As readers of Strategic Demands may recall, your editor as a younger man was close to Dan Ellsberg during his Rand research days in Santa Monica. Dan’s role with the “Pentagon Papers” was historic, but few know of Dan Ellsberg’s role as a U.S. nuclear war planner…
The “button” can morph into a perverse temptation for an unstable leader. In 1974, during his impeachment proceedings, President Richard M. Nixon said to reporters: “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes, 70 million people will be dead.”
Nuclear weapons of the US and adversaries remain on “high alert”. The Union of Concerned Scientist address the risks, as the United Nations Non-Proliferation Review Conference concludes in disarray…
As the war in Ukraine grinds on and new weapon systems are escalating the fighting, a war of words, threats, and responses are delivering new levels of risks, collapsing arms control agreements, and calls for a negotiated wars end. Will the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war continue to expand with dire consequences
Updated: January 1, 2018 The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. A look back at Dan Ellsberg… 1969 / 70 / 71 in Los Angeles… memories of Rand and the McNamara “history project”… Vietnam’s reality he shared with your editor as he prepared to reveal it to a nation at war. Now, again, […]
On Veterans Day, formerly World War One Armistice Day, the “war to end all wars”, we look back and forward at the costs of war and remember the courage in defense of values worth defending. My father was a B-17 pilot then trained as a B-29 pilot among those who began the nuclear era…
Update / February 28, 2022 Washington Post | Opinion: Putin’s nuclear threats remind us arms control is dangerously unfinished business * https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/28/putins-nuclear-threats-remind-us-arms-control-is-dangerously-unfinished-business/ Collapsing Nuclear Arms Control Agreements A Proposed Ukraine Fix: Act Now to Expand the INF Agreement Lost opportunity for nuclear arms control agreements and ‘mutual security’ * https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Nuclear_Nonproliferation February […]
A Nuclear Arsenal and Reflections on a President’s Last Days in Office Obama plans major nuclear policy changes in his final months … Obama administration determined to advance the nuclear reduction agenda. StratDem update: A month ago we wrote that the president’s final days in office should include executive orders addressing nuclear proliferation issues… Now, […]
To look at some 200 nations of the world and ask how democracy’s doing these days is to witness what’s being called ‘backsliding’. Signs of loss in democratic norms are global and the world wide web — the Internet with its social media storms — is pushing breakdowns. Democracy’s ‘backsliding’ & its breakdowns are all-too-real
The Russian president sends a warning — the end of the INF and resumption of US tests of intermediate range ground-launched nuclear warheads means gravely higher stakes. When new first strike, ‘usable’ nukes are deployed to countries threatening the Russian Federation, then all bets are off
If decades of disastrous wars in the Mid/Near East aren’t enough for you… if U.S. forces based across the globe aren’t enough… if a Triad of 24/7/365 hair-trigger alert nuclear weapons aren’t enough, if the collapse of weapons control agreements and treaties aren’t enough then how about a Big Show on the 4th of July? […]
As the international nuclear arms control architecture collapses, the progenitors of nuclear weapons control meet up at their annual DC confab to talk of strategic issues and academically shake their heads witnessing a descent toward a nuclear precipice … Nukes in the new era of proliferation … The 2019 Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference
Another legislative attempt to bring sanity into nuclear weapons policy. Being ‘on the brink’ of disaster is not rational policy. A new nuclear arms race is accelerating. Threats and chaos dominate U.S. foreign policy. Risks are multiplying and strategic opportunities lost in clicks of daily crisis. It is time to change course …
Press reports of the Putin-Trump meeting in Helsinki converged quickly on a dominant narrative — Putin advanced Russian interests and the US president inexplicably supports (or doesn’t support) Putin’s interests. At Strategic Demands, as an independent voice distinct from news cycle narratives, we focus here on our interests, the ‘issue of issues’, nuclear weapons
March 1st : Russian president Putin addresses the nation. Accompanied by large screen animated demonstrations, he talks of a new generation of nuclear weapons. In the US, strategic experts question the weapons. Others begin debating the rising danger of a nuclear arms race. The US president reacts, angrily tweeting before dawn
The U.S. needs new oversight on the unlimited power of the president to order nuclear use on any day at any moment for whatever reason. The singular nuclear launch authority one person has is an extreme and potentially cataclysmic authority. Now is the time for a sane nuclear launch system