Notes from a public meeting : Are We Heading to a Nuclear War

Brief notes from a public meeting :Are we heading to a nuclear war? London region CND meeting at SOAS  27/3/18

Ted Seay (senior policy consultant at B.A.S.I.C.), David Webb (chair of CND)

and Carol Turner (Chair of London CND).

1) Dooms Day Clock has been moved to 2 minutes to midnight due to the escalating risks of climate change and nuclear weapons.

2) The margin for error in avoiding a nuclear disaster was getting thinner because

A) development of New Nukes, B)broadening of circumstances in which the use of Nuclear weapons is being contemplated  C) lack of high-level communications between major nuclear weapons powers. D) the turning of backs on International Treaties E) the US new Nuclear posture review – moving towards first/pre emptive strike.

3) Even a relatively small regional nuclear war could trigger global cooling, damage the ozone layer and cause droughts for more than a decade (nuclear winter).

4) Underwater/sea drones can detect nuclear submarines.

5)All nuclear weapons states are currently ‘modernising’ or ‘upgrading’ their arsenal. In reality these are development of new nuclear weapons in contravention of the NPT.

The Korean peninsula: The temperature appeared to have dropped with Trump’s agreeing to meet with Kim Jong Un the president of North Korea all thanks to Moon Jae-in the president of South Korea for his hard work (came to power with the elections promise of restoring the Sunshine policy of rapprochement with N.K.) However the US never entered negotiations with N.K. in the past without pre conditions. N. Korea has been for a long time been seeking a peace treaty and hoping for the lifting of economic sanctions.

3) China, South Korea and North Korea: Not in their interests to start a military conflict. China has commercial investments in South Korea. Any military conflict in the region will see the US taking over the South Korean military and the conflict in the peninsula will very quickly develop into a Global conflict.

US : Nuclear Posture Review 2018:

President Barack Obama gave a landmark address in Prague in which he famously affirmed “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons (2009) The commitment to total nuclear disarmament was a major policy departure. However Ted Seay believes Department of Defence and Department of Energy (developers/manufacturers/investors and the military) are so powerful they over ruled this initiative. The nuclear Posture Review of 2010 under Obama raised the threshold of use of nuclear weapons and limited the possibilities of use to “extreme circumstance”.

Under Trump the 2018 NPR report there are plans for modernising current N weapons and development of small/ low yield nuclear bombs. (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were low yield bombs). They call them tactical/battlefield ‘small’ bombs, but they are just as deadly. Their presence and the readiness to use them increase the possibility of errors/miscalculations during a regional conflict.

TS: the cost of the US ‘modernisation’ and development of nuclear weapons estimated to cost $1.5 trillion over 30 years, the final figure will be even higher($3-4 Trillion) as usually the case.

The NPR 2018 report never really explains how any of these new capabilities would alter our security environment. There are other significant departures from the 2010 NPR. The role of diplomacy in nuclear relations is mostly ignored and it does not contain a single reference to Article VI of the U.N. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which obliges the United States, as one of the signatories, to move in the direction of nuclear disarmament. The report is also noticeably vague when it comes to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a global ban on nuclear explosive testing.

New Technology: Super fuzing of ballistic missiles :

Before the invention of this new fuzing mechanism, even the most accurate ballistic missile warheads might not detonate close enough to targets hardened against nuclear attack to destroy them. But the new super-fuze is designed to destroy fixed targets by detonating above and around a target in a much more effective way.(making them deadlier) Warheads that would otherwise overfly a target and land too far away will now, because of the new fuzing system, detonate above the target.

This is seen as a dangerous development towards first use/pre emptive use of nuclear weapons.

NATO is expensive& pointless (hardware & military manoeuvres): “The US government, despite impending defence spending cuts, is planning to upgrade the bombs with precision guidance systems at a cost of $4 billion. European countries (where these US tactical Nuclear weapons exist), whose pilots are trained to deliver the B-61s to target, are also facing expensive decisions to replace the relevant aircraft, which are now coming to the end of their effective service lives. Each replacement aircraft – (the US F-35 Joint Strike Fighter) – is estimated to cost from $90 million to just over $110 million”. However initial estimates have a habit of taking a steep increase once these projects are on their way.

David Webb spoke about the UK’s nuclear arsenal/capabilities and delivery systems. In 2016 parliament voted to renew the Trident system. The UK is also involved in developing new nukes MK4A.  Super fuzed missiles already installed in Trident submarines.

The UK is following the US nuclear Strategy.

On 29^th March 2018:

Theresa May “The Chancellor of the Exchequer and I agreed the Ministry of Defence will have access to £600m this coming financial year for the MoD’s Dreadnought submarine programme"

FT: A report published in January by the UK’s spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, raised questions over the affordability of the MoD’s £178bn equipment plan and highlighted how the cost of building Britain’s new Dreadnought and Astute-class attack submarines had risen by £941m since 2016.