Nuke Science & Nuked News Smoke from burning cities would engulf Earth, causing worldwide crop failures Even a ‘small’ conflict in which two nations unleash nuclear weapons on each other could lead to worldwide famine, new research suggests. Soot from burning cities would encircle the planet and cool it by reflecting sunlight back […]
Category: New Definitions of National Security
The International Space Station Minus Russia
In a move that can be seen as symbolic, as well as adversarial, the Russian Federation announces Roscosmos, its space agency, will be ending its participation in the ISS cooperative space venture. Sometime after 2024, the new Russian space agency director says, will be — ‘the end’
Quotes: Rattling & Ratcheting Nukes
A moment last fall in the Moscow press talked of turning the U.S. into a ash wasteland, the result of Russian nuclear weapons. This carryover from the first Cold War (call it 1.0) has bestowed another level of Mutually Assured Destruction to today’s new Nuclear MAD, a Cold War 2.0 getting hotter day by day…
United Nations 6th Climate Assessment – Part 2
Dire climate news from tens of thousands of science studies… UN’s 6th Assessment in 3 parts: August 2021, ‘How the climate is changing’; February 2022, ‘What are the climate impacts? How can we adapt and act now to make a difference?’ Coming March 2022, ‘Solutions to slow impacts of climate change’
Another Perspective on Ukraine-Russia and What Comes Next
Perspective is essential in understanding causes of war — and roads to peace. Strategic Demands strives in our work to see security, and mutual security, with a realistic perspective. Here, Anatol Lieven, brings a “Responsible Statecraft” perspective…
Harrowing, Wrenching – U.S. Intel Agencies Point at Climate Change
Intelligence services agencies of the United States have a warning that’s now crept into officially expressed national security policy. Strategic Demands: “The U.S. security establishment’s far too long delayed admission of the clear and present danger of #ClimateChange is still far from the shift in national and global security policy demanded”
New German Coalition Government, New Positions on Nuclear Weapons
Recall that the German Green Party, out in front of some 100 Green parties internationally, led ‘ban the bomb’ opposition to nuclear weapons in Europe in the 1980s. The new German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, is a German Green Party leader. Green politics calls …
Glasgow Climate Summit Concludes with Pledges and Promises, but What About Action?
A mutual existential question and threat remains as the international climate summit, COP26, ends. Some 39,000 registered delegates now return to their some 200 countries. Will nations’ climate actions come close to making the climate changes necessary?
ICBMs ‘Hair-trigger’ Launch on Warning Era Must End
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…
Stark Words, Stark Warning at the U.N.
President Biden speaks to the United Nations of pressing national and global challenges faced by today’s generation. Our “intergenerational” responsibility begins to be recognized, acknowledged and acted upon
As Is, the U.S. President’s Authority to Order Nuclear Weapons Launch
In the interest of furthering the goal of nuclear era sanity, Strategic Demands is re-posting the recent PolitiFact ‘clarification’ on the singular authority, the legal and practical powers of president Donald Trump to order the launch of nuclear weapons. The president’s state-of-mind was in deep question as he attacked the legality of the 2020 election
The End of Boots On the Ground Occupation
Twenty years at war….. This is how it ends…. a tweet from CENTCOM: The last American Soldier leaves Afghanistan Major General Chris Donahue, commander of U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan
As Afghanistan Falls to the Taliban
August in its imperial definition faces another day of reckoning – August 15th, 2021. The president of Afghanistan flees and the Taliban enter Kabul. Negotiations over a reported “unconditional surrender” proceed. U.S. helicopters swoop in to evacuate …
IPCC report: ‘Code red’ for human-driven global heating – Part 1
First of three-part UN Report documenting the impacts of climate change by United Nations’ 6th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is no doubt: “Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying” – IPCC 6th Report, August 2021. Next release, February 2022; next, March 2022
History of Earth Science with the Committee on Science, Space & Technology
History can play a critical role informing every generation’s decisions. Accurate, informed knowledge and intelligence can shape front-line decision-makers lives as they deal with everyday challenges. Larger challenges, even existential challenges — and crisis require best available intelligence. To illustrate, let’s look back at the origins of U.S. climate and earth science
Earth System Observatory
The original mission statement of NASA prominently focused on Earth Science. A first generation of visionary scientists and government leaders set in motion missions to study, measure and monitor Earth’s life systems. Now, fifty+ years on, with decades of data and ‘vital signs’ to guide policy decisions, it’s time for a leap of knowledge
The Strategic Demands of Climate Change
The International Energy Agency shocked the financial world this week. News headlines from the IEA, captured at StratDem with a series of screen shot scans, present demands and timeline for an End to the Oil & Gas Era. A drawdown of hydrocarbon emissions and immediate transition from business-as-usual must become a global goal — Now