Tag: Russia
No first use of nuclear weapons
Pantelis Ikonomou, former IAEA inspector, writes:
Last week, the No-First-Use Act (NFU) was reintroduced in the US Senate to establish in law that the US policy is NOT to use nuclear weapons first in any conflict. This is a key initiative necessary to advance NFU policy in the US, in its nuclear allied countries (NATO, Japan. South Korea, and Australia), and ultimately in all other nuclear armed states.
President Obama, who had considered ruling out the first use of a nuclear weapon in a conflict, eventually abandoned the idea. Allied countries maintained the option of first use of US nuclear weapons was needed for their protection. There was conern in the US that NFU would embolden Russia and China.
President Biden could now run into these same problems. Armed conflicts in the NATO vicinity have grown stronger. Strategic tensions between the US and the two nuclear powers, Russia and China, are escalating. There is no clarity about their policy on first use of nuclear weapons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated “Our nuclear weapons doctrine does not provide for a pre-emptive strike…” however, “… we are prepared and will use nuclear weapons only when we know for certain that some potential aggressor is attacking Russia, our territory.”
Beijing in its White Defence Charter 2011 underlines the posture of maintaining a “minimum nuclear deterrent,” with the commitment of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, but without a detailed analysis of the term “minimum.”
The need for NFU nuclear doctrine is becoming more important than ever. Continuously modernized nuclear arsenals are getting more capable. They can wipe out humanity and civilization on the planet (more than once). The probability of nuclear Armageddon due to accident or miscalculation is dangerously increasing.
Unfortunately, global peace and mankind’s existence depend currently upon an irrational equilibrium, that of Mutually Assured Destruction. The deadlock of of nuclear deterrence ought now be obvious to all: sensible superpower leaders, their expert advisors, and the terrified world public.
There is no better moment for a great world power, such as the US, to take the leadership and steer the world towards the adoption of global NFU. Doing so would challenge the Russians and Chinese to clarify their doctrines, lower the risk of nuclear war, and pave the way for nuclear disarmament. Nuclear weapons, the most dangerous invention the world has ever seen, must be prevented from ever being used again. May the US Senate open the door to this way.
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Stevenson’s army, April 22
– Centcom seeks carrier to cover Afghan withdrawal.
– Taliban spreadsheet lists allied violations of ceasefire.
– US gives Iran list of possible sanctions relief.
– DOD investigating possible Russian directed energy attacks on US troops.
-Trial balloon: NYT says Biden will label Armenian killings “genocide.”
– NYT has its tick-tock on refugee numbers snafu.
– WaPo details Kerrry’s work on climate. Says he flies commercial.
– House passes bill to limit Saudi arms sales.
– SFRC bill would give more details on executive agreements.
– Frank Hoffman analyzes 3 defense budget options.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
And then more:
– This is peak hearing season in Congress, and a good time to catch up on defense and foreign policy issues. For example, look at D Briefs column yesterday. You can also locate hearings at the regular LOC site.
– SFRC approved a bipartisan bill to counter China.
– Politico has State’s ambassadorial bid list along with an explanation: the countries not listed may be ones slated for political appointees.
The document is a snapshot and could change, of course. But if a country is not listed, it’s likely for one of two reasons: the post is currently occupied by a member of the Foreign Service and that person won’t rotate out until after 2022; or it’s being reserved for Biden to give to a campaign donor or another political ally.
– Chevron opposes Myanmar sanctions.
– Chad rebels prepared for war in Libya.
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Stevenson’s army, April 21
– WaPo explains the State/HHS fight over refugees and Biden’s overruling Blinken on admissions.
– NYT says Biden has to choose between solar panels and punishing China for human rights violations.
– Centcom commander says fighting terrorists will be harder after Afghan withdrawal.
– US loses air superiority to drones.
– Russia is fighting ISIS in Syria.
– Chad president’s death raises many issues.
– Iran shaken by Israeli attacks.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, April 20
– New Zealand doesn’t went to expand Five Eyes [as a student urged in a policy memo] or even to join Biden’s “alliance of democracies.”
– Ukraine worries about Russian military moves and leaks memo.
– USAF sends planes to Poland.
-FP says Philippines is releasing more details about China maritime activities.
– FP writers urge new hotlines for crisis management.
-NYT surveys new research showing deepening US sectarian divisions. The two parties have not only become more ideologically polarized — they have simultaneously sorted along racial, religious, educational, generational and geographic lines. Partisanship has become a “mega-identity.”
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, April 16
Longtime WaPo reporter Walter Pincus tells how technology is driving intelligence.
FDD has new site following Biden foreign policy.
NYT explains thinking behind Russia sanctions. Russia retaliates.
NYT notes new Russia sanctions will affect Russian banks.
Lawfare parses sanctions in terms of cyber policy. Politico says US won’t send ships into Black Sea. Administration approves new arms sale to UAE.
NYT says US military is looking at neighboring sites after Afghan withdrawal. Trust in US military drops slightly, Bloomberg reports.
Biden keeps Trump’s low refugee cap.
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A Bronx cheer for a dumb idea
COVID-19 isn’t the only epidemic in the Balkans. There is an even more deadly one: proposals to move borders. There is no vaccine to prevent their spread. Below is a good pictorial summary, courtesy of Rada Trajkovic, who tweets:
Balkans corrupt, criminalised, illiberal leaders have been so emboldened by their unfettered domestic power grabs that they now believe they can play a (bloody) game with our borders. Perfect distraction from their poor domestic records & a way to destabilise the EU for decades.
Greater Albania, Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia: the wet dream of Franjo Tudjman, Slobodan Milosevic, Hasan Pristina. Everyone wins!
But of course there are losers, both on this map and beyond. The Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims to the American press, no matter how unreligious) get an indefensible, rump state surrounded by sworn enemies and ripe for radicalization. The Kosovo Albanians lose their state and become the northeastern province of Albania. The major Serb Orthodox sites south of the Ibar River in Kosovo would no longer be sustainable. Macedonia loses perhaps 40% of its territory. Several hundred thousand people (maybe half a million or more?) on the “wrong” side of ethnically defined new borders would have to relocate or run the risks associated with minorities in ethnically defined states.
Beyond this map the repurcussions would also be dramatic: once the principle of not changing borders to accommodate ethnic differences is breached, the Russian position on South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Crimea and Donbas in Ukraine would be vastly strengthened. Russian challenges to the terriorial integrity of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would not be far behind.
All of this is well understood in the United States and Europe. Few in Washington, London, or Brussels are interested in opening Pandora’s Box. But the West is distracted. The US is confronting a long list of foreign policy challenges. The EU is preoccupied with COVID-19, economic recession, and the aftermath of Brexit. Ditto the UK. Chancellor Merkel, the EU’s trump card when it comes to pursuing liberal democracy in the Balkans and many other matters, is getting ready to retire without a worthy heir apparent.
The current preference in the West is not to move borders but to make them less cumbersome. This proposition goes under the heading of “mini-Schengen,” an effort on the regional level to mirror the EU’s borderless Schengen area. Removing visas, tariffs and non-tariff barriers while shortening the waiting time for trucks at the all too frequent border stations in the Balkans could improve efficiency and hasten the day that the Balkans can join the “maxi” Schengen area.
That is a much easier and more promising prospect than moving half a million people, many of them against their will. Violence is the only force that could achieve what the map above projects. American and European troops would either need to suppress murder and mayhem in Kosovo, Bosnia, and North Macedonia or evacuate, something that would no doubt be celebrated in Moscow. Nor would violence stop there: the Serbs of Montenegro would seek union with Serbia while the Bosniaks of Serbia’s Sandjak seek union with rump Bosnia, pushing aside people of other ethnicities in the effort. Perhaps the Russians could use renewed Balkan violence as a pretext for deploying their own troops, as they did recently to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In short: the map above is a proposal for death and destruction, instability, NATO and European embarrassment, and still another Russian win, in addition to ensuring the ethnic nationalist political stranglehold in the Balkans for another generation. Those who propose such an outrage merit oppropbrium from real democracies. I hope the US and EU can spare a few moments from their many other priorities to give this distraction the diplomatic equivalent of the Bronx cheer it deserves:
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