Nuclear Weapons Watch Thread

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wjfox
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Nuclear Weapons Watch Thread

Post by wjfox »

Well, this doesn't look good at all.

35 years of reductions in nuclear weapon stockpiles has suddenly and abruptly begun to reverse.


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caltrek
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Nuclear Notebook: How many nuclear weapons does North Korea have in 2021?
by Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda
July 21, 2021

https://thebulletin.org/premium/2021-07 ... e-in-2021/

Introduction:
(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) North Korea has made significant advances over the past two decades in developing a nuclear weapons arsenal. It has detonated six nuclear devices––one with a yield of well over 100 kilotons––and test-flown a variety of new ballistic missiles, several of which may be capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets in Northeast Asia and potentially in the United States and Europe. However, there is considerable uncertainty about which of North Korea’s missiles have been fielded with an active operational nuclear capability.

It is widely assumed that North Korea has operational nuclear warheads for medium-range missiles. However, it is unclear whether it has managed to develop fully functioning nuclear warheads that can be delivered by long-range ballistic missiles and, following violent atmospheric reentry, detonate as planned. That said, just because North Korea has not yet publicly demonstrated a capability to deliver a functioning nuclear reentry vehicle on a long-range ballistic missile does not necessarily indicate that it is not working on developing one or could not field one in the future. It is clear from its development efforts and public statements that North Korea ultimately intends to field an operational nuclear arsenal capable of holding regional and US targets at risk.

Due to the lack of clarity surrounding North Korea’s nuclear program, agencies and officials of the US intelligence community, as well as military commanders and nongovernmental experts, struggle to assess the program’s characteristics and capabilities. Based on publicly available information about North Korea’s fissile material production and missile posture, we cautiously estimate that North Korea might have produced sufficient fissile material to build 40 to 50 nuclear weapons and that it might possibly have assembled 10 to 20 warheads for delivery by medium-range ballistic missiles.
The article goes into a lot of further detail some of which I did not read. What I did read simply further documents and explains its summary conclusions as contained in the cited introduction.
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Re: Nuclear Weapons Watch Thread

Post by raklian »

wjfox wrote: Wed Aug 04, 2021 6:36 pm Well, this doesn't look good at all.

35 years of reductions in nuclear weapon stockpiles has suddenly and abruptly begun to reverse.
The Chinese are rapidly increasing their nuclear arsenal as well. :(
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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The 2021 Nuclear Year in Review
by Susan D’Agostino
December 27, 2021

https://thebulletin.org/2021/12/the-202 ... g-stories/

Introduction:
(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got the 2021 nuclear year off to a rousing start when she—for good reason—spoke with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about “preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the [nuclear] launch codes.” On a brighter note, that same month the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force, though none of the nuclear states have signed.

In February, George Shultz, one of President Ronald Reagan’s most trusted advisors during the Cold War, passed away. “If I could choose one American to whom I would entrust the nation’s fate in a crisis,” Henry Kissinger once said, “it would be George Shultz.”

In March, all eyes turned to North Korea’s short-range ballistic missile tests, which violated UN Security Council resolutions and threatened South Korea and the world. The month also marked the 10th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, prompting some concerned scientists to remind the public and policymakers that a similar incident could happen again. This year also marked 75 years since the United States tested nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, though the country has yet to right the wrongs committed against the Marshallese people and their land.

In April, the United Kingdom raised its nuclear stockpile limits, “reversing two decades of progress towards a smaller and more transparent UK arsenal.” Also in April, Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility was sabotaged—allegedly by Israel—amid talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal. Meanwhile, Japan announced a plan for releasing Fukushima’s wastewater into the sea, even before reestablishing public trust in that process.

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden injected the nuclear landscape with a dose of cautious optimism when they reaffirmed the Reagan-Gorbechev statement that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Those at the US National Nuclear Security Administration must have been whistling while looking at their shoes, the sky, or anywhere but their $505 billion expenditures for sustaining and modernizing nuclear warheads and production facilities.
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Re: Nuclear Weapons Watch Thread

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‘No one can win a nuclear war’: Superpowers release rare joint statement

January 4, 2022 — 12.30pm

China, Russia, the UK, the United States and France have agreed that a further spread of nuclear arms and a nuclear war should be avoided.

According to a joint statement released on Tuesday morning (AEDT), the five countries – permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – said they considered it their primary responsibility to avoid war between the nuclear states and to reduce strategic risks, while aiming to work to create an atmosphere of security.

“We declare there could be no winners in a nuclear war, it should never be started,” the Russian-language version of the statement read.

An English-language version was released by the White House.

“We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the statement reads. “We also affirm that nuclear weapons – for as long as they continue to exist – should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression and prevent war. We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented.”

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/no- ... 59lmf.html
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Post by erowind »

Would Russia and the United states be willing to stop their nuclear modernization efforts then? How about sending 90% of the warheads to be disarmed and buried in geologically stable bedrock? Would America stop antagonizing Russia by trying to spread NATO control to countries that are directly bordering it? None of these questions and more will be answered at the next security council lipservice convention!

(I do hope they're sincere, but, ehhh, yah...)
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‘No one can win a nuclear war’: Superpowers release rare joint statement
More on that:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/ ... -statement

Extract:
(Common Dreams) None of the five countries, nor any of the other four nuclear powers, signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)—a landmark 2017 agreement outlawing nukes that took effect last January and has been ratified by 56 nations.

Peace advocates reacted to the leaders' statement by noting the yawning chasm between their words and actions.

"As Greta Thunberg said, 'blah, blah, blah,'" Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, tweeted in response to the leaders' proclamation. "They write this 'nice' statement but [are] doing exactly the opposite in reality. They're in a nuclear arms race, expanding nuclear arsenals, spending billions on modernizing, and constantly prepared to start a nuclear war."

Russia—which, with over 6,000 warheads, is home to the world's largest nuclear arsenal—is modernizing its missile delivery systems while developing two new types of intercontinental ballistic missiles, including the road-mobile RS-26 Rubezh, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

In a move that disarmament campaigners called a violation of Britain's NPT obligations, Prime Minister Boris Johnson last year announced a plan to increase the size of the nation's nuclear arsenal by up to 40%.

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-12 ... -expansion

Introduction:
(Arms Control Association) China is accelerating its development of strategic nuclear warheads in an effort to amass 700 by 2027 and 1,000 by 2030, more than doubling last year’s estimate, according to the U.S. Defense Department’s 2021 China military power report.

Viewed alongside recent revelations about the construction of at least 250 new missile silos in northwestern China, the annual report highlights a concerning nuclear buildup. Last year, the Pentagon estimated that Beijing had a total nuclear warhead stockpile in the low 200s and projected it would at least double over the next decade. (See ACT, October 2020.)

China is “investing in, and expanding, the number of its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms and constructing the infrastructure necessary to support this major expansion of its nuclear forces,” according to the report, which covers developments through 2020.

“Our number-one pacing challenge is the People’s Republic of China,” said Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby on Nov. 5.
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caltrek
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The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the World's Future
by Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner
January 11, 2022

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022 ... lds-future

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Late January of this year will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use nuclear weapons. Adopted by an overwhelming vote of the official representatives of the world's nations at a UN conference in July 2017, the treaty was subsequently signed by 86 nations. It received the required 50 national ratifications by late October 2020, and, on January 22, 2021, became international law.

Right from the start, the world's nine nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea—expressed their opposition to such a treaty. They pressed other nations to boycott the crucial 2017 UN conference and refused to attend it when it occurred. Indeed, three of them (the United States, Britain, and France) issued a statement declaring that they would never ratify the treaty. Not surprisingly, then, none of the nuclear powers has signed the agreement or indicated any sympathy for it.

Even so, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has acquired considerable momentum over the past year. During that time, an additional nine nations ratified it, thus becoming parties to the treaty. And dozens more, having signed it, are expected to ratify it in the near future. Furthermore, the governments of two NATO nations, Norway and Germany, have broken free from the U.S. government's oppositional stance to the treaty and agreed to attend the first meeting of the countries that are parties to it.

In nations where public opinion on the treaty has been examined, the international agreement enjoys considerable support. YouGov opinion polls in five NATO countries in Europe show overwhelming backing and very little opposition, with the same true in Iceland, another NATO participant. Polling has also revealed large majorities in favor of the treaty in Japan, Canada, and Australia.
caltrtek's comment: I can see refusing to ratify the treaty, but to "press other nations to boycott the crucial 2017 UN conference and" to have "refused to attend it" seems ludicrous. I would think that all countries would see it in their own interests to encourage others to pursue the goals of the treaty, even if they themselves refuse to ratify because of worries regarding conflict with certain other countries.
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Re: Nuclear Weapons Watch Thread

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To Avert 'Global Nuclear Holocaust,' U.S. Groups Demand Abolition of ICBMs
by Jake Johnson
January 12, 2022

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/ ... tion-icbms

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) More than 60 U.S. organizations issued a joint statement Wednesday calling for the total elimination of the country's land-based nuclear missiles, warning that the weapons are both an enormous waste of money and—most crucially—an existential threat to humankind.

Organized by the advocacy groups RootsAction and Just Foreign Policy, the statement argues that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are "uniquely dangerous, greatly increasing the chances that a false alarm or miscalculation will result in nuclear war."

"There is no more important step the United States could take to reduce the chances of a global nuclear holocaust than to eliminate its ICBMs," continues the statement, which was signed by Beyond the Bomb, Global Zero, Justice Democrats, CodePink, and dozens of other anti-war groups.

"Everything is at stake," the groups warn. "Nuclear weapons could destroy civilization and inflict catastrophic damage on the world's ecosystems with 'nuclear winter,' inducing mass starvation while virtually ending agriculture. That is the overarching context for the need to shut down the 400 ICBMs now in underground silos that are scattered across five states—Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming."

The statement comes just two weeks after President Joe Biden signed into law a sprawling military policy bill that allocates billions of dollars to research, development, and missile procurement for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program, an initiative that is expected to replace the current Minuteman III ICBMs in the coming years.
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What If Nuclear Deterrence Fails
Linda Pence Guntner
January 12, 2022

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/12 ... nce-fails/

Introduction:
(Counterpunch) “Long live deterrence to dissuade nuclear attacks” blasted the headline on Gwynne Dyer’s December 6, 2021 column in The Hill Times. And then came this subheader:

“It’s not absolutely foolproof, but it has protected us all from nuclear war for 75 years.”

There is just one obvious problem with this statement. In order for deterrence to work, it has to be absolutely 100 percent foolproof. The consequence of it being less than that is beyond catastrophic. It could amount to the end of life on earth as we know it. That’s one hell of a gamble. And it’s a gamble that is not morally defensible on any level. It’s one that should never be taken.

As we wrote on the cover of our pamphlet —The Myth of Deterrence: Why nuclear weapons don’t deter or protect and aren’t really weapons at all — “The only way to be 100% certain of nuclear deterrence is to have 100% nuclear weapons abolition.”

Trusting in nuclear deterrence is a risk of such monumental humanitarian consequences that it changed the entire dialogue around disarmament, prompting a new civil society movement to push the United Nations to adopt, sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The TPNW worked — and came into law in January 2021 — precisely because the issue of nuclear weapons was viewed from the perspective of their humanitarian consequences if used.
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