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? […]
Nuclear Talks, Nuclear Risks North Korea and Russia Take Next Steps VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) — Smiling and upbeat, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday stepped off his khaki-green armored train in far-eastern Russia for a much-anticipated summit with President Vladimir Putin that comes amid deadlocked diplomacy on his nuclear program.
Not a walk in the park. Defense One; Foreign Affairs; TomDispatch. A taste of things to come as war plans shift to visions of full-spectrum conflict, strategic and tactical, cyber war, space war, AI war… China, Russia, the U.S. in a 21st century geo-political Great Game, all-too-real moves with new war systems, new nukes…
As nuclear treaty after nuclear treaty bites the dust, today, February 1st, 2019, the U.S. announces its intent to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. Nuclear arms control is immeasurably damaged. A new nuclear arms race is heralded, a global breakout characterized by many as “insanity”.
President Donald Trump announces via Twitter that he has ordered Mike Pompeo to cancel a planned trip to North Korea because there has not been “sufficient progress” in denuclearization talks so far. The president singles out China for not “helping the process”…
The historic meet up between North Korea and the US produced a page and a half ‘agreement’. This released result was all the public has been given to date. Behind the scenes, the world is assured, much is in the works. New meetings are planned. In North Korea, a campaign of politics with posters is […]
After the Singapore summit, the commentators, op-ed writers, columnists, analysts, foreign policy experts and seemingly everyone within reach of a keyboard or smartphone all have an opinion. Who are we not to join in with StratDem’s opinion? Consider the alternative to negotiating, “politics by other means”, war and potential catastrophic use of nuclear weapons
The nuclear question, the crisis, revolves around “CVID”. You ask, CVID? We answer, Complete, Verifiable and Irreversible Dismantlement (or Denuclearization?). Then we add calls for “complete nuclearization” on the Korean peninsula. Then we add — when, where, how, why. The world is asking for nuclear deescalation and not just on the Korean peninsula Update: […]
The credibility gap, as the phrase goes, extends its reach as news of death, violence, evangelical preachers and hard right politics comes from Israel and the U.S. Talk about a Jared Kushner-brokered peace is so unrealistic and distant as to produce cognitive dissonance, chaos, loss of hope
The lies of the Iraq war and subsequent disaster now shift toward an Iran disaster. After listening this past week to Israel’s PM present his country’s official POV regarding Iran, although it veered widely from top U.S. security officials public statements and testimony before Congress, the U.S. president has decided
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
As war drums beat, talk of war grows closer. Yesterday, we exchanged pre-publication messages with professor Tom Nichols over the issue of “preventive” versus “preemptive” war. We went further by asking how many Americans, who support a US attack on North Korea, even know the difference between preventive and preemptive war. A Trump-ordered first strike […]
Count the ways words and belligerance can escalate to war. A litany comes to mind — miscalculation, provocation, preemption, a Gulf of Tonkin moment, or just a temper-tantrum acted out in a “fit of pique” (James Clapper’s words). We could go on, but words that draw the world closer to the edge, push closer to disaster
Fact: Decades of war across the globe produce trillions of dollars of debt and historic spending levels … a $696.5 billion defense bill passes … 18.7% year-over-year growth … though the Pentagon is the only federal department unable to conduct and pass a financial audit … this is unsustainable
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.”
