By Ron Boat
Let’s be honest. A nuke flying into your town can ruin your day. What can ruin your life is America’s inability to respond to, and win, a nuclear conflict.
Many experts understand and agree that America has never been more cowering, more stumbling toward a perilous precipice than we currently are. The world’s battle for unused, stockpiled nuclear weapons lying in wait has been won, and America has been found wanting.
While history recounts that it beneficially ended WWII, the nuclear bomb is unquestionably something that has unleashed unfathomable destructive capabilities for those with a piquant urge to perpetrate the ultimate demise of ideological enemies.
In considering our own offensive and defensive strengths with regard to EMPs and nuclear weapons, there are not many more qualified that Dr. Peter Pry, a former CIA intelligence officer, chief of staff of a congressional committee on EMPs, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, chief adviser to the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to the vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and to the chairman of the Terrorism Panel, and others.
Dr. Pry’s many positions bespeak his qualification to address America’s most pressing and dominant threat – nuclear attack by a multitude of now capable enemies.
For decades the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was a discerning tenet in the arsenal of justifications for those designing our nuclear strategies. “No one would dare strike a country knowing they could strike back and destroy us” was the mantra. But Dr. Pry warns us of the actual fallacy of this thinking:
This idea that “Mutually Assured Destruction” was ever “mutual” is one of the great myths of the U.S. arms control community. When the Kennedy administration began arms control negotiations with the Russians, the military basically ceased to be in charge of our nuclear strategy. Under Eisenhower, we believed in fighting and winning nuclear wars. We prepared for that. But Kennedy brought in a lot of Harvard and Yale educated pinheads with a new theory – arms control – and tried to educate Russian on the principal of Mutually Assured Destruction; holding each other hostage. When Russia signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972, we took that as evidence that Russia agreed with us that mutually assured destruction is mutual. That was never true.
They cheated on treaties; their 10,000 nuclear capable SAMS; other missile systems; their deep underground shelters; their civil defense program – all contradict the concept of MAD. Only we would have adhered to it. We’re not postured to fight and win a nuclear war; we’re postured for transparency.
Pry went on to say, “There is no mutually assured deterrence” when one side is not afraid to kill all and win at all costs – America isn’t on board with that, instead thinking it can deter instead of fight.
The Machiavellian precept, “It is better to be feared than to be loved,” doesn’t make for a great marriage, but on the world stage of perceived power, it’s paramount in presenting a protective persona AND capability.
During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy mobilized the U.S. nuclear deterrent to DEFCON 2, showing strength and helping resolve the confrontation peacefully. After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush mobilized to DEFCON 3, a show of strength to warn off other potential aggressors.
Washington has mobilized to DEFCON 3 only of necessity, because of Russia’s “special combat alert” for nuclear forces, but should demarche Moscow, immediately informing the Kremlin by all channels that the U.S. wishes to avoid nuclear war.
Russia’s “mutual” obstinance:
- Russia has by far the world’s biggest and most modern offensive nuclear arsenal, with a 10-to-1 advantage over the U.S. in tactical nuclear weapons, and perhaps a 2-to-1 advantage in strategic nuclear warheads (if Moscow is cheating on New START, which is likely).
- Russia has thousands of nuclear command posts, bunkers and shelters for political-military elites and civilians, including nuclear blast doors on subways to protect urban populations and a very serious nuclear civil defense program that just a few years ago exercised sheltering 40 million people.
- In light of the Ukraine battles, midnight flights are flying Russian elites and their families to the Urals, where some of Russia’s best protected deep underground facilities, some of enormous scale, are located – small cities shielded beneath hundreds of meters of solid granite.
- A new General Staff Command Post beneath Kosvinsky Mountain accommodates an estimated 30,000 people. A recently completed city beneath Yamantau Mountain is much larger, and of unknown purpose.
- China is increasing their deliverable nuclear warheads to 1,000-plus by 2030 and are constructing 250 new missile silos in northwest China – this number adequate to destroy most major U.S. cities.
In contrast America has:
- No deep underground command posts for political-military leaders that would survive a nuclear strike. (Even NORAD’s famous command post inside Cheyenne Mountain, designed to survive the A-bomb, would probably not survive a thermonuclear strike by an H-bomb.)
- No significant nuclear civil defense program or system of shelters to protect the civilian population.
- No anti-missile defenses capable of stopping Russian (or Chinese) warheads, only 64 National Missile Defense Ground-Based Interceptors planned for less sophisticated missile threats from North Korea or Iran.
- No modern ICBMs, SLBMs, ballistic missile submarines, or strategic bombers, all of which are at least 30 years old and many nearing obsolescence.
- No modern nuclear warheads, all of which have been patched-up and repaired over the decades, none tested for 30 years.
- Almost no tactical nuclear weapons (about 100 gravity bombs bunkered in NATO Europe).
World powers are posturing themselves with Ukraine, and the results haven’t been tallied yet. Ukraine could become the world’s nuclear graveyard. Moscow believes nuclear war can be won, is positioned to do so and will roll the nuclear dice in the perilous game of power.
President Biden’s recent gaffes threatening U.S. military intervention in Ukraine and regime change in Russia upticks possible nuclear war through design or miscalculation.
Western belief that Russia is “on the ropes” in Ukraine, presented by Ukrainian propaganda and wishful thinking, may prove as false as Washington’s hope that Afghanistan would become a feminist-secular democracy.
North Korea’s threat
Nuclear attack is a devastating aggression, but an EMP attack can have similar effects without the infrastructure-damaging consequences. North Korea’s Unha-3 space launch vehicle could carry a small nuclear warhead and detonate it miles over the United States to create an EMP, leading to a protracted nationwide blackout, killing millions.
Several years ago, Pyongyang’s satellite, the KSM-3, could have evaded detection by U.S. missile-tracking radars in its initial orbit and evaded interception by our National Missile Defense.
As of early 2020, it has been estimated that North Korea possesses a military nuclear weapons arsenal of approximately 30 to 40 nuclear weapons. Adm. William Gortney, commander of NORAD, acknowledged the nuclear-missile threat from North Korea, warning they have mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), called KN-08, which, when armed with nuclear warheads, can strike the U.S. mainland.
Iran’s progress
Israeli analysts and some senior U.S. national security officials warn that Iran probably already has nuclear weapons. Years ago, prior to 2003, Iran was manufacturing nuclear-weapon components, like bridge-wire detonators and neutron initiators, performing non-fissile explosive experiments of an implosion nuclear device and working on the design of a nuclear warhead for the Shahab-III missile.
America is a superpower – but by no means the only superpower. Our enemies should not assume our inadequacies to be weakness, for our capabilities are strong. Are they strong enough to fully protect us, or have we squandered billions on CRT, social equity training, COVID lies, gay and trans study groups and illegal immigration instead of fortifying our country against the real threats – real enemies, foreign and domestic?
Ron Boat has been writing national and international corporate marketing and training programs since 1975. In 2011 he was asked to write for No. 1 blogs and leading online publications. He interviews top military, political, and business leaders adding facts and timely commentary, without the rhetoric of political bias. He trusts that facts matter, and that truthful expression is paramount for a free America.@PatriotRon on CloutHub & Gab.
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