NUCLEAR INSANITY AND THE LAST DAYS OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY
Nov 15, 2024
LLAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS & THE IMPACT OF THE STORY
By the coincidence of consecutive dates of a couple of similar international articles, this piece is also from Australia, but it also points out that the entire world, including non-nuclear-armed endowed countries, is worried about the coming 2nd presidency of Donald Trump, who is not considered anywhere around the world, including in his own country, to be a straight shooter who can, in any way, be relied upon to “do the right thing” for democracy.
Two points from this article are similar to several of the previous articles I have led this blog post with my constant concerns — that the United States, with the cost of “deterrence”, cannot afford to protect its non-nuclear allies from any nuclear conflict and that their pretense to “take care” of countries like Australia and South Korea, and that we should not pretend to be able to do so. A third, and dangerous issue is the re-election of Donald Trump who often seems to be more personally allied to our nuclear enemies like Russia, North Korea, and to some degree, China. My own view is that Trump should never, ever, be allowed to get within miles of the nuclear football. Congress needs to change the procedure for knowing and using the nuclear codes before Trump and the new congress take office in mid-January.
Australia obviously, from the opinion and points of author Dr. Peter Hooton, feels like they are better off to separate themselves from the United States as a partner in military matters. They are not the 1st country who is uncomfortable allying with the USA, and that may very well include Ukraine, knowing that Trump, (who said on July 2nd of this year, that he will halt the Russia/Ukraine war in 24 hours after he becomes president. That huge brag and/or lie is likely, as “Rolling Stone” headlined yesterday, “Trump’s Peace Plan for Ukraine Looks Like Putin’s Victory,“.
So it is well known that the only way Trump could possibly do as he says is to side with Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, but even that is unlikely to happen because NATO is, of course, not happy with the USA’s limited or restricted actions in the recent past. But still, Trump is likely to quickly try to negotiate on Putin’s behalf leaving Ukraine and NATO out in the cold air of winter. ~llaw
The Extended Nuclear Deterrence Myth
15 Nov 2024
By Dr Peter Hooton
Australia has long contributed to global arms control and non-proliferation efforts, yet its reliance on the US nuclear umbrella reflects a conflicting stance on nuclear disarmament. This dependence not only undermines Australia’s historical commitment to nuclear disarmament but also risks drawing the nation into potential nuclear conflict without assured protection.
Australia has made important contributions to the negotiation and consolidation of multilateral nuclear (and conventional) arms control and non-proliferation measures—in relation, for example but by no means only, to the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 and to the adoption of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. But it sees the world, strategically, through the eyes of a nuclear weapon state (NWS) and thus takes an essentially NWS view of the future which pays, ever more obviously now, lip-service to nuclear disarmament as, at best, a distant ideal.
Australian defence strategists would have us believe that, for as long as nuclear weapons exist, Australia must (and presumably can) rely on US nuclear weapons for its security. The United States has been largely silent on this claim while continuing broadly to assure “Allies and partners,” in the language of its most recent Nuclear Posture Review (2022), that they can be confident of US readiness “to deter the range of strategic threats they face whether in crisis or conflict.”
This language raises questions that are much too little asked. Nuclear war poses an existential threat most obviously to the nuclear weapons possessors themselves. So does Australia really believe the United States would choose to expose itself to the risk of nuclear attack by threatening to use its nuclear weapons for any purpose that did not serve its own strategic interests exclusively? Of course it doesn’t.
Does the United States in any case have the means to defend Australia against strategic nuclear weapons? No. As impressive as they sometimes are, none of the air defence systems now deployed in Israel and Ukraine are capable of intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and no such system is reliably available even to the United States itself.
What grounds do we have for fearing that Australia could become a nuclear target independently of its alliance relationships? Surely the answer to this question is “none.” Nuclear weapons are not needed to exploit Australia’s strategic vulnerabilities—its massive import dependency, and long sea lines of supply and communication—and can do nothing to alleviate them. The only credible occasion for deploying nuclear weapons against us would be a nuclear war in which the United States was already engaged.
The situation might then be summarised as follows: the concept of extended nuclear deterrence allows us to claim the benefit of association with another state’s nuclear weapons. But when deterrence fails, we will very quickly discover that there is no “nuclear umbrella.” The United States has no capacity to defend us against the strategic nuclear missiles that may be deployed against us precisely because we have claimed the false protection of its nuclear arsenal. Australia’s mistaken reliance on nuclear weapons as a last line of defence thus makes us more, rather than less, likely to experience their impact.
In 2016, Australia voted against a UN General Assembly resolution clearing the way for the negotiation of a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons and refused to participate in the negotiations that led to the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in New York the following year. Australia is now one of the few countries in its own region not to have signed the treaty. The Australian Labor Party adopted a resolution in 2018 committing a future Labor government to do so but has not followed through in the face of unwavering US hostility to the Treaty, and for fear of being wedged by a parliamentary Opposition whose principal contribution to the national life is incessantly to sound the national security alarm.
Parties to the TPNW are prohibited from providing any support to another state’s nuclear weapons program. In Australia’s case, this would mean (at a minimum) giving up its nuclear umbrella and terminating all nuclear-weapons-related activities at the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap. Australia/US relations would be faced with a challenging reset, not least because the Americans have come to assume a largely unquestioning Australian like-mindedness on strategic issues. We are though, I think, much too inclined to overlook the fact that Australia’s national character and international credibility in the nuclear era have been shaped, to a genuinely important degree, by an enduring commitment to nuclear disarmament. We owe it to ourselves not to diminish this (to some modest degree bipartisan) legacy. And we do certainly diminish it by opening ourselves to the prospect of becoming an expendable bit-player in someone else’s nuclear war. Australia has taken practical steps, in close consultation with the United States, to carefully dissociate itself from other weapons—anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions—that it, unlike the United States, has formally renounced. It could do the same with nuclear weapons.
Australia can dissociate itself from nuclear weapons without turning its back on the alliance. But this will only get harder as the focus shifts from deterrence to undermining confidence in the survivability of strategic nuclear weapons platforms, and Australia finds itself increasingly caught up in US strategic non-nuclear weapons programs. We might perhaps begin by placing more emphasis publicly on an important US motivation for extending the nuclear deterrence concept to allies, which is to reduce the incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. As a party to the TPNW, Australia would be demonstrating its determination never to acquire these weapons, and the United States would no longer have to pretend that it is holding a nuclear umbrella over our heads.
It really makes no difference, for the purposes of this argument, who sits in the Oval Office, but the fact that Americans have chosen, for the second time in eight years, to hand over the nuclear launch codes to Donald Trump obviously does nothing to diminish its force. Australia is always more at ease in the world, and more helpful, when it makes a real effort to see the world for itself—as it has done from time to time over the past eighty years. Our relationship with the United States is claustrophobic and the situation is getting worse. We must find some clear air soon if we are to avoid suffocation. This will require genuinely independent thinking and the courage of our traditionally multilateralist and humanitarian convictions. A second Trump administration gives us a chance to see whether we still have these qualities.
A somewhat fuller, and more contextual, treatment of these issues, including their alliance implications, is given in “Australia’s bipolar approach to nuclear disarmament.”
Peter Hooton is a former diplomat whose postings included appointments as High Commissioner to Samoa (2001–03) and Solomon Islands (2007–09). Prior to leaving the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2012, he was Assistant Secretary for Arms Control and Counter-Proliferation.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.
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(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is 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. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning 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:
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- Nuclear Power
- Nuclear Power Emergencies
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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, Friday, (11/15/2024)
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
Who’s powering nuclear energy’s comeback? | WRVO Public Media
WRVO
All Things Considered. Next Up: 7:00 PM As It Happens. 0:00. 0:00. All … And over the past few months, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all made …
Scoop: Israel destroyed active nuclear weapons research facility in Iran, officials say – Axios
Axios
The strike significantly damaged Iran’s effort to resume nuclear weapons research, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
Anthropic, feds test whether Claude AI will share sensitive nuclear info – Axios
Axios
The company says it believes the red-team exercise is the first time a frontier model has been used in top-secret work.
Nuclear Power
NEWS
Biden Is Pushing a Massive Nuclear Energy Expansion. Will Trump Follow Through?
Truthout
US representatives at COP29 seem to hope the controversial power source will be a palatable climate solution for Trump.
The US aims to deploy 200 GW of net new nuclear energy capacity by 2050 | Enerdata
Enerdata
The US administration is establishing a new framework outlining actions that the US government can take to expand nuclear capacity in the United …
Biden-Harris Administration Announces Ambitious Targets to Expand U.S. Nuclear Energy …
T&D World
These goals are expected to be met through a mix of constructing new nuclear power plants, upgrading existing reactors, and potentially restarting …
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Lake County EMA-led drills at Perry Nuclear Power Plant assessed – News-Herald
News-Herald
Lake County Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Busher recently delivered “positive” news to the Lake County commissioners detailing the …
Nuclear War
NEWS
Nuclear Arms Control Takes Back Seat to the War in Ukraine for Russia – DNI.gov
DNI.gov
National Intelligence Officers (NIOs) serve as the principal subject matter experts to the DNI and national security decision makers on all aspects of …
Scoop: Israel destroyed active nuclear weapons research facility in Iran, officials say – Axios
Axios
The strike significantly damaged Iran’s effort to resume nuclear weapons research, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
Trump Re-Election Introduces New Variables to Nuclear Disarmament Equation
Arms Control Association
In his first term, the president-elect endorsed the development and deployment of new nuclear weapons and elevated the role of nuclear deterrence in …
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
How credible is Russia’s evolving nuclear doctrine? – Brookings Institution
Brookings Institution
… nuclear weapons in a war with NATO. In any event, the decision to use … nuclear doctrine and implied nuclear threats have any real credibility.
US, Japan, South Korea coordinate response to North Korean threats – VOA News
VOA News
US, Japan, South Korea coordinate response to North Korean threats … war against Ukraine and on Pyongyang’s nuclear threat more broadly, on the …
The Extended Nuclear Deterrence Myth – Australian Institute of International Affairs
Australian Institute of International Affairs
… threats they face whether in crisis or … Nuclear war poses an existential threat most obviously to the nuclear weapons possessors themselves
Yellowstone Caldera
NEWS
History offers clues to Yellowstone’s next eruption – Missoula Current
Missoula Current
To an extent, forecasts of volcanic eruptions rely upon knowledge of the frequency at which eruptions occur at a given volcano. As an analogy, let’s …
Volcanoes and how they erupt – Science News Explores
Science News Explores
Boyce. Months between rejuvenation and volcanic eruption at Yellowstone caldera, Wyoming. Geology. Vol. 43, August 2015. doi …
IAEA Weekly News
15 November 2024
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) got underway in Baku, Azerbaijan, this week. Follow our COP29 Blog for in-depth coverage of the role of nuclear energy and its applications in the discussions and see the top stories on IAEA.org.
15 November 2024
COP29: First Week in Review
The IAEA is at COP29 in Baku, putting into place concrete measures to help countries use nuclear science and technology to fight climate change. Read more →
14 November 2024
Data Centres, Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrencies Eye Advanced Nuclear to Meet Growing Power Needs
As major tech companies like Google and Microsoft face growing energy demands from data centers powering AI, they are turning to advanced nuclear technologies such as small modular reactors to provide clean and reliable power. Read more →
13 November 2024
IAEA and EBRD Expand Cooperation to Nuclear Energy to Help Reach Net Zero
The IAEA and the EBRD are broadening their collaboration in the nuclear energy sector to help countries achieve net zero. This partnership represents a significant step, as it extends their cooperation beyond nuclear and radiation safety concerns. Read more →
13 November 2024
New IAEA and LinkedIn Practical Arrangement Brings Opportunities for Women in the Nuclear Field
A new IAEA and LinkedIn Practical Arrangement will bring networking and training opportunities for women in the nuclear field. Read more →
12 November 2024
IAEA Arrives at COP29
The COP29 climate conference has kicked off in Baku, Azerbaijan and the IAEA is once again present to discuss all the ways that nuclear science and technology can help in the fight against climate change. Read more →