USA: playing poker with its own “first strike” capability

Experts warn: this is madness!

by Peter Küpfer

Prudent voices, including some in the United States, are urgently pointing out that the hectic US arms race has for certain influential circles become a highly threatening game with a global catastrophe. Despite this, the United States continues to spare no effort to be able to devastate in particular Russia and China with a surprise nuclear strike. Recently, the USA has apparently taken a decisive new step in this highly sensitive area. This is further proof of the faltering former world power’s iron will to assert its unchanged claims to dominance over the rest of the world, whatever the cost. It seems to be doing this even at the price of self-destruction, at least concerning some of its submissive European vassals.

In March 2024, the outgoing American president gave, as an important official act, the green light to pursue the programme of a further massive increase in the impact of America’s nuclear potential. According to American sources, intensive research into the ultimate achievement of American nuclear first-strike capability has been underway for more than 20 years. The start of these efforts corresponds to the time when the USA withdrew from all peacekeeping agreements, especially those with Russia.
  In August 2024, the “New York Times” published leaked details from the dossier, which is kept under lock and key.1 According to this, the US weapons programme to increase explosive power, which has been in place for decades, has recently progressed to the point where it should currently allow the US to “deter Russia, China and North Korea simultaneously”. However, the term “deter” in this context is inadmissibly trivialising. In fact, it means nothing other than what is the unstated main objective behind all this toying with a nuclear first strike: to carry out the first strike unnoticed by the enemy so quickly and efficiently that it will make the use of their defence system impossible. Of course, this will then be presented as a timely counter-strike because there were increasing signs that the opposing side wanted to carry out the first strike. This is a wide and tricky field for (deliberate?) misunderstandings and the like.

Playing with fire

In this context, Dr Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of National Security at MIT, writes the following in a detailed report on the American arms-critical platform Responsible Defence – here summarised:
  The current qualitative improvement of American nuclear firepower for intercontinental missiles has been enhanced in recent years by revolutionary weapon technology additions to such an extent that their destructive potential has increased threefold. Both soil depth effect and targeting accuracy have been drastically increased. This was achieved thanks to the development of a highly effective explosive device as well as the technologically enhanced effect of a new generation of warheads. With this increase in explosive power, the achievement of the objective, namely the elimination of enemy missile silos in the ground, has been significantly improved compared to previous generations. Together with the long-standing technical superiority in the detection of an enemy nuclear attack, the situation has thus changed decisively in favour of the USA. While the Russian Federation today needs 30
 minutes to detect and react to an emergency, for the USA it is only half that time, 15 minutes. According to American nuclear wizards in the development of the new generation of nuclear-capable guided missiles, all this should enable the USA to take out all Russian, Chinese and North Korean land-based nuclear silos simultaneously, in one fell swoop, as Postol writes, citing corresponding official documents.2

Experts’ warnings
must be taken seriously at last

Professor Postol, who is intensively involved with analysing the effects of nuclear weapons, combines his detailed report on the new generation of nuclear warheads with a serious warning: “No matter how successful a planned pre-emptive nuclear attack might look like on paper, the reality of a nuclear war initiated with the delusional belief it could be won will be global destruction so great in scale that the very end of human civilization cannot be ruled out.”3 [emphasis pk]
  As early as 1962, the Cuban missile crisis clearly demonstrated that misunderstandings or systemic errors in the existing arrangements for the use of strategic nuclear weapons can never be ruled out. Even then, as the former US Secretary of Defence McNamara later publicly admitted, the world had “just lucked out”, as he put it. Both camps had suspected each other of wanting to trigger a nuclear first strike. For John F. Kennedy, this was the reason to reach an agreement with Nikita Khrushchev on serious disarmament, and the latter agreed. This first serious attempt to improve the honest chances of peace in the middle of the Cold War and in the face of the permanent nuclear threat was thwarted by Kennedy’s assassination.

Irresponsible recklessness prevails

Against this backdrop, the NATO decision to station such missiles in Germany becomes oppressive. It is incomprehensible that there are hardly any protests throughout Europe, neither from governments or the opposition nor from political parties. As far as Russia is concerned, whose defence is the primary target, alongside that of the People’s Republic of China and North Korea, at least Vladimir Putin has issued a clear warning. The West would do well to take this more seriously than has been the case so far, as the revealing statement by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently made clear. When asked by media representatives what Russia had to say about the new NATO decision to install nuclear-capable guided missiles on German territory, he replied that he was “not interested in what they say about it in Russia”.
  Is it just recklessness and irresponsibility that speaks from such a public statement by a person highly responsible for America’s foreign policy, or is it an expression of American megalomania? If politicians are really convinced that, firstly, America should remain the global superpower, that secondly, the rest of the world should subordinate itself to its interests and that thirdly, the USA has the self-granted and armed prerogative to enforce this its claim to dominance over all others in the world by any means necessary, then finally among all those who still think rationally, including those in Europe, opposing forces should become effective. Better today than tomorrow. For the insight of every thinking fellow human being remains true: the concepts of a successful nuclear first strike with its effects on the whole world (including those who triggered the strike!) stem from a delusion, the delusion of omnipotence. •



1 “Biden approved secret nuclear strategy”; in: The New York Times of 20 August 2024
2 Ted Postol provides a comprehensive account of this on the American platform “Responsible Statecraft”, in: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/biden-nuclear-strategy of 28 August 2024

3 ibid.

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