs into assets wasn’t my major task.
Okay, Habu-bu, see this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
BTW, I searched on the systems used and they are now part of the public domain, sort of. You gotta pay to see the reports. Google VPD II & HPD & Trestle EMP Simulator. I was not sure that this stuff was public domain as I have been doing other things for the last couple of decades.
The testing was done in the US back in the 80′s and 90′s via contained systems and advanced modeling was done via CW illumination and pulser systems. Military systems were studied as were civilian systems. I was part of those efforts in a small way. Once you prove the science you can scale down the test systems and do direct current injection to test the systems in labs.
Happy now? Your aggressive questioning bugs me because you should know I am a fairly straight shooter from my online cognomen. It is consistent and some know the back channel.
dan @ 32: “…now that the Bear has vanished into history?” Has he? Seems he awakened in the Republic of Georgia last year. I think he was just playing possum.
Alexis @ 58: “So long as we obey the laws and project power in a nonviolent manner, there are distinct limits to what the federal government can do against us.” What if The Won breaks that compact for whatever reason? What is they do curb our freedoms? Is the Homeland Security report is just setting the scene for the manufactured crisis? Just asking the questions.
Mad Fiddler @ 61: Just so. Thanks for the backup.
dan @ 79: Man, oh man, is that a lot to digest.
Is the Homeland Security report is just setting the scene for the manufactured crisis?
Reminiscent of 90′s. It is a fact that the similar tone was used in memos to federal agencies during the second half of the second term of Clinton administration. Not much came of it at that time, though It may have been a reaction to sudden surge of interest in Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents, on the net, as well as paving the way for the next donk administration which was projected to be Gore’s.
At that time I thought it was “we don’t have much of right-wing extremist presently, so we must manufacture them”. Something else beside sending cruise missile to bomb some baby milk factory.
Today Napolitano said she is fully behind the tone of the document, despite protestations even from some democrats. The resurrection of the “right-wing” threat meme, in this case, is more specific and provides a tool for targeting any form of opposition, simply providing a wide scope for whatever the “threat” de jour may be.
Dan 57 you know the events but you simply fail to seethat the interpretation from the other side can reasonably be different.
“after the Nagasaki bomb, the US had no others, and USSR had already lost 9 million combat dead and approximately 20 million civilian. What political sense would it have made for …with the Soviet Union”
Mone, but within a dew years we were ready for that. What political sense would it have made for the USSR, who had lost that 9 million to go to war. Less than none. Which is why I say that without the Bomb there need have been no cold war.
“If I look at a politically color-coded map, suddenly, within 2 years, the Eurasian landmass goes from approximately 30% Red to approximately 50%”
- By that same definition the map of Wurope has gone from 0% American to 50% – moreover they get the wealthy 50% & the Russians got Bulgaria.
“America’s interest was always to Go Home”
Of course it was – so was Russia’s – we have already agreed the overstretch caused by maintaining a large army in eastern Europe was a/the reason for the fall of the USSR.
“do you believe Stalin really thought – that the Allied armies intended to attack the USSR, and that was really the reason the Red Army remained in all those countries”
Yes, or at least that there was a sufficient risk that they would do so that it would be gross dereliction not to take adequate precautions. The US did have the Bomb & was quite evidently using it as a threat. Truman afreed with the “great & prescient” Churchill, who had originally been the greatest proponent of invading Russia. We know that within a few years they WERE prepared to go to war & we know that only a few years before the USSR had been attacked without warning by a country which had sworn peace towards them.
We now also hnow that trusting to NATO’s promises, peaceful intentions & treaty guarantees allowed NATO, in flagrent violation of all international law, to arm openly genocidal ex-Nazis promote a war that killed half a million Yugoslaves. That action alone proves that Stalin was right not to trust western promises.
What political sense would it have made for the USSR, who had lost that 9 million to go to war.
2 reasons.
1. exporting revolution
2. “нас много”
we
Who is we?
know that only a few years before the USSR had been attacked without warning by a country which had sworn peace towards them.
While before that Stalin peacefully co-opted those creepy Poles, and sundry Baltics. Only if these Finns were not so stupidly stubborn could they enjoy the worker’s paradise too… Very jolly fella. Non-aggressive, it was all just a common sense to bring good stuff to those oppressed ingrates!
And after the war, managed coup d’etat in miscellaneous Eastern European countries, Greece, then Korea, and when Nikita took over, Vietnam, Cuba, Congo and miscellaneous other African countries, Latin America…
All very noble and with concern for well being… for those new state office workers.
You know, you are full of it.
While most of your diatribe is like taken from Enver Hoxha propaganda books, the last paragraph is from alternate universe.
It is truly a feat to associate Stalin’s distrust with the Yugoslavia war of 1990′s. OK, just to make sure you don’t take it wrong way–pure nutcasery.
One more thing. Does the real owner of the name and blog under it know that you’ve “nationalized” his identity?
For that, I recommend that you will be rolled in tar and feathers and paraded on main national squares and plazas. May be difficult though, so I recommend that you are banned from BC.
82. Robohobo
It’s just Habu, no need to get juvenile, just Habu will do nicely.
It was good to see citations.
On the other hand you failed to mention if you are under the aegis of a secrecy agreement. If you are you should be aware that simply because an item is in the public domain you are NOT released from your oath and cannot in essence confirm what has been placed in the public domain. That is strictly forbidden and you should know that.
All intelligence is compartmentalized. You know only one part, so to confirm something that is in the public domain AND may have been planted there to draw people such as youself out into the light so that another piece of the puzzle can be fitted together is foolish and dangerous.
You need a meeting with your security officer. Send him/her the trail of our colloquy and see what happens. Please let us know the outcome.
Best,
Habu
Good grief. I had no idea that EMP knowledge was so cloak and dagger… so I don’t need to park my tractor in the metal shed after all?
Wait, don’t tell me! Then you’d have to kill me, right?
The country that discards it’s nukes will plow for thoses that secretly build and use them.
Habu – what’s your assessment of Golitsyn’s predictions? I’d be curious. Personally, and in light of conventional accounts like Pipes’ and Figes’ and Conquest’s and other defectors’, I’d say he was about as right as it is possible to be. But I never worked for CIA.
Wretchard wrote: “Japan is widely believed to have the capability to build weapons very quickly.”
Years ago I was working with a PhD (Physics) researcher from one of the Japanese megacompanies during one of North Korea’s early nuke demonstrations. So I asked him how Japan could sit back and do nothing while the neighborhood went nuclear.
He answered that the Japanese government takes its pacifist constitution very seriously. But that Mitsubishi contracts at Japanese nuclear power plants. He thought if anyone had a nuclear weapon in Japan it was Mitsubishi – holding it in trust for the Japanese people.
Related link:
http://www.nci.org/03NCI/01/pr5994.htm
“…
Monday, May 9, 1994 202-822-8444
…
‘ASTOUNDING’ DISCREPANCY OF 70 KILOGRAMS OF PLUTONIUM WARRANTS SHUTDOWN OF TROUBLED NUCLEAR FUEL PLANT IN JAPAN
Washington—A factory in Japan that turns U.S.-controlled plutonium into fuel for breeder reactors should be shut down until serious operating problems and an inventory imbalance amounting to at least nine bombs’ worth of plutonium are resolved, the Nuclear Control Institute (NCI) urged in a letter to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, released today.
…”
90. dan
I really have no idea. I know from various reviews that he has his doubters. I read the book and that’s about the extent of my knowledge.
Everything in that world is strictly “need to know”. I knew what I knew and others knew what they knew.
It’s like an entire herd of gnus.
Alvin asked:
“so I don’t need to park my tractor in the metal shed after all?”
If your tractor is diesel powered or gas powered but does not use electronic ignition (has points in a distributer) then it is probably immune to EMP. As I mentioned more than once before, my daily driver is a 1964 Rambler American. My Rambler has no semiconducter electronics in it (it uses buzzers for voltage regulation and predates alternators). Consequently my ancient Rambler is completely immune to EMP.
It occurs to me that the guys who flew Enola Gay and Bockscar might well have died if the B-29 had used modern electronic ignition.
habu – fair enough. are you in a position to tell us your feeling or intuition? if not, that’s fine, i’m just always curious to know what people make of the book. my sense is that it’s been the object of much activneya meropriyatya if nothing else.
Since I had nothing to do with this aspect of intelligence I can say a few things.
After reading his book I thought we’d been had. I haven’t changed my mind. The same runners at FIS today are the same bunch who were KGB .. old wine, new bottles. Is Putin running the show? Ya. Is Putin KGB? Ya.
Read the book and see the plot unfolding.
I mentioned in an earlier post the acronym MICE.
Money
Ideology
Compromise (or coercion)
Ego
These are the human weaknesses that make people targets for turning into spies. Let’s take a look at Bill Clinton as a possible KGB recruit.
We know while at Oxford Bill C. traveled to the Soviet Union through the back door. We know nothing of who he met with or what he did. We do know that no one from the west went to Moscow in those days without being escorted by the KGB’s front organization Intourist. So we know he was in contact with the KGB. We do know that upon his return he began organizing anti war protest in England against the USA.
Now if I’m a KGB case officer and I know Clinton is coming I also know all about him.
I know he’s a liar, a rake, a coke and pothead and basically a sociopathic personality. How hard is it for me to apply MICE to Bill Clinton and recruit him? Did they? I’d be amazed if they didn’t. The trail of dead bodies in BC’s wake ..KGB wetwork to cover their asset. Hell, Clintons own National Security Advisor is a intelligence dupe, stuffing TS and other classified material down his pants.BC sold TS stuff to a laundry list of commmie countries.
So do I think we’ve been had. Hell yeah.
Caveat: Dan, you have to understand that after a decade and a half working covertly one tends toward being highly suspicious of our stated enemies and those who pretend to be allies and aren’t..Pakistan’s ISI and in fact all of Pakistan period come to mind.
Intelligence is unreal hardball and very unforgiving if you screw up. It ain’t paranoia if they’re really out to get ya and brother there’s a gaggle of ‘em out there and inside the wire look’n to ruin us .. do you think it’s working? You also have to understand that some covert operations take decades to develop. Americans don’t think in those terms normally. Hardball world brother.
Now see, Habu: that sounds like real life to me. The burden is on them; “because that’s crazy” is not an answer. I appreciate your thoughts, amigo.
Habu, that makes two of us, hanging on a thread, as it were. . .
Thank you for your insight, Habu.
one thing i’m interested in habu, and i guess you wouldn’t be in a position to answer this (i am a lawyer, by the way, so i get it): it appears to me, through the fog, that the US government is *aware* of Golitsyn’s thesis. Just thought i’d throw that out there. It’s beeen explained to me that that is an optimistic point of view, but i have confidence in you folks: i know it’s true.
2×4 #85 Nothing worth arguing with in what you say. I went out of my way not to say that Stalin was nice I merely said that he had reason to fear attacks by western lunatics that hated Russia You prove not only thuat such existed but they they are still there plotting to destroy an enemy 20 years gone (which is where the Yugoslav case proves that such a threat was always genuine.
Stalin invaded the Congo indeed!!!
#100
You’ve given us a read two-fer;
non sequitur and Illusory perception.
At the time of the Bolshevik revolution, US, Japan, and Britain sent tens of thousands of troops into Russian territory to support the anti-communist White Russian armies.
Lenin got back using Comintern for many decades afterward to infiltrate the West with trained agents whose goal was to work their way into positions of trust and influence. They worked to become union shop stewards, educational bureacrats, minor government functionaries, teachers, etc., so that they could use their positions to steer their fellows to sympathy and support for programs and actions favorable to the Soviet Union. Communist International had organized by socialists throughout Europe in the 19th century.
Of course, most U.S. citizens will guffaw and dismiss this as nonsense, because they’ve been told so many millions of times that only the United States is sufficiently evil to bother undermining other people’s countries.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Allied_Intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War
also at your leisure:
Igor Gouzenko
Regards
These people are apparently ignorant of the fact that humans are animals. Thus humans are subject to the rules of predator and prey just like any other animal.
If the conflagration occurs after the appearance of the universal assembler, then it won’t be a problem.