It would be one thing if the arguments for expanding fossil fuels were geostrategic or economic. The public could weigh the projects and forecasts against protection of lives, species and livelihoods....

It would be one thing if the arguments for expanding fossil fuels were geostrategic or economic. The public could weigh the projects and forecasts against protection of lives, species and livelihoods....

It would be one thing if the arguments for expanding fossil fuels were geostrategic or economic. The public could weigh the projects and forecasts against protection of lives, species and livelihoods....

It would be one thing if the arguments for expanding fossil fuels were geostrategic or economic. The public could weigh the projects and forecasts against protection of lives, species and livelihoods....

Peter Huessy _Peter Huessy is president of Geostrategic Analysis and Senior Fellow at NIDS and the Gold Institute and a weekly nuclear policy guest on the John Batchelor Show._ Nuclear weapons and the deterrent strategy accompanying their deployment are sometimes poorly understood. For the general public that is understandable, given the complexities of preventing nuclear war. What is most worrisome are those ‘experts’ who widely seek the abolition of nuclear weapons but are often confused about the real American nuclear deterrent necessary to prevent war. For example, the most misunderstood idea is often referred to as MAD or mutual assured destruction. This is the assumption that US strategy relies on the idea that should the US be attacked with nuclear weapons, our only option would inevitably lead to the exchange of such overwhelming nuclear force as to destroy both our own country and the adversary nation. A second bad assumption is that since MAD if carried out would get us all killed, reductions toward zero nuclear weapons – abolition – should be our highest priority. And since it’s still an all or nothing MAD strategy, prudence would jettison the idea of nuclear deterrence altogether. Including any call for any flexible or limited regional response capability. Over 60 years ago, President Kennedy warned that having just two unpalatable choices – risk MAD (all-out nuclear war) or surrender – was a prescription for more war. In two nuclear crises of his administration, in Berlin in 1981 and in Cuba in 1962, the US had both force flexibility (new SLBM & ICBM missiles) and just plain luck (Khrushchev wasn’t completely reckless) that brought the crises to an end without war. In August 1961, for example, Kennedy had previously told the Soviet leader that a threatened Russian attack on the American military garrison in Berlin meant nuclear war. We had significant (3900) battlefield nuclear forces in Germany. But we also had a newly deployed strategic sea-launched long-range missile aboard submarines which Kennedy thought saved the day and which he later would personally thank the Lawrence Livermore team for developing. Thus, Khrushchev knew Kennedy meant business. Although the General Secretary eventually didn’t attack, he went and built the Berlin Wall, an off ramp critical to standing down from nuclear war. Bu the USSR leader wasn’t done. A year later, October 1962, US intelligence determined the Soviets had placed nuclear armed missiles in Cuba. On that very day, coincidentally, the USAF had just deployed the very first Minuteman ICBMs in Montana. A key to the crisis resolution was a secret deal. Kennedy then knew Minuteman meant the US no longer needed the US medium range missiles in Turkey – close enough to strike key targets in the Soviet Union. The new Minuteman missiles could also reach Moscow. Kennedy later declared that “Minuteman was my ace in the hole” as he secretly traded away the US missiles based in Turkey for the Soviets removing the close-in missiles in Cuba. In both cases, the US avoided nuclear war. Deterrence held, albeit with some fortuitous help. But could we continue to rely on just in time new technologies that saved the day or the good sense of our adversaries? How best to continue? According to nuclear expert Frank Miller, since the very beginning of the Truman administration, it was American strategy to go after key overall Soviet military capabilities. Over time, as missile accuracy improved, US strategy was to go after Soviet military systems themselves such as missile silos. The key reason the US needed such flexible nuclear firepower was that President Eisenhower knew it would have bankrupted the USA to build the conventional force necessary to match the Soviet and Warsaw Pact conventional forces. The Kennedy administration emphasized the targeting of Soviet warmaking assets, despite Secretary of Defense McNamara later shielding the US move toward keeping at risk Soviet military assets by falsely claiming the US still operated under the strategy of MAD. The US thus from the very early years of the nuclear age had response options other than simple massive retaliatory strikes on urban areas. Eventually the deterrent strategy the US adopted, in place now for decades, held at risk those elements of power of great importance to the leaders of the Soviet Union and China, for example and explicitly took off the table city busting. And after the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik, the US, in an extraordinary technological feat built both a submarine and a companion sea launched ballistic missile by 1960, and an ICBM silo-based missile called Minuteman by 1962 to carry out just such a strategy as eventually adopted. Why is this important? Without a US capability to target the military forces of the USSR or China, their war forces would be in a sanctuary from which they could attack the United States or its allies with impunity. Having only the capability to deliver MAD is not a credible deterrent as President Kennedy warned. As Miller writes, such a flexible strategy has been US policy since at least the Truman administration when US policy was to destroy the capability of the USSR to “wage aggressive war,” and destroy those elements of the Soviet military that would “halt aggression.” Thus, 14 American presidents from 20 administrations, over 75 years have used such a strategy to avoid direct military conflict between nuclear armed powers. Now the US unilaterally got rid of over 90 per cent of its theater nuclear weapons in 1991 as the Cold War was over and, as we thought at the time, a Russian-led assault on Western Europe was no longer a threat. The US also reduced our strategic nuclear forces from roughly 10,000 to 1550, as we assume Russia did too in three landmark arms deals (START I, the Moscow deal and New START.) At the time of the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiative (PNI), the Europeans insisted the US have an insurance policy – leave behind, a small extended nuclear force in Western Europe. The US did so with a few hundred gravity bombs in Europe. This was not any plan to start or initiate a nuclear war, contrary to some recent muddled commentary. It was to give the president options other than the threatened all-out use of strategic long range nuclear forces to deter adversaries from attacking the US and Europe in the first place. It has turned out not to be enough. The Russians in 1991 did not follow suit with a PNI of their own, and the Russians kept at least 2000 and as many as 4000 such ‘battlefield’ nuclear forces. Then on April 30, 1999, a new nuclear policy was crafted by a small group of top Russian officials. President Yeltsin in a secret meeting of the Politburo called for Russia to develop highly accurate and very low yield nuclear weapons able to be used on the conventional battlefield. Mr Putin as president put the decree into force. The strategy has variously been described as ‘escalate to win’ or ‘escalate to de-escalate,’ or the use of such battlefield nuclear forces to exercise blackmail, coercion or actual terror, and swiftly change the direction of conventional conflicts toward Russia’s favor. While the US does have a small number of theater nuclear forces now in Great Britain, the US needs more flexible forces to better hold at risk our adversary’s military capability. Although it is not explicitly known, the lack of sufficient US and allied deterrent choices at the regional/battlefield level may have been a factor in the Russian decision in 2014 and 2012 to invade Ukraine, as well as previous aggression against Georgia and Moldova. Despite declaring that the independence of Ukraine is an existential issue, NATO has not sent its own forces to fight the Russians but only some conventional weapons delivered to Ukraine. To many in Russia, that ‘inaction’ by NATO means NATO is deterred, especially as Putin and officials within the Russian Federation routinely threaten the use of such theater nuclear weapons against Ukraine and NATO forces should Ukraine or its allies deploy certain kinds of weapons or attack certain Russian targets. The Strategic Posture Commission concluded in 2023 that the United States needed additional regional or theater nuclear forces that were survivable, mobile, and prompt to deter Russian from escalating a conventional conflict to the nuclear level. The support was both bipartisan and unanimous. The deployment of a navy nuclear armed sea-launched cruise missile is an added theater capability that can deliver deterrence and help keep the peace. It is supported by the US Navy and funded by Congress. Such forces give the president options other than ending the world and have nothing to do with ‘starting’ a nuclear war. True, the folks in Moscow and Peking see such theater/battlefield weapons as instruments of war that make aggression possible. But the US and its allies believe nuclear and conventional forces are to deter and prevent war. That is how US nuclear modernization and a flexible response capability will keep the nuclear peace. This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

The Quebec election campaign—which concludes with voting across Canada’s only majority French-speaking province Monday, October 5—is taking place against the backdrop of a systemic crisis of global capitalism. The trade war that Trump is waging against Canada is but one facet of a vast intensification of commercial, geostrategic and military conflicts. The ruling classes of all the imperialist states, Canada included, are frantically rearming for a third world war that has already begun, and that they intend to make the working class pay for through the dismantling of public services and social support, and the destruction of jobs and living standards. All the parties contesting the election adhere to this class-war program, which will translate after the election into a sharp intensification of the state-employer assault on workers’ living conditions—not just in Quebec, but across Canada. Christine Fréchette’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), Charles Milliard’s Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s Parti Québécois (PQ), and Éric Duhaime’s Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) are big business parties that openly promote austerity and tout Quebec chauvinism. Their rivalry centers on who will succeed in convincing the ruling elite that they will be the most effective in intensifying the anti-worker assault, while containing...

The EU’s Global Gateway strategy rests on the premise that development cooperation and the EU’s own geostrategic interests can be mutually reinforcing. Genuine synergies do exist: a renewable energy p...

Germany is prepared to sign an $8 billion contract to supply submarines to India, according to Stefan Wicke, the German Ambassador to New Delhi. Wicke stated that both nations are increasing military spending due to a "unfriendly geostrategic environment" globally. The deal includes the transfer of advanced technologies and the training of crews, with deliveries scheduled over several years. New Delhi is pursuing the acquisition as part of a broader naval modernization plan to strengthen its presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

All the talk of friendship and partnership masked a deeper hostility.

The Royal Brunei Air Force (RBAirF), which turned 60 in June, finds itself in a rapidly changing geostrategic environment, characterized by conflict and instability. Brunei is unlikely to suffer outright military aggression but could face spillover effects of increased super power confrontation in the region.  Brunei’s recent defense white paper identified major power rivalry, regional and global conflicts, radicalization, and rapidly advancing disruptive technologies as sources of concern.

In my political and economic evolution, the critique of capitalism was the gateway drug of evolving into being critical and generally left leaning on that journey.

Explore economic security and technology leadership in an era of rising geostrategic competition in this two-day course.

Explore economic security and technology leadership in an era of rising geostrategic competition in this two-day course.