LLAW’s All Things Nuclear #676, Saturday, (06/29/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUN 30, 2024

1

Share

LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Saturday, (06/29/2024)

International laws, rules, agreements, and pacts mean nothing where nuclear war is concerned no matter how hard we wish that were not so. All we have left to hold nuclear war in abeyance is what we call “deterrence”, meaning each major nuclear armed country spends billions of dollars each year in order to hold a threatened nuclear attack in abeyance through the concept of ‘fear’ and ‘coercion’ (as mentioned in the article) that one nuclear country is more powerful than the others. “Deterrence” cannot continue to work for obvious financial reasons as well as others, and returning to nuclear agreements, et al, is no longer considered because they are always willfully broken by the dishonestly and disloyalty of those in charge. The Russia/Ukraine war is the ‘hotbed’ right now and Putin is the one with the nuclear football as he makes the loudest threats to use nuclear weapons, especially if NATO (and the USA) enter the actual war as defenders of democracy, not as simple financiers and military suppliers.

So it is that we are staring nuclear war, read a disastrous WWIII, in the face if just one of the 9 nuclear armed nations breaks the fear factor of ‘deterrence’ and uses nuclear weapons against an enemy. It takes only one nuclear bomb, because the other side will retaliate with even more, and then the international nuclear war begins almost instantly, never to end, of course, with a victory for any country, but a world of nuclear disaster beyond belief or comprehension. ~llaw

Global Issues

Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All

Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal

  • OPINION by Andrew Lichterman – Alyn Ware – Yosuke Watanabe (Oakland, California / Prague, Czech Republic / Yokohama, Japan)
  • Friday, June 28, 2024
  • Inter Press Service

Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal

Aftermath of attack in the city center of Kharkiv, Ukraine. June 2024. Credit: IOM

OAKLAND, California / PRAGUE, Czech Republic / YOKOHAMA, Japan, Jun 28 (IPS) – Our three organizations – Western States Legal Foundation, Peace Depot, and Basel Peace Office – all dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons, have consistently expressed our concern about the risk of nuclear war escalating during armed conflicts and times of high tension, when nuclear-armed states often make veiled or even explicit threats to use nuclear weapons and prepare for such use.

This has happened, for example, with the governments of India and Pakistan trading nuclear threats during their 2001 stand-off, the U.S. government making veiled nuclear threats against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and the U.S. and North Korean leaders threatening to strike each other with nuclear weapons in 2017.

We speak out now against the series of coercive nuclear threats that have been made by the Russian government since 2022 in conjunction with its invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Ukrainian territory.

From the start of the full-scale invasion and war in 2022, the government of the Russian Federation has made a series of threats to use nuclear weapons against countries that provide Ukraine with weapons and other military assistance.

Russian officials also have claimed the right to use nuclear weapons to defend territories they have occupied and illegally annexed in the course of the war. These threats have been accompanied by such posturing as the announced deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus and the highlighting of exercises of Russian nuclear forces in a military district on Ukraine’s borders.

These threats make clear once more a key role of the nuclear weapons possessed by the world’s most powerful states: to make it easier for their governments to pursue aggressive wars and to coerce countries to accept this aggression by exponentially increasing the danger to all who might oppose them.

In 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal, but did not reach a conclusion, one way or the other, regarding an extreme circumstance of self-defense when the very survival of a state is at stake.

This approach was controversial at the time in the international legal community, with considerable opinion that the threat or use of nuclear arms is illegal in all circumstances. That view has only strengthened in the nearly three decades since then.

Among other developments, the UN Human Rights Committee found in 2018 that threat or use of nuclear weapons is contrary to the human right to life; the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons declared in its preamble that use of nuclear weapons is contrary to international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the conduct of warfare; and a 2011 International Red Cross and Red Cross Movement resolution stated that it is “difficult to envisage how any use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with” IHL.

Regardless of one’s view of the current state of the law, the population of the Russian Federation faces no threat to its “very survival”. Their government could end its war on Ukraine tomorrow and the Russian Federation would remain a large and powerful state with an immense resource and industrial base, its internationally recognized borders intact.

There is no rationale for the brandishing of nuclear weapons by the government of the Russian Federation other than to leverage their terrible destructive power to advance its war of aggression and conquest in Ukraine.

In January 2022, less than two months before the government of the Russian Federation launched its invasion, that government, together with those of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and China issued a statement affirming that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Then in November 2022, at the G20 Summit in Bali, and again at the September 2023 G20 Summit in Delhi, the leaders and/or foreign ministers of China, France, India, Russia, UK, and USA declared that the “use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.” Yet, the nuclear threats continue.

Amidst a war already involving extensive air bombardment and missile warfare, together with the use of new kinds of electronic warfare that intensifies the fog of war, a nuclear crisis would pose extraordinary dangers. No one should have any illusions that such a crisis could be easily controlled.

The government of the Russian Federation should cease its threats of nuclear use, and issue assurances that it will not use nuclear weapons in the conflict with Ukraine. The United States, France, the United Kingdom, and NATO should issue such assurances as well.

Andrew Lichterman is Senior Research Analyst, Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, USA; Alyn Ware is Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Director, Basel Peace Office, Prague, Czech Republic; Yosuke Watanabe is Research Fellow, Peace Depot, Japan Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Yokohama, Japan.

The Western States Legal Foundation, based in Oakland, California, seeks to abolish nuclear weapons as an essential step in making possible a more secure, just, and environmentally sustainable world; Peace Depot is a non-profit, independent think tank based in Yokohama, Japan. It supports civil society’s peace movements, particularly in the area of nuclear disarmament and military base issues; Basel Peace Office is a coalition of four Swiss organizations and three international organizations advancing effective policies and proposals to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world.


Subscribed

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

  1. All Things Nuclear
  2. Nuclear Power
  3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
  4. Nuclear War
  5. Nuclear War Threats
  6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Saturday, (06/29/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

RFK calls Biden-Trump debate ‘sad,’ sees political opening – NPR

NPR

RFK Jr. spoke to All Things Considered about the Biden-Trump debate and … And that’s going to be like a nuclear bomb hitting our economy.

RFK Jr. calls Biden-Trump debate ‘sad,’ sees political opening – WGCU

WGCU

Independent candidate RFK Jr. spoke to All Things Considered about the Biden-Trump debate and what it means for his third-party run for the …

What to know about France’s high-stakes election, where the far right is gaining ground

WUWF

“This normalization strategy means she has broken with everything that scared people about the party,” says French political historian Jean Garrigues.

Nuclear Power

NEWS

U.S. needs major nuclear power expansion to meet rising electricity demand, Southern …

NBC New York

Unit 3’s reactor and cooling tower stand at Georgia Power Co.’s Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, on Jan. 20, 2023. The …

PPL expands Kentucky nuclear feasibility study

World Nuclear News

… nuclear energy in the state. The Ghent power plant site (Image: PPL). Ghent is a four-unit, coal-fired power plant with a combined net generating …

TVA’s Sequoyah plant offers insight as Kentucky looks at adding nuclear energy

The Paducah Sun

The Sequoyah Nuclear Plant is located outside Chattanooga, Tennessee, and produces enough electricity to power 1.3 million homes. DYLAN PAYNE | The …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Goodhue County passes nuclear emergency simulation despite flooding | News | kimt.com

KIMT

… Nuclear Power Plant in Welch did on the nuclear preparedness test. RED WING, Minn.- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) held a press …

Emergency blackout schedules were introduced in Kyiv this morning due to electricity shortage

MSN

… Offer 0% Interest Until Nearly 2026 · Ad · Bill Gates’ Nuclear Power Dreams. Climate Crisis 247. 62. 41.

Richland Community College hosts emergency drill for Illinois Emergency Management Agency

Herald-Review.com

… emergency management pertaining to an incident at one of the six nuclear power stations,” he said. “It addresses the roles and responsibilities of …

Nuclear War

NEWS

The $91 billion wasted on nuclear weapons last year could transform ecosystem restoration …

Mongabay

Nuclear war would mean climate disruption with devastating consequences. The world would fall under a nuclear winter, be subject to a deadly …

Russia presses its offensive in Ukraine and issues new threats as the West tries to blunt the push

AP News

Slowly but steadily this summer, Russian troops are forging through Ukraine’s outgunned and undermanned defenses along the front line of the …

Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal – Global Issues

Global Issues

From the start of the full-scale invasion and war in 2022, the government of the Russian Federation has made a series of threats to use nuclear …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Russia presses its offensive in Ukraine and issues new threats as the West tries to blunt the push

AP News

That, in turn, has brought new threats by President Vladimir Putin to retaliate against the West — either directly or indirectly. The moves by the …

No debate: On existential threats, Biden, Trump, and CNN all largely failed

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

… threats that could, if not properly managed, cripple or even end human civilization. On Thursday evening, discussion of these threatsnuclear war …

Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal – Global Issues

Global Issues

” Yet, the nuclear threats continue. Amidst a war already involving … war, a nuclear crisis would pose extraordinary dangers. No one should ..

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Yellowstone quakes explained with beachball diagrams – Ravalli Republic

Ravalli Republic

Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week’s …

ULA needs to launch Vulcan II rocket – La Ronge Northerner

La Ronge Northerner

Yellowstone caldera, sometimes referred to as the Yellowstone supervolcano, is a volcanic caldera and supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.