WASHINGTON INSIDER USA on slippery slope to nuclear Armageddon? Special to the AAS On 11 January 2018 the Huffington Post published a new nuclear pos- leaked copy of the draft of the Trump Administration’s Nu- ture is a danger- clear Posture Review. Implementation of the revised US ous step towards nuclear war-fighting and deterrent strategy—barring ma- nuclear war. jor modifications by President Donald Trump before its fi- Under the nalisation—will put the United States on a slippery slope new NPR, one to nuclear war. source warned, Trump had ordered the nuclear posture review (NPR) the United States on 27 January 2017, one week after taking office. It is one is prepared to use of several Pentagon reviews of the US war-fighting pos- the threat of us- ture either completed or in process. In December 2017 ing low-yield nu- the Trump Administration issued its National Security Strat- clear weapons egy, followed on 19 January 2018 by the National De- against China, as fence Strategy (“Sharpening the American Military’s Com- a deterrent to pos- petitive Edge”). sible attacks on In February the Pentagon is expected to issue the fi- US aircraft carri- nal version of the Nuclear Posture Review and a Ballistic er groups, which Missile Defence Review. Later in the year, the military will are vulnerable to complete similar assessments of US cyber-warfare readi- attack by conven- ness and a deep analysis of American defence manufac- tional Chinese hy- turing and supply chain capacities. personic anti-ship missiles. The NPR The leaked Nuclear Posture Review from Huff- Filling the gap with tactical nuclear arms? explicitly calls for ington Post. While the United States has never had a “no first use” deployment of submarine-launched low-yield nuclear policy for nuclear weapons, preferring what the NPR calls weapons, in addition to the development of submarine- “retained ambiguity”, the 2018 document explicitly man- launched cruise missiles, as a means of covering the ex- dates the integration of nuclear and non-nuclear weap- isting “gap” in regional deterrents. ons systems at the combat command level. The US mili- Two other US Government sources indicated that, be- tary, according to the leaked unclassified draft, will “plan, hind the scenes, Pentagon planners are developing options train and exercise to integrate US nuclear and non-nucle- for low-yield nuclear retaliation against conventional or cy- ar forces to operate in the face of adversary nuclear threats ber attacks against US forces or critical US infrastructure. and employment.” Defining “critical US infrastructure” is highly subjec- Since the Obama Administration, the United States tive. In “Containing Russia, Again”, a January 2018 arti- has been working on a new generation of tactical nucle- cle in the Foreign Affairs journal of the New York Coun- ar bombs, the B61-12, which will have lower yields, but cil on Foreign Relations, former Bush and Obama Admin- far greater range and accuracy than their predecessors. istration officials Robert D. Blackwill and Philip H. Gor- Field tests of the B61-12 have already occurred, and the don argue that alleged Russian interference in the 2016 new nuclear bombs are scheduled to go into production US presidential elections was nothing short of an act of in 2020, with 400 to 480 of them deployed around the war, aimed at regime change: “Whereas physical attacks world by 2024, at a cost of $11 billion. Once deployed, on the US homeland, such as Pearl Harbor or 9/11, have they will be fielded on F-35 stealth fighter jets. Using brought Americans together in a common cause and led new “dial-a-yield” technologies, the bombs can be ad- them to bolster defences, an assault on the American sense justed to deliver a payload equivalent to between 300 of national unity could weaken the institutions and shared tons and 50,000 tons of TNT. The lowest yield is 98 per beliefs that are critical to enduring security and success. cent smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Ja- Growing domestic strife and diminishing trust in national pan in August 1945. institutions represent as great a threat to the United States As early as 2015, Federation of American Scientists nu- as any traditional national security concern, with the ex- clear expert Hans Kristensen warned that the United States ception of a nuclear attack.” was greatly increasing the danger of nuclear war. He told Mother Jones magazine, “If Russia put out a guided nu- ‘4+1 Challenges’ clear bomb on a stealthy fighter that could sneak through According to former NATO supreme commander Gen- air defences, would that add to the perception here that eral Wesley Clark, he had a conversation at the Pentagon they were lowering the threshold for use of nuclear weap- in 1991 with Paul Wolfowitz, then a senior aide to Sec- ons? Absolutely.” retary of Defence Dick Cheney. Wolfowitz’s position was While the language of the leaked version of the NPR that, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States attempts to downplay the heightened threat of nuclear war had a little more than a decade in which to complete a under the new US doctrine and weapons systems, three series of regime-change wars, before a new power would high-level officials, who agreed to speak under condition emerge to challenge American global military suprema- of anonymity, have confirmed their own fears that the cy. Wolfowitz further insisted that the United States must

www.cecaust.com.au Vol. 20 No. 5 31 January 2018 Australian Alert Service 9 do everything possible to delay such challenges to Amer- ican unipolar world dominance. The draft Nuclear Posture Review, for the first time, claims that the global dominance of US military forces, since the end of the Cold War, has come to an end, and that the United States is faced with great-power challeng- es from Russia and China. The NPR charges that Russia’s reincorporation of Crimea (a step taken after a popular ref- erendum in the region, but termed “annexation” in this document) and Chinese island-building in the South Chi- na Sea demonstrate an effort by both powers to overturn the existing world order, and that this requires “tailored nuclear deterrent” strategies targeted at them. Trump Administration national security planners have asserted that the United States is facing “4+1 challenges”, American B-61 nuclear bombs. Photo: Wikipedia each of which requires the prescribed changes in nuclear of nuclear holocaust, unless the major nuclear powers— weapons strategy. The 4+1 challenges are: China, Russia, the United States, Russia and China—agree to end the North Korea, Iran, and “violent extremism”. hyper-dangerous doctrine of “launch on warning”. Their leaders currently have just moments to decide, upon re- The Hawaii scare ceiving word of a nuclear weapons attack possibly under On 13 January 2018, a false alarm went out to millions way, whether or not to launch massive nuclear retaliation of residents and visitors to Hawaii, alerting them that a bal- and assure the extinction of the human race. listic missile was headed towards the islands. The alert, lat- Last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved er attributed to human error during a shift change, triggered its doomsday clock to two minutes before midnight, warn- panic, as people believed that the first launch of a nucle- ing that the threat of nuclear annihilation is greater today ar war was under way. It was 38 minutes before Hawai- than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Blurring ians were informed that the alert had been a false alarm. the lines between conventional and nuclear war, through Former Secretary of Defence William Perry (1993-97 the deployment of lower-yield nuclear bombs and the in- under President Bill Clinton) took the occasion of the Ha- troduction of submarine-launched cruise missiles, is one waii scare to warn once again that the world is on the edge reason the clock is ticking closer to midnight.

House Intelligence Committee votes to release memo on illegal spying against Trump campaign The Anglo-American intelligence operation against on the President’s team after he took office. The problem Donald Trump’s plan to normalise relations between the was, how to make this criminal activity public, and to USA and Russia has unravelled further. On 29 January force criminal charges against the perpetrators within the the US House Intelligence Committee voted to begin the Barack Obama intelligence operation. process of releasing the four-page classified memo on US Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz released a statement government surveillance abuses put together under the on 18 January that began: “The House must immediate- Committee’s Chair, Rep. Devin Nunes (Republican, Cal- ly make public the memo prepared by the Intelligence ifornia). Democrats led by Rep. Adam Schiff opposed the Committee regarding the FBI and the Department of Jus- memo’s release unsuccessfully. The next step is a five- tice. The facts contained in this memo are jaw-dropping day period of Presidential consideration of the release. and demand full transparency. There is no higher prior- The as yet classified report summarises the files Con- ity than the release of this information to preserve our gress has received on the two-year intelligence agency democracy.” effort to eliminate candidate and then President Trump. On 20 January Gaetz led 64 other Republicans who It sent shock waves across Capitol Hill as Republican had read the memo in signing a letter to Nunes, urging members of Congress read it, many since pushing for its its release, and saying, “The audience of this document public release. should not be limited to Members of Congress—the Amer- Nunes’s office wrote the so-called “FISA memo” on 18 ican people deserve to know the information it contains.” January, documenting key elements gleaned from the ma- Speaking on Fox News, Gaetz asserted that “I think terial he had extracted, with great difficulty and with help that this will not end just with firings. I believe there are from the courts, from the FBI and the Department of Jus- people who will go to jail. I was very persuaded by the tice (DOJ) on the MI6-Christopher Steele dossier and the evidence.” The entire Mueller investigation “is a lie built role of the Fusion GPS “cash for trash” company, on be- on a foundation of corruption.... It is a real attempt to un- half of the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton pres- dermine the President.... It would be ludicrous if we al- idential campaign, in leaking and circulating the dossier. low the Mueller probe to go ahead.” Reports have been circulating that the documents ob- Republican Rep. Jim Jordan has spoken in favour of tained prove that the discredited Steele dossier, unvetted releasing the source documents as well, comparing the and unsubstantiated, was the basis for the Foreign Intel- Nunes memo to “any document which needs to be ref- ligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court ruling allowing the erenced or footnoted, and Democrats will attempt to dis- FBI to spy on the Trump Presidential campaign, and then miss Nunes’ memo without documentation”.

10 Australian Alert Service 31 January 2018 Vol. 20 No. 5 www.cecaust.com.au