Bush s Proposed Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament Measures Will Increase Chances of Nuclear War

November 20, 2001 | David T. Pyne, Esq.

[rightwing2]

Here here. Reminds me of the New Zealand PM who dismantled the military with the haughty declaration that they were going to promote peace, not violence. (Big sign taped on Auckland's backside: "Kick Me. I'm Unarmed!")

As bizarre as it might sound to the less informed among us, that is exactly the mentality of the Bushies who believe that if they unilaterally destroy 75% of our nukes and place in serious doubt our future status as a nuclear superpower that Russia will follow suit and the ChiComs will restrain themselves from pursuing their current strategic nuclear missile build-up to its logical conclusion--nuclear parity with the US, which by the year 2011 will require only 1700 strategic warheads! Unilateral nuclear disarmament as practiced by the Bushies is nothing less than liberal gun control implementation implemented at the nuclear level, doomed to fail for the same reasons. Gun control does not decrease the risk of violent crime, it increases it. Unilateral nuclear disarmament will increase the risks of nuclear war for the exact same reasons because it does not take the weapons away from the "usual suspect" countries most likely to employ them in acts of global and regional aggression. Instead, it disarms the very (global) policeman (the US) that is supposed to promote order and stability in the world.

[DoughtyOne]

Absolutely right! That's it in a nutshell. Good job.

[rightwing2]

If this guy is a "expert",I'm the next Pope. While it would be a considerable stretch to call me a Bush supporter,he is right on this issue. We can throw our money away on VERY expensive defense systems that are surplus to our needs,or actually spend the money where it is needed. Even 1700 nukes is far in excess of what is needed for defensive purposes. All you can kill your enemy is dead.

Well, for someone who has the clarity of vision to call Bush "Bubba 2" as you call him, I find it disconcerting that you justify his systematic unilateral destruction of the bulk of the US strategic nuclear deterrent, which indeed is the most grevious thing he is doing to destroy the national security of this country. Indeed, if he favored preserving our nuclear deterrent at present levels, I would be forced to concede that he would be a "reasonably good" national security President, which would at least be committed to fulfilling the President's most important role of safeguarding the country from nuclear attack. Instead, President Bush is leading the charge to dismantle the very nuclear and conventional arsenal which made the United States a military superpower in the first place which will go far to make nuclear war with Russia and perhaps Communist China as well, far more likely.

Bush's plan to disarm us to 1700 stratnukes, many of which will undoubtedly be dealerted per the anti-nuke wackos' and Commie front think-tanks' prescription, is not enough to deter the Russian Federation with its 6000 stratnukes from launching a first strike against us without any fear of retaliation against them whatsoever. This is true because the Russians with their 8500 S-300 ABMs of which 1750 are armed with neutron warheads capable of shooting down more than one warhead at a time have the capability of shooting down approximately 2000 incoming warheads TODAY. This is precisely why the numbers of warheads in our strategic arsenal remains of supreme importance. Even if the Russians were to disarm to 2000 deployed stratnukes as Putin has suggested they might be willing to agree to, they could still launch a nuclear first strike against us which would destroy essentially all of our strategic arsenal excepting those SLBMs deployed on the 50% of our nuclear missile subs which are at sea at any given time (which anti-nuke wacko President Bush is reportedly considering reducing to only 33%).

First off,Russia is no real danger to us. They are MUCH more likely to be our ally in any future war than they are our opponet.

Your statement flies in the face of reality as confirmed by multiple CIA Ballistic Missile Threat assessments over the past three years which list Russia as the number one threat country to the US in terms of nuclear missile capabilities. Even if I bought your apparent belief that former KGB director and current Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin is a trusted US ally who can be relied upon to keep his treaties, which I don't, he could be replaced with an even more "hard-line" hardliner any day which could nuke the US at a whim (or blackmail us into disarming the rest of our nuclear arsenal once we finished the Bush nuclear build-down to a measily 1700 nukes). There would be nothing that the US could do about it. Russia is the only country in the world that has the capability of annihilating us as a country and accordingly they are by far the greatest threat to our existance.

The real danger we face is guerilla warfare. There is really no effective way to protect yourself from a few nutcases with suitcase nukes.

In fact, this is one of the lesser threats we face. The US would be far more likely to come under attack by rogue states like Communist China or Iran employing nuclear weapons or even Russian-sponsored terrorists or Spetsnaz troops than it would from "a few nutcases". In fact, there is no threat from "nutcases" who do not have access to nukes and will not for the forseeable future. Rather the threat is from the determined enemies of the US in the Islamic/Communist/"former Communist" axis of nations.

[rightwing2]

Give China three year and my guess is they already have 1500 to 2000 ICBM's. I know that not predicted by the CIA or anyone but they are detetermoned and they have the scientist and the US technology to do it.

Well, I think that estimate is a little high given the fact that even the US has only 500 ICBMs. However, you are not as far off as some might think. The Heritage Foundation published a national security study around 1999 or before which estimated that the PRC has the industrial and technical capability to build 1000 ICBMs over a period of a decade or two. I estimate that they will build about 400 strategic missiles or so by 2020 (and probably by 2015) with an average payload of five warheads each. That would give them nuclear superiority over the US with 2000 stategic nukes to our 1700 (which we will have undoubtedly disarmed to an even lower level by 2020).

You have to look to the future and see where this treacherous US policy is taking us. You see, 1700 stratnukes is not the final number the anti-nuke wackos and unilateral nuclear disarmers in the Bush Administration are looking to take us to. This is just step #2 in a phased plan to unilaterally disarm the US of its entire nuclear deterrent and surrender it to a global government in waiting such as the anti-American United Nations as indicated by freespeech1 on Post #14 of this thread. Step #1 was the START I disarmament measures which were fully implemented by the US last year. The fact that Bush is a Republican merely provides the anti-nuke globalist unilateral disarmers more cover (and even more impetus) to destroy our nuclear deterrent as it helps deflect the criticism of the very same conservatives who would have attacked Clinton vociferously had he proposed the same unilateral nuclear disarmament plan now being implemented by George W. Bush.

[WALLACE212]

A few reminders for all the "Yawn, Russia is our friend now" drones.-

1) The subs are a paper unit- little warheads- no independent launch capabilty- Clinton removed the PAL codes. They now rely on the ELF signal for a warning/ launch order. If you simultaneously squish Washington (or wherever the Prez is at the time) LOOKING GLASS, and the two TACAMO planes- guess what? No PAL codes, no launch, first strike wipes us UNOPPOSED.

2) If we ever had actually deployed MX on mobile launchers, all this "land based ICBMs are obsolete" nonsense would cease. We have millions of square miles of Fed land to hide those bad boys on, we just wont spend the money.

3) Russia beat us to the mobile land based ICBM, the Topol-M. They are deploying these at the rate of about three per quarter. They are supposed to be single warhead weapons, but we have observed multiple re-entry vehicle separation tests- the Russkies MIRV'ed 'em in direct violation of START2.

4) The US has 500 ICBM's. A lot you say? consider this- Russia currently has over 700 SS-18 Mod-3's (14 550 kiloton warheads) & 5's (1 20 megaton bunker buster) deployed. And that is ONE type of missile. They could squish every silo, launch command center, military base, airfield, and a decent chunk of our largest cities with the SS18's alone.

[WALLACE212]

Add me to your ping list, please. To much disinformation on this topic for me to ignore.

[Poohbah]

Russia currently has over 700 SS-18 Mod-3's (14 550 kiloton warheads) & 5's (1 20 megaton bunker buster) deployed. And that is ONE type of missile.

Correction, good sir. Only 308 were ever deployed, and they've been getting scrapped or used for test flights/satellite launches. Only 168 missiles were deployed as of 2001.

[Poohbah]

Give China three year and my guess is they already have 1500 to 2000 ICBM's.

Hmm. You're saying that China will, go from 20 deployed ICBMs to 1,500-2,000 by April, 2005? How much money do you want to bet?

[Poohbah]

Over 100?

Interesting. You mind telling me what models, and where they're deployed?

[WALLACE212]

"The Reagan and Bush administrations respected the SS-18 to such a degree that they made it the main focus of their arms control initiatives. The START II Treaty specifically banned land-based MIRV systems, in part, because of the threat the SS-18 posed to the balance of power. It was seen as a first-strike weapon and a very destabilizing presence in the bilateral relationship.

US negotiators allowed the Russian Federation to retain 90 of the SS-18 silos. After complying with the START II silo conversion protocol, the Russian Rocket Forces will be permitted to replace 90 of the SS-18s with a smaller, single-warhead missile. The protocol requires Russia to place a 2.9-meter restrictive ring near the top of the retained SS-18 silos and to fill the bottom five meters of the silos with concrete. These measures make the silos too small to hold an SS-18.

The Nunn-Lugar program is assisting in the reduction of the SS-18 missile threat to the United States. The Russian Federation must eliminate 100 SS-18s by December 2001 and an additional 154 SS-18s by January 2003. In recent years, Nunn-Lugar has played a role in SS-18 dismantlement. It provided the equipment necessary to help destroy the missiles. A total of 204 of these missiles were deployed on Russian territory and 104 in Kazakhstan. The elimination base at Surovatikha, near Nijny-Novgorod, destroyed 32 missiles in 1993 with the remaining 44 destroyed in 1994."

Got this from the FAS website, yeah my numbers were a bit off.... of course this info is a bit old. New numbers aren't forthcoming from Mother Russia. And lets just say I don't trust 'em. Their record of compliance with arms reduction treaties is less than stellar. And 100-odd Satan's is plenty in my book.

The Mod 4 's and 6's BTW, not three and five.

[WALLACE212]

FAS lists 20 Dong Feng 5A's and 48 Dong Feng 21A's. They have another 60 or so old POS IRBM's that could make life sh***y for the Russkies. that gives them about 100 megatons worth of grief that could hit CONUS.

[Poohbah]

The SS-18's life expectancy is 2011--and that's AFTER some serious skull-sweat (and real sweat) to exend the lifespan to 24 years.

Also, with the SS-18 being a liquid-fueld bird, it faces a pre-boost phase missile defense threat known as a "dropped wrench."

BTW, nobody has ever fired a live warshot ICBM under combat conditions. The launches conducted to date out of Vandenberg and Plesetsk are all done with carefully prepared missiles--they get many more man-hours of maintenance and servicing in the two weeks before their "test" flight than they goet in the two decades they were on alert duty. Even then, there are failures. I wonder what the "real world" launch success rate would be.

[WALLACE212]

If you can figure it out, DIA's gonna offer you a hell of a job...LOL

[Poohbah]

In an era where information practically beats down your door, your inability to locate that information is quite telling...

[sneakypete]

Your statement flies in the face of reality as confirmed by multiple CIA Ballistic Missile Threat assessments over the past three years which list Russia as the number one threat country to the US in terms of nuclear missile capabilities.

Gee,I wonder why Russia is considere to be the most "capable" of doing this? Would it be becasue they are practically the only ones with the CAPABILITY to do so? "Capability" does not speak to "intent".

As for the rest of it,my best suggestion to you is thearapy to learn how to deal with unreasonable fears. Or suicide. Your pick.

[WALLACE212]

Yeah, I have often wondered that about a lot of the older birds. An ICBM's a rather complicated bugger, given the miniscule BS that will ground a shuttle, you do have to wonder what all those rockets would do if TSHTF. Maybe we should have kept SAC around... planes dropping iron may be the only survivable delivery system after all.

[Poohbah]

Look at the range figure for the DF-21A...a missile that only goes 1,800 kms is not an ICBM.