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Old 04-06-2010, 08:08 AM
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Exclamation No Nuclear Retaliation Without Due Process of Law

No Nuclear Retaliation Without Due Process of Law


The Obama administration's new nuclear policy, to which I alerted readers several days ago and again yesterday, contains a very curious doctrine.

As reported by Jake Tapper:
In the [Nuclear Policy] Review, the US government will pledge to refrain from using nuclear weapons to attack any country in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- even if that country has attacked the US with chemical or biological weapons.
Who will decide whether a country is "in compliance" with the NPT? Normally investigation and fact finding is done by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which acts under the auspices of the U.N.

So does this mean we have deferred to an international organization the underlying fact finding as to whether we have a right under our own policy to retaliate for a chemical or biological attack?

And who can make a binding declaration as to non-compliance?

The IAEA has made such findings in the past as to "safeguards agreements," but would such a finding be sufficient for nuclear retaliation? Musn't we go to the U.N. Security Council, which normally determines sanctions for non-compliance? Can the President of the United States act unilaterally in finding non-compliance? Who precisely determines non-compliance can be unclear.

What if the country in question disputes "alleged" non-compliance? Shouldn't the people of that country be entitled to some measure of due process?

After all, if due process rights attach to detainees at Gitmo, why not to people who may be the subject of nuclear retaliation based on a disputed finding of non-compliance with the NPT? Shouldn't the people have a right also to judicial review of such findings, under standards at least as rigorous as those afforded Gitmo detainees?

These are all valid questions once we start down the road of conditioning our ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons on a finding of non-compliance with the NPT.

While it seems absurd to think that a dispute as to NPT compliance might deter U.S. nuclear retaliation, such absurdity is a natural progression from a new policy which creates explicit standards and boundaries as to nuclear retaliation for the use of chemical or biological weapons.

Some things are better left unsaid, and the conditions under which we would engage in nuclear retaliation for chemical or biological attack was one of those things.

But for the President who cannot stop talking, not talking is unfathomable.

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Related Posts:
It's Official - We Will Not Bring Nukes To A Chem or Bio Weapons Fight
Weakness Is The New Strength

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  #2  
Old 04-06-2010, 09:14 AM
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The Doomsday Dilemma

This Spring, Barack Obama will push toward his goal of a nuclear-free world. But the stiffest resistance may be at home.

By John Barry and Evan Thomas | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 3, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Apr 12, 2010




For many years, America's master plan for nuclear war with the Soviet Union was called the SIOP—the Single Integrated Operational Plan.

Beginning in 1962, the U.S. president was given some options to mull in the few minutes he had to decide before Soviet missiles bore down on Washington. He could, for instance, choose to spare the Soviet satellites, the Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe. Or he could opt for, say, the "urban-industrial" strike option—1,500 or so warheads dropped on 300 Russian cities. After a briefing on the SIOP on Sept. 14, 1962, President John F. Kennedy turned to his secretary of state, Dean Rusk, and remarked, "And they call us human beings."

Ever since the dawn of the atomic age at Hiroshima in August 1945, American presidents have been trying to figure out how to climb off the nuclear treadmill. The urgency may have faded in the post–Cold War era, but the weapons are still there. By 2002, President George W. Bush was signing off on a document containing his administration's Nuclear Posture Review, an -analysis of how America's nuclear arms might be used. Bush scribbled on the cover, "But why do we still have to have so many?"

According to a knowledgeable source who would not be identified discussing sensitive national-security matters, President Obama wasn't briefed on the U.S. nuclear-strike plan against Russia and China until some months after he had taken office. "He thought it was insane," says the source. (The reason for the delay is unclear; the White House did not respond to repeated inquiries.)

During his presidential campaign, Obama embraced a dream first articulated by President Reagan: the abolition of nuclear weapons. The idea is no longer all that radical. In January 2007, an op-ed piece calling for a nuclear-weapons-free world appeared in The Wall Street Journal, signed by Reagan's secretary of state George Shultz; Nixon's and Ford's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger; Clinton's secretary of defense Bill Perry; and Sam Nunn, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and longtime wise man of the defense establishment. "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," as they were quickly dubbed, had gotten together to give cover to politicians. "We wanted the candidates of both parties to feel they could debate the issue freely," said Nunn.


So when Obama joined the cry for a world without nukes in his campaign, he wasn't taking a big political chance. His Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, did not seem to disagree. And yet, accomplishing this goal—or even taking some meaningful steps toward it—makes health-care reform look easy. As president, Obama the idealist has had to become Obama the realist: working for a nuclear-free world tomorrow, but at the same time, and at great cost, keeping up America's nuclear forces today.

In a speech in Prague last spring, Obama noted that "in a strange turn of history, the threat of global war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up." He warned that with more nations acquiring nuclear weapons, or wishing to, the scary but oddly stable reign of "mutual assured destruction" was giving way to a new disorder. "As more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold." Obama stated "clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." But, he added, "I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly—perhaps not in my lifetime." And he threw in an important caveat:

"Make no mistake. As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies."

Nuclear policy will be front and center for Obama this spring, but in a way that may reveal more about limits than possibilities. On April 8, the president will sign an arms-control treaty with Russia that will set limits on numbers of warheads and launchers, lower than any previously agreed.

Progress, to be sure. But it's not entirely clear that a polarized Congress will find the two-thirds majority to ratify the treaty. Its most impassioned opponent, Sen. Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, is already demanding to know whether the "New START" treaty represents "a new era in arms control or unilateral disarmament." For their part the Russians are still smarting from perceived humiliations at the end of the Cold War and are increasingly dependent on nuclear weapons as their conventional forces wither. They seem unlikely to go much further in cutting their arsenal.

The prospect of nuclear proliferation is anxiety-inducing for all presidents, especially as terrorists try to get their hands on loose nukes. Obama is convinced that nuclear terrorism now poses a greater threat than the remote possibility of a nuclear war. On April 12 and 13, he will host a Washington summit of more than 40 heads of government with the aim of getting tougher measures to secure the fissile material still lying unprotected around the world. He's set a deadline of four years for truly securing the most dangerous materials. His own advisers suspect he is being overambitious but see the summit as a "consciousness-raising exercise." Every five years, the signers of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meet to review progress, and in May they will meet again. The Obama team hopes to use the conference to push his no-nukes agenda, but he will be resisted by countries, like Iran, that resent American power. At the same time, Obama can't cut America's arsenal as much as he might like. Countries long under U.S. nuclear protection, like Japan, may decide they need their own nuclear arms as American power declines in the world. Countries choosing to stay under the nuclear umbrella will want reassurances that they can depend on it.

Obama's dream of a nuke-free world will encounter the stiffest resistance at home—from the people who make and safeguard nuclear weapons. America's nuclear systems are aging, raising questions about the reliability of bombs, planes, and missiles. The U.S. Senate never ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and though the White House has talked hopefully of getting a vote on the CTBT sometime in a first Obama term, congressional staff experts are skeptical. "The CTBT is going nowhere," says a staffer who declined to be named. "The Republicans are not going to go for it." The GOP rationale: the United States needs to at least preserve the option of testing the reliability of old weapons or developing new ones.

For the past 15 years, the United States has been pursuing what it calls "stockpile stewardship." Atomic labs have used elaborate computer simulations and chemical and physical testing to ascertain whether the aging bombs would still go off. But at some point, the older weapons may have to be seriously upgraded or replaced. The Obama administration is proposing to increase funding for nuclear-weapons work by some $5 billion over five years. The United States needs to train a new generation of nuclear-weapons scientists and build a new plant at Los Alamos to construct plutonium "pits," the fissile cores of U.S. warheads.

Some Obama supporters on the left are outraged. Last month in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a well-informed antinuke group, bitterly decried "one of the larger increases in warhead spending history." Even so, the sweeteners may not be enough. In January, the directors of America's three nuclear labs told Republicans in Congress that they couldn't be confident that stockpile stewardship would work indefinitely to guarantee America's arsenal.

Sometime this week, Obama is supposed to release a long-delayed Nuclear Posture Review. The hope is to lay out a "paradigm shift" in thinking—to move away from war planning and focus on steps toward a nuclear-free world. There will be ambitious plans to safeguard against proliferation, in part by strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency; by providing nuclear fuel to countries that need it (so they don't try to enrich their own uranium); and by better securing nuclear materials from reactors around the world used for research and medicine, ingredients that might be used to build a "dirty bomb."

These are all sensible steps. But on the question of what Obama will do with America's own nuclear weapons, the president is sure to fall shy of his ambitions. Obama has rejected calls to scrap one leg of the "triad" of U.S. nuclear forces: missiles, submarines, and bombers. He does want to get away from the alert status known as "prompt launch," so there is talk of "repositioning" U.S. forces so they could not be quickly taken out by surprise. (The old standards were "launch on warning" or "launch under attack." Obama wants to avoid any kind of hasty response.) But the United States is likely to keep some ICBMs on alert against a Russian or Chinese missile attack.


Obama will call for improved communications with the Russian leadership to avoid what are tactfully called "misperceptions." Obama is also un-likely to make a "no first use" pledge, though the wording will be fudged. The new members of NATO—former Soviet satellites like the Baltic states—would be aghast at any such promise. As for future reductions, the United States has already removed all battlefield nukes from Europe. The Russians have not. Obama's advisers are hoping to trade some of America's "reserve force" of intercontinental weapons for those Russian tactical weapons.

But Obama is still faced with the age-old question of targeting America's strategic weapons. Will American missiles be aimed at Moscow or Beijing—or Tehran? No, cities are off-limits. But even if the targets are military forces, millions would still die. Obama is still pondering the dilemma; the matter is said by administration officials to be under secret review.

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/235884
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Old 04-08-2010, 12:32 PM
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The Need for New Nuclear Weapons
by Stephen L. Carter
April 7, 2010 | 1:38pm


The president's announcement that he will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations is unlikely to do us any harm. But Stephen L. Carter says there is real danger in Obama's decision. [/color]

In all the hoopla over President Obama’s announcement that the U.S. will largely foreswear the use of nuclear weapons except in response to nuclear attack, an important element of his plan has not received the attention it should: the promise that America “will not develop new nuclear warheads or pursue new military missions or new capabilities for nuclear weapons.” His decision to restrict sharply the circumstances in which current nuclear weapons will be used is in some ways morally attractive; his decision to restrict the development of new ones may be premature.

President Obama’s evident hope is that if America makes no significant improvements in a nuclear arsenal that The New York Times yesterday described as “aging, oversize, increasingly outmoded,” the rest of the world will go along. Alas, our generous example will likely prove insufficient.

Countries act out of their own perceived interests, and, at the moment, plenty of countries believe that their interests dictate the creation or maintenance of an independent nuclear deterrent. True, few observers any longer anticipate the sort of planet-destroying war that worried the world throughout the second half of the 20th century. But the smaller nuclear conflicts that most experts consider far more likely will require a new generation of weapons.

One need only wait for the moment when a drone drops a nuclear warhead somewhere on American soil, and we lack the necessary precision munitions with which to retaliate.

Indeed, the nuclear weapon of the future is unlikely to be delivered by a ballistic missile or a slowpoke bomber. It will be delivered by an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV—what has become known as a drone. Someday all of war will be fought by remote control. There is no reason to imagine that nuclear weapons will be exempt from this evolution. Persistent rumor has it that Israel and Russia and perhaps China and India are interested in developing UAVs capable of launching nuclear weapons. Israel recently introduced its largest drone, the Heran TP, or Eitan (“steadfast”), capable of remaining aloft for more than 24 hours and delivering a payload weighing a ton. In theory, the Eitan could deliver a small (kiloton-range) nuclear warhead. As more nuclear powers tilt their research in this direction, it is not out of the question that a terrorist group will someday possess both a long-range drone and a nuclear weapon designed to fit.

Where does the United States stand in this arms race? At the moment, we lead the pack in developing UAVs, but (unless there is classified research going on) not in developing nuclear warheads to fit them. Instead, we would rely, even in a limited nuclear exchange, on submarine-launched ballistic missiles or, possibly, cruise missiles. These weapons are designed to seek fixed targets over long distances. Their disadvantage is that they cannot remain quietly aloft, searching for targets. That is what drones are for.

The two principal UAVs operated by the United States are the Predator and the Reaper. The Predator, which typically carriestwo AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, can remain in the air, hunting targets, for as long as 40 hours.

The newer (and much more expensive) Reaper drone has an engine eight times as powerful as the Predator’s, and heavier armament. In addition to the usual complement of missiles and warheads, the Reaper can carry, for example, the GBU-12 Paveway II, a “smart bomb” designed to deliver a 500-pound warhead within four feet of its target. (The GBU is the weapon in the famous YouTube video of a laser-guided bomb falling in Fallujah, Iraq.) The Reaper, among its other capabilities, can be fitted to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier.

Although at present the United States has disclosed no plans to do so, the Reaper could in theory be armed with a single small nuclear warhead.

The old W-54 nuclear warhead, the “Davy Crockett,” weighed only 50 pounds, but its yield was smaller than that of a conventional Paveway.

The W-80 variable yield nuclear warhead for the Tomahawk cruise missile weighs only about 300 pounds, but the administration hasannounced plans to retire that weapon. The mainstay of the current American nuclear arsenal is the B-61, Mod 11, which weighs about 1,200 pounds. The maximum yield of the B-61 is classified, but is thought to be about 340 kilotons. Megaton weapons—the stuff of the titanic city-destroying explosions seen in movies—weigh many thousands of pounds, and could not be carried by any remote-controlled aircraft currently in operation, whether in the American or any other arsenal. But even converting a small nuclear warhead to be launched from a Reaper would require more design work than the president’s plan to “sustain our stockpile” suggests.

The president’s announcement that he will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations has been controversial, but is unlikely to do the nation any harm. Falling behind in the race to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons could be infinitely more dangerous. How dangerous? One need only wait for the moment when a drone drops a nuclear warhead somewhere on American soil, and we lack the necessary precision munitions with which to retaliate. Here one is reminded of the dictum of Thomas Schelling, in explaining how the strategy of deterrence works: “There is a difference,” he wrote in his classic work Arms and Influence, “between fending off assault and making someone afraid to assault you.”

It is an irony of our era that many commentators seem to view the prospect of a small nuclear war through the lens of climate change: What, they wonder, would be the effects? One might think that our biggest moral concern would be the millions or more who would die. Still, the fact that people worry so much about what a small war would do to the planet suggests that we are already halfway to accepting that such a war is bound to occur. In case so horrific an event does occur, it is best to hold on to our technological advantage.

Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale. He is at work on a book on the Obama administration and just-war theory.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...ng-nukes/full/
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