In an astounding feat of double-think, the United States is accusing China of expanding its nuclear arsenal. As Karl Grossman points out in the following interview, China is increasingly being surrounded by U.S. military installations and missiles across the Pacific region – and is the party that is actively being threatened. In a recent editorial, we detailed how Beijing is also subjected to relentless hostile rhetoric as the U.S. and its allies ramp up a reckless aggressive agenda towards China.

China has a fraction of the nuclear arsenal possessed by the United States (and Russia). Yet this crucial context is omitted when Washington accuses China of expanding its military forces, including possibly nuclear weapons. Grossman highlights the incongruity from the United States undertaking a trillion-dollar expansion of its nuclear forces in blatant violation of legally binding disarmament commitments. The U.S. is pushing the world to the brink of catastrophe. Everything it says about China is self-projection of its own criminal malignancy.

Karl Grossman’s biography includes being a full Professor of Journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. He is an award-winning film-maker, author and renowned international expert on space weaponization, having addressed UN conferences and other forums on the subject. He is a founding director (in 1992) of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. Grossman is author of the ground-breaking book, Weapons in Space. He is also an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

Interview

Question: Recent U.S. media reports citing satellite images claimed that China was greatly expanding its nuclear arsenal with hundreds of new missile silos under construction in the west of the country. In your expert view, how did you assess those satellite images? Did they accurately indicate alleged new silos as U.S. media reported?

Karl Grossman: They appear to be missile silos. The first article reporting on this was written by Joby Warrick in The Washington Post in June but, importantly, he attributed this conclusion to researchers. His article began: “Researchers using commercial satellite images spotted 119 construction sites where they say China is building silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

The researchers cited in this first story were from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. It is not a right-wing entity seeking to encourage war. Its major funders, for example, include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation which states an aim of “decreasing nuclear risk” of war, and the Carnegie Corporation which claims, “We are a grant-making foundation, investing in knowledge that inspires informed action in democracy, education, and international peace since 1911.”

Reporter Joby Warrick has a long career as an excellent journalist. He’s a former member of the investigative team at the Post. He’s been at the newspaper since 1966. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his book: Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS.

His and subsequent reporting has been rebutted by reports that assert the sites are not being prepared for missile silos but for wind turbines. These articles have appeared in media including India-based TFI Global which ran a story headlined: “China’s 100 new silos for nuclear missiles turn out to be wind turbines.”

If, in fact, the claimed missile sites – and since Warrick’s story three locations have been pointed to by U.S. media – turn out to be sites for wind farms, a huge error has been made which could, indeed, lead to tragedy. It would have encouraged saber rattling by the U.S., a nuclear arms race between the U.S. and China, and furthered the possibility of war. If, however, they are sites for missiles, the articles that report that they are sites for wind turbines will be shown to be based on an effort at disinformation.

Question: The sudden appearance of the U.S. reports and the lack of follow-up seems strange, suggesting the initial highly publicized claims of China’s nuclear expansion are not substantiated. What explains the sudden – albeit fleeting – interest from the American side?

Karl Grossman: There has been follow-up, but far, far more of a follow-up could and should be done. Particularly deficient if these are missiles sites under construction would be full reporting on

the “why” of the situation. The New York Times ran a subsequent article involving what was described as the discovery of a second missile site field based on analysis by nuclear experts at the Federation of American Scientists. It was headlined: “A 2^nd New Nuclear Missile Base for China, and Many Questions About Strategy” and carried a sub-head: “Is China scrapping its ‘minimum deterrent’ strategy and joining an arms race? Or is it looking to create a negotiating card, in case it is drawn into arms control negotiations?”

This piece, by William J. Broad, a Times science journalist, and David E. Sanger, a national security correspondent, both also Pulitzer Prize recipients, asked in its body: “It may signify a vast expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal – the cravings of an economic and technological superpower to show that, after decades of restraint, it is ready to wield an arsenal the size of Washington’s, or Moscow’s.”

But as Alice Slater, a member of the board of the organization World Without War, an attorney and long an anti-war and anti-nuclear activist, in a letter yet unpublished to the Times, says the newspaper “fails to give any context as to what may be influencing China to expand its missile placements now. Despite China’s eminently sensible policy to keep its current stockpile of 350 bombs decoupled from their missiles, as well as its announced policy never to be the first to use nuclear weapons, as compared to the U.S. and Russia each with some 1,500 bombs mounted on missiles ready to be fired in minutes, there is no acknowledgement by the Times of the aggressive posture the U.S. has taken towards China. It started with President Obama’s pivot to Asia, announced by Hillary Clinton, up to current U.S. plans for a Pacific Deterrence Initiative to establish a network of precision-strike missiles to surround China including missile defenses around Taiwan, Okinawa, and the Philippines, and into western Pacific including Japan, Guam, and Indonesia.”

Slater’s letter continues: “If we want to end the nuclear arms race and realize the new promise of the recently adopted Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the Times should bring some sanity to the conversation by reminding the public of the context in which this new ‘provocation’ from China is taking place. In the flames of this new demonization of China, we should remember the famous cartoonist, Walt Kelly, during the height of the McCarthy scare era, who had his famous Pogo Possum saying, ‘We met the enemy and he is us!’”

Moreover, there has been virtually no reporting in U.S. ever on why China, far more than other nations, feels itself threatened: a history of what the Chinese describe as the “Century of Humiliation.” Visiting China as a member for 20 years of the Commission on Disarmament Education, Conflict Resolution and Peace of the United Nations and the International Association of University Presidents, I received an earful about this period between 1839 and 1949 that was replete with interventions in and invasions of China by western powers and Japan. China is super-sensitive along these lines, thus its being surrounded by U.S. military installations causes greatly added concern.

Question: China did not officially comment on the U.S. claims of nuclear expansion. Some Chinese media reports speculated that the satellite images cited by the U.S. were related to new wind farms. In any case, if for argument’s sake, China was expanding its nuclear forces as alleged, how does that alleged expansion compare with the well-documented and self-declared U.S. nuclear forces upgrade? The U.S. is committed to a $1 trillion revamp of its nuclear triad over the next three decades, is that correct?

Karl Grossman: Yes, that is correct. Indeed, it is to be even more than $1 trillion. As national security analyst Mark Thompson wrote in March on his website POGO (for Project on Government Oversight) in an article headlined “Joe Biden’s Nuclear Triad, Looming choices on doomsday weapons.” He wrote: “Believe it or not, we’re currently amid a triad of nuclear triads. How President Joe Biden juggles them will make clear if the atomic status quo continues on autopilot, as it has for 70 years, or if he’s willing to put his hand on the tiller and lighten the nuclear shadow that most of us have lived under our entire lives.”

Thompson goes on: “The U.S. nuclear triad is a Cold War construct, consisting of three ‘legs’  – bombers, submarines, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is capable of delivering nuclear weapons pretty much anywhere in the world at any time. Now there’s a second triad consisting of the world’s big-league nuclear players. Originally limited to the U.S. and the Soviet Union (now Russia), the Trump administration pushed hard to incorporate China into the superpower arms control club. But with only an estimated 320 warheads compared to the 5,800 held by the U.S. and 6,375 held by Russia, China wasn’t interested. Nonetheless, China’s push for a more capable nuclear force makes it a major nuclear player….

“Unfortunately, the nation [the U.S.] has treated its nuclear force the same way it has treated its infrastructure: Both are falling apart. So, after decades of kicking the warheads down the road, the Pentagon wants to rebuild all three legs of the nuclear triad simultaneously. It plans on spending up to $140 billion for a new crop of ICBMs, nearly $100 billion for B-21 bombers, and $128 billion for new submarines. The cost of buying and operating these weapons: Nearly $1.7 trillion through 2046, according to the independent Arms Control Association.”

To quote further: “The post-Cold War triad bolsters the notion that nuclear war is deterrable, or – failing that – winnable, so long as the nation continues to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into it. But every day that delusion persists, the chances grow that our long-standing nuclear shadow could explode into a war pitching the world into an even darker atomic eclipse.

“Too dramatic? No more so than a handful of terrorists destroying a pair of the country’s tallest skyscrapers. Or one of the world’s richest nation’s having one of the poorest showings in handling a global pandemic. Or U.S. citizens storming the Capitol seeking to overturn an election whose outcome they don’t like.

“That’s hardly a reassuring track record. In fact, it should make one wonder how long can the world’s A-bomb luck last. Candidate Biden declared that President Biden ‘will work to maintain a strong, credible deterrent while reducing our reliance and excessive expenditure on nuclear weapons.’ Your move, Mr. President,” added Thompson.

Three months later, Politico, in June, headlined an article: “Biden goes ‘full steam ahead’ on Trump’s nuclear expansion despite campaign rhetoric.” It began: “President Joe Biden ran on a platform opposing new nuclear weapons, but his first defense budget backs two controversial new projects put in motion by former President Donald Trump and also doubles down on the wholesale upgrade of all three legs of the [nuclear] arsenal.”

The piece quoted Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund, which it identified as a “leading disarmament group: “The decision this budget is sending is full steam ahead. [And that] We like what Trump was doing and we want to do more of it. It is not the message Biden was sending as a candidate. What we have here is Biden essentially buying into the Trump nuclear plan, in some cases going beyond that.”

A message that continues to be valid was an opinion piece in The Washington Post in 2019, “China is not an enemy.” Written by several people, including J. Stapleton Roy, a former U.S. ambassador to China, and Susan A. Thornton, former U.S. acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, it declared: “We are deeply concerned about the growing deterioration in U.S. relations with China, which we believe does not serve American or global interests. Although we are very troubled by Beijing’s recent behavior, which requires a strong response, we also believe that many U.S. actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations.”

It continued: “China’s troubling behavior in recent years – including its turn toward greater domestic repression, increased state control over private firms, failure to live up to several of its trade commitments, greater efforts to control foreign opinion and more aggressive foreign policy – raises serious challenges for the rest of the world. These challenges require a firm and effective U.S. response, but the current approach to China is fundamentally counterproductive.

“We do not believe Beijing is an economic enemy or an existential national security threat that must be confronted in every sphere; nor is China a monolith, or the views of its leaders set in stone. Although its rapid economic and military growth has led Beijing toward a more assertive international role, many Chinese officials and other elites know that a moderate, pragmatic and genuinely cooperative approach with the West serves China’s interests. Washington’s adversarial stance toward Beijing weakens the influence of those voices in favor of assertive nationalists. With the right balance of competition and cooperation, U.S. actions can strengthen those Chinese leaders who want China to play a constructive role in world affairs.

“U.S. efforts to treat China as an enemy and decouple it from the global economy will damage the United States’ international role and reputation and undermine the economic interests of all nations. U.S. opposition will not prevent the continued expansion of the Chinese economy, a greater global market share for Chinese companies and an increase in China’s role in world affairs. Moreover, the United States cannot significantly slow China’s rise without damaging itself. If the United States presses its allies to treat China as an economic and political enemy, it will weaken its relations with those allies and could end up isolating itself rather than Beijing….

“Moreover, a government intent on limiting the information and opportunities available to its own citizens and harshly repressing its ethnic minorities will not garner meaningful international support nor succeed in attracting global talent. The best American response to these practices is to work with our allies and partners to create a more open and prosperous world in which China is offered the opportunity to participate. Efforts to isolate China will simply weaken those Chinese intent on developing a more humane and tolerant society.

“Although China has set a goal of becoming a world-class military by midcentury, it faces immense hurdles to operating as a globally dominant military power. However, Beijing’s growing military capabilities have already eroded the United States’ long-standing military preeminence in the Western Pacific. The best way to respond to this is not to engage in an open-ended arms race centered on offensive, deep-strike weapons and the virtually impossible goal of reasserting full-spectrum U.S. dominance up to China’s borders.”

Question: How does the U.S. upgrade of its nuclear forces fit with its commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)?

Karl Grossman: The U.S. nuclear weapons “modernization” program violates the disarmament component of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Major objectives of the NPT, an international treaty which took effect in 1970, include preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and achieving nuclear disarmament.

As Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in an essay titled “Nuclear Weapons Modernization: A Threat to the NPT” written during the Obama administration, when the nuclear weapons modernization program began: “The United States has embarked on an overhaul of its entire nuclear weapons enterprise, including development of new weapons delivery systems and life extension programs for and modernization of all its enduring nuclear warhead types and nuclear weapons production facilities. Moreover, rather than constraining the role of nuclear weapons, the Obama administration’s 2013 nuclear weapons employment strategy reaffirmed the existing posture of a nuclear triad of forces on high alert.”

Kristensen related how, in addition to improving ICBMs, “beginning in 2017, the Navy will begin to deploy a modified version of the Trident II D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile on ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) to extend its service life through 2040. The Air Force has begun LEPs [Life Extension Programs] for the air-launched cruise missile and the B-2 and B-52 bombers.

He wrote: “Beyond these upgrades of existing weapons, work is under way to design new weapons to replace the current ones. The Navy is designing a new class of 12 SSBNs, the Air Force is examining whether to build a mobile ICBM or extend the service life of the existing Minuteman III, and the Air Force has begun development of a new, stealthy long-range bomber and a new nuclear-capable tactical fighter-bomber. Production of a new guided ‘standoff’ nuclear bomb, which would be able to glide toward a target over a distance, is under way, and the Air Force is developing a new long-range nuclear cruise missile to replace the current one.

“As is often the case with modernizations, many of these programs will introduce improved or new military capabilities to the weapons systems. For example, the LEP for the B61 gravity bomb will add a guided tail kit to one of the existing B61 types to increase its accuracy.”

These programs “indicate a commitment to a scale of nuclear modernization that appears to be at odds with the Obama administration’s arms reduction and disarmament agenda. This modernization plan is broader and more expensive than the Bush administration’s plan and appears to prioritize nuclear capabilities over conventional ones. The Obama administration entered office with a strong arms control and disarmament agenda, but despite efforts by some officials and agencies to reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons, the administration may ironically end up being remembered more for its commitment to prolonging and modernizing the traditional nuclear arsenal.”

The Trump administration continued with and expanded on this nuclear weapons modernization scheme and the Biden administration is also continuing with it and expanding it – despite the NPT and its commitment to nuclear weapons disarmament.

Question: Is Russia at fault over its commitments to the NPT?

Karl Grossman: Russia’s nuclear weapons modernization program is also not keeping with the disarmament component of the NPT.

Question: Washington has been pushing for the inclusion of China in arms-control discussions with Russia. Is that a viable proposition from the U.S. side?

Karl Grossman: Most of all, there must be talks to discuss and understand that nuclear war is un-winnable, that a nuclear war must never be fought – and far more real further action towards disarmament is critical.

As former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Schultz has written: “Nuclear weapons were, and are, the gravest threat to humanity’s survival. Their effect in preventing wars has been overrated and reports of the damage they cause tend to be brushed aside… To depend on nuclear deterrence indefinitely into the future, especially when other means of deterrence are available, is foolhardy.”

Beyond foolhardy. At the start of this year, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the “Doomsday Clock” at 100 seconds to midnight – “the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse and the same time we set in 2020.”

Among the reasons stated: “In the past year, countries with nuclear weapons continued to spend vast sums on nuclear modernization programs, even as they allowed proven risk-reduction achievements in arms control and diplomacy to wither or die… Governments in the United States, Russia, and other countries appear to consider nuclear weapons more-and-more usable, increasing the risks of their actual use.”

As Physicians for Social Responsibility have stated: “Nuclear weapons make us less, not more, safe – in fact, they pose one of the gravest threats, along with climate change, to human health and survival. That’s why PSR is committed to advancing policies and solutions that advance bilateral arms control, reduce the risk of or prevent nuclear war, reduce or eliminate funding for nuclear weapons production and proliferation, and reduce or eliminate nuclear arsenals. Our goal is the total elimination of nuclear weapons and ending the nuclear threat for good.”

Another anti-war group in the U.S. is Back from the Brink: The Call to Prevent Nuclear War. As it describes itself, it’s a “grassroots initiative seeking to fundamentally change U.S. nuclear weapons policy and lead us away from the dangerous path we are on.” It “calls on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by: 1. Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first. 2. Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. president to launch a nuclear attack. 3. Taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert. 4. Cancelling the plan to replace its entire nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons. 5. Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

Question: The expansion of U.S. military forces (conventional and nuclear) near China’s borders, in particular in the South China Sea, does not bode well for arms control since Beijing is likely to feel it is the side that is facing an increasing offensive threat. How does the balance of forces in that region look to you?

Karl Grossman: It is putting the world on the brink.

Nuclear weapons policies and the trillions of U.S. dollars proposed to fund them come into sharp focus this month and through next year as Congress and the Biden Administration engage the nuclear weapons threat.

A threat viewed as existential by bombmakers, presidents, and arms control activists since the first nuclear weapons were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, nuclear weapons deployed today have a capacity to destroy all life on Earth.

Salvaging U.S. nuclear policy from the wreckage left by the Trump Administration, President Biden quickly renewed for five years the New START Treaty which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads at 1,550 each for the U.S. and Russia

President Biden has also entered negotiations with Iran to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or the Iran nuclear deal) which Trump abrogated in 2017. The JCPOA had been negotiated by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — China, Russia, France, Great Britain, the U.S. plus Germany –all of whom remain committed to it.

All this is a good beginning on the nuclear front for the new Administration, but historic leadership will be required of Biden and members of Congress in the coming months, as Appropriations Committees consider spending up to $1.5 trillion on “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Fiscal 2022 budget scheduled for presentation May 24 will include provision for a newly designed Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, GBSD—which could wind up costing more than $140 billion, and $250 billion over three decades.] The GBSD, would replace the Minuteman III ICBM’s currently deployed in silos in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming

Democratic Senator Ed Markey (Massachusetts) and Representative Ro Khanna (17^th District, California) have filed bills in Congress to transfer funds from the new ICBMs toward research for universal vaccines against the Novelcorona virus. The Investing in Cures Before Missiles (ICMB) Act, according to Markey, “makes clear that we can begin to phase out the Cold War nuclear posture that risks accidental nuclear war while still deterring adversaries and assuring allies, and redirect those savings to the clear and present dangers posed by coronaviruses and other emerging and infectious diseases. The devastation sown by COVID-19 would pale in comparison to that of even a limited nuclear war. The ICBM Act signals that we intend to make the world safe from nuclear weapons and prioritize spending that saves lives, rather than ends them.”

Proponents of GBSD including its general contractor Northrop Grumman and major sub-contractors have spent at least one hundred nineteen million dollars of lobbying Congress in 2019-2021; the military industrial complex on parade.

Other initiatives would remove from “hair trigger alert” status controlling the four hundred Minuteman III missiles currently deployed in western States. “Hair trigger alert” and “launch on warning” are relics of the Cold War which give decision makers at most ten minutes to evaluate the validity of the warning of a nuclear attack, and to launch hundreds of the U.S. ICBMs before the enemy’s missile reach their targets.

Dozens of false warnings have scrambled B-52 jets loaded with megatons of nuclear bombs, raised Minuteman missiles to highest alert, roused sleeping presidents out of bed, or caused low ranking military personnel to disobey command and control orders to defuse a frantic but false alarm.

Such false warnings consist of flocks of flying swans, a bear climbing a missile pad security fence, the rising moon, the sun’s reflection on an unusual cloud formation, a defective computer chip costing twenty-five cents, and practice tapes of a nuclear attack unwittingly communicated in Hawaii as “This is Not a Drill”.

China has removed “launch on warning” status from its three hundred nuclear armed missiles. China’s Director of Arms Control, Fu Cong, in 2019 called for all nuclear armed nations to remove their nuclear armed missiles from hair trigger alert, which China considers too risky. The consequences of an accidental launch of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic. Standing down thousands of nuclear weapons from “launch on warning” makes all the sense in the world and could bolster the U.S.’ bona fides in nuclear weapons reduction negotiations going forward.

George Schultz, former Secretary of State, and editor of “The War That Should Never Be Fought”, advised that our adversaries are not always wrong, the U.S. is not always right, and verifiable nuclear weapons treaties are the only alternative to escalating nuclear weapons competition and eventual calamity. Nuclear weapons negotiation can bridge intractable geo-political conflicts, build mutual trust, and save taxpayers trillions of dollars.

American administrations rejected Soviet President Gorbachev’s offer to eliminate all nuclear weapons. President George Bush abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, spawning a new nuclear arms race, and Trump withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty, returning Europe to a no man’s land vulnerable to tactical nuclear weapons.

No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons, could provide a logical first step away from the fifty- year policy of “deterrents” and mutually assured destruction, universally referred to by the most appropriate of acronyms — MAD. MAD is designed to discourage adversaries from attacking by assuring that the aggressor, principally the Soviet Union/Russia, or vice versa the U.S. would suffer devastating retaliation. In his inimitable style Robert McNamara calculated the level of assured strategic destruction to be thirty percent of Russia’s population, and seventy percent of Russia’s economic capacity, ie. one hundred million Russian dead etc. QED, Quite Easily Done.

No First Use of nuclear weapons eliminates the need or rationale for a significant part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Much of the huge cost associated with the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal pertains to the survivability and retaliatory response to a nuclear attack. Yes, NFU means the U.S. is taking a pre-emptive nuclear first strike “off the table”

No First Use is also the subject of legislation filed in this year’s Congress (117^th) by Senator Elizabeth Warren MA and Representative Adam Smith, WA. Smith chairs the influential House Armed Services Committee and describes the NFU bill as, “The United States should never initiate a nuclear war. This bill would strengthen deterrence while reducing the chance of nuclear use due to miscalculation or misunderstanding. Codifying that deterring nuclear use is the sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal strengthens U.S. national security and would renew U.S. leadership on nuclear nonproliferation and disbarment.”

Following Trump’s perverse logic: “Why have nuclear weapons if you cannot use them?”, the Sea Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear, and low yield submarine launched cruise missiles- nuclear were created. The SLCM-N is considered redundant, provocative, and costs more than ten billion dollars. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Md, and Representative Joe Courtney, CT, have recently filed bills to defund the SLCM-N. “Installing so-called ‘tactical’ nuclear warheads on Virginia-class attack subs is a money drain that will hinder construction of three Virginia-class attack submarines per-year—which both the Obama and Trump shipbuilding plans endorsed,” said Courtney.

Literally and figuratively at the core of the plan to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal are projects to manufacture new plutonium pits for the next generation of nuclear weapons. Tens of billions of dollars would initially fund construction of plutonium bomb plants at Savannah River Site, S.C., and Los Alamos, N.M. These funds flow through the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. NNSA FY 2021 budget request of nearly twenty billion dollars is more than one-half the entire Department of Energy budget request. Whether new nuclear bombs take precedence over new clean energy technologies should be questioned in Congressional committee hearings in the coming weeks.

Regarding plutonium pit production, the DOE estimates the legacy clean- up cost of plutonium manufacture since the Manhattan Project during WWII at one trillion dollars. Some sites like Hanford WA and Rocky Flats CO are deemed polluted beyond remediation and are ruined forever.

Were Congress and the Biden Administration to pause, review or even defund any or all of the nuclear weapon programs they would also pause the nascent nuclear arms race stalking future generations. President Biden could and should send a clear signal to his deputies who will soon write the Nuclear Posture Review issued every five years. Quoting Ronald Reagan, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” should be the mantra of the Biden Nuclear Posture Review.

By introducing the American public to taboo issues such as “No First Use” of nuclear weapons, taking ICMB’s off “hair trigger alert”, debating the “sole authority” of the President to order a nuclear attack, and working for the eventual verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons, the Biden Administration would enhance its standing in the world’s arms control community–standing squandered by Trump. Biden could save hundreds of billions of dollars by transferring funds from nuclear armed missiles to research to prevent the next pandemic, or cybersecurity. And maybe, if our luck still holds, he could avoid destroying human civilization and much of life on Earth.

Another arena for Biden administration action is the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — the cornerstone of nuclear arms control. Signed in 1968, it is reviewed every five years, this year in Vienna in August. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and U.S. arms control negotiators will bring enhanced credibility to the table if they eschew Trump’s jingoistic nuclear weapons policies.

Article VI of the NPT commits all signatories to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons from their arsenals. The massive nuclear arms build-up the U.S. is considering defies the spirit and letter of NPT’s Article VI.

Since the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, eminent scientists like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, philosophers like Bertrand Russell, religious leaders like the Dalai Lama and many Catholic Popes, Quakers and Imams—in fact, the great majority of the world’s nations and peoples–have demanded that international treaties curtail and eliminate nuclear weapons from the Earth.

Their efforts have led to decreasing nuclear weapons from 70,000 to the current 16,000, ninety percent of which are held in Russian and U.S. arsenals Forty percent of the world’s population now live in the five Nuclear Weapons Free Zones established under Article VII of the NPT. And nuclear weapons are now illegal in the fifty- four countries that have ratified the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, TPNW, entered into force February 2021.

Still ominous warnings about the renewed nuclear arms race are rising. “The likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe is greater today than during the Cold War, and the public is completely unaware of the danger,” says former Secretary of Defense William Perry. The Biden Administration has quickly reached an inflexion point for U.S. nuclear weapons policy: either double down on new weapons for decades into the future or seek verifiable consequential nuclear weapons treaties.

According to Rutgers Professor Alan Robock, even a fraction of the nuclear weapons currently deployed–one hundred–could create a nuclear winter dispersing high in the atmosphere enough soot to block sunlight and make agriculture impossible, leading to famine for billions of people.

Corresponding with Albert Einstein in 1932, Sigmund Freud remarked that humans have a propensity for violence, and an instinct to kill and destroy. Only multi-lateral laws could abate man’s “death wish,” the two agreed. Such laws do exist in the form of nuclear treaties, like New START, the NPT and TPNW.

Ridding the world of these horrific weapons is not fantasy but is an imperative for world leaders. Biden stated as Vice-President, “The spread of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat facing the country and, I would argue, facing humanity. And that is why we are working both to stop their proliferation and eventually to eliminate them”.

The next few weeks and months will determine the course of nuclear weapons policy for the U.S. and the world. There are only two choices: expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal or reduce it, agree on verifiable nuclear weapons treaties with Russia and China or threaten catastrophic war, spend trillions of dollars on demonic weapons or on medicine, schools and art… life or death.

counterpunch.org

There is no guarantee of successful outcome. But at the very least there must be a commitment to work together and to dialogue. Thus, New START is a step in the right direction.

The agreement this week by the United States and the Russian Federation to extend the New START arms control treaty is a symbolic step of reengagement by both sides. That has to be welcomed.

Bilateral relations have deteriorated so badly in recent years that if the treaty was allowed to expire – as it was slated to do next week – then the world was facing the danger of a new, destructive nuclear arms race. The US had already abrogated other arms control pacts. This was the last line of defense, so to speak, for global security.

The fact that President Joe Biden made a phone call to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin – a week after his inauguration – and agreed to extend New START shows that the American side understands the vital importance of securing strategic stability.

Biden and Putin agreed to an immediate five-year extension of the treaty. Already both sides have now opened communications on arranging procedures and mechanisms.

Significantly, President Biden accepted Russia’s insistence that the treaty be extended without any conditions. Under Donald Trump, negotiations on New START had floundered because his administration was wrangling to have China included in the treaty. That was always a non-starter for Russia (and China). The New START is a bilateral treaty originally signed by the US and Russia in 2010. It has nothing to do with another party, but the wrangling by Trump was indicative of the low-caliber diplomacy of his administration and failure to appreciate issues of global security. His attitude was that of a real-estate hustler completely out of his depth.

In any case, there appears to be a return to professional diplomacy in Washington under Biden. On agreeing to a five-year extension, both sides will now have the breathing space and opportunity to formulate a longer-term accord. There may in time also evolve a means for a new broader comprehensive treaty involving other nuclear powers, including Britain, France and China.

For now though the main thing – and it is a crucial cornerstone – is that the United States and Russia have agreed to maintain limits on strategic nuclear weapons as stipulated by the New START. The two powers possess over 90 per cent of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is therefore of paramount importance for them to engage in mutual agreement for the sake of global security.

Russia’s deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov described the decision this week as mutually beneficial and the only right one to take.

“We now have a significant amount of time in order to launch and hold profound bilateral talks on the whole set of issues that influence strategic stability… So, we welcome the decision of the Biden administration to agree to our proposal of a five-year extension,” Ryabkov added.

Senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev, who is chair of the international affairs committee in the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, said the agreement on New START was a promising development. He said it may “open doors to make progress on other problems”.

The phone call between Biden and Putin this week hardly marks a “reset” in the badly frayed relations. According to the White House version of the conversation, the American president brought up other subjects, including: allegations about Russian interference in US elections, as well as allegations of Russian cyber attacks, and running assassination plots in Afghanistan against US troops. Biden also raised the arrest of convicted Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

Russia has rejected all such allegations of malign conduct as unfounded. If the American side partake in genuine discussions it will find the truth of these matters in time.

But in the absence of any dialogue then the baleful result is that tensions, misunderstanding and distrust can only grow, sending relations into further downward spiral with potentially catastrophic consequences. There are a lot of issues that both sides need to engage on in order to dispel false and unnecessary problems.

President Biden and his team have shown serious misunderstanding and misconceptions about Russia. They are infected with Russophobia as is much of the American political class. This Russophobia has been allowed to fester in large part due to the lack of diplomatic engagement by the American side. The only remedy is to talk.

In a separate address this week, President Putin told the World Economic Forum that international powers must renew communication and partnership on a mutually respectful basis. Global security and many dangerous challenges depend on world powers abandoning Cold War-type mentality and animosities.

“We are open to the broadest international cooperation, while achieving our national goals, and we are confident that cooperation on matters of the global socioeconomic agenda would have a positive influence on the overall atmosphere in global affairs, and that interdependence in addressing acute current problems would also increase mutual trust which is particularly important and particularly topical today,” said Putin.

The first step mandates the engagement in dialogue. There is no guarantee of successful outcome. But at the very least there must be a commitment to work together and to dialogue. Thus, New START is a step in the right direction.

A new study out this week reports a massive increase in civilian deaths in Afghanistan from U.S.-led air strikes under Trump’s watch. The death toll leapt by 330 per cent since he took office in early 2017, attributed to Trump and his cabinet loosening the “rules of engagement” for U.S. forces.

While the Trump administration has latterly cobbled a tenuous peace deal with the Afghan Taliban, which may see U.S. troops withdrawing from the country over the next year (or maybe not), the fact remains that this president oversaw an expansion of lethal American military power. The number of civilians killed by U.S.-led air strikes in 2019 was the highest in the nearly two-decade-old war.

Civilian deaths from U.S.-led forces were also reportedly at all-time highs in other countries where the Pentagon is intervening, including Iraq and Syria, ostensibly in the name of “fighting terrorism”. In capturing the Iraqi city of Mosul by U.S.-led Iraqi and Kurdish forces in 2017, it is estimated that 40,000 were killed in a blitzkrieg. U.S. allies were told to “kill anything that moves”.

In Syria’s Raqqa, it is reckoned the death toll from U.S. air strikes also in 2017 was at least 1,600, most of the victims buried under rubble.

In Yemen, Trump has extended that disastrous war which the Obama administration supported from the outset in 2015 by supplying air power and logistics to Saudi Arabia. Millions of children are prone to starvation and disease because of Washington’s support for the Saudi coalition aerial bombardment in Yemen. Trump has vetoed at least five Congressional bills calling for an end to American military involvement.

Bear in mind that this horrendous legacy is bestowed on a president who campaigned for election in 2016 on the basis that he would “end endless wars” and bring U.S. troops home.

Trump’s record of militarism and aggression can be measured in other ways too.

Under his watch, the Pentagon moved from its so-called war on terrorism mission to prioritizing the return of “great power rivalry” with Russia and China, nominating Moscow and Beijing explicitly as adversaries.

Trump thus did more than any other president over the past generation to revive the Cold War and its looming threat of nuclear “mutually assured destruction”.

His administration walked away from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, thereby undermining security in Europe and paving the way for the possible installation of short and medium-range tactical nuclear warheads near Russia’s borders.

Trump also recently dumped the Open Skies Treaty, furthering eroding trust over arms control and international security. He has also all but consigned the New START treaty with Russia – the last remaining Cold War-era arms control measure – to the scrapheap.

The world is consequently a much more dangerous and insecure place because of the Trump White House.

His administration has sold more offensive weapons to Taiwan, the breakaway Chinese territory, than any other past administration, thereby stoking unprecedented tensions with Beijing. China has warned it is ready to invade Taiwan militarily if its sovereignty is further undermined. Those tensions have been ratcheted up by Commander-in-Chief Trump overseeing a U.S. military build-up in the South China Sea challenging Beijing’s territorial claims as “unlawful”.

Countless other aggressions have been instigated by Trump towards Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba, among others. The use of unilateral economic sanctions – economic warfare – has increased exponentially under Trump, including against Russia, China and Iran. On Iran, Trump threatened to obliterate the country while encircling it with nuclear-capable bombers and personally ordering the assassination of its top military commander, Major-General Qassem Soleimani, in January this year.

No wonder the U.S.-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved its Doomsday Clock to the closest point before apocalyptic midnight due to the mounting tensions and risks of conflict that have been bequeathed by the Trump presidency. It’s the closest to worldwide disaster over a seven-decade period, according to the respected scientists.

Here’s the appalling thing. If this is the vile record of a president who promised to “end endless wars”, then what does that tell you about the endemic, unrelenting nature of American warmongering? A president who appeared to lament “American carnage” when he was inaugurated in January 2017 went on to wreak even more bloody carnage.

And now he is being succeeded by President-elect Joe Biden who is not vowing to end wars, but instead to “strengthen” U.S. global power and interventions. One can only shudder at the pernicious prospect of more American wars, mass killing and destruction.

One of the more interesting stories carefully hidden by the smoke being generate by civil unrest, plague and personal scandals is the continued march of American militarism. The story is particularly compelling as neither main party candidate is bothering to talk about it and there is no discussion of foreign policy even planned for the final presidential debate. Last week eccentric multi billionaire Elon Musk announced that he and the Pentagon are developing a new 7,500 m.p.h. missile capable of delivering 80 tons of military cargo nearly anywhere in the world in under an hour. It would undoubtedly be a major advanced capability catering to those military planners who envision continued U.S. intervention worldwide for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, agreement on a new START treaty that would limit the proliferation of some hypersonic weapon systems is stalled because the White House wants to include China in any deal. Beijing is not interested, particularly as Donald Trump is also claiming that Beijing will pay for the multi-trillion dollar stimulus packages that the United States will ultimately require to combat the coronavirus “… because this was not caused by our workers and our people, this was caused by China and China will pay us back in one form or another. We’re gonna take it from China. I tell you now, it’s coming out of China. They’re the ones that caused this problem.”

Indeed, China and Russia continue to be the boogeymen trotted out regularly to scare Americans. Last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s State Department issued a statement warning that “some foreign governments, such as those of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation, seek to exert influence over U.S. foreign policy through lobbyists, external experts, and think tanks.” Why the statement was issued at this time, so close to elections is unclear, though it is possibly an attempt to line up possible scapegoats if the electoral process does not produce results acceptable to whomever loses. In fact, Russia and China hardly find a place on the list of those who fund lobbyists and think tanks.

Also of interest is another story about how Washington has chosen to interact with the world, one involving both enemy du jour Iran and Venezuela. Readers will undoubtedly recall how the United States seized in international waters four Greek owned but Liberian flagged tankers loaded with gasoline that were bound for Venezuela. The tankers were transporting more than a million gallons of fuel to economic basket case Venezuela, a country which is in its sad condition due to sanctions and other “maximum pressure” imposed by Washington, which has also sanctioned Venezuela’s own oil industry. The fuel was seized based on unilaterally imposed U.S. sanctions on Iranian sale or export of its own petroleum products, a move intended to strangle the Iranian economy and bring about an uprising of the Iranian people. As the sanctions imposed by Washington are not supported by the United Nations or by any other legal authority, the seizure is little more than exercise of a bit of force majeure that used to be called piracy.

Even though foreign and national security policy has not really been discussed in either the Biden or Trump campaign, there is general agreement in both parties that Venezuela is a rogue regime that must be replaced while Iran is an actual, tangible threat due to its alleged misbehavior in the Middle East. It has been dubbed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the “number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world.” Saner voices have observed that neither Venezuela nor Iran threaten the United States in any way and that the U.S. and Israel continue to kill many more civilians than Iran ever has, but they have been drowned out by the media talking heads who constantly spout the established narrative.

Well, the alleged Iranian fuel has arrived in New Jersey and a legal battle for custody of it has begun.  The fuel had been removed from the Greek tankers and transferred to other tankers for removal to the United States but the complication is that the Trump administration must now prove its case for forfeiture before the oil can be sold. The U.S. justification for seizing the cargoes is the claim that the fuel was an asset of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the Treasury, Justice and State Departments have conveniently designated a foreign terrorist organization. But that contention is disputed by the cargoes’ owners, who claim to have nothing to do with the IRGC. They include other energy exporters and shippers in the Middle East, namely Mobin International Limited, Oman Fuel Trading Ltd and Sohar Fuel Trading LLC FZ. They have filed a motion for dismissal and are seeking return of the fuel plus additional compensation for the losses they have suffered. One has to hope they win as it is the United States that is in the wrong in this case.

The entire saga of the tankers and the fuel is symptomatic of the undeclared economic warfare that the United States now prefers to use when dealing with adversaries. And there is considerable evidence to suggest that Washington is trying to goad Iran into responding with force, providing the U.S. government with a plausible rationale for responding in kind. President Trump has directly threatened Iran in an October 9th public statement in which he promised the Iranians that “If you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are gonna do things to you that have never been done before.”

So, Washington’s aggression directed against much of the world continues with a national election less than two weeks away but no one is talking about it. That would seem odd in and of itself, but the sad part is that it is deliberate collusion on the part of government and media to make sure the voting public remains unaware the extent to which the United States has in reality become a pariah, a full-time bully in its foreign relations.

The GOP think tank has been taking millions from a conglomerate while publicly promoting its landmines and autonomous machine guns.

Eli CLIFTON

The conservative Heritage Foundation has consistently fought international treaties banning weapons that pose an outsized threat to civilians in war zones. This would include anti-personnel landmines, cluster munitions, and “killer robots”—as well as regulations that would enforce arms embargoes on human rights offenders. And yet, Heritage fails to disclose a possible financial incentive for taking these positions.

Heritage received at least $5.8 million from the Hanwha Group between 2007 and 2015, according to the organization’s annual reports reviewed by Responsible Statecraft. Between 2010 and 2014, Hanwha—a South Korean conglomerate that has produced landmine and autonomous weapons systems—contributed a minimum of $1 million per year, making Hanwha one of the Heritage Foundation’s biggest donors. Hanwha was not listed as a donor after 2015, but Heritage permits donors to make anonymous contributions and Heritage and the Hanwha Group did not respond to questions about whether the funding arrangement continued after 2015.

However, Korean media regularly reports on the close relationship between Heritage and Hanwha, and suggested their friendly relationship was alive and well, at least as recently as October 2018 when Heritage Foundation founder Edwin J. Feulner and Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn met in Seoul. This meeting was documented by The Korea Herald, a major South Korean English language newspaper. Topics discussed included: “difficulties faced by Korean businesses in the U.S., despite the successful renegotiation of the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement.”

“Feulner and the Hanwha chairman have maintained a working relationship for the past 30 years, holding regular meetings to discuss outstanding political and economic issues between the two countries,” concluded The Korea Herald article.

Heritage’s work may have proven particularly beneficial for Hanwha.

“Why hasn’t the U.S. gotten rid of its land mines?” Bromund asked. “Because South Korea uses mines to defend itself against North Korea, and South Korea is an ally of ours.” He continued:

“But according to the Times, ‘given the North’s nuclear buildup, a mined DMZ seems to be a Cold War vestige of diminished value.’ So because North Korea has nuclear weapons, we should abandon our land mines? I’m glad the Times wasn’t advising NATO on how to defend Western Europe during the Cold War.”

That was just one of many Heritageop-edsand reports over the years attacking efforts to ban landmines.

South Korea is one of only 33 countries that has not acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty. According to the International Committee to Ban Landmines (ICBL).

“I had no clue Hanhwa was giving [Heritage] money,” said Mark Hiznay, associate director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch. “Hanwha for a long time was only producing ammunition and weapons for the South Korean military, but that changed in the mid-2000s when they started broadening their exports.”

The ICBL’s “Stop Explosive Investments” campaign describes Hanwha as “a diversified industrial conglomerate. Its defence division makes munitions, guidance and delivery systems.” In recent years the group has “opened up to the export market, both exhibiting at international arms fairs and selling military equipment abroad.”

“Heritage hasn’t been too hot on multilateral or humanitarian disarmament treaties dating back into the mid-90s, when the first efforts to ban mines start bubbling up on the international stage,” said Hiznay.

Opposing international efforts to eliminate the manufacturing of products produced by one of Heritage’s biggest donors poses a potential conflict of interest that no Heritage scholars disclosed in their condemnation of the Mine Ban Treaty. That potential conflict of interest became even more glaring when Heritage defended autonomous weapon systems, including one manufactured by Hanwha, the SGR-A1.

The SGR-A1 is an autonomous sentry designed to replace human guards on the DMZ between North and South Korea, complete with the capacity to identify humans through voice recognition and, if a person is unable to provide an access code, fire on an individual with a variety of possible weapons, including a machine gun or a grenade launcher. Activists have expressed concerns about autonomous weapons systems lowering the threshold for initiating the use of deadly force, complicating the chain of accountability, and ignoring ethical concerns that a human operator might take under consideration.

Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Steven Groves, appeared to share none of those concerns in two reports published after Hanwha’s December 2014 announcement of its acquisition of Samsung Techwin, the manufacturer of the SGR-A1.

In a March 2015 report titled, “The U.S. Should Oppose the U.N.’s Attempt to Ban Autonomous Weapons,” Groves mentions the SGR-A1 in the first paragraph as an example of autonomous weapons systems currently under development, and he urged the U.S. delegation to the 2015 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) to, “identify nations at the CCW that are inclined to support a ban on [lethal autonomous weapons systems systems] and persuade those nations against that course of action.”

Such an effort by the U.S. delegation would have benefited manufacturers of autonomous weapons systems, such as Hanwha, whose development, sale, and potential export of systems like the SGR-A1 might be limited by such a ban.

In April 2016, Groves, again referencing the SGR-A1 as an example of an autonomous weapon system, argued for the normalization of autonomous weapons and for the U.S. and “like-minded nations” to convene a “group of experts drawn from advanced militaries, legal academia, robotics engineers, computer programmers, and ethicists” to develop a manual on how law of armed conflict principles can be applied to autonomous weapons. Groves acknowledged that such an effort goes against “the momentum in U.N. Forums and among human rights and arms control activists […] to ban [autonomous weapons], not normalize them.”

Groves did not disclose Heritage’s funding from Hanwha in either of his reports defending autonomous weapons, which included explicit references to Hanwha’s SGR-A1.

In 2017, Groves departed Heritage to serve as Chief of Staff for then-U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley before moving to the Trump White House where he worked as an assistant special counsel. Groves’ LinkedIn profile says he “[r]epresented the White House in the investigation conducted by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election” and later worked as deputy press secretary before returning to Heritage in June 2020.

“Neither [Bromund nor Groves were] aware of Hanwha’s donation or any relationship between Heritage and Hanwha,” said a Heritage spokesperson. “Heritage’s authority rests on the rigor, depth, and independent nature of our research and analysis. The Heritage Foundation’s broad base of more than a half-million members guarantees that no donor or group of donors has the ability to direct the views or activities of Heritage.”

Heritage did not provide a conflict of interest policy, when requested, but the spokesperson was adamant that the foundation refuses “to engage in contract research,” and “takes no money from government—whether federal, state, local, tribal, or foreign—for any research activity or any other purpose.” Heritage added that “when a potential donor specifies conditions for the use of funds to be donated, Heritage declines the donation if the conditions would compromise our research independence.”

While Heritage never mentions Hanwha in conjunction with any of its work touching on policies that could impact their donor’s business, Hanwha press releases and South Korean media regularly highlighted the close relationship between Heritage and Hanwha leadership.

Between 2012 and 2018 Hanwha published at least six press releases reporting on meetings between Hanwha and Heritage executives.

“In 2011, to thank [Hanwha] Chairman Kim [Seung-Youn] for his contribution to bilateral non-governmental diplomacy, the foundation named the conference center on the 2nd floor of the Heritage Foundation Pennsylvania Avenue Building in Washington, D.C., the ‘Kim Seung Youn Conference Center,’” said one such press release.

The Korea Herald published three articles on meetings between Heritage founder Edwin Feulner and Kim just in 2016 and 2017.

Indeed, the relationship between Kim and Feulner, who chaired the Trump administration’s transition team, may have secured Kim a special invitation to Trump’s inauguration.

“Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn has been at the vanguard of fostering business cooperation with the United States, years before uncertainties emerged upon the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has expressed skepticism toward the two countries’ free trade agreement,” wrote The Korea Herald in June, 2017.

“Kim’s ties with leading business figures in the US, including Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner, has made him one of the rare South Korean business representatives who is able to bridge the differences between the two new administrations and seek mutual benefits.”

The paper later added, “Kim was also invited to Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January at the recommendation of Feulner.”

Neither the Heritage Foundation nor Hanwha responded to questions about whether the Korea Herald report was accurate and, if so, if Kim took Feulner up on the invitation.

While Heritage and Hanwha are not forthcoming about the details of their multi-million dollar relationship, including whether it is ongoing, several things are clear: Hanwha’s $5.8 million-plus in contributions to one of the most influential conservative think tanks in the U.S. coincided with high profile meetings between Hanwha and Heritage’s leadership in Seoul, a named conference room at Heritage’s Washington offices, and a flood of reports and analysis opposing arms control efforts that could have limited the market for several of Hanwha’s weapons products, and a potential conflict of interest that Heritage never disclosed in their research products.

theamericanconservative.com

China underscored this week that it is willing to engage in negotiations with the U.S. to reduce nuclear arsenals and to underpin strategic stability. However, the offer comes with the caveat that Washington must first reduce its arsenal to the level of China’s before Beijing will engage in such talks.

That is an eminently reasonable and logical proposal. The starting point is to look at the existing balance of forces. While the U.S. and Russia each possess about 6,000 nuclear warheads, China’s arsenal is assessed to number around 300. The difference is 20-fold.

It is therefore derisory for the Trump administration to keep on insisting that China has an “obligation” to join in arms-control negotiations between Washington and Moscow.

China’s nuclear arsenal is comparable to that of France and Britain, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. So, why isn’t the Trump administration’s keenness to include China in arms-control talks extended to its two NATO allies? Their omission shows the illogical, if not disingenuous, thinking in Washington.

Fu Cong, director of arms control policy at China’s foreign ministry, stated this week: “I can assure you that if the U.S. says that they are ready to come down to the Chinese level, China will be happy to participate the next day. But actually, we know that it’s not going to happen. We know the U.S. policy.”

He added: “Saying that the small number of nuclear warheads that China possesses poses a threat to U.S. security, when the U.S. has 6,000, I don’t think that stands to logic.”

Washington and Moscow resumed talks last month on strategic stability and in particular renewing the START accord on limiting long-range nuclear weapons. Further bilateral talks are scheduled to take place later this month and in January, one month before the 2010 New START pact is due to expire. If the treaty is not replaced then there are fears of a new global arms race breaking out.

During the talks last month in Vienna, it was apparent that Washington is trying to use uncertainty over the future of START as ploy to pull China into trilateral talks. That negotiating tactic amounts to a reckless disregard by America of its existing obligations to ensure global security and peace.

As Beijing points out, the priority for China is for Washington and Moscow to agree to extend the New START treaty and continue to reduce their arsenals on that basis as mandated by the treaty.

China “will participate when their [American and Russian] nuclear arsenals come down to a level comparable to the level of Chinese nuclear warheads.”

Moscow has said that it “respects” the Chinese position on arms control. It also has urged the American side to prioritize its obligations on upholding the START accord and to fulfill its binding treaty commitments to achieve further nuclear disarmament.

Russia and China’s perspectives seem undoubtedly to be the most logical and principled.

A more sinister interpretation of Washington’s ambiguous position is that it using unreasonable demands on China as a pretext for crashing the START accord. If Beijing cannot be cajoled into joining a trilateral forum, as Washington insists, then the latter will invoke China’s alleged “bad faith” in order to give a pseudo reason for not renewing START. Such a maneuver by the Trump administration was employed for unilaterally pulling out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year, when the U.S. cited dubious claims that Russia was in breach of that arms-control pact.

What this American administration appears to be seeking is a free hand to increase its nuclear forces, thereby shirking historic international obligations for disarmament. Motivating this is Washington’s incorrigible Cold War ideology which perceives both Russia and China as “great power rivals”.

Washington’s insistent calls on China to join arms-control talks have little to do with a desire to underpin global security and strategic balance. Such calls are belied glaringly by an intensifying campaign of invective and hostility towards China. Just this week, for example, Christopher Wray, the head of the American FBI, accused China of being the “greatest threat” to the U.S.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi noted this week that bilateral relations between Washington and Beijing are at the worst level in more than four decades since former President Richard Nixon opened an era of detente in the mid-1970s.

China has repeatedly appealed to Washington to drop its Cold War hostility and zero-sum thinking; and instead to strive for “peaceful coexistence”.

Regrettably, such a fundamental change seems unlikely for Washington under this administration or even under a new Democrat one. Indeed, on the contrary, Washington seems irrepressibly wired for war. That is because American foreign policy is at its core hegemonic, propelled by the imperialist logic of its capitalist economy and the inherent need for domination. Thus, peaceful coexistence is anathema.

Beijing’s willingness to engage in comprehensive arms-control talks lays bare the cynical claims made by Washington that China is secretly rushing to build up its nuclear arsenal with aggressive intent. What’s more, Beijing’s reasonable proposal for joining disarmament efforts exposes Washington’s rank duplicity.

Ahead of talks with Russian delegates, the Americans took a stealthy photo of the venue contriving to show Chinese flags sitting atop vacant tables.

U.S. envoy Marshall Billingslea then tried to twitter-shame China by declaring: “Vienna talks about to start. China is a no-show… We will proceed with Russia, notwithstanding.”

China had categorically stated several times over past weeks that it had no intention of attending the talks in Vienna which were designated anyway as bilateral discussions between Washington and Moscow on the future of arms control.

The Russian delegation was evidently blindsided by the PR stunt. Both China and Russia condemned the attempt by the American side to contrive Beijing as somehow derelict. China slammed it as “performance art”. While Russia published a photograph of the American and Russian delegates in discussions without any Chinese flags present.

The fiasco shows that the talks were really aimed at coaxing China into trilateral talks to satisfy Washington’s geopolitical agenda. In the weeks before the Vienna bilateral talks, U.S. envoy Billingslea had repeatedly called on China to attend in a trilateral format. Such wrangling is inappropriate and undermines diplomatic protocol with Moscow.

Beijing has consistently stated that it will not participate in arms control talks with the U.S. and Russia until both nuclear powers first substantially reduce their vastly greater arsenals. China’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is a mere fraction – some 5 per cent – of either the U.S. or Russia’s. Beijing maintains that Washington must proceed with its obligations for disarmament, along with Russia. Moscow has said it respects China’s position.

The Trump administration has let it be known that it wants to include China in arms control talks with Russia. In principle such comprehensive limitations may seem reasonable. Russia has said that other nuclear powers such as France and Britain should also be included. But what the U.S. side is angling for is not a comprehensive accord in principle; rather it is seeking to rope China into limitations for its own geopolitical agenda of rivalry with Beijing. If Washington is serious about finding a comprehensive treaty, then it should, as China points out, prioritize the scaling back of its own inordinate possession of nukes. The U.S. and Russia account for over 90 per cent of the world’s total nuclear arsenal.

What the propaganda stunt with Chinese flags by the U.S. side in Vienna shows is Washington’s petulance from not being able to cajole China into the talks format with Russia.

As it turned out, the U.S. and Russian sides agreed to hold a second round of talks to follow this week’s meeting.

Russia’s foreign ministry stated: “During the Vienna consultations, the sides agreed to conduct a meeting of experts on military doctrines and nuclear strategies, including the issues of use of nuclear weapons.”

The ministry added: “Russia is open to further dialogue on strategic stability, it seeks to build further relation with the U.S. in arms control, strictly on a parity basis and in reliance on the principle of mutual accounting of interests and concerns of the sides.”

The main issue going forward is the future of the New START treaty governing strategic nuclear weapons. That treaty is due to expire in February next year. Moscow has repeatedly called for an extension, but the Trump administration has demurred about its future, suggesting that it is willing to let it expire. After walking away from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year, the Trump administration appears to be conducting a policy of creating global instability and playing with fire by unleashing a new arms race.

Again, lurking behind this reckless brinkmanship is the U.S. objective of coercing Russia and China to acquiesce in its agenda of controlling both by turning bilateral agreements with Moscow into trilateral arrangements with Beijing. Russia has said it will not comply with this stealth conduct by Washington.

What the U.S. needs to do is honor its bilateral relations with Russia and get down to genuine mutual negotiations on strategic stability and arms control. The New START treaty is a test case for Washington’s commitment to its obligations for nuclear disarmament as agreed to from historic bilateral negotiations with Moscow.

The cheap stunt with China’s flags and distortion of the bilateral talks in Vienna with Russia does not inspire confidence in U.S. commitments or intentions. At least under the present administration.

It does not bode well for American credibility in pursuing bilateral talks with Russia on extending the New START treaty which expires in eight months. Indeed, it smacks of bad faith. Playing fast and loose with global security is deplorable.