Expand Nuclear Weapons Programs to Protect Missileers’ Tender Psyches

Nuclear missile officers’ jobs weigh heavy on them but not for the reasons you’d think. 

By Russ Wellen

On May 8 we posted about an article by Robert Burns of the Associated Press, in which he reported that the Air Force removed authority to control – and launch – nuclear missiles from 17 officers of the 91st Missile Wing in Minot, North Dakota after they were given a poor review for a series of mistakes.

Spirit of Boondoggle Departs Quashed Los Alamos Project, Finds New One to Possess

The construction of an expensive new plutonium pit facility has been abandoned. Will it be replaced a collection of smaller buildings?

By Russ Wellen

Thanks in large part to lawsuits filed by the Los Alamos Study Group, last year the Obama administration halted the construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The research for which it was earmarked was  on plutonium pits, which is where the chain reaction of a nuclear weapons occurs. Even if you believe in nuclear weapons, the need for new pits is nonexistent because they’re noted for their longevity.

Would Pakistan Respond to India’s Use of Conventional Weapons With Tactical Nukes?

Theoretically Pakistan is poised to respond to Indian military retaliation for a terrorist strike with tactical nukes.

By Russ Wellen

It’s debatable how much nuclear weapons add to national security. But what’s undeniable is that they add layer upon layer of complexity, sprinkled with convoluted and even counterintuitive thinking (such as how missile defense systems are seen as an offensive act), to national defense. By way of example, on April 30, in the Times of India, Indrani Bagchi, wrote:

India will retaliate massively even if Pakistan uses tactical nuclear weapons against it. [It] will protect its security interests by retaliating to a “smaller” tactical attack in exactly the same manner as it would respond to a “big” strategic attack.

Two questions immediately arise.
1. Why did Pakistan develop tactical nuclear weapons?
2. Why would India respond disproportionately to the use of what’s often referred to as “battlefield” nuclear weapons? (Not to diminish their power or, by any means, condone a state’s possession of them.)

Minot’s Launch Control Fail: Reason #532 Why Nuclear Deterrence Is a Fragile Foundation for Peace

To concerns about human error in nuclear launch control add moodiness.

By Russ Wellen

Robert Burns of the Associated Press reports that the Air Force removed authority to control – and launch – nuclear missiles from 17 officers of the 91st Missile Wing in Minot, North Dakota after they were given a poor review for a series of mistakes.

The tip-off to trouble was a March inspection, which earned the equivalent of a “D” grade when tested on its mastery of Minuteman III missile launch operations. … In addition to the 17, possible disciplinary action is pending against one other officer at Minot who investigators found had purposefully broken a missile safety rule in an unspecified act that could have compromised the secret codes that enable the launching of missiles. [Emphasis added.]

Human error when on nuclear launch duty is serious enough. But willfulness only further increases the degree of difficulty of managing nuclear risk.

Despite Funneling Money to the Corporations That Run the Nuclear Labs, the Administration Finds Itself in Their Debt

Corporate contractors not only receive money from the federal government, but help dictate policy.

By Russ Wellen

Dienekes was a Spartan soldier noted for his bravery. Herodotus wrote of him in The Histories (via Wikipedia)

It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, their arrows would block out the sun. Dienekes, however, undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, ‘Good. Then we will fight in the shade.’”

A reporter using the name Dienekes produced a paper in February titled Broken Promises: The White House, Special Interests, and New START that the Los Alamos Study Group featured on its website. Perhaps, he identifies with Dienekes because he feels vastly dwarfed by the forces of the Iron Triangle (his description: “the relationship between congressional committees, federal agencies, and special interest groups seeking to benefit from public policy”) against which he pits himself. Meanwhile, this reader can’t help but observe that in the event of a nuclear war, the survivors will be living in the shade of nuclear winter.

Nixon’s “Madman Theory” Was Not the Vietnam War’s Only Test Case for Nuclear Weapons

In part, the Vietnam War was perceived as a message that the U.S. would not be intimidated by a Chinese nuclear-weapons program.

By Russ Wellen

You’ve probably heard that, as Jeremi Suri reported in Wired five years ago, after the Paris Vietnam peace talks broke down in 1969…

Frustrated, Nixon decided to try something new: threaten the Soviet Union with a massive nuclear strike and make its leaders think he was crazy enough to go through with it. His hope was that the Soviets would be so frightened of events spinning out of control that they would strong-arm Hanoi, telling the North Vietnamese to start making concessions at the negotiating table or risk losing Soviet military support.

Ability of Nuclear Deterrence to Defuse Crises Exaggerated

During the good old war, nuclear deterrence failed to thwart crises, which were subsequently solved with good, old politics.

By Russ Wellen

We may owe thanks for the absence of war (other than proxy) during the Long Peace — aka the Cold War — between the United States and the Soviet Union less to nuclear deterrence, as is commonly assumed, than to the “underlying politics.” That’s a thesis beginning to gain credibility which Francis J. Gavin presents as well as anyone (though I’ve just begun the book) in Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Cornell University Press, 2012).

Nuclear Weapons Have Outlived Their Usefulness — if They Ever Had Any

Historian Ward Wilson pokes holes in the mythology of nuclear weapons.

By Russ Wellen

Long awaited by many of us in the arms control and disarmament communities, historian Ward Wilson’s book, Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in January. He doesn’t fail to deliver. What at first seems like a short book soon becomes a distillate of years of the author’s thinking, to which the expansive footnotes and lengthy bibliography also attest.

Wilson is a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. For years unaffiliated, though, with either academy or a foundation, his writing style can be characterized as plain speaking and congenial, accessible to the general public as well as policymakers, strategists, and historians.

Latest Smoking Gun on Iran’s Nuclear Program Just Another Misfire

Yousaf Butt lays waste to the magnetic-ring-sign-of-Iran-nuclear-expansion theory.

By Russ Wellen

On February 13 Joby Warrick reported for the Washington Post that “Iran recently sought to acquire tens of thousands of highly specialized magnets used in centrifuge machines, according to experts and diplomats, a sign that the country may be planning a major expansion of its nuclear program that could shorten the path to an atomic weapons capability.” More:

Purchase orders obtained by nuclear researchers show an attempt by Iranian agents to buy 100,000 of the ring-shaped magnets — which are banned from export to Iran under U.N. resolutions — from China about a year ago, those familiar with the effort said. It is unclear whether the attempt succeeded.

Iran’s Weak Emergency Infrastructure Would Only Compound Effects of an Attack

Why are states allowed to implement nuclear energy without a sufficient emergency preparedness program?

By Russ Wellen

In October, 2012 I wrote a post titled Attacking Iran Is Like Setting Off Nuclear Bombs on the Ground about a report released the previous month. Titled The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble, it’s the product of an organization called Omid for Iran, along with the Hinckley Institute of Politics and the University of Utah. Omid for Iran was founded by Khosrow B. Semnani, the Iranian immigrant who became a radioactive waste disposal magnate. A controversial figure often embroiled in lawsuits, he served as president of his company Envirocare until the Department of Energy requested he step down in the wake of a bribery scandal.

Like many immigrants who make good in the United States, he draws on a reserve of rancor toward the forces in his country of origin (usually, in these cases, communist) that keep an entrepreneur like him from fulfilling his dream. You can tell by this excerpt from the executive summary of “The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble” that, should they attack Iran, he’s less interested in blaming Israel and the United States than he is Tehran for inciting them.