While elected officials of our increasingly dysfunctional democracy debated “memogate,” the world became more dangerous as Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review was officially released on Friday, February 2. Ignoring scientific studies of the past decade and growing global sentiment by the world’s non-nuclear states to abolish nuclear weapons, with this announcement the new arms race begins and the Cold War resumes.
Scientific studies have demonstrated the potential catastrophic global environmental effects following a limited regional nuclear war, using just 100 12-kiloton Hiroshima-size weapons (of the 16,300 in the arsenals of the nine nuclear nations, which is approximately one-half of just one percent) that would potentially kill two billion people.
This new Doctrine proposes the development of two new generations of nuclear weapons including “low-yield nukes,” Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM) and the long-term development of Submarine Launched Cruise Missiles (SLCM). These “low-yield nukes” are 20 kt—same as the larger Nagasaki size bombs that killed more than 70,000 people. Seemingly ignoring the fact that nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons regardless of size with the same horrific initial devastation and radioactive fallout, these weapons are proposed to demonstrate America’s resolve in deterring nuclear attack.
In fact this circular argument of smaller nuclear weapons being a greater deterrence actually increases the likelihood of their use. This further promotes the mythology of deterrence which actually drives all nine nuclear states to follow suit. Coupled with the Trump Doctrine’s new non-nuclear circumstances under which nuclear attack would be launched, such as certain cyberattacks, the risk of nuclear war is dramatically increased, bringing the imminent threat of nuclear war to the center of US military policy and foreign policy. This fact was also acknowledged in the recent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ movement of their nuclear Doomsday clock to two minutes till midnight, the closest since World War II.
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