Tag Archives: war

Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare by Bertrand Russell

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Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare was a 1959 book by Bertrand Russell. The title is clearly tongue-in-cheek because these are two things that don’t mix. Here is a fun quote/paraphrase relating the book to the present day, provided by History News Network:

Responding on August 8 to North Korean threats, Trump publicly warned that North Korea “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Later that day, North Korea’s state media announced that its government was considering a strategy of striking the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam with mid- to long-range nuclear missiles―a strategy that a spokesman for the Korean People’s Army said would be “put into practice” once Kim authorized it.

This kind of reckless and potentially suicidal behavior is reminiscent of the game of “Chicken,” which achieved notoriety in the 1950s. In the film Rebel Without a Cause (1955), two rebellious, antisocial male teenagers (or juvenile delinquents, as they were known at the time) played the game before a crowd of onlookers by driving jalopies at top speed toward a cliff. Whoever jumped out of the cars first was revealed as “chicken” (a coward). A more popular variant of the game involved two teenagers driving their cars at high speed toward one another, with the first to swerve out of the way drawing the derisive label. According to some accounts, young James Dean, a star of Rebel Without a Cause, actually died much this way.

With news of the game spreading, Bertrand Russell, the great mathematician and philosopher, suggested in 1959 that the two sides in the Cold War were engaged in an even crazier version: nuclear “Chicken.” He wrote: “As played by irresponsible boys, this game is considered decadent and immoral, though only the lives of the players are risked.” But the game became “incredibly dangerous” and “absurd” when it was played by government officials “who risk not only their own lives but those of many hundreds of millions of human beings.” Russell warned that “the moment will come when neither side can face the derisive cry of ‘Chicken!’ from the other side.” When that moment arrived, “the statesmen of both sides will plunge the world into destruction.”

This might be the biggest problem of all with having nuclear weapons around. Even if rational adult supervision is present 99% of the time, and even if there were no risk of terrorism, it only takes one irrational leader one time to pull the trigger and fuck up our world permanently.

North Korean nuclear submarines

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Submarine-launched nuclear missiles are the ultimate deterrent, because unless your enemies are sure they can find and destroy all your subs before they have a chance to launch, you have the ability to retaliate anywhere at anytime, even if this is your last action after your enemy has turned your country into a “sea of fire” (as the North Koreans are fond of saying). If you read the first half of this CNN article, you think North Korea has them or almost has them, but if you get to the end you find out that the expert consensus is that North Korea isn’t close.

The US military has detected “highly unusual and unprecedented levels” of North Korean submarine activity and evidence of an “ejection test” in the days following Pyongyang’s second intercontinental ballistic missile launch this month, a defense official told CNN on Monday.

An ejection test examines a missile’s “cold-launch system,” which uses high pressure steam to propel a missile out of the launch canister into the air before its engines ignite. That helps prevent flames and heat from the engine from damaging either the submarine, submersible barge or any nearby equipment used to launch the missile.

Two concerns: one is that Trump decides they are close and decides to order a preemptive strike. Even if this were the best course of action, Trump is not the leader we would need at the helm during such a crisis. Two is that these might be the same experts what brung us weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Maybe this is their makeup call for the earlier bad call. In other words, maybe we’re in for an unpleasant WMD surprise that goes in the opposite direction of the last one.

The current US intelligence assessment is that the missile program aboard submarines remains in the very early stages.

a “soft military coup” for the U.S.?

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This New Republic article is clearly very partisan. But it points out some concerns about three active or very recently retired generals being given unprecedented power over our country.

His complete failure to grow into the job has allowed multiple power centers to emerge and vie for ascendency within the administration. It has impelled other institutional actors to essentially expropriate from Trump governing tasks that should be his exclusively. In some cases, as when he gave military leaders a free hand in fighting terrorism, he has willingly parted with these obligations. In others, as when Congress wrested discretion over Russian sanctions away from him, he has been layered over reluctantly.

But the most alarming development is the one that ironically has official Washington the most relieved: the emergence of a trio of military officers (two retired, one actively serving) as de facto caretakers of the presidency.

It is perfectly consistent to say that the growing clout of generals John Kelly (the White House chief of staff), H.R. McMaster (the national security advisor), and Jim Mattis (the defense secretary) is preferable to an alternative in which Trump shambles through his presidency unencumbered, but also dangerous in its own right, and evidence of serious institutional failure. The hope is apparently to keep Trump’s administration within certain guardrails, so that if and when it fails, he doesn’t take the country and the world off the road with him.

If there is some kind of international crisis, I think I feel more comfortable with these guys making decisions than Trump. But I don’t like the idea that we have the military in charge rather than the civilian leadership, because they are very likely to come up with military solutions to problems. I always thought Trump would be lazy and delegate a lot of his job to subordinates, but this has taken a disturbing turn. It seems unlikely that Trump would be removed from office by Congress in the next four years, so at the moment I am hoping to avoid any major geopolitical crises through luck, and that someone will convince him not to run for reelection.

July 2017 in Review

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Most frightening stories:

Most hopeful stories:

  • A new cancer treatment genetically modifies a patient’s own immune system to attack cancer cells.
  • Shareholders of big fossil fuel companies are starting to force some action on climate change business risk disclosure.
  • Richard Florida offers five ideas for solving poverty and what is wrong with cities: taxing land based on its improved value, massive investment in public transportation and public education, ending the mortgage interest tax deduction, and guaranteed minimum income.

Most interesting stories, that were not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps were a mixture of both:

  • Technology is marching on, whether or not the economy and human species are. The new thing with satellites is to have lots of small, cheap ones instead of a few big, expensive ones. Even if the coal industry were to make a comeback, today’s coal jobs are going to data analysts, remote control machine operators, mechanical and electrical engineers, not guys underground with pickaxes and headlamps. But the coal can be produced with a lot less human effort (i.e. jobs) than it used to be. Iris scans like in Minority Report are now a thing.
  • Ecologists have some new ideas for measuring resilience of ecosystems. Technologists have some wild ideas to have robots directly counteract the effects of humans on ecosystems. I like ideas – how do I get a (well-compensated) job where I can just sit around and think up ideas?
  • Isaac Asimov says truly creative people (1) are weird and (2) generally work alone.

Some combination of the Trump news, the things I see every day on the streets of Philadelphia, and events affecting friends and family led me to question this month whether the United States is really a society in decline. Actually, I don’t question that, I think the answer is yes. But the more important question is whether it is a temporary or permanent decline, and what it means for the rest of the globe. I am leaning slightly toward permanent, but maybe I will feel better next month, we’ll see. Maybe I need to get out of this country for a little while. Last time I did that I felt that the social glue holding Americans together is actually pretty strong compared to most other places, even if our government and its approach to other governments have become largely dysfunctional. We need to get through the next couple years without a nuclear detonation, hope the current vacuum of leadership leads some quality leaders to emerge, and hope things have nowhere to go but up. There, I talked myself off the ledge!

 

the value of nuclear weapons

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Moral considerations aside, Richard N. Haas gives a clear explanation of why nuclear weapons are attractive to countries.

Decades ago, Israel made such a calculation in the face of Arab threats to eliminate the Jewish state. More recently, Ukraine, Libya, and Iraq all gave up their nuclear weapons programs either voluntarily or under pressure. Subsequently, Ukraine was invaded by Russia, Iraq by the US, and Libya by the US and several of its European partners. Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya were ousted.

North Korea has avoided such a fate, and the third generation of the Kim family rules with an iron fist. It is doubtful that the lesson is lost on Kim Jong-un.

You could try to estimate what it would cost for a particular country to have a conventional military equal in deterrent power to a few nuclear weapons. And the answer is almost certainly that they couldn’t afford it, even if they had the people and technology and productive capacity necessary. So a nuclear deterrent seems very logical. Of course the problem is that when everybody has them, or even a substantial fraction of countries has them, the risk to everybody becomes much higher than if nobody had them.

Another thing I learned from this article is that the UN General Assembly in July created (I don’t know if that is the right legal word) a treaty designed to facilitate long-term disarmament and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. It may not be legally binding or backed by serious political power at the moment, but it shows leadership and could give serious, ethical leaders something to point to in future negotiations. Imagine for example if China, Russia, and the United States decided to throw their weight behind this.

Niall Ferguson compares Trump to JFK

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Niall Ferguson appears to have finally stopped explaining and apologizing and rationalizing Donald Trump, and admitted that he is a bad President. Just not the only bad President ever, so that makes it okay. Who is Niall’s example of another bad President? John F. Kennedy. He withheld information on his health from the public, had suspected ties to organized crime, and was unfaithful to his wife. These are historical facts I can’t argue with, but surely not very important points of comparison between the two men. Niall picks a couple more points of comparison that I think are important, but for completely different reasons than Niall.

And on his watch, the world came closer than at any other time to nuclear Armageddon, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. How was catastrophe averted? By using a back channel to the Kremlin to cut a secret deal…

Perhaps Trump’s Cuban missile crisis is on its way, in North Korea.

On the secret back channel, Trump has been criticized for not maintaining this back channel. The idea of the back channel is that if the radar says there are incoming missiles, the President has a direct line to the other side that will help him make a crucial decision whether to launch a response. That happened several times during the Cold War. Do we trust Trump to make the right decision under similar circumstances? Or at least a reasoned, rational decision even if there is no right one. I don’t.

On the Cuban Missile Crisis, one reason it happened is that foreign enemies perceived the U.S. leadership as weak and decided to test it. When we were tested, the U.S. military leadership pressed for an attack on Cuba, which very likely could have led to a world war with or without thermonuclear weapons. Kennedy resisted this advice and managed to defuse the crisis without launching an invasion. I admit, he bluffed his way through it, and maybe got lucky, but it was strong leadership and it took as much courage to stand up to the U.S. military as to the USSR. Possibly more. And maybe they killed him for it.

Trump is not only weak, he is an international laughing stock. Foreign powers who wouldn’t have crossed a Clinton or Bush or Obama are constantly testing him. Not only is he likely to do whatever military advisers tell him to do, he does not really even have independent civilian advisers to counter them. He is insecure, ignorant, and irrational. The risk to civilization is huge.

Wow, I just depressed myself. Well, nuclear weapons are the worst thing currently out there in the world, and the threat is real and growing. Start a global thermonuclear war, and we will not be around to worry about health care or climate change or anything else. The cockroaches can figure that stuff out when they evolve intelligence in another trillion years or so.

Congo

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This disturbing article in The Week reminds us that there is still a nasty war going on in Congo, and that part of the driver is fighting over minerals used to make smart phones.

A brutal civil war in Congo has displaced more people in the past year than the wars in Syria and Iraq…

The government of President Joseph Kabila appears to be behind some of the atrocities. After the rebel faction Kamuina Nsapu rose up last fall against Kabila’s government, both the Congolese army and the rebels engaged in atrocities. But the most horrific attacks in recent months have been the work of a new militia, Bana Mura, which the U.N. says was created and armed by Kabila’s government. Bana Mura militants, of a different ethnic group than the Kamwina Nsapu, have slaughtered whole villages, going door-to-door and killing everyone they found — babies, parents, grandparents…

Impoverished Congo has $24 trillion worth of mineral wealth in the ground, including cobalt, diamonds, gold, and coltan — a highly valuable ore containing the heat-resistant element tantalum, used to make the circuit boards in smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices. The proceeds, often made off child labor, fund the rebel factions and the Congolese military — much as “blood diamonds” did in Sierra Leone. U.S. companies participate indirectly, by buying tantalum and circuit boards, and directly, by investing in Congolese mining: Just last year, U.S. hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management was hit with a record fine of $412 million for bribing Kabila for mineral concessions.

 

drumbeat of war with North Korea?

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According to CNN, “US military options for North Korea have been prepared” and “all options are on the table”. Neither of these statements is concerning to me on its face. I assume the U.S. military has considered how to respond to all sorts of “what if” scenarios, and it should. What is concerning – do i have to point this out – is Donald J. Trump. If he wakes up one day and impulsively decides to order an attack, will the U.S. military just automatically carry it out?

Once the first shots are fired, the civilians tend to lose a lot of control to the military. I would hope Trump, Mattis and the other civilians who supposedly are in control of our foreign policy and military actions would go to Congress and then to the UN, get a resolution and build a coalition before taking any such action. If George W. Bush had followed those steps, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars either would not have happened, or would have happened with much broader support from the rest of the world. A calm, rational, confident leader could actually show strength by doing this, but someone like Trump will almost certainly see any attempt at consensus building as a sign of weakness. This is getting very dangerous.

“What we have to do is prepare all options because the President has made clear to us that he will not accept a nuclear power in North Korea and a threat that can target the United States and target the American population,” McMaster said during remarks at a Washington think tank…

“I hardly ever escape a day at the White House without the President asking me about North Korea and how it is that the United States is responding to that threat,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo told MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt this past weekend. “It’s very much at the top of his mind.” Trump last week also indicated he is becoming more concerned…

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned lawmakers on Wednesday that the North Korea’s missile program may be advancing ahead of previous estimates that put Kim Jong Un’s unpredictable regime three to five years away from achieving its ambition of being able to deliver a nuclear weapon to the US…

In a recent exchange with Sen. Lindsay Graham on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary James Mattis took an unusually specific stand on US military policy. Graham asked: “Is it the policy of the Trump administration to deny North Korea the capability of building an ICBM that can hit the American homeland with a nuclear weapon on top? Is that the policy?”

“Yes,” Mattis answered.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar

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Here is a professor of Middle East history at UCLA explaining some of the history between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The Saudi-Qatari quarrel can be traced to back to the conquests that led to the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Only the fact that Qatar was a British protectorate at that time dissuaded the emerging Saudi state from swallowing up the small spit of land on which Qatar is situated.

In the years following Qatari independence in 1971, Qatar and Saudi Arabia quarreled over boundaries. Qatar also struck out on its own in foreign affairs in an effort to wriggle out from under the thumb of its neighbor.

Then, in 1995, Sheikh Tammin bin Hamad, the current ruler of Qatar, took power from his father in a coup d’état. Monarchs in Saudi Arabia and the UAE viewed the coup as a dangerous precedent and plotted a countercoup. The sheikh was to be assassinated. Tammin caught wind of the plot and crushed it, but the bad blood remained.

Fast forward to 2010-11. During the Arab uprisings, Saudi Arabia and Qatar again found themselves at loggerheads. Qatar became a cheerleader for the uprisings through its news empire, al-Jazeera, and through financial and even military assistance to a number of opposition movements. Saudi Arabia became the epicenter of the counter-revolution.