{"id":52240,"date":"2015-01-12T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=52240"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:03","slug":"january-this-month-in-nuclear-threat-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/01\/january-this-month-in-nuclear-threat-history\/","title":{"rendered":"January: This Month in Nuclear Threat History"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 5, 1991<\/strong> \u2013 Shoshone native American leaders Corbin Harney and Chief Raymond Yorrell helped organize, along with other organizations such as Greenpeace, a mass protest of 3,000 people at the Nevada Test Site in response to the approximately 700 U.S. nuclear weapons tests conducted in and around Shoshone and other native peoples\u2019 lands (of the 1,030 total U.S. nuclear test explosions conducted from 1945-1992) during the Cold War.\u00a0\u00a0 Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague global populations, most especially indigenous peoples, decades after over 2,000 nuclear bombs were exploded below ground or in the atmosphere by members of the Nuclear Club.\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d\u00a0 Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 24 and \u201c3,000 Urge Test Ban,\u201d Desert Voices:\u00a0 The Newsletter of the Nevada Desert Experience, <\/em>No. 9, Spring 1991, p. 3.)<\/p>\n

January 9, 2013<\/strong> \u2013 An article released on this date by Bob Brewin on Nextgov.com<\/em>, \u201cAir Force Eyes Return to Mobile Nuclear Missiles,\u201d triggered a number of critical responses by many nuclear experts including Philip E. Coyle, former director of the Pentagon\u2019s Operational Test and Evaluation division (1994-2001), and Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs (NSIA) at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)(2010-2011) who now serves as a Senior Science Fellow at The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC.\u00a0\u00a0 Coyle noted that, \u201cThe U.S. Air Force needs to be careful not to stir up a hornet\u2019s nest.\u00a0 Mobile basing or advanced deployment concepts could cause Russia or China to redouble their efforts on mobile basing of ICBMs and set off a new kind of arms race and weaken U.S. defenses.\u201d \u00a0Comments:\u00a0 According to numerous press accounts, including a November 10, 2014 Los Angeles Times<\/em> article as well as Pentagon press releases, a new nuclear arms race has, in fact, begun.\u00a0 Russia, which just tested the new Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile this autumn, is planning on spending $560 billion on military modernization over the next six years with one-fourth of that total devoted to modernizing its nuclear arsenal.\u00a0 The United States, is planning to spend at least $355 billion in the next few years (although analysts like Jeffrey Lewis of the Monterey Institute point out that a more realistic price tag is likely to be a trillion dollars over the next 30 years) to upgrade its strategic forces.\u00a0 \u00a0China, North Korea, Pakistan, India, and presumably Israel are doing the same.\u00a0 Unfortunately, these circumstances\u00a0equate to an increased likelihood of a nuclear confrontation somewhere in the world, including possibly a full-scale nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia.\u00a0 (Source: \u00a0W.J. Hennigan and Ralph Vartabedian. \u00a0\u201cAs U.S. Nuclear Arsenal Ages, Other Nations Have Modernized.\u201d \u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>.\u00a0 November 10, 2014.)<\/p>\n

January 10, 2000<\/strong> \u2013 Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new National Security Concept which eliminated a 1997 conception that allowed for the first use of nuclear arms only \u201cin case of a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation.\u201d\u00a0 The new 2000 nuclear strategy document criticized \u201cthe attempt to create a structure of international relations based on the dominance of western countries led by the USA\u2026with the use of military force, in violation of the fundamental norms of international law.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 It also endorsed \u201cthe use of all available means and forces, including nuclear weapons, in case of the need to repel an armed aggression when all other means of settling the crisis have been exhausted or proved ineffective.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Despite a formal ending to the Cold War with the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the fact that both the U.S. and Russia still possess thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert status and that those nuclear sabers have been rattled over Ukraine very recently, the world still remains highly at risk of a nuclear Armageddon.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 43.)<\/p>\n

January 12, 1954<\/strong> \u2013 President Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced the U.S. policy of massive (nuclear) retaliation \u201cin response to communist aggression anywhere in the world\u2026applied at places and with means of [our] own choosing.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Comments:\u00a0 While U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear deterrence is not as heavy-handed as during the heart of the Cold War in the Fifties, a nuclear confrontation between the two nations is a frighteningly real possibility today.\u00a0\u00a0 Therefore each nation\u2019s leaders should join a renewed global push to eliminate all nuclear weapons before it is too late.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 27.)<\/p>\n

January 14, 1994<\/strong> \u2013 At a strategic summit meeting in Moscow, U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin reaffirmed their support for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by calling for the completion of the treaty, \u201cas soon as possible.\u201d\u00a0 Within a few years, France (January 27, 1996) and China (July 29, 1996) joined the U.S. and Russia in a nuclear test ban moratorium, the United Nations\u2019 General Assembly voted to adopt the CTBT (158-3) on September 10, 1996, and two weeks later, the first world leaders, with President Clinton being the very first, signed the CTBT.\u00a0 Britain and France became the first declared nuclear weapon states to ratify the treaty by April 6, 1998, but the U.S. Senate rejected ratification on October 13, 1999 by a 51-48 vote.\u00a0 On April 21, 2000, the Russian Duma approved ratification of the CTBT by 298 votes to 74, with three abstentions.\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Despite the Ukraine-Crimea Crisis, it is hoped that the new 114th<\/sup> U.S. Congress will recognize that, with an extensive international monitoring system in place as well as improved national technical means of verification,\u00a0 ratifying the CTBT is essential to U.S.-Russian and global strategic stability.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d\u00a0 Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 16, 18-19, 20, 22.)<\/p>\n

January 16, 1984<\/strong> \u2013 In a nationally televised address, President Ronald Reagan stated, \u201c\u2026my dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the face of the Earth.\u201d\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Ten months earlier on March 23, 1983, the President expressed similar sentiments while at the same time announcing a multi-trillion dollar long-term effort to intercept ballistic missiles in the atmosphere or in outer space \u2013 the Strategic Defense Initiative, or \u201cStar Wars\u201d as media critics dubbed the plan, which triggered yet another round of destabilizing offensive and defensive nuclear weapons\/missile defense developments that continue until this day. \u00a0(Source:\u00a0 President Reagan\u2019s Speech at the White House, January 16, 1984 at www.reagan.utexas.edu\/archives\/speeches\/1984\/11684a.htm accessed December 9<\/a>, 2014.)<\/p>\n

January 25, 1995<\/strong> \u2013 The launching of a joint U.S.-Norwegian scientific sounding rocket, the Black Brant XII, weeks after Russian authorities had been notified of the impending mission, almost caused World War III!\u00a0\u00a0 The missile, which appeared to Russian radar technicians as matching the signature of a U.S. Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile intended to blind their defenses in preparation for a first strike, triggered a nuclear alert.\u00a0 Thankfully, a sober, rational President Boris Yeltsin resisted virulent, time-urgent recommendations from at least one of his military advisers to immediately launch a nuclear counterattack.\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0\u00a0 Hundreds of false nuclear alerts and Broken Arrow nuclear accidents over the decades since the dawn of the nuclear age, have taken the world to the edge of global catastrophe.\u00a0 This state of affairs represents possibly the most powerful rationale for eliminating all global nuclear arsenals.\u00a0 \u00a0(Source: \u00a0CATO Policy Analysis No. 399<\/em>, Dr. Geoffrey Forden, March 3, 2001.)<\/p>\n

January 26, 2012<\/strong> \u2013 President Obama\u2019s Blue Ribbon Commission on America\u2019s Nuclear Future, chaired by Lee Hamilton and Brent Scowcroft, issued its final report on this date.\u00a0 The report did not address critical issues such as the tremendous threat of radioactive waste and routine nuclear reactor operations to American\u2019s health and environmental safety (such as groundwater contamination, increased cancer risk, and the threat to the human gene pool).\u00a0 It did however conclude that, \u201cNo currently available or reasonably foreseeable reactor and fuel cycle technology developments including advances in reprocessing and recycling technologies have the potential to fundamentally alter the waste management challenge this nation confronts over at least the next several decades if not longer.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 The tremendously out-of-control civilian and military nuclear waste sequestration, remediation, and permanent storage conundrum, as well as the terrorist targeting potential, the economic unsustainability of civilian nuclear power, and the potential for nuclear proliferation points logically to an accelerated phase-out of global civilian nuclear power plants (with a very limited exception possibly for nuclear fusion research) over the next decade.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Blue Ribbon Commission on America\u2019s Nuclear Future, January 26, 2012, www.brc.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/documents\/brc_finalreport_jan2012.pdf<\/a>, accessed on December 9, 2014.)<\/p>\n

January 27, 1967<\/strong> \u2013 The Outer Space Treaty, prohibiting the placement of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in orbit, on the moon, or on any celestial body, was signed on this date.\u00a0 The treaty entered into force on October 10, 1967.\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Although this treaty has served mankind well, there remain suspicions that orbiting nuclear weapons can be easily and quickly deployed by the U.S., Russia, and other powers.\u00a0 The Russians experimented with the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) during the Cold War.\u00a0 Unfortunately, U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty in 2002 spawned a renewed strategic defensive race and revived asymmetrical responses such as FOBS while also accelerating a push for the modernization of U.S. and Russian strategic offensive arsenals.\u00a0 As part of the Global Zero push to eliminate all nuclear weapons, the Outer Space Treaty should be broadened to prohibit the launch, transfer or deployment of WMD through the atmosphere and outer space as well.\u00a0\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 1.)<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wagingpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 2015 – Nuclear Threat in History<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}