BY DR. PETER VINCENT PRY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
— 08/06/21 03:00 PM EDT 360
As the 76th anniversaries of the 1945 atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and
9 come and go, the obsolescence of U.S. nuclear
capabilities increasingly appears to be eroding
the foundations of deterrence.
For example, when Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister
Taro Aso recently vowed
to help the U.S. defend Taiwan, to
protect Japan’s own strategic interests and
fulfill alliance obligations, an “unofficial”
website affiliated with China’s People’s
Liberation Army threatened a
nuclear first strike. In her July 15 blog post,
“Nuke
and Eliminate Japan,” author and
human rights activist Jennifer Zeng provides a
fuller account of China’s nuclear threats, only
partially reported by some Western media:
-
“When
we liberate Taiwan, if Japan dares to
intervene by force, even if it deploys only
one soldier, one plane and one ship …we will
use nuclear bombs first. We will use nuclear
bombs continuously until Japan declares
unconditional surrender for the second
time.”
-
“…
We’ll join forces with Russia and North
Korea. Three arrows (countries) shoot
together to hit the Japanese mainland
thoroughly and in full depth.”
-
“…
After defeating Japan, we must take more
severe measures than in World War II to
partition Japan …by dividing the four
Japanese islands into four independent
states. … China and Russia should each
formulate its own Peace Constitution, and
each of the four countries should be placed
under the administration of China and
Russia, with China and Russia stationing
troops.”
-
“Now the international
situation has changed dramatically. … In
order to protect the peaceful rise of our
country, it is necessary to make limited
adjustments to our nuclear policy.”
The above — excerpts that Zeng translated from
the video uploaded by a Chinese channel, Xigua
Video — is consistent with longstanding thinking
of China’s military, as when General Zhu Chenghu
in 2005 threatened that
U.S. defense of Taiwan could provoke a nuclear
strike on Los Angeles.
Speaking louder than words, China is building
250 new intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) silos, probably for their 10-warhead DF-41,
enough to deploy 2,500 strategic warheads in a
few years — far eclipsing, with the DF-41 ICBM
alone, the U.S. strategic deterrent of 1,400
operational warheads on all U.S. missiles and
bombers. Until now, the DF-41 has been deployed
on mobile launchers, making it difficult for the
United States to count China’s ICBMs.
China’s in-your-face silo-basing demonstrates to
the world that the U.S. is outgunned.
“Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be
fought,” President
Biden and Russian President Vladimir
Putin pledged
in a joint statement following their
June summit in Geneva. This nuclear equivalent
of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 “Peace
for our time” false promise is belied
by Russia’s numerous broken arms control
treaties, massive nuclear build-up, and nuclear
war-winning doctrine.
Just in April, NATO feared that Russia’s “military
exercise” might be mobilization for
overrunning Ukraine and perhaps the frontline
NATO states — a performance Moscow prepares to
repeat in September with their next rehearsal
for a potential World War III: Zapad 2021.
Unprecedented Russian cyber attacks on U.S.
critical infrastructures have been escalating.
Washington appears to be helpless.
It is evidence of deterrence failing.
Yet all too many of America’s political, media
and academic elites seem to be unworried that
war games by the Pentagon and RAND reportedly show
the U.S. losing a World War III to
aggression by Russia or China. They are
reminiscent of elitist attitudes in the 1930s,
described by Winston Churchill in “The
Gathering Storm,” about how the
democracies blamed themselves, invented false
narratives to justify appeasement, and ignored
military threats from Nazi Germany and Imperial
Japan, resulting in World War II.
Today’s comforting false narratives,
contradicted by reality, include:
The nuclear build-up by Russia
and China is provoked by U.S. nuclear
modernization.
The U.S. is a decade behind both adversaries in
modernizing its nuclear delivery systems and is
not “modernizing” but more accurately
“recycling” its decades-old, antique nuclear
weapons, untested in 30 years.
The nuclear build-up by Russia
and China is provoked by U.S. strategic missile
defenses.
U.S. missile defenses (44 anti-missiles),
existing and planned, pose no serious threat to
Russia’s or China’s nuclear retaliatory
capabilities. Indeed, Russia’s thousands of
anti-missiles, deep underground shelters for
political-military elites, and civil defense for
the general population, poses a serious threat
to U.S. nuclear retaliatory capabilities.
Russia’s and China’s massive
nuclear build-up is normal behavior for great
powers.
Yet their nuclear capabilities, doctrine and
strategic posture far exceed the requirements of
deterrence and are consistent with nuclear
blackmail and war-winning.
Also reminiscent of the 1930s is the push by
some congressional
Democrats and earlier calls by the Arms
Control Association to respond to
growing nuclear threats with a “no first use”
pledge — that would undermine extended nuclear
deterrence to U.S. allies. Worse, they call for
using the new
Nuclear Posture Review, slated for
January 2022, to adopt minimum deterrence by
cutting U.S. nuclear forces to “a few hundred
warheads.”
Not much better are Democrats and Republicans
who support the current nuclear “modernization”
program — by Cold War standards, minimum
deterrence — that abandons the principle that
U.S. nuclear capabilities should be “second to
none.”
Perhaps a new bipartisan consensus can be forged
to support space-based missile defenses, such as
the “Brilliant
Pebbles” ballistic missile defense
proposed in 1987, which could be deployable in
five years for $20 billion; or much needed
protection from electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and
cyber attacks for life-sustaining critical
infrastructures.
Thus, we would replace Mutual Assured
Destruction (MAD) with the principle of
protecting life — call it “Strategic Assured
National Existence” (SANE) — so there will be no
Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in our future.
Dr. Peter
Vincent Pry is executive director of
the Task Force on National and Homeland
Security. He served as chief of staff to the EMP
Commission, on the staff of the House Armed
Services Committee, and was an intelligence
officer with the CIA. He is author of “The
Power And The Light: The
Congressional EMP Commission’s War to Save
America.”
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/566427-hiroshimas-and-nagasakis-in-our-future
ISRAEL
NATIONAL NEWS Beyond Hiroshima: Blackout
Warfare
Failed states like North Korea and Iran, or
terrorists, can destroy the most advanced
societies on Earth with an EMP attack.
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