It is hard to determine the serious immanent danger aspects mentioned in this article from the British “Daily Express” because there hasn’t been a lot of other coverage concerning the previous Ukraine attack on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in Russia. What I have read is primarily about Russia’s outrage denouncing Ukraine for their bold retaliation crossing the border into Russia and attacking the Kursk nuclear plant as a response to Russia’s continued attacks on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. But there is no doubt that the overall situation, including threats to the other two Ukraine power plants possibly under siege by Russia, and the surprise attack by Ukraine on the Kursk plant has raised the implications of this ongoing war to an apparent far greater international level.
The difference of the immanent radiation danger of both countries’ nuclear power plants becoming active WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) at this stage of the “nuclear power plant wars” is that Zaporizhzhia has been shut down due to the previous Russian attacks, but the Kursk plant is so far still operational, which increases the danger of a possible meltdown . . . Stay tuned. ~llaw
At the beginning of October, Ukrainian drones were shot down just three miles from the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), sparking widespread panic.
11:39, Wed, Oct 16, 2024 | UPDATED: 11:43, Wed, Oct 16, 2024
Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (Image: Google maps Bojidar 93)
Russia faces the prospect of a catastrophic nuclear disaster due to the proximity of one of its atomic power plants to the frontlines.
At the beginning of October, Ukrainian drones were shot down just three miles from the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), sparking widespread panic.
The plant is located a mere 18 miles from the frontline, near the city of Kurchatov and has come in closer range of Ukrainian missiles and drones, following Kyiv’s daring incursion into the Kursk region at the beginning of August.
Ukraine‘s Security and Defence Council representative Andriy Kovalenko denied any attempt by Kyiv’s forces to strike the plant at the time, calling such a move “pointless”.
Operators at the Kursk Nuclear Power Station (Image: Bojidar 93 Google Maps)
However, the fact remains the KNPP remains vulnerable to a military strike – whether intentional or not – and was never designed to withstand such an attack.
Unlike Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia NPP, the Kursk plant is still operational and therefore the consequences of a direct hit on it could be devastating.
Alexander Nikitin, a nuclear advisor at the environmental Bellona Foundation, told the Russian investigative outlet Verstka that the plant’s design never accounted for the possibility of a military attack.
He called the current situation “an unprecedented emergency”, echoing warnings made by Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
A source from Russia‘s state nuclear agency Rosatom pointed out that the Kursk plant was built during the time of the Soviet Union and much of its technology and materials were old.
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Nuclear energy is a climate solution in that its reactors don’t emit the planet-warming greenhouse gases that come from power plants that burn fossil …
The threat of a nuclear confrontation, which a decade ago seemed fanciful, is no longer unimaginable. Advertisement. Russian President Vladimir Putin …
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that North Korea is sending military personnel to help Russia’s war effort, without providing details …
Although the magical word ‘deterrence’ is not used, this ‘must read’ article, from “Truthout”, helps to explain what nuclear “deterrence” is doing to the economy of the United States and other nuclear armed nations, which will also continue to ‘rub off’ on economically smaller non-nuclear countries. This story and my comments relate to and expands on my “All Things Nuclear” blog post from yesterday.
All we need to know and understand is that as long as nuclear ‘deterrence’ is the only way to defend ourselves from our fear of nuclear war, our economic stability around the world will only get worse, and of course the lower and middle classes of all nations’ citizens will be the first to continue to suffer to a growing greater degree until poverty, rather than war may take its ultimate toll on humanity, although nuclear war is, of course, far and away the most likely.
Obviously, we cannot have it both ways, and so the simple saving grace, if we are human enough, is to “lay down our arms”, unify around the world, and remove, now and forever, all things nuclear from our way of international life. ~llaw
Costly Replacement of ICBMs With Sentinel Missiles Increases Risk of Nuclear War
Many of our unmet needs as US citizens are due in part to the cost of the US nuclear arsenal.
Brig. Gen. William Rogers, director of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Systems Directorate and Air Force program executive officer for ICBMs, speaks during a leadership ceremony at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, on August 27, 2024.
R. Nial Bradshaw / U.S. Air Force
At the September 10 presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris described her support for maintaining the “most lethal fighting force” in the world. Almost certainly that includes the United States’ plan to upgrade its nuclear arsenal with more powerful, more accurate nuclear warhead delivery systems, as well as new tactical nuclear warheads and bombs for use on the battlefield.
The world is already awash in nuclear weapons with an astonishing capacity for mass death: The U.S. has 14 Ohio-class nuclear-armed submarines. A single submarine can launch 24 missiles. Each missile can carry eight independently targeted warheads with blast forces many times greater than the Hiroshima bomb — 100,000 tons of TNT equivalent versus 15,000 tons. The missiles launched from just one such submarine can obliterate the major cities of any nation on Earth. The U.S. also maintains 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in fixed silos and hundreds of strategic nuclear bombs mounted on B-52 and B-2 bombers.
The U.S., North Korea, France, Russia and China are all upgrading their nuclear weapons arsenals, developing new nuclear weapons, or deploying them more closely to current target areas. Israeli leaders have threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran, a risk which has intensified since the former’s escalation against Lebanon. Russia has threatened to use nukes if Ukraine moved to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or if the U.S. assists Ukraine in firing conventional missiles deep into Russia. The U.S. has never disavowed first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Russian scholar Gilbert Doctorow worries that the U.S. may launch a first nuclear strike against Russia to prevent its total victory in Ukraine. Former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, one of several members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, fears the U.S. may use tactical nukes in Ukraine to forestall total Russian victory in that war. Trump’s advisers are calling for renewing nuclear weapons testing, in violation of the multilateral Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
The first steps in this unsound direction were taken by the U.S. under President Barack Obama, when design and production of this new generation of nukes began. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden continued with Obama’s plan, increasing its annual funding.
The 2023, U.S. military budget voted by Congress, included $51.5 billion for nuclear weapons, an 18 percent increase over the previous year and more than all of the other nuclear-armed nations combined. The budget continues funds for upgrading all three legs of the U.S. nuclear weapons triad — ICBMs in fixed silos, nuclear-armed submarines and long-range strategic bombers — with new nuclear missiles. This is happening as the U.S. — the world’s most powerful nuclear-armed nation — has withdrawn from major nuclear disarmament treaties representing decades of successful diplomacy.
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Nuclear Power · Nuclear Propulsion · Nuclear Policy · Nuclear History · Nuclear … Emergency THAAD Deployment To Israel Heightens Concerns On Strain To …
US Carrier Strike Group Pivots to NATO Waters Amid Russia Threat · US To Expand NATO Air Base To Hold Nuclear-Capable Fighter Jets · Video Shows F-16 ‘ …
This “last minute” message from, Scott D. Sagan, a Political Scientist at Stanford University, who writes about nuclear issues reminds us of how Donald Trump helped free Iran from restricted use of nuclear power. That agreement, created by President Obama, prevented Iran from creating nuclear weapons by restricting Tehran’s ability to make highly enriched uranium bomb material mentioned in the article below, which Trump unilaterally canceled in 2018.
Such a totally irresponsible action alone should prevent Trump from ever setting foot in the White House again, but his views on nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare go even further, considering his ridiculous belief that he can control (through “friendship”) Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong un, and China’s Xi Jinping. Obviously, he has no rational understanding of nuclear conflict and that none of these well-armed nuclear-threat countries are our allies, but rather exactly the opposite. ~llaw
Opinion: I study nuclear war. Kamala Harris must be our next president.
Scott D. Sagan
Op-ed contributor
The risk of nuclear war in the Middle East today is dangerously high, and Donald Trump is responsible.
Let me explain.
I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. I clearly remember the “duck and cover” exercises we conducted in elementary school, crawling under the wooden desks when an alarm bell rang out at the Greenfield Village School. Our teacher tried to calm our nerves by claiming this was “a hurricane drill.” But with Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis on the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite, we all knew what the drills were really about.
And I recall how scared I was again about the danger of nuclear war a few years later, as a teenager in the 1970s. On Oct. 6, 1973, Israel was attacked by Egyptian and Syrian forces in a surprise attack in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The Israeli Defense Forces gradually fought back, supplied by U.S. emergency arms shipments, defeating the Syrians and crossing the Suez Canal to surround the Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai desert. Then, on Oct. 24, 1973, the Soviet Union threatened to send troops to Egypt to enter the war, on the side of its Egyptian allies.
Suddenly, President Richard Nixon put U.S. nuclear forces on a high-level DEFCON 3 alert to try to deter the Soviet Union from sending forces to the Middle East. Threatening nuclear war was not prudent (I thought that even in my teenage years), but simultaneously, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger successfully put pressure on Israel to accept a cease-fire and end the 1973 war. This cease-fire eventually led to the Camp David Accords and the peace between Israel and Egypt that still exists today.
We also now know that Nixon, facing Watergate soon thereafter, was so distraught and irrational in his decision-making that Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger actually warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to automatically follow military orders from the president, but rather to check with him first. Schlessinger’s actions were not constitutional, but were prudent and wise.
This dark history is relevant today. For I have never been worried about a nuclear war in the Middle East since then … until now.
No deal
A war is raging in the Middle East, and Iran is on the brink of getting nuclear weapons. Donald Trump is responsible for this dangerous development because his administration withdrew, in 2018, from the U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal that restricted Tehran’s ability to make highly enriched uranium bomb material.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors in Iran verified that Tehran was in compliance, but then-President Donald Trump claimed that he, the self-proclaimed “master of the deal,” would get a better agreement.
He did not.
Iran was a year or two away from getting the bomb when the Obama Administration negotiated the Iran nuclear agreement, and when Trump cancelled it. Now, U.S. intelligence agencies report that Iran “has greatly expanded its nuclear program” and “has the infrastructure and experience to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium.” The head of the IAEA now estimates that Iran has “amassed enough nuclear material for several weapons, not just one.” That is the direct result of Trump’s ego and poor decision-making.
In the coming weeks or months, Israel may well attack the Iranian nuclear facilities in response to Iran’s recent missile and drone attack on Israel. But Israel lacks the confidence that it could destroy all of the Iranian nuclear materials, both because the enrichment centrifuges are in deep underground facilities — and because most of the IAEA inspectors were kicked out of Iran due to Trump’s rash withdrawal from the nuclear deal. This means Israel can’t be sure that it knows where all Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities are now located. And even if an attack is successful in the short-term, Iran will likely then rush to rebuild a nuclear arsenal.
High stakes
When you get to the polls, think about that scenario.
Do you want a President Kamala Harris who supports Israel, but has expressed doubts about the way Israel is fighting its wars today?
Or do you want a President Trump, who criticized calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “knows what he’s doing” and advised him “have victory, get your victory, and get it over with.”
Do you want a President Harris, a former prosecutor known to stay calm and focused under pressure?
Or do you want a President Trump, who was so impulsive and vengeful at the end of his term in office that his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, like Nixon’s secretary of defense, told senior military officers to check back with him before following any presidential orders to use military force?
The voters of Michigan may well decide who is the next president of the United States. They should remember that the risk of nuclear war is on the ballot in November.
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Like the one about the COVID test machine then President Donald Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin in the early days of the pandemic. Or the …
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently stated, “The nuclear threat is not confined to history books,” and “nuclear weapons remain a clear and …
Missiles are launched during a simulated nuclear counterattack drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea on April 22. (See Article for Photo Credits)
I have no idea who the “experts” are, or if they even exist, when it comes to nuclear forbearance, nuclear proliferation, and other questionable activities dealing with subjective nuclear concerns. But, of course, this one of nuclear “deterrence” is the one that may be the most important and dangerous of all because the very concept is based on fear of each other.
Deterrence is the only factor that prevents nuclear war, most all other country-to-country agreements and pledges having become broken or gone by the wayside, and deterrence is merely a temporary fragile thread that cannot, for many reasons, survive forever among the nations that have nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) because to continue on is unaffordable both financially and cooperatively trustworthy over time, and time is of the essence where nuclear war and all other things nuclear is concerned. Someone will push the nuclear button in due time and that one single action by a single world leader will end the world as we know it.
The coming inevitable Doomsday is inevitable barring a sudden cooperative change of heart by all nuclear armed countries (which will never happen), or by an unknown force of some kind that has not yet revealed its influence over humanity. ~llaw
Nuclear deterrence still at heart of great power strategy, experts say
AFP, PARIS
Nuclear-armed powers have no intention of giving up the atom bomb as part of their military strategy, experts said after the Nobel Peace Prize committee urged against any weakening of the nuclear “taboo.”
Awarding this year’s peace prize to Japan’s Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors pushing for a nuclear weapons ban, the committee on Friday said the atom bomb attacks on both Japanese cities in 1945 had led to a “nuclear taboo” which had, however, come under “pressure” since.
While none of the countries possessing nuclear weapons have used them in war since 1945, the implicit or even explicit threat to do so is part of their arsenal.
Missiles are launched during a simulated nuclear counterattack drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea on April 22.
Photo: The North Korean Central News Agency via EPA-EFE
Moscow has repeatedly brandished the nuclear threat in a bid to dissuade the West from supporting Ukraine, which has been fending off Russia’s invasion since February 2022.
Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center director Alexander Gabuev said it was “no coincidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin made a nuclear threat on the eve of a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy about Kyiv’s possible use of missiles capable of striking Russian territory.
The Nobel committee wanted to send “a strong signal” to Russia, said Bruno Tertrais, political scientist at France’s Strategic Research Foundation.
Russia had “normalized,” even “trivialized,” talk of a nuclear weapons use since its invasion of Ukraine, he said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said last week his country would use nuclear weapons “without hesitation” if attacked by South Korea and its ally, the US.
In the Middle East, Israel, the region’s only nuclear-armed state, has vowed a “deadly, precise and surprising” response to Iran’s direct strike on Israeli territory on Oct. 1.
Meanwhile, Tehran has significantly ramped up its nuclear program and now has enough material to build more than three atomic bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
“The logic of deterrence is firmly entrenched in countries that have nuclear weapons,” said Tertrais, adding however that the risk of atomic bomb use “is no greater now than five years ago.”
Standard nuclear doctrine — developed during the Cold War between superpowers the US and the Soviet Union — is based on the assumption that such weapons would never have to be used, because their impact is so devastating, and because nuclear retaliation would probably bring similar destruction on the original attacker.
This is why China has never given up its “no first strike” doctrine, said Lukasz Kulesa, Director of Proliferation and Nuclear Policy at the Royal United Services Institute.
Other countries have also signaled that nuclear arms use would be a last resort while not ruling it out completely to maintain credibility in the eyes of opponents, Kulesa said.
However, keeping a safe balance between threat and restraint can never be risk-free, he said.
“There is always a possibility of failure. There is also a possibility of inadvertent escalation that can go all the way to the nuclear level,” he said.
Countries possessing nuclear weapons today are the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
Israel is also widely assumed to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, although it has never officially acknowledged this.
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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.
This simple prescient and common sense statement from a survivor of the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki by the United States and the co-leader of the recently honored Nobel Prize group, Nihon Hidankyo, echoes the similar words of those who knew and understood “All Things Nuclear” since the 1940s Manhattan Project scientists who helped build and denounce the two nuclear bombs used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that ended World War II. We should all know by now that we cannot continue on the nuclear path, including nuclear power, that we are presently on and survive . . . ~llaw
Risk of nuclear war rising amid global conflicts, Nobel peace laureate says
‘Path to self-destruction’: Survivors recall horrors of nuclear bombings as they draw parallels to ongoing wars.
Demonstrators gather for a rally in support of Palestinians in Gaza, at the preserved Atomic Bomb Dome in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, in Hiroshima, Japan, on October 12, 2024 [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]
Published On 12 Oct 202412 Oct 2024
Conflicts raging around the world, including in Gaza, are heightening the possibility of a nuclear war, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize warned, renewing calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots group of Japanese atomic bomb survivors, won the prize on Friday for its “efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”.
On Saturday, Shigemitsu Tanaka, a survivor of the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki by the United States and co-leader of the group, said the “international situation is getting progressively worse, and now wars are being waged as countries threaten the use of nuclear weapons”.
“I fear that we as humankind are on the path to self-destruction. The only way to stop that is to abolish nuclear,” the resident of Nagasaki told reporters.
Nagasaki was the second Japanese city that was hit by a US nuclear bomb on August 9, 1945, killing at least 74,000 people. Three days earlier, the US bombing of Hiroshima had killed 140,000 people.
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With the end of the Cold War, it was decided that the airborne alert was no longer necessary. Instead, a smaller fleet of aircraft was maintained on a …
Nobel Peace Prize: Take Award as Chance to Contain Nuclear Threats … Amid an unprecedented increase in the nuclear threat posed by Russia’s aggression …
Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov served as deputy minister of foreign affairs and defense before being appointed as Moscow’s most senior diplomat in Washington in August 2017. (See AP photo credits in the article)
This article, courtesy of “Newsweek” is an up to the moment comprehensive report on the current and serious situation among Russia, Ukraine, the United States, Britain, the rest of NATO, and possibly the entire world.
The firing and timing of the Russian Ambassador by Putin seems to me to possibly be intentionally related to the U.S. presidential election, which may also be due to Donald J. Trump’s candidacy who has long been known to have a close and possibly illegal personal relationship (Logan Act violation) to Vladimir Putin, which has been suggested in Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward’s new book “War” to be released on October 15th.
There are also links to important older but related stories posted at the end of this informative and extremely harrowing current situation that could flare like an out of control forest fire into the first and last all-out nuclear war . . . ~llaw
Exclusive: Russia Ambassador Exits US With Warning of ‘Nuclear Catastrophe’
Published Oct 10, 2024 at 4:31 PM EDTUpdated Oct 11, 2024 at 12:03 AM EDT
Russia’s top envoy to the United States has ended his term, leaving behind an ominous forecast about the risk of deteriorating bilateral ties escalating into a nuclear-armed clash over the ongoing war in Ukraine in an exclusive interview with Newsweek.
The Kremlin announced on Thursday that Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov had been officially relieved of his duty after seven years of service. In the lead-up to his departure, Antonov spoke with Newsweek about the troubled state of relations between Moscow and Washington, which show no signs of improving as the war in Ukraine continues and NATO doubles down on military support for Kyiv amid recent advances by the Russian military.
‘”Project Ukraine’ is dragging American politicians only further into an abyss, from which it is increasingly difficult to get out,” Antonov told Newsweek. “As we see, the administration can only respond to the victories of Russian troops in Donbas and the failure of the provocation by the Ukrainian armed forces in the Kursk region by using the same hackneyed theses about ‘support as long as we can.'”
“There are zero signals to clients about the need to think over their position and sit down at the negotiating table,” he added. “Neither are there any hints about stopping the senseless flow of weapons at the expense of the local taxpayer.”
Instead, he argued that “Washington is continuing a dangerous discussion about the possibility of giving Ukrainians a permission to strike deep into Russian territory with Western long-range missiles.”
Such talk threatened to defy the latest ultimatum issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly warned against external intervention since first ordering a “special military operation” into Ukraine in February 2022.
“They refuse to take into account the clear warnings of the President of the Russian Federation that a ‘green light’ for such attacks would mean NATO’s direct involvement in the conflict,” Antonov said, “with all the following conclusions on our part.”
Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov at the United Nations headquarters. Antonov has left Washington after seven years of service. Sergey Guneev/Sputnik/AP
Divisions at Home and Abroad
Antonov served as deputy minister of foreign affairs and defense before being appointed as Moscow’s most senior diplomat in Washington in August 2017. He became a vocal advocate for the Kremlin’s position throughout the terms of U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who is also set to vacate his office soon as Vice President Kamala Harris gears up for a tight race against Trump next month.
Antonov said he had “no desire” to discuss the inner workings of U.S. politics today but observed that “local party strategists seem to be trying to come up with official statements for Ukraine to meet the demands of the U.S. current electoral cycle.”
“These people are not interested in the fate of Europeans and Kiev,” Antonov said. “They are only interested in the digits in public opinion polls, which supposedly can be adjusted in their favor if they demonstrate ‘determination’ and ‘leadership.’ This is pure recklessness.”
He also identified a “divided” public discourse in the U.S.
“On one hand,” Antonov said, “we see a lot of attempts by reasonable political scientists to understand the situation, find workable—at least in the eyes of the United States— options to end the conflict and develop an inter-party consensus based on a common understanding of the danger of collapsing into World War III.”
“However, any voices of reason in Washington today are silenced or written off as ‘Kremlin propaganda,” he added. “The recent unjustified sanctions against Russian journalists are in this vein, as well as provocative attacks by local intelligence services against Dmitry Simes, Scott Ritter and compatriots living in America.”
Antonov railed against what he called a “brutal ‘cleansing’ of the information space in America” via the prosecution and censorship of individuals accused of spreading Russian propaganda, sanctions and raids against state-backed Russian media outlets and other measures.
Such actions, he argued, target those “who call for a sober assessment of the risks of being dragged into a morass of the Eastern Europe conflict and the prospect of a head-on collision with a nuclear power, those who warn that sitting out overseas while others are dying, without any costs, is an illusion and self-deception.”
Newsweek reached out to the U.S. State Department and the Ukrainian Embassy to the U.S. for comment.
Washington and Kyiv have long accused Moscow of spreading disinformation via state-sponsored campaigns intended to serve the Kremlin’s interests.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has declared an unwavering position to continue military assistance to Ukraine, and many NATO allies have offered similar pledges. However, the issue has proved increasingly polarizing in Western capitals, with some, including a number of Republicans in the U.S., expressing growing skepticism about the utility of the current strategy.
The division also runs through the upcoming U.S. election. Harris vows to continue with Biden’s approach of supporting Ukraine until victory, while Trump has promised to quickly reach a deal that would put an end to what has become Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
But as these debates play out at a turbulent time for U.S. politics, Antonov accused U.S. think tanks of responding to “reasonable” publications with “poisonous commentaries about the harm of any conversation with ‘the Russians'” and said that U.S. politicians prefer “to listen to ‘hawks.'”
Rather than seeking peace, they discuss “creating hostilities between the Slavs, encouraging the killing of people, and intensifying military escalation,” he argued.
“All this only confirms that the political elites have set themselves the task not just to defeat Russia but to preserve the old world order, based on the rules favorable to NATO countries,” Antonov said. “We want to change this obviously outdated state of affairs. We want our security interests to be taken into account.”
Ukrainian personnel fire a howitzer toward Russian positions near the front line in Chasiv Yar on September 30. GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images
A Flashpoint in Flames
While Russia’s large-scale war against Ukraine began in February 2022, the roots of the conflict could be traced back to seismic shifts in the global order that began decades earlier.
Since first assuming power on the eve of the 21st century, less than 10 years after the fall of the USSR, Putin has consistently argued against the growing presence of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance in the former Soviet sphere of influence. He has accused Western rivals of seeking to encircle Russia; Washington and its allies have argued that entry into NATO was voluntary and was often pursued due to the perceived threats of Russian aggression.
The geopolitical storm landed in Ukraine a decade ago, when a mass uprising supported by the U.S. in 2014 ousted the government in favor of leadership seeking closer ties with the West. Moscow condemned what it called a “coup” and sent forces to seize the Crimean Peninsula as Russia-aligned separatists rose in the eastern Donbas region.
Thus began the largest militarization on the continent since the Cold War, with NATO increasingly shoring up its position in Eastern Europe and Russia dedicating more troops and equipment to its western frontier.
As Russian troops began to amass in unprecedented numbers along Ukraine’s borders in 2021, Moscow issued two proposals for demilitarizing that would effectively see NATO reduce its presence in regions near Russia’s borders, to which Antonov said the response was “silence and smirks.”
Talks quickly unraveled, and Putin ultimately resorted to force. Both sides continue to blame one another for setting the stage for conflict.
“In America, there is an unwillingness to recognize that over the past few decades, the West, led by Washington, has been rejecting Moscow’s outstretched hand of cooperation again and again,” Antonov said. “Year after year, it has been militarily ‘exploiting’ European territory, conducting waves of NATO expansion to the East.”
“It has organized color revolutions and anti-constitutional coups,” he said, “increasingly encircling Russia in a hostile ‘ring,’ and as the ‘decisive battering ram’ it chose Ukraine.”
Antonov said that the Pentagon has gone so far as “to study the outcomes of using nuclear weapons on the agricultural sector of Eastern Europe, including Russia,” including “modeling a global nuclear war scenario that will lead to the destruction, as Americans think for some reason, of only agricultural farms.”
“Such simulations were actively conducted during the Cold War years,” Antonov said. “It is noteworthy that even the American military started to contemplate a nuclear conflict.”
“At the same time, they mistakenly believe that this catastrophe will only affect Europe and Russia,” he added. “This is extremely short-sighted. America will not be able to sit it out across the ocean. A global nuclear catastrophe would affect everyone.”
Now, Antonov said, “The objective maximum task at this stage is to prevent the ties between two great powers and permanent members of the Security Council from finally plunging into an uncontrolled nosedive.”
“Russia, as a responsible state, is not interested in such an extremely dangerous development of the situation,” he said. “We convey this idea to our interlocutors and the general public in America on a regular basis. We try to put it explicitly that an insatiable desire to achieve strategic victory on the battlefield over Russia is simply impossible.”
Russian personnel fire a rocket launcher against Ukrainian positions in Avdiivka on October 4. Evgeny Biyatov/Sputnik/AP
Rival Proposals
Several notable attempts have been made to achieve a diplomatic solution since the beginning of the conflict, including direct talks held in Belarus and Turkey in the early weeks. The discussions appeared to make the most progress in Istanbul in April 2022 but have since remained largely frozen.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for a resolution that would see Russian forces unconditionally withdraw from his country’s territory, including four provinces annexed by Moscow in an internationally disputed referendum held in September 2022, as well as from Crimea, which was annexed in a similar vote after being captured by Russia in 2014. He’s also stated that Russian officials, including Putin, must face accountability for alleged war crimes.
These core demands, which Russia outright rejected, were reportedly featured in the new “victory plan” presented by the Ukrainian leader to the White House last month. The plan was set to be unveiled this weekend at a summit in Germany, but the meeting was canceled after Biden pulled out to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.
Putin presented a new proposal of his own in June. This entailed Ukraine ceding the unilaterally Russian-annexed territories, Kyiv abandoning its desire to become a full NATO member, and other measures dismissed by Zelensky and his foreign backers.
Harris referred to the conditions of the Russian plan as “proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable,” during a meeting last month with Zelensky.
Trump has not responded directly to the Russian proposal but has said he had his own plan that would end the war “in 24 hours.” While he has declined to offer details, his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, has revealed the plan would likely include a “demilitarized zone” along the current line of demarcation between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
On the ground, the war has only intensified. Russian forces have advanced on several key axes, while Ukrainian forces have conducted strikes further into Russia itself, including a ground incursion into Kursk province.
Echoing the position expressed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during an exclusive interview with Newsweek earlier this week, Antonov saw additional pledges of military assistance to Ukraine from the U.S. and other Western countries as a direct response to the Russian peace plan, resulting in new warnings from the Kremlin over growing foreign involvement in the conflict.
“Now, amid talks of long-range missiles, Vladimir Putin has sent a clear warning to the United States and its allies,” Antonov said. “He reminded them of the direct involvement of American so-called ‘technical specialists’ in planning and carrying out strikes against Russia.”
Antonov compared the discussions surrounding providing such missiles to Ukraine to “a diver frozen before the decisive jump into the abyss.” He added, “Just think about how far the Western elites have gone in their desire to profit from pitting two Slavic peoples against each other.”
He also referenced the recent reports of a U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jet being downed by friendly, potentially from a U.S.-supplied Patriot air defense system, as a “clear and obvious confirmation that the Ukrainian army is not ready to operate modern Western weapons.”
Asked last month about the ongoing deliberations of allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike Russia, Biden simply said, “We’re working that out right now.” No policy changes have since been announced.
Later in September, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller responded to a question about the use of U.S.-provided long-range missiles in the war by stating that there was no “one magic capability that would change the face of the conflict.”
“We look at all of the capabilities and all the tactics and all the support that we provide Ukraine in totality,” Miller said at the time, “and when we approve any new weapon system or any new tactic, we look at how it’s going to affect the entire battlefield and Ukraine’s entire strategy. And that’s what we’ll continue to do.”
Last week, however, Zelensky accused Western partners of “dragging out” the supply of long-range weapons during a meeting with new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
U.S. President Joe Biden (R) meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on September 26. Antonov isn’t hopeful that fighting between Russia and Ukraine would change when the next president takes office. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
A ‘Sobering’ Farewell Message
Antonov left Washington in the midst of the most challenging period in the U.S.-Russia relationship since the end of the Cold War. While he continued to advocate for improved ties, he also acknowledged the depth of the bilateral deterioration between the world’s top two nuclear powers.
“The average American reader, who sees and hears on a daily basis a stream of anti-Russian reports and articles from the media and notes Russophobic slogans coming from government officials and legislators, would hardly be surprised by an unsatisfactory assessment of bilateral ties between Russia and the U.S.,” Antonov said.
“Relations between Moscow and Washington are going through an extremely turbulent period, arguably touching the lowest point in their history,” he added. “Trust between our countries has been completely lost. With rare exceptions, almost all areas of interaction have been ‘frozen.'”
He saw “only a few” politicians and organizations today that he said, “are trying to look behind the curtain of propaganda clichés and understand what really provoked this ‘ice age’ in Russian-American relations.”
Otherwise, he saw few efforts “to take a critical look at the situation and try to understand the root causes of the downward spiral, rather than throwing out sharp accusations of ‘unprovoked aggression,’ ‘imperialism,’ and alleged attempts to subjugate nearly half of Europe.”
In the White House, he described an administration that “continues to burn one bridge after another.”
“We believe that normalization of relations is valuable in itself for either party,” Antonov said. “It takes two to tango. We will not forcefully invite anyone to cooperate.”
Antonov was not especially hopeful that the situation would change depending on whether Harris or Trump emerged victorious next month.
“We stay clear-eyed and understand that in the current circumstances, there is little chance for people who may assume power in the United States not to ultimately find themselves under the dense influence of the ‘deep state’ and corporate structures that are Russophobic towards Russia,” Antonov said.
“The debris in Russia-U.S. relations is so huge that it is extremely difficult to clear it up even with very serious political will,” he added. “Blind support for the Kiev regime and its terrorism on Russian territory puts an end to even an attempt to approach the discussion of normalization of relations.”
With little indication of peace on the horizon and the threat of an even larger-scale confrontation still looming, Antonov cautioned against those who “believe that through controlled escalation it is possible to avoid the worst and weaken Russia, send it into oblivion—to the ‘dump’ of history.”
“The main sobering message that is now required to avoid fatal mistakes is to stop and cease the openly hostile policy towards the Russian Federation,” Antonov said. “Recognize that our country has national interests and a legitimate right to ensure the safety of its citizens, to have its own alternative viewpoint and the opportunity to share it with anyone who is interested in hearing it.
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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.
88.5 NEPM. All Things Considered. 88.5 NEPM. All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:30 PM Marketplace. 0:00. 0:00. All Things Considered. 88.5 NEPM. 0:00 0 …
Ahead of the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on 13 October, we look at the role played by the IAEA’s unique Incident and Emergency Centre in preparing and responding to potential nuclear or radiological emergencies. Read more →
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has restored its connection to a 150 kilovolt (kV) power line that could be used as a back-up option for the plant, although the supplies of electricity needed for reactor cooling and other essential functions remain fragile, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said today. Read more →
The IAEA Director General has engaged with Slovenian leaders and civil society today, in the lead up to a key referendum on expanding the country’s nuclear power programme. Read more →
To mark World Cotton Day, the IAEA Director General has highlighted how nuclear science helps optimize the growth of the world’s most important natural fibre, at celebrations in Benin this morning. . Read more →
With just a short four weeks until election day, you owe it to yourself to read this excerpt and analysis from Bob Woodward’s new book “War”. I believe if Trump is re-elected President of the United States of America, he will immediately put Ukraine, the United States, and NATO in an extremely serious precarious political and military situation with Russia. ~llaw
It is a study in contrasts—and of just how dysfunctional the U.S. political system has become, even in the conduct of foreign policy. Over the last several years, around the same period of time U.S. President Joe Biden was confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin, his predecessor Donald Trump was secretly talking to him and opposing U.S. military aid to Ukraine, according to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in his new book, War.
Among the shocking new disclosures in the book, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy ahead of its release date next week, Woodward reports that Trump spoke to Putin as many as seven times after he left the presidency and that at one point, in 2024, Trump told a senior aide to leave the room at his mansion in Mar-a-Lago so “he could have what he said was a private phone call” with the Russian leader.
It was not clear how many of the other calls to Putin occurred before or after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. But the disclosures raise new questions about whether the former president might have violated the Logan Act, which forbids a U.S. citizen from communicating “without authority” from the federal government with foreign officials to “influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government” in a dispute with the United States. Such questions date back to suggestions that incoming Trump officials had contacts with Russia even before he was inaugurated in January 2017.
With the U.S. presidential election less than a month away, the book resurrects unsettling questions about Trump’s relationship to Putin and the largely unresolved mystery of the former president’s business and financial ties to Russia.
In particular, the Woodward disclosures raise fresh questions about Trump’s well-documented deference to Putin, especially since Trump has promised to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war “in 24 hours” if elected, hinting broadly that he would do so by forcing Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and forswear joining NATO, which is partly what Putin demands. Going back to just days before the invasion, as Russian troops were amassing on the Ukrainian border, the former president went out of his way to praise Putin for his aggression. “I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine … as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump told a right-wing radio program on Feb. 22, 2022. He also suggested that Putin’s effort to subsume Ukraine could be a model for how the United States should deal with its immigration problem. “We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen,” Trump said.
War, Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, 448 pp., $32, October 2024
As Woodward writes, “Trump’s unwillingness to criticize Putin was not a one-off incident but a consistent character trait.” Woodward describes his source on Trump’s post-presidential phone calls to Putin as a single anonymous Trump aide, but when he asked Jason Miller, the former president’s top 2024 campaign aide, about the calls, Miller did not outright deny Woodward’s account but said, “I’d push back on that.” Asked further whether Trump could resolve the Ukraine war with one phone call, as the former president has occasionally claimed, Miller said:
“I think he could. He knows the pressure points. He knows what is going to motivate both sides, and I think he can do that with one phone call each,” meaning to Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, respectively.
Woodward also quotes Dan Coats, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, as saying he himself has long been mystified by Trump’s relationship with Putin. “His reaching out and never saying anything bad about Putin. For me … it’s scary,” Coats told Woodward.
Asked to comment on Woodward’s reporting, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded with a lengthy personal broadside against the journalist. “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Cheung said in a statement, adding that Trump is already “successfully” suing Woodward “because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.” Cheung added: “Woodward is a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally, and he’s slow, lethargic, incompetent, and overall a boring person with no personality.”
Cheung did not mention that Trump has agreed to numerous interviews with Woodward, who is regarded as Washington’s leading chronicler of presidents, going back to 1989.
Woodward also supplies some harrowing new details on Biden’s “missiles of October” moment in 2022, parts of which have been previously reported. In the fall of that year, six months into Putin’s faltering invasion of Ukraine and in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Biden administration began receiving alarming intelligence that the Russian president was increasingly desperate over his battlefield losses. New intelligence reports indicated that there was a 50 percent chance Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon, an assessment that was dramatically up from 5 percent and then 10 percent earlier in the war, Woodward writes.
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Nuclear energy produces about 10% of the world’s electricity, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). It generates more carbon-free power …
Maybe we should all consider taking a look at this old film — or at a minimum reading the following dramatic in its own right — “report”, if we can spare the time between now and the U.S. presidential election just a few weeks away.
It might help make us more aware, allowing us some time to contemplate our own present reality of a similarity to the “nightmare scenario that was all too plausible in an era of heightened tension between the West and the then Soviet Union.”, as the article references the old 1984 movie “Threads”.
These similarly intensifying ‘threats’ as ‘threads’ are coming now in an even more realistically possible way that could instantly turn into an an apocalyptic armageddon-like nuclear war at any time on any day. Awareness, even fictional, is very much worth our time now given the potential of a World War III . . . llaw
Brutal lessons of 1984 nuclear bomb drama Threads
Image caption,
Much of the supporting cast of Threads were people from the Sheffield area
Greg McKevitt
BBC Archive
Published9 October 2024, 02:15 BST
One of the most terrifying programmes ever shown on British television, Threads is the nuclear apocalypse drama-documentary that continues to haunt people’s nightmares 40 years on. Ahead of a rare new showing on the BBC, here’s a look at how the drama still has the potential to terrify people.
First broadcast on 23 September 1984, anyone who tuned in to BBC Two on that Sunday evening would experience a bleak and unforgettable depiction of a massive nuclear bomb attack on a British city and its aftermath.
It was a nightmare scenario that was all too plausible in an era of heightened tension between the West and the then Soviet Union.
Rarely seen on television since its first broadcast, it’s being shown again on BBC Four and iPlayer on 9 October.
Sheffield was chosen as the fictional nuclear target because its writer, Kes author Barry Hines, lived there.
Ahead of transmission, about 600 people from the area who volunteered to work as extras were invited to a private viewing of the film. Some were involved with amateur dramatics while others just thought it might be a bit of fun. Maybe they could spot themselves or their friends on television.
No one was expecting anything quite like this.
Media caption,
1984: Look North interviews some of the extras who have just watched Threads
One young woman told the BBC’s Look North news programme: “When I was doing it, it was just a good laugh, you know? I didn’t really think about what it would likely be like to see it, and when you see it it’s a lot different – it’s very disturbing.”
Another woman, trying to hold back tears, said: “I didn’t think I would have reacted like this but I just couldn’t help it. There’s just going to be nothing after, is there? Nothing.”
Named Threads because of the strands that bind life together in a large city, it covered the events leading up to the attack and the 13 horrendous years after it, as seen through the lives of two families, the Kemps and the Becketts.
Their attempts to survive after the attack make for harrowing viewing, with society breaking down as nuclear winter sets in.
Another woman who appeared as an extra said that while she was watching the drama she thought “everybody’s going to get out of it like all the other films,” but Threads offered no hope.
“I want to die when it hits me because I don’t want to live through anything they lived through, not at all – it was horrible,” she added.
The effect of a nuclear attack on Sheffield was calculated precisely by the makers of Threads, whose director Mick Jackson had previously worked on the grim 1982 BBC documentary, QED: A Guide to Armageddon.
Such a one-megaton airburst would create shockwaves causing severe damage to buildings up to nine miles away.
Much of the following morning’s Breakfast Time was given over to discussing the issues raised by the programme.
Showing impeccable timing, Boy George was on as a guest to promote Culture Club’s new single The War Song, with its catchy “war is stupid” chorus.
He said: “A lot of people see war programmes as something really glamorous, so I think it’s about time they did see things that show it for what it is.”
Media caption,
Threads extras Norma and Debbie Neath talk about the experience on Breakfast Time
Breakfast Time reporter Paul Burden spoke to another two women who signed up as extras, only to receive “a brutal first-hand lesson in the realities of life after the bomb”.
For Norma Neath and her daughter Debbie who lived on the outskirts of Sheffield in the village of Coal Aston, in the event of such an attack “the chance of instant death would be only one in 20”.
Debbie said on the day of filming, it started off as a laugh but by the end “it became a bit too real”.
She said: “They’d got all people laid out with horrible wounds and nasty things, and we were freezing cold and beginning to feel how we probably would really feel if we were in that situation.”
Writer Barry Hines said it was not their intention merely to shock “like it was a horror film”.
“It’s just that it’s such a shocking subject that there’s some very harrowing scenes in it, and so there’s no way that we could avoid shocking the audience,” he said.
Image caption,
Karen Meagher and Reece Dinsdale played the young couple at the centre of the family drama before the bomb dropped
Media caption,
Threads creators Barry Hines and Mick Jackson explain why they tackled the subject in this way, on Pebble Mill at One
On the day after the Threads broadcast, Hines and Jackson also appeared on Pebble Mill at One to deliver a sobering message for viewers of the cosy lunchtime magazine programme.
Hines said his main reason for making Threads was to get people thinking about nuclear weapons, as “a lot of people don’t know anything about it”.
Jackson said many people had the “misconception” that a nuclear bomb meant “a flash and a bang and it’s all over”.
He added: “I think Threads might have shown those people that in fact, in even the severest worst scenario for a nuclear war that you can imagine, more people are going to survive than perish immediately, and that sort of long, drawn-out suffering is something that most people would have to go through if it happens.”
Media caption,
Journalist John Tusa introduces the broadcast of Threads on BBC Two
Later on, Newsnight was given over to a special debate featuring a panel of military and strategic experts from Britain and the US, along with representatives from the three main parties.
Three questions were under discussion:
Can nuclear escalation be controlled so that it stops well short of mass destruction and the nuclear winter?
What lessons can be drawn about Britain’s civil defence programme and its ability to provide either for the aftermath of a mass nuclear attack or the prospect of nuclear winter?
What effect does the nuclear winter hypothesis have on nuclear deterrence and our readiness to rely on nuclear weapons as a key element of defence?
Threads has since become cult viewing, although it has been rarely broadcast on the BBC in the following 40 years.
Director Mick Jackson will introduce a fresh showing on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer, at 22:00 BST on 9 October.
At the time, television critics largely approved of the decision to show Threads.
Herbert Kretzmer of the Daily Mail said that recent programmes about nuclear weapons had showed the BBC “confidently fulfilling its ancient role as a convener and focus of national debate”.
But he worried about the film’s purpose. “Is there not a sense in which programmes like this, while seeking to alert the populace, succeed mainly in paralysing the will?”
In the Times, Peter Ackroyd commented: “It was not clear if the point of Threads was to frighten or inform… they are not incompatible aims, although I suspect they come under the larger heading of entertainment.”
Sean French in the Sunday Times wrote: “By the end we were a little better informed and a lot more worried. Answers were as far away as ever.”
Media caption,
Experts and interested parties give their reaction to Threads, on Did You See
A week after Threads was broadcast, the television review programme Did You See sought a range of views from people with a professional interest in the subject.
Bruce Kent of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament felt that “at the end it could have given people a bit more positive direction about the sorts of things they could actually do”.
Military strategist Air Vice-Marshall Stewart Menaul remained sceptical about the programme’s claims.
He said: “Let me emphasise straight away, nobody is going to start chucking 5,000 megatons around this planet. Nobody, neither the Russians, the Americans, the British, the French, or anybody else. It will simply never happen.”
One of those who watched the film at a formative age was Black Mirror writer Charlie Brooker, who was 13 in 1984.
He told Desert Island Discs in 2018: “I remember watching Threads and not being able to process what that meant; not understanding how society kept going.”
He added: “I assumed it [nuclear war] was going to happen and I think in the 1980s it did seem like that was going to happen.”
While the world has changed in so many ways since Threads was first broadcast, it retains its harrowing power.
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Meetings Coverage and Press Releases – the United Nations
… nuclear Iran must be unacceptable to all”. Iran, she continued, intends … about the Russian Federation’s announcement of the upcoming revision of its …
… threatened the West with Russia’s nuclear arsenal. In a strong, new warning to the West late last month, Putin said any nation’s conventional attack …
From the article below: “Both Washington and Seoul have warned that any nuclear strike by North Korea would likely lead to the collapse of Kim’s regime.”
The question is, and it has been asked before is, “Even though it could no doubt be done, would we do it?” The answer is, in my long=considered opinion, it doesn’t matter, because any nuclear attack on another nation with nuclear weapons would automatically represent the beginning of WWIII, which would only take a few days from beginning to end.
All nuclear armed nations’ leaders ought to have better sense, but the constant banter from them all, including the US, and especially Russia’s Putin who seems to have remained close to Kim Jong un. So that could mean a nuclear attack on South or North Korea would be equivalent to a nuclear attack on the United States or Russia. I believe the same probability extends throughout all of the 9 nuclear armed countries, and Iran may well have become number ten, which may have suddenly defused Israel’s Netanyahu. That’s a good thing for now, but certainly not for long . . . ~llaw
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has once again raised the specter of nuclear conflict, warning that his country could set off its nukes in potential confrontations with South Korea and the U.S.
His latest warning comes as tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalate, with Kim accusing the two nations of provocation and exacerbating regional hostilities.
In a speech delivered at the Kim Jong Un University of National Defense on Monday, he asserted that North Korea would “without hesitation use all its attack capabilities against its enemies,” should they employ armed forces against the North. “The use of nuclear weapons is not ruled out in this case,” he warned, signaling a willingness to consider preemptive nuclear action.
Kim’s comments are part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive rhetoric since he adopted a more confrontational nuclear doctrine in 2022.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, watches an artillery exercise at an undisclosed place in North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the… More Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP
Analysts speculate that North Korea may ramp up military provocations as the U.S. presidential election approaches next month.
The North Korean leader criticized the growing military alliance between South Korea and the U.S. specifically a new deterrence guideline established in July that integrates South Korean conventional forces with U.S. nuclear capabilities.
Kim argues that such moves threaten to disrupt the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula, where South Korea remains without its own nuclear arsenal.
But experts remain skeptical about North Korea’s actual nuclear capabilities, given that its military is outmatched by U.S. and South Korean forces.
Both Washington and Seoul have warned that any nuclear strike by North Korea would likely lead to the collapse of Kim’s regime.
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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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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.
Israel ‘Cancels’ Plan To Attack Iran’s Nuclear Oil Fields After Bombshell Report & Warnings · Erdogan Finally Enters Israel War? · Iran’s ‘Nuke Test’ …
warned that the war is entering a dangerous phase, highlighting NATO’s increased focus on nuclear … ‘Nuclear War Risk High’: Putin’s Aide Warns U.S. & …
Nuclear weapons · Kim Jong Un · South Korea · United States · Nuclear threat. New Nuclear Threats Made to US From Kim Jong Un. Published Oct 08, 2024 …
A conflict between or among any nations so long as one has nuclear arms could start World War III, because any act of such a war would bring immediate retaliation from an ally of a nuclear armed country or countries. This particular instance in the article following these comments is a very scary example, and of course there are others such as North Korea and South Korea because if North Korea were to use nuclear weapons against South Korea, the United States would defend South Korea with US nuclear weapons. The same thing could happen with Russia nuking Ukraine, which is a NATO member.
So it is that we must remain alert to all international conflicts no matter their nuclear capability. Also there are the smaller nations’ conflicts that may have nuclear power plants that are ripe for terrorism attacks that could destroy other nations with radiation poisoning even without nuclear arms by damaging nuclear reactors or even incoming power lines leading to nuclear power generating facilities. This issue is already in the forefront of such possibilities in the Russia/Ukraine war where nuclear power plants are already a huge issue in the war.
The only realistic salvation, without intervention of some unknown kind, mankind has in order to avoid all-out nuclear war, or any other international nuclear catastrophe, is to convince all nations to collectively find a way for peace that includes the honest and legitimate dismantling and removing of all things nuclear from human ability to ever use all things nuclear for military or electricity or any other purposes. Doing so can only be accomplished by world unification of all nations, large and small. Otherwise, we are leading ourselves to armageddon followed by innocent other life all the way to the Earth’s 6th extinction. ~llaw
He is doing everything to unite all Muslims and to sever the Western civilization’s centuries-old relations with the Islamic world
My realism-in-international-relations-theory cap on: Unless you make it intentionally, peace cannot occur all by itself. But wars can. You don’t have to do anything special to start a war. But if there is a war you want to start and for some reason, you yourself cannot initiate it, then you find a dog. After all, why keep a dog and bark yourself?
Now, the cap off; back to what is really happening!
Israeli Prime Minister (or the prime suspect of the only genocide of the 21st century that has been going on for the last year) Benjamin Netanyahu started a deluge in his country, and now he is about to let in all those who facilitated his genocide on the prospect of exterminating at least 2 millions of Tehran residents and making about 100 million people injured and sick in Iran and neighboring countries that is on the path of the wind storms of the thermo-nuclear weapons he is going to drop on Iran.
That seems the only way for Netanyahu to keep himself out of Israeli prison: It would gratify the Zionist Armageddon troops in his coalition government who would never allow the Jerusalem District Court to put its claws on him in one count of bribery and three of fraud; he denies them all. His wife and other family members have been involved in all cases.
Netanyahu refused to resign for the trial; he argued that it would not contradict his work. His trial was suspended in October due to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, raid in the occupied territories; his lawyers asked for another delay claiming he does not have time to prepare, and he will only be able to testify in March of next year. That is, Netanyahu needs to prolong that war to something large and endless like George W. Bush’s “War on Terror.”
As the Hamas Raid provided the favorable circumstances to begin his coalition partners’ plan for the “Final Solution in Palestine,” now he has ample opportunity to respond to the 200 plus rockets the Iranian Mullahs fired on Israel last week as retaliation to Israel’s killing Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon. Now it is Netanyahu’s turn to retaliate against Iran’s counterretaliation. That is his last opening to spread his war on Gaza to the entire Shiite Crescent, starting at the two ends of it, Lebanon and Yemen, and reaching to the center: Iran, itself.
Netanyahu’s Likud has seven coalition partners – United Torah Judaism, Shas, Religious Zionist Party, Otzma Yehudit, New Hope and Noam – and they actually keep him trapped inside the hardline coalition. His partners are spending billions of dollars in the Occupied Territories opening new settlements and religious schools. Hard-line religious parties allowed gun ownership without investigation. If Netanyahu ever objects to any of these government decrees, his National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir the leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, threatened to end the coalition, which might mean Netanyahu goes to prison with his wife.
This political paralysis will not only keep him doing whatever Ben-Gvir wants him to do, but he has to gear up so that he keeps his allies at the U.N. Security Council, the U.S., Britain and France, on a leash. He knows that in America going to a fateful election would not allow him to keep the Israeli armed forces permanently in the Gaza Strip. America wants Israel to withdraw completely, to let the Palestinian Authority take control. Netanyahu cannot accept cooperation with the Palestinians and he can no longer oppose the U.S. demands. The only way out for him seems to raise the level of hostilities in the region.
State built on blood
Israel was created (at the expense of the Ottoman Empire) to provide a safe refuge for Jews. But it has never been what it was intended for. Since its establishment in 1948, over 20,000 Jews have been killed and over 100,000 of them injured and maimed in the wars the Israeli government started. Not all the Israeli prime ministers were warmongers. Yitzhak Rabin, the fifth prime minister of Israel, for instance, wanted to put an end to the violence caused by Israel’s rejection of the U.N.’s partition of Palestine between the Jews and native Muslims and Christians. He signed the Oslo Accords to finally make peace in Palestine. But Yigal Amir, an Israeli law student and ultranationalist who radically opposed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s peace initiative, particularly the signing of the Oslo Accords, killed him. Guess who benefited from this political murder?
After a brief interval of seven months with Shimon Peres, Netanyahu became the prime minister and again with a coalition of religious hardliners, he rejected the peace accords Rabin signed and began occupying the Palestinian villages and towns.
According to Mouin Rabbani, former senior analyst at the International Crisis Group and co-editor of Jadaliyya Ezine magazine, Netanyahu has three modi vivendi since his first tour of government in 1996. The first is to launch outrageous provocation guaranteed to elicit an armed response. The second is to use overwhelming firepower to kill Arabs and remind them who is boss. The third and the last is to mobilize foreign parties to quickly restore calm on improved conditions.
Forcing their hands
Now Netanyahu is the prime minister for the sixth time, and he has successfully paved the way to elicit any support not only from the U.S. but also from the British, French and German governments.
If, for any reason, he cannot drag the American generals with him into a disastrous war in Iran, there is a way to bring peace to Palestine. American politicians and their trigger-happy generals (who, overruling President Kennedy’s objection, helped Israel go nuclear in the first place) should understand that millions of dead people in Iran and their neighbors, a devastated Tehran and the misery that would follow would make all the Muslim people in the region, Türkiye included, turn their back on the West for good. Those generals should not even think that Iran is a Shiite country and most of the Arabs and Turks are not, so they won’t really bother about the mass killings and devastation in Iran! Even one single, small Jericho rocket with a nuclear bomb would not only demolish the years of efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Middle Eastern nations, but also any future cooperation between the West and the East would be impossible for the foreseeable future.
As professor Stephen Walt, whose realistic cap and basic teachings I borrowed here, says: “If you don’t want someone to do something, you don’t give them the means to do it. One must therefore conclude the U.S. government does not object to what Israel has been doing for the past year.”
We hope the U.S. still has the final control of Netanyahu’s push-button of those bombs which U.S. President Johnson acquiesced to be built in the Negev Desert in Israel after Kennedy was assassinated. (No, I don’t mean that Kennedy was killed by the Israeli Zionists!)
About the author
Hakkı Öcal is an award-winning journalist. He currently serves as academic at Ibn Haldun University.
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
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:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
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.
Even as the US has made clear it opposes a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Gallant said Israel has not ruled out any of its options. “Everything …
Tripling that to nearly 300 GW will involve the construction of hundreds of new reactors of all … Based in Toronto, Canada, Paul writes about nuclear …
The revised rules, outlined by President Vladimir Putin, say that an attack on Russia with “participation or support of a nuclear power” will be seen …
This is a change in Russia’s “nuclear doctrine” against striking first with nukes — a central plank nuclear deterrence back in the Cold War of 1946 to …
… risks, believing that nuclear weapons will deter an unacceptably strong US or South Korean response.” While the report said “an offensive strategy ..
