On 5 March, Moscow demanded written guarantees of sanctions waivers from US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken that would preserve Russia’s ambitious economic, scientific-technological and military collaboration projects in the pipeline with Iran.

While privately, Iranian delegation members in Vienna were undoubtedly miffed at this eleventh-hour wrench in the works, Tehran’s official position was stoic.

“Russia is a responsible member of nuclear negotiations, and it has always proven that, not like America,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokeman Saeed Khatibzadeh informed reporters on Monday.

“It is natural for us to discuss its [Russia’s] demands,” he continued, and bolstered Moscow’s position by adding: “What really matters is that the nuclear cooperation relations between Iran and various countries should not be subject to sanctions.”

March 5 also happens to be the anniversary of the date the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force in 1970.

The fate of the NPT may now hinge on the US response. For, if the Biden administration rides the high horse, that will almost certainly be a deal-breaker for the current negotiations in Vienna to broker the US’ return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

On the other hand, a golden opportunity is now at hand for Iran too to hang tough on its remaining demands — that is, removing the US designation of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization; a firm guarantee that a future US government will not (again) renege on the nuclear deal; and, conclusively closing the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) case on Tehran’s nuclear program. Russia is firmly supportive of Iran’s demands.

The chances of Biden obliging Moscow with sanctions waivers are nil, as that would lethally damage US prestige and make a complete mockery of its ‘weaponization of the dollar’ (which is what sanctions are about). Without using sanctions as a weapon, the US is increasingly unable to force its will on other countries.

The “sanctions from hell” recently imposed on Russia demonstrate a new cutting edge, and include the freezing of Russia’s central bank reserves. It is a cynical move to the extreme which may come with significant unforeseen repercussions. For one, the US looks to be sending a powerful message to China as well, which holds something like 2-3 trillion dollars as US Treasury bonds.

China draws its own lines

The call from Blinken to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on March 5 — the same day Russia transmitted its demand for sanction waivers — suggests that China is no doubt closely observing developments. Wang told Blinken point-blank that Beijing has “grave concern over recent words and deeds of the US side,” especially with regard to Taiwan, and expects “concrete actions” by the Americans to shore up the relationship.

China has consistently opposed US sanctions. On the issue of Ukraine, Wang Yi cautioned Washington from taking further actions that “add fuel to the fire” (alluding to reported plans to dispatch foreign mercenaries to join the fighting), and importantly, “to engage in equal dialogue with Russia, face up to the frictions and problems accumulated over the years, pay attention to the negative impact of NATO’s continuous eastward expansion on Russia’s security, and seek to build a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism in accordance with the ‘indivisibility of security’ principle.”

Suffice to say, if China is not caving in, the strong likelihood is that the negotiations in Vienna may soon lose momentum. The latest Russian demand can even prove a deal-maker. The action-reaction syndrome used to be a staple of the superpower nuclear competition. But Russians seem to have now found an ingenious new dimension to it: counter US dollar weaponization by extending the countermeasure to the nuclear non-proliferation issue.

“Weaponizing the atom”

By doing so, Russia has elevated the American sanctions regime far beyond the crude money terms of seizing central bank dollar reserves — which is plain highway robbery — to an altogether new sublime level of “weaponization of atom.”

Iran has suffered immensely from the US’ weaponization of the dollar. Ever since its 1979 revolution, Iran has been under western sanctions aimed at stifling its growth and development — many of them cruel and humiliating. These hit a nadir, when at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the US even blocked Iran’s pathway to procure vaccines for its citizens.

So many such horrific episodes can be dredged up from Iran’s four-decade-long painful history as a victim of America’s “weaponization of dollar,” whereby, an immensely resource-rich country was forced to live far below its real potential, and one of the world’s greatest and oldest civilizations suffered humiliations at the hands of an uppity country with some 246 years of history.

It must then be tormenting for Washington that Iran is one of the countries that has immense potential to resort to “weaponization of atom” to counter America’s “weaponization of dollar.”

Whether it will do or not is a moot point. Certainly, Iran’s stated preference is to live without nuclear weapons. That is why it has come fully prepared to close the deal at the negotiations in Vienna. Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian even told EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Friday that he’s “ready to fly to Vienna” to sign the nuclear deal on Monday.

But the point is, if Iran wishes, it has the capability to meet the US on equal terms even without a nuclear deal in Vienna. In fact, if Biden refuses to provide Russia with a written guarantee to suspend the “sanctions from hell,” that deal may not go through in Vienna, since Russia, as an original signatory to the JCPOA, must sign off on it. Of course, the Americans are insisting that they will continue to work with Russia at Vienna within the matrix of their shared interest to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons.

Indeed, as it is, the remaining three demands by Iran also pose a big challenge to Biden. Lifting the ban on the IRGC is a bitter pill for the Washington elite to swallow; again, Biden is in no position to guarantee that a deal signed in Vienna will have any shelf life beyond his presidency.

Herein lies the catch. Until such time as an agreement is reached in Vienna, Iran’s centrifuges will be producing enriched uranium, which would mean that the so-called “breakout time” keeps shrinking and for all purposes, at some point, Iran will have transformed itself as a virtual nuclear weapon state whether it wants or not — and the very purpose of the deal that the US is frantically seeking at Vienna will be defeated.

For Iran too, this is a moment of truth. Things have come to such a pass in international politics that many countries, which willingly signed the NPT, probably regret their decision now. India, Pakistan and North Korea already broke the NPT shackle. The point is, in the final analysis, a nuclear weapon is the means to preserve a country’s strategic autonomy to pursue independent policies.

It provides a firewall against foreign interference in the internal affairs; it reduces the scope for Washington’s coup machine to overthrow the established government; it compels the US to abandon the highly immoral, cynical bullying via “weaponization of the dollar;” and, above all, it enhances plurality in the world order by strengthening a country’s freedom to choose its own unique path of development.

“Atoms for Peace” was the title of a famous speech delivered by US President Dwight Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in New York City in 1953. In retrospect, it turned out to be a propaganda component of the US’ Cold War strategy of containing the former Soviet Union.

Eisenhower was launching a media campaign that would last for years aimed at “emotion management,” balancing fears of continuing nuclear armament with promises of peaceful use of uranium in future nuclear reactors.

Ironically, that catchy phrase acquires today an altogether new meaning: Atoms may offer the best means to an equitable world order.

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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.

If the Trump administration follows through on its threat to re-start nuclear tests, it will complete the unraveling of more than 50 years of arms control agreements, taking the world back to the days when school children practiced “duck and cover,” and people built backyard bomb shelters.

It will certainly be the death knell for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, passed by the UN’S General Assembly in 1996. The Treaty has never gone into effect because, while 184 nations endorsed it, eight key countries have yet to sign on: the US, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Iran and North Korea.

Evan without ratification, the Treaty has had an effect. Many nuclear-armed countries, including the US, Britain, and Russia, stopped testing by the early 1990s. China and France stopped in 1996 and Indian and Pakistan in 1998. Only North Korea continues to test.

Halting the tests helped slow the push to make weapons smaller, lighter and more lethal, although over the years countries have learned how to design more dangerous weapons using computers and sub-critical tests. For instance, without actually testing any weapon, the US recently created a “super fuze” that makes its warheads far more capable of knocking out an opponent’s missile silos. Washington has also just deployed a highly destabilizing low-yield warhead that has yet to be detonated.

Nonetheless, the test ban did—and does—slow the development of nuclear weapons and retards their proliferation to other countries. Its demise will almost certainly open the gates for others—Saudi Arabia, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Turkey, and Brazil—to join the nuclear club.

“It would blow up any chance of avoiding a dangerous new nuclear arms race,” says Beatrice Fihn of the Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and “complete the erosion of the global arms control framework.”

While the Trump administration has accelerated withdrawal from nuclear agreements, including the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement, and START II, the erosion of treaties goes back almost 20 years.

At stake is a tapestry of agreements dating back to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty that ended atmospheric testing. That first agreement was an important public health victory. A generation of “down winders” in Australia, the American Southwest, the South Pacific and Siberia are still paying the price for open-air testing.

The Partial Test Ban also broke ground for a host of other agreements.

The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) restricted the spread of nuclear weapons and banned nuclear-armed countries from threatening non-nuclear nations with weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, key parts of the agreement have been ignored by the major nuclear powers, especially Article VI that requires nuclear disarmament, followed by general disarmament.

What followed the NPT were a series of treaties that slowly dismantled some of the tens of thousands of warheads with the capacity to quite literally destroy the planet. At one point, the US and Russia had more than 50,000 warheads between them.

The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty reduced the possibility of a first-strike attack against another nuclear power. The same year, the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (SALT I) put a limit on the number of long-range missiles. Two years later, SALT II cut back on the number of highly destabilizing multiple warheads on missiles and put ceilings on bombers and missiles.

The 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement banned land-based medium-range missiles in Europe that had put the continent on a hair-trigger. Four years later, START I cut the number of warheads in the Russian and American arsenals by 80 percent. That still left each side with 6,000 warheads and 1600 missiles and bombers. It would take 20 years to negotiate START II , which reduced both sides to 1550 deployed nuclear warheads and banished multiple warheads from land-based missiles.

All of this is on the verge of collapse. While Trump has been withdrawing from treaties, it was President George W. Bush’s abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 that tipped the first domino.

The death of the ABM agreement put the danger of a first-strike was back on the table and launched a new arms race, As the Obama administration began deploying ABMs in Europe, South Korea and Japan, the Russians began designing weapons to overcome them.

The ABM’s demise also led to the destruction of the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement (INF) that banned medium-range, ground-based missiles from Europe. The US claimed the Russians were violating the INF by deploying a cruise missile that could be fitted with a nuclear warhead. The Russians countered that the American ABM system, the Mark 41 Ageis Ashore, could be similarly configured. Moscow offered to let its cruise be examined, but NATO wasn’t interested.

The White House has made it clear that it will not renew the START II treaty unless it includes Chinese medium-range missiles, but that is a poison pill. The Chinese have about one fifth the number of warheads that Russia and the US have, and most of China’s potential opponents—India, Japan, and US bases in the region—are within medium range.

While Chinese and Russian medium-range missiles do not threaten the American homeland, US medium-range missiles in Asia and Europe could decimate both countries. In any case, how would such an agreement be configured? Would the US and Russia reduce their warhead stockpile to China’s 300 weapons, or would China increase its weapons levels to match Moscow and Washington? Both are unlikely.

If START II goes, so do the limits on warheads and launchers, and we are back to the height of the Cold War.

Why?

On many levels this makes no sense. Russia and the US have more than 12,000 warheads between them, more than enough to end civilization. Recent studies of the impact of a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan found it would have worldwide repercussions by altering rain patterns and disrupting agriculture. Imagine what a nuclear war involving China, Russia, and the US and its allies would do.

Partly this is a matter of simple greed.

The new program will cost in the range of $1.7 trillion, with the possibility of much more. Modernizing the “triad” will require new missiles, ships, bombers and warheads, all of which will enrich virtually every segment of the US arms industry.

But this is about more than a rich payday. There is a section of the US military and political class that would like to use nuclear weapons on a limited scale. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review explicitly reverses the Obama administration’s move away from nuclear weapons, reasserting their importance in US military doctrine.

That is what the recently deployed low yield warhead on the US’s Trident submarine is all about. The W76-2 packs a five-kiloton punch, or about one-third the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, a far cry from the standard nuclear warheads with yields of 100 kilotons to 475 kilotons.

The US rationale is that a small warhead will deter the Russians from using their low yield nuclear warheads against NATO, The Trump administration says the Russians have a plan to do exactly that, figuring the US would hesitate to risk an all-out nuclear exchange by replying in kind. There is, in fact, little proof such a plan exists, and Moscow denies it.

According to the Trump administration, China and Russia are also violating the ban on nuclear test by setting off low yield, hard to detect, warheads. No evidence has been produced to show this, and no serious scientist supports the charge. Modern seismic weapons detection is so efficient it can detect warheads that fail to go critical, so-called duds.

Bear baiting—and dragon drubbing in the case of China—is a tried and true mechanism for opening the arms spigot.

Some of this is about making arms manufactures and generals happy, but it is also about the fact that the last war the US won was Grenada. The US military lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, made of mess of Libya, Somalia and Syria, and is trying to extract itself from a stalemate in Yemen.

Just suppose some of those wars were fought with low-yield nukes? While it seems deranged—like using hand grenades to get rid of kitchen ants—some argue that if we don’t take the gloves off we will continue to lose wars or get bogged down in stalemates.

The Pentagon knows the Russians are not a conventional threat because the US and NATO vastly outnumber and out spend Moscow. China is more of a conventional challenge, but any major clash could go nuclear and no one wants that.

According to the Pentagon, the W76-2 may be used to respond “to significant non-nuclear strategic attacks” on the US or its allies’ “infrastructure,” including cyber war. That could include Iran.

Early in his term, President Trump asked why the US can’t use its nuclear weapons. If Washington successfully torpedoes START II and re-starts testing, he may get to do exactly that.

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When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told an economic meeting in the city of Sivas on Sept. 4 that Turkey was considering building nuclear weapons, he was responding to a broken promise.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the government of Iran of lying about its nuclear program, he was concealing one of the greatest subterfuges in the history of nuclear weapons.

And the vast majority of Americans haven’t a clue about either.

Early in the morning of Sept. 22, 1979, a US satellite recorded a double flash near the Prince Edward islands in the South Atlantic. The satellite, a Vela 5B, carries a device called a “bhangmeter” whose purpose is to detect nuclear explosions. Sent into orbit following the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, its job was to monitor any violations of the agreement. The Treaty banned nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, underwater and in space.

Nuclear explosions have a unique footprint. When the weapon detonates, it sends out an initial pulse of light, but as the fireball expands, it cools down for a few milliseconds, then spikes again.

“Nothing in nature produces such a double-humped light flash,” says Victor Gilinsky. “The spacing of the hump gives an indication of the amount of energy, or yield, released by the explosion.” Gilinsky was a member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a former Rand Corporation physicist.

There was little question who had conducted the test. The Prince Edward islands were owned by South Africa and US intelligence knew the apartheid government was conducting research into nuclear weapons, but had yet to produce one. But Israel had nukes and both countries had close military ties. In short, it was almost certainly an Israeli weapon, though Israel denied it.

In the weeks that followed, clear evidence for a nuclear test emerged from hydrophones near Ascension Island and a jump in radioactive iodine-131 in Australian sheep. Only nuclear explosions produce iodine-131.

But the test came at a bad time for US President Jimmy Carter, who was gearing up his re-election campaign, a cornerstone of which was a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.

If the Israelis were seen to have violated the Partial Test Ban, as well as the 1977 Glenn Amendment to the Arms Export Control Act, the US would have been required to cut off all arms sales to Israel and apply heavy sanctions. Carter was nervous about what such a finding would have on the election, since a major part of Carter’s platform was arms control and non-proliferation.

So Carter threw together a panel of experts whose job was not to examine the incident but to cover it up. The Ruina Panel cooked up a tortured explanation involving mini-meteors that the media accepted and, as a result, so did the American public.

But nuclear physicists knew the panel was blowing smoke and that the evidence was unarguable. The device was set off on a barge between Prince Edward Island and Marion Island (the former should not be confused with Canada’s Prince Edward Island) with a yield of from 3 to 4 kilotons. A secret CIA panel concurred but put the yield at 1.5 to 2 kilotons. For comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons.

It was also clear why the Israelis took the risk. Israel had a number of Hiroshima-style fission bombs but was working on producing a thermonuclear weapon—a hydrogen bomb. Fission bombs are easy to use, but fusion weapons are tricky and require a test. That the Vela picked it up was pure chance, since the satellite had been retired. But its bhangmeters were still working.

From Carter on, every US president has covered up the Israeli violation of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, as well as the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). So when Netanyahu says Iran is lying about its nuclear program, much of the rest of the world, including the US nuclear establishment, rolls their eyes.

As for Turkish President Erdogan, he is perfectly correct that the nuclear powers have broken the promise they made back in 1968 when the signed the NPT. Article VI of that agreement calls for an end to the nuclear arms race and the abolition of nuclear weapons. Indeed, in many ways Article VI is the heart of the NPT. Non-nuclear armed countries signed the agreement, only to find themselves locked into a system of “nuclear apartheid,” where they agreed not to acquire such weapons of mass destruction, while China, Russia, Great Britain, France and the US get to keep theirs.

The “Big Five” not only kept their weapons, they are all in the process of upgrading and expanding them. The US is also shedding other agreements, like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Agreement. Washington is also getting ready to abandon the START treaty that limits the US and Russia to a set number of warheads and long-range strategic launchers.

What is amazing is that only four other countries have abandoned the NPT: Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and India (only the latter three have been sanctioned by the US). But that situation cannot hold forever, especially since part of Article VI calls for general disarmament, a pledge that has been honored in the breach. The US currently has the largest defense budget in its history and spends about 47 percent of what the entire rest of the world spends on their militaries.

While the US doesn’t seem able to win wars with that huge military—Afghanistan and Iraq were disasters—it can inflict a stunning amount of damage that few countries are willing to absorb. Even when Washington doesn’t resort to its military, its sanctions can decimate a country’s economy and impoverish its citizens. North Korea and Iran are cases in point.

If the US were willing to cover up the 1979 Israeli test, while sanctioning other countries that acquire nuclear weapons, why would anyone think that this is nothing more than hypocrisy on the subject of proliferation? And if the NPT is simply a device to ensure that other countries cannot defend themselves from other nations’ conventional and/or nuclear forces, why would anyone sign on or stay in the Treaty?

Turkish President Erdogan may be bluffing. He loves bombast and effectively uses it to keep his foes off balance. The threat may be a strategy for getting the US to back off on its support for Israel and Greece in their joint efforts to develop energy sources in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

But Turkey also has security concerns. In his speech, Erdogan pointed out “There is Israel just beside us. Do they have [nuclear weapons]? They do.” He went on to say that if Turkey did not response to Israeli “bullying,” in the region, “We will face the prospect of losing our strategic superiority in the region.”

Iran may be lying—although though there is no evidence that Teheran is making a serious run at producing a nuclear weapon—but if they are, they in good company with the Americans and the Israelis.

Sooner or later someone is going to set off one of those nukes. The likeliest candidates are India and Pakistan, although use by the US and China in the South China Sea is not out of the question. Neither is a dustup between NATO and Russia in the Baltic.

It is easy to blame the current resident of the White House for world tensions, except that the major nuclear powers have been ignoring their commitments on nuclear weapons and disarmament for over 50 years.

The path back to sanity is thorny but not impossible:

One: re-join the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, thus making Russia’s medium range missiles unnecessary, and reduce tensions between the US and China by withdrawing ABM systems from Japan and South Korea.

Two: re-instate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Agreement and find a way to bring China, India and Pakistan into it. That will require a general reduction of US military forces in Asia coupled with an agreement with China to back off on its claims over most of the South China Sea. Tensions between India and Pakistan would be greatly reduced by simply fulfilling the UN pledge to hold a referendum in Kashmir. The latter would almost certainly vote for independence.

Three: continue adherence to the START Treaty but halt the modernization of the Big Five’s nuclear weapons arsenals and begin to implement Article VI of the NPT in regards to both nuclear and conventional forces.

Pie in the sky? Well, it beats a mushroom cloud..

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The latest provocation by Washington was the purported dispatch of a naval carrier strike group and B-52 nuclear-capable heavy bombers to the Persian Gulf. That US move was claimed to be based on “security concerns”, which in their vapidity and vagueness should prompt contempt from other observers. Especially, too, because the US concerns of alleged Iranian “aggression” were delivered by none other than John Bolton, the national security advisor to President Trump, who has a long and sordid personal history of telling lies in order to justify American wars in the Middle East.

Iran’s warning that it will walk away completely from the 2015 nuclear accord, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as it is formally known, marks a reprehensible unwinding of international diplomacy. The JCPOA was signed by Iran, Russia, China, the US and European Union (France, Germany and Britain) after several years of rigorous negotiations. The deal finally signed in July 2015 was ratified by the UN Security Council. The accord is thus mandated by the highest authority of international law. It is the American side under the Trump administration which has done everything imaginable to trash the treaty, primarily by abrogating its signature one year ago.

Furthermore, the Trump administration has ratcheted up economic sanctions on Iran, in particular on the country’s vital oil trade. Recently, Trump announced the US was cancelling waivers on eight nations which had continued to import Iranian crude, including China, India and Japan, thereby indicating that Washington was intent on imposing a global stranglehold on Iran’s economy. The US moves are a total repudiation of the nuclear accord. Indeed, arguably, they constitute an act of war.

Tehran originally signed the deal with the unprecedented commitment to curb its nuclear enrichment activities. It was a generous concession by Iran – an unprecedented self-imposed restriction and forfeiture of its legal right to enrich uranium as a long-time signatory to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran did that to assuage American claims it was secretly trying to build nuclear weapons, something which Tehran has consistently denied, saying that its nuclear industry is dedicated to civilian purposes, as the NPT permits.

Despite over a dozen on-site inspections of Iranian facilities by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which have all verified Iran’s full compliance with the terms of the nuclear accord, Washington has done everything to impede Iran from benefiting from sanctions relief, which Iran is legally entitled to from implementation of the JCPOA.

Iran’s economy has suffered greatly from the ongoing de facto blockade that the US has imposed, an abuse of power owing to the latter’s influence on global banking and the dominance of the American dollar in oil trade. Washington’s provocations have risen to new heights with the recent US designation of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps as a “terrorist organization”. Claims by Washington that Iran is engaged in covertly sponsoring regional terrorism are groundless, and indeed bitterly ironic given American complicity in sponsoring state and non-state terrorism.

In any case, the alarming stand-off that has emerged between the US and Iran is indisputably the consequence of Washington’s bad faith and irrational aggression towards Tehran. Iran is responding by notifying its cancellation of the JCPOA, and also if it is attacked military by the US it will block the vital oil trade route known as the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf outlet through which a quarter of the world’s daily shipped oil passes. If the stand-off goes that way, then the world will witness an economic meltdown, if not a military conflagration.

This week when Iran announced its intention to suspend participation in the nuclear accord, the European powers reacted by remonstrating with Tehran for not upholding the JCPOA. China and Russia called on all sides to comply with the treaty. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went further and said that Washington must take responsibility for the dire state of affairs. The European powers have hardly implemented the JCPOA beyond paying lip service over the past four years. They have pathetically ceded to Washington’s outrageous intimidation of “secondary sanctions” hitting legitimate European investment and trade with Iran. How’s that for monstrous arrogance? Washington is no longer a signatory to the JCPOA – a deplorable violation in itself – but in addition it wants to tear up the signatures of others who intend to abide by the treaty.

Rather than admonishing Iran for its intended suspension of the JCPOA, the European Union should be siding with Russia, China and the UN in fully backing the JCPOA and, what’s more, expressing its full condemnation of the US for making a mockery of international diplomacy and law. By not doing so, the Europeans are only indulging Washington’s worst instincts for aggression. And the rest of the world may pay a severe price for this indulgence and lack of European integrity and independence.

The document is reviewed every five years at the Review Conferences of the Parties to the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Geneva will host the next one in 2020. One hundred eighty-five countries have remained non-nuclear.  Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov cited expert estimates, which conclude that as many as fifty countries might have eventually acquired nuclear weapons were it not for this treaty.  South Africa, which actually had produced some nuclear munitions, Brazil, Argentina, and some other states have all turned away from their military nuclear programs.

The Antarctic, Latin America, the South Pacific, Southern Asia, Africa, and Central Asia are nuclear-weapon-free zones and these areas encompass about 120 nations. The entire Southern Hemisphere has remained free of nukes.

In about 30 years, the combined nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States have been reduced by 80-83% in comparison with their peak during the Cold War. To a much lesser extent, France and the UK have reduced their nuclear offensive weapons as well. That’s the good news.

The failure to prevent more nations going nuclear has been the bad news. Pyongyang’s withdrawal was possible because the treaty does list any repercussions for pulling out in order to then proliferate. North Korea’s pullout was quite legal pursuant to Article X, item1 of the NPT. 

Many states have not ratified the 1997 Additional Protocol to the IAEA, which significantly strengthens nuclear safeguards in non-nuclear-weapon states, granting expanded rights of access to information and locations. The NPT does not say anything about punitive measures that would be taken against those who violate the treaty. 

The conference on the establishment of a zone in the Middle East that would be free of weapons of mass destruction that was agreed to at the 2010 Nuclear Summit has never materialized. Deadlocked for many years, the prospects look bleak for the talks on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, as US-Russian cooperation on the safety and security of nuclear sites and materials ended in 2014.

The US and Russia are the only powers to be part of an arms-control regime. Third  nuclear-weapon states have not agreed to legally binding nuclear-weapon limitations.

The NPT is an agreement between non-nuclear-weapon states not to go nuclear in exchange for assistance in developing peaceful atomic energy. There’s real hope that the problem of North Korea can be solved now, but some countries might follow its example and use peaceful nuclear-energy projects to acquire either nuclear weapons or the technology to develop them. The example of Libya, which had canceled its nuclear program, only to be attacked by NATO in 2011, may provoke some nations into being more clandestine in their efforts to acquire a nuclear deterrent “just to be on the safe side.” 

The treaty does not restrict either the development of dual-use technologies nor the accumulation of nuclear materials for peaceful purposes allowed under Article IV, item 2. Nor does it provide a clear definition of what exactly constitutes a violation and when a state can be accused of trespassing that threshold. Nuclear tests, for example? Israel has acquired nuclear capability without them. India was recognized as a nuclear power only in 1998 although it conducted its first test in 1974.

Expanding the capability to enrich uranium and increasing one’s low-enriched stockpile, openly or secretly in sites hidden underground, are activities not explicitly banned by the treaty. Adding definitions to clarify what is, could significantly improve the document. The introduction of a standard clause to compel states to return all dual-use nuclear technologies and materials acquired within the framework of the treaty, in the event that they decide to withdraw from it, would be a step in the right direction.

One more weak point — the treaty does not provide security guarantees to non-nuclear-weapon states.

Nevertheless, the NPT has played an instrumental role in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons (NW) and their technology, remaining a bedrock of the non-proliferation regime. NW are still stationed in North America, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East. 

In his speech to the UN Assembly in 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, proposed to eliminate all nuclear weapons in a phased program to be implemented by 2000. That was no surprise, as back then he was the leader of the country that had been a founding nation that was actively involved in preparing the NPT for consideration by the international community. Comprehensive disarmament might have been achievable if the US had joined the effort. But it did not, rejecting the idea of radical nuclear disarmament through the NPT.

The ratification by the US of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) would have been a significant contribution to the non-proliferation process, but that has not happened.

Another major contribution to the effectiveness of the NPT that the US could make would be to bring home all its tactical nuclear weapons that are based in other countries. No other nuclear-weapon state has its weapons deployed outside its national borders. Keeping nukes in other countries is proliferation. 

The US plans to integrate its modernized B61-12 guided nuclear bombs with stealth F-35 bombers. About half of the munitions are earmarked for delivery by the national aircraft of its NATO allies, once their crews undergo special training. This constitutes a violation. The treaty prohibits nuclear-weapon states from transferring nukes to other recipients (Article I) as well as from receiving NW (Article II).

The US unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has dealt a severe blow to the NPT. The IAEA has stated that Iran is complying with the agreement’s provisions.  Now any state ready to meet the NPT terms will know that its efforts may be for naught, because the fate of international agreements depends on the whims of the US.

The United States could do much more to make the global non-proliferation regime more effective. Hopefully, the issue will be addressed in a constructive way at the US-Russia summit in Helsinki scheduled for July 16. Other states could also contribute to making the 2020 Review Conference more productive than the previous ones. 

Nobody can do it alone. Only cooperation between major global powers and alliances, coupled with effective action, can reverse the current negative trends and stop the spread of dangerous materials, and know-how. The 50^th anniversary of the NPT is the appropriate moment to reflect on the future and consider ways to make the global non-proliferation regime more effective.

Iran’s nuclear program is a response to the potential threat posed by America’s conventional capability. Tehran also wants to deter Israel.  N. Korea’s nuclear program has prompted S. Korea and Japan to mull the idea of nuclear arms. That’s how chain reactions start. One state’s nuclear acquisitions drive its adversaries to follow suit. And once that capability has been acquired, there is only a slim chance of ever going back.

Brazil, Egypt, and Argentina halted their programs before, not after, they had the capability to produce nuclear weapons.  South Africa is the only nation to eliminate its existing arsenal, no matter how small it was. 

The two Koreas are moving toward rapprochement and the Trump-Kim Jong-un summit in Singapore is giving rise to great expectations.  It is evident that tensions are easing, but nothing indicates that Pyongyang is ready to eliminate its nuclear stockpiles. N. Korea may curb its program but not disarm. It remembers well the lessons of Iraq and Libya, which rolled back their nuclear programs only to be attacked afterward. International law failed to protect them. The US-led foreign interventions that circumvent the UN prompt other countries to view nuclear capability as the only deterrent that is truly effective. Nukes appear to be the only way to protect one’s national security.

The US did little to keep India and Pakistan from acquiring atomic weapons or to punish them for going nuclear. It connived to help Israel with its program. But it threatened war against N. Korea and is siding with Israel against Iran. Is there any coherence in this approach to the problem of proliferation? Definitely not. There is no clearly defined policy. It is based on the principle of “whatever is convenient for me is right, and whatever isn’t — is wrong.”    

The United States is violating the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (the NPT Treaty) right now by conducting "joint nuclear missions" with its European allies. The new B61-12 nuclear glide vehicle is scheduled for deployment in Europe around 2020.  It will be delivered by US-built F-15 or F-16 aircraft or European-built Tornado fighters. The planes are operated by Belgian, Dutch, German, Italian, and US crews. The bombs will be adapted so that the stealth F-35 can join the air forces of the European allies. A lot of joint training is anticipated in order to prepare the crews of several nations to use these nuclear munitions in war. Such joint activities take place during the annual NATO exercise Steadfast Noon. Finland, a non-NATO country, is studying the possibility of purchasing the nuclear-capable F-35.

Thus, non-nuclear states are locked into a nuclear-weapon posture.  Articles I and II of the Treaty state that nations may not "transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons" or hand over control over them. The fact that this is being violated is indisputable, but the US 2018 Nuclear Posture Review eyes expanding this practice.

The F-35 that has been supplied to Israel, which is not a party to the NPT, is an addition to the air leg of the nuclear triad. Even NATO allies are forbidden to update or make any changes to the aircraft without US permission. Israel is the only exception to this rule. It is allowed to install any systems it wants, including those that would enable the aircraft to carry Israeli-made nuclear munitions. If that’s not a violation of the NPT then what is?

The United States is the only power to deploy nukes abroad. This is the definition of proliferation. US President Donald Trump put forward the idea that more countries, such as Japan and South Korea, may need to develop their own nuclear weapons. This is tantamount to calling on other states that are parties to the NPT to forgo their commitments and to expedite the erosion of the nonproliferation regime. 

This is a hard time for arms control. The erosion of the NPT will greatly complicate the prospects for strategic arms agreements between the US and Russia. Global control over nuclear weapons is essential in order to make progress. The above-mentioned chain reaction may reduce all hopes to naught. The US non-compliance with its NPT commitments is an issue serious enough to be added to the agenda of the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

Avangard is to be installed on intercontinental missile, such as the 200-ton Sarmat ICBM. Delivered to the desired orbit at an altitude of 100 km from the Earth using a pre-booster, it can glide to its target at a speed of Mach 20 (5-7 km/s) while maneuvering with the help of stabilizers.

This is the first mass-produced weapon with a glider warhead that can travel at such an altitude in the dense layers of the atmosphere. The boost-glider vehicle can also abruptly change course. The system produces signatures, which are quite different from traditional intercontinental systems, to hinder attempts to spot and engage it.

The use of composite materials enables the re-entry vehicle to resist temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Celsius. It can fly within plasma and the glider is also protected from laser irradiation. The system passed its trials with flying colors.

The weapon is perfectly suited for knocking out an enemy’s critical infrastructure and leaving him unable to strike back. Its yield ranges from 150 kilotons to one megaton.

Russia, not the US, has been the first to achieve prompt global strike capability. That’s what makes this weapon especially important. The Russian president wasn’t exaggerating when he described the Kinzhal hypersonic missile. Now another new system is almost ready to go, further shaming those who doubted its existence.

President Putin’s address, in which he described these new ‘super weapons,” had nothing to do with serving the interests of the military-industrial complex. The development of the systems mentioned in this speech was prompted by the US withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty. That agreement had been the cornerstone of strategic stability until Washington pulled out in 2002, a move that was followed by the rollout of NATO missile-defense sites in Romania and Poland (this year). The ABM Treaty was not the only major international agreement the US put an end to. Today it is openly violating the NPT treaty. The Nuclear Posture Review released this year seeks to bury arms control. The announced plan to breach the 1991 presidential nuclear initiatives and arm naval ships with long-range missiles is nothing but an open threat to upset the strategic balance.

The Russian president made no threats; he just wanted to explain the measures his country had to take in response. This is quite a natural thing to do at a time when arms control is in crisis. None of the weapons systems he mentioned violates the New START Treaty. Russia never said it wanted to withdraw from the arms-control agreements still in force. It’s the US, not Russia, who seems to doubt that the New START or INF Treaty is worth preserving. The voices clamoring to tear up the intermediate-forces agreement are getting louder in America. There is a bumpy road ahead, so President Putin is taking steps to protect Russia’s citizens – which is exactly what he has always promised to do. Washington bears full responsibility for having convinced Moscow it needed to strengthen its defenses. Now America lags behind Russia in military technology that makes it possible for super weapons to be produced and added to the active arsenal. Tu l’as voulu, George Dandin!

Transparency is a good thing but it may not reveal the whole picture. One may appear to be open and aboveboard but still be hiding one’s real plans and intentions. For instance, Japan is ranked among the world’sten most peaceful nations. Threatened by N. Korea and China, it appears to be an innocent victim looking to the US for protection. That’s one side of the coin. But there is also another side.

The Japanese constitution forbidsoffensive weapons. Aircraft carriers are generally considered to belong to this category, and for this reason they are called “helicopter destroyers”in Japan. For instance, the Izumo-class air-capable destroyers are as big as British Invincible-classaircraft carriers. The warships can be modernized to turn them into real flat tops and that’s exactly what the Japanese government plans to do. Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said on March 2 that the military is considering the possibility of deploying US-made F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) fighters on the helicopter carriers. China has already expressed its concern over the plan.

The F-35 Lightning II supersonic stealth aircraft can be easily configured to carry nukes. Arming the air-capable warships of a non-nuclear state with nuclear-capable aircraft constitutes a violation of the NPT Treaty, which prohibits nuclear states from transferring nukes to other recipients. It also bans non-nuclear states from acquiring them.

The first land-based nuclear-capable F-35A variant fighter was delivered to Japan in late February. US military instructors would train Japanese military personnel to operate this offensive weapon. South Korea also plans to follow Japan’s example and put American aircraft on its aviation-capable ships. That’s how the policy of nonproliferation slowly begins to crumble.

Japan uses Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions to justify its plans to acquire US-made Tomahawk sea-based cruise missiles – another weapon that could potentially be nuclear tipped. The plans also include the acquisition of JASSM-ER and LRASM missiles, each of which has a range of roughly 900 km (559 mi). These are not defensive weapons.

Last year, US President Trump said at a joint press conference with Japanese PM Abe that “Japan is going to be purchasing massive amounts of military equipment.”

Tokyo is also looking into developing its own standoff cruise missile that can be launched from ships, aircraft, and land launchers to strike ground and sea targets. Any new long-range cruise missile could be integrated with Aegis Mk-41 launchers. It’s almost certain that ground-based Aegis Ashore systems will be at least partially operated by US military personnel. So, a medium-range missile with nuclear capability and operated by American servicemen will be deployed near Russia’s and China’s borders. Is this not a cause for legitimate concern?

The 2,100-memberAmphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade is expected to be operational this month, enabling first-strike capability. The Japanese military already has amphibious assault ships as well unmanned aerial vehicles to support such operations.

Plans are underway to build a three-tier missile defense. The Japanese government decided to acquire US Aegis Ashore systems, in order to join the American global BMD effort. The Aegis Mk-41 launcher can fire long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles that could be nuclear tipped.

Japan is to establish a space and cyberspace command center that will also be responsible for electronic warfare. The unit is already operational and willexpand by about 40%, bringing it up to 150 members, in FY 2018, which starts on April 1. That command center has confirmed Japan’s intention to extend its military operations into space. A network of radar for monitoring space is expected to be operational in FY 2022.

Japan possesses almost 47 tons of separated plutonium. That’s enough to produce 6,000 nuclear devices. The idea of going nuclear has not been abandoned and it even enjoys support from the US. Sharing nuclear capability is an option.Japan’s Epsilon rocket that is used for its civilian space program could be used as an intercontinental nuclear-delivery vehicle with a range of 12,000 km. Experts believe the conversion would take less than a year, including the acquisition of a multiple independent reentry vehicle. There are no technical obstacles.

North Korea's nuclear program is being adroitly used by Tokyo as a pretext for militarizationthat will threaten Russia and China. While the global media “cry wolf” over Iran's and N. Korea’s nuclear programs, they are surprisingly quiet when it comes to nuclear capability Japan could acquire in just one year. Tokyo is also clearly well on its way to boosting its conventional capabilities—thus changing the balance of power in the Asia Pacific. This is not a high-profile issue. But it should be.

The statement is more than propitious. No progress on European security is conceivable without an agreement on what to do with tactical nukes. US TNW are deployed while Russian tactical nukes are all stored. Unlike the US, Russia does not keep them abroad. Its non-strategic delivery means cannot strike the continental US. It makes American TNW in Europe an addition to the strategic potential able to tilt the existing strategic balance.

US instructors train European personnel, the Belgian, German, Italian and Dutch, to use TNW. An example is the yearly exercise Steadfast Noon, a low-profile training event conducted in semi-secrecy. The exercise testifies to the fact that European non-nuclear states (NNS) are involved in nuclear planning. The US trains their military personnel to fight a nuclear war.

It all constitutes a flagrant violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It prohibits nuclear states from transferring nukes to other recipients (Article I). It also prohibits NNS from receiving TNW (Article II). About half of US air-delivered bombs in Europe to be modernized are earmarked for delivery by aircraft of Europe’s NNS, which are parties to the NPT.

In the early 2020s, modernized B61-12 guided nuclear bombs will be delivered by stealth F-35 bombers that many European NATO members are going to acquire thus achieving first strike nuclear capability.

Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey take part in the F-35 program. Belgium will probably purchase the F-35 as a replacement for its aging F-16. Poland, Finland (not a NATO member but a privileged partner) and Germany appear to be on the way to acquire the aircraft. There will probably be others – all of them becoming nations with nukes deployed on their territories and crews trained to use TNW in violation of the NPT.

The nukes are hard to get rid of. In 2010, NATO adopted the Tallinn formula, which stipulates that no member of the alliance can unilaterally withdraw American TNW.

The US 2018 Nuclear Posture Review eulogizes low-yield nuclear weapons (with strength of less than 20 kilotons). It identifies the need for nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles and lower-yield warheads for sea-launched strategic missiles.

If the idea is implemented, the RF won’t be able to distinguish an incoming low-yield munition from a full-blown weapon to trigger a nuclear exchange at strategic level. From Russia’s perspective, the concept presupposes another addition to the strategic arsenal. Very provocative, isn’t it?

NATO’s superiority in conventional weapons also should not be forgotten as well as the nuclear capability possessed by France and the United Kingdom.

Here is another aspect so rarely remembered nowadays. Sea-based TNW are excluded from the US-Russia TNW balance. The undeservedly forgotten Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) signed in 1991 have so far been complied with. Unlike the INF Treaty, the compliance with the PNIs has never been doubted. Emergence of sea-based TNW means an end to the PNIs that have served both nations so effectively and for so long. The US, in effect, is adding European nuclear arsenals to the Russia-US strategic equation. Moscow will respond. It will also demand these weapons taken into consideration in potential arms control talks. It has every reason and right to do it. The problem of TNW will arise in negotiating the future the New START.

As one can see, the US plans undermine European security. They bring to naught the chances of reaching new strategic or non-strategic nuclear US-Russia accords. And it makes the US and European NATO members less secure upping the nuclear threshold. Moscow will not stand idle watching all these war preparations take place. It will respond. And other NPT participants will question the validity of the agreement breached in broad daylight. So may negative things with no silver lining visible. Is it worth it? Evidently not, but that’s what the US is doing. It will be responsible for the consequences. Russia has done its best to avoid the worst. On Feb.28, Sergey Lavrov said something really important. Hopefully, there are enough reasonable people not to make his stern and timely warning fall on deaf ears.