[D66] US, NATO powers intensify preparations for nuclear war

[J.N.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/26/nuke-j26.html

US, NATO powers intensify preparations for nuclear war
By Thomas Gaist
26 June 2015

The NATO military alliance is preparing to implement a more aggressive
nuclear weapons strategy in response to alleged “Russian aggression,”
according to NATO sources cited by the Guardian Wednesday evening.

Proposed changes include provisions for greater involvement of nuclear
forces in ongoing NATO military exercises along Russia’s borders and new
guidelines for nuclear escalation against Russia, according to the NATO
officials.

The alliance’s nuclear doctrine has been the subject of quiet, informal
discussions “on the sidelines” of the ongoing NATO summit. The new
policies will be formally articulated and confirmed at an upcoming
conference of the alliance’s Nuclear Planning Group, which was
rescheduled for an earlier date this week as word got around about the
secretive planning.

“There is very real concern about the way in which Russia publicly
bandies around nuclear stuff. So there are quite a lot of deliberations
in the alliance about nuclear weapons,” an unnamed NATO diplomat told
the Guardian.

The claim that discussion about a revision of nuclear weapons policy is
in response to Russian aggression turns reality on its head. In the
aftermath of the US and NATO-backed coup in Ukraine last year, the major
imperialist powers have engaged in a relentless militarization of
Eastern Europe, including the establishment of a rapid reaction force of
40,000 troops.

This week, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the US
would permanently deploy tanks, military vehicles and other equipment to
countries bordering Russia. There are also ongoing discussions about
directly arming Ukraine, beyond the extensive assistance the right-wing
government already receives.

NATO is now planning to respond to any attempt by Russia to maintain or
counter US imperialism’s aggressive moves in Eastern Europe with even
more massive military response, including nuclear weapons.

An indication of the thinking of NATO strategists was provided by a
report in the Financial Times. In the event of a conflict involving one
of the Baltic countries, “Russia might…accuse the alliance of escalating
the conflict and threaten to use intermediate range nuclear weapons.”
The Times quotes Elbridge Colby, of the Center for a New American
Security (CNAS): “NATO does not need a total nuclear rethink. But it
needs to be realistic about how it would respond and willing to show
Putin that he would not get away with it.”

This scenario builds on allegations from the US that Russia has violated
the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), allegations that the
Russian government has denied. US officials have stated that the
Pentagon is preparing to launch preemptive attacks against missiles or
other targets in Russia, including with nuclear weapons, in response to
Moscow’s alleged violation of the treaty.

The announcement of major revisions to NATO’s nuclear strategy came just
days after the publication of an extensive report, “Project Atom:
Defining US Nuclear Strategy and Posture for 2025-2050,” by the Center
for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The main portions of the
report were authored by a career US government strategist and senior
CSIS analyst, Clark Murdock, a man who previously worked in high-level
strategy jobs at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Department
of Defense (DOD), the US Air Force and the National War College. The
report included contributions from a large team of researchers and
experts, including panels from the CNAS and the National Institution for
Public Policy (NIPP).

The thrust of the CSIS analysis is that the US must make its nuclear
arsenal easier to use in a war with Russia, China or some other power.
The military must adopt “a US nuclear strategy designed for twenty-first
century realities,” based on new generations of tactical warheads and
delivery systems.

More advanced tactical nuclear weapons will enable Washington to
threaten and launch small nuclear wars, without being “self-deterred” by
concerns that its actions would lead to a nuclear holocaust, the CSIS
report argues.

“The United States needs to develop and deploy more employable nuclear
weapons,” the CSIS wrote, including “low collateral damage, enhanced
radiation, earth penetration, electromagnetic pulse, and others as
technology advances.”

Such advances, the report argues, are the only way to counter the
erosion of American technological superiority by the growth of the
Chinese and Russian nuclear arsenals, together with the addition of as
many as nine new governments to the “nuclear club.”

Under the “Measured Response” theory advocated by the CSIS and Murdock,
these types of highly mobile nuclear strike forces could engage in
“controlled nuclear operations,” firing “low yield, accurate, special
effects” nukes against enemy targets without leading to a full-scale
nuclear war.

By “forward deploying a robust set of discriminate nuclear response
options,” the US could launch tactical nuclear strikes “at all rungs of
the nuclear escalation ladder,” Murdock wrote.

Such “small-scale” nuclear conflicts would inevitably claim tens, if not
hundreds of millions of lives, even assuming they did not escalate into
a global nuclear war.

The continental US, according to this theory, would be protected from
the consequences of regional-scale nuclear warfare by the deterrent
effect of Washington’s huge arsenal of high-yield strategic weapons. Any
“controlled” nuclear conflicts started by the US government, moreover,
would not involve nuclear operations targeting or launched from North
America.

“The US homeland would not be engaged in the US response to a nuclear
attack on a regional ally,” the CSIS wrote.

In barely veiled language, CSIS is suggesting that the US should utilize
allied and client governments as staging areas and arenas for
“controlled” atomic warfare.

As the product of collaboration between an extensive network of
ruling-class policy theorists, such proposals are extremely ominous and
represent a grave warning to the international working class.

There have been other calls for a significant expansion of US nuclear
weapons capacity. In comments to the Atlantic Council earlier this week,
US Congressman Mac Thornberry, the chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee, called for a “national conversation about building new
nuclear weapons.”

“That’s something we haven’t been able to even have a conversation about
for a while, but I think we’re going to have to,” Thornberry declared.

Late last year, the Obama administration announced plans for a $1
trillion, three-decades-long upgrade of nuclear weapons capability.

In the writings of the CSIS and the other discussions within the state
apparatus, there is a degree of insanity. The strategists of American
imperialism are coldly calculating the best tactics for waging and
winning nuclear war. Yet this insanity flows from the logic of American
imperialism and the drive by the financial aristocracy to control—ever
more directly through the use of military force—the entire world.