Another nuclear accident in the land of Chernobyl

[T]he Russian military base near Nenoska, Russia, where a small nuclear reactor exploded last week.

In online posts and calls to local officials, Russians on Monday expressed anger that the explosion of a small nuclear reactor at a military test site last week has gone unacknowledged for days by their government.

“Even if it is not as dangerous as it seems, we deserve to know,” said Danil Kotsyubinsky, a resident of St. Petersburg who has been pressing local officials for information.

The accident, which has been cloaked in secrecy, took place on Thursday at the Nenoska naval weapons range on the coast of the White Sea in northern Russia, and it apparently involved a test of a new type of cruise missile propelled by nuclear power, American analysts say.

The explosion killed at least seven people, released radiation that briefly elevated readings in a city 25 miles away and set off a scramble by Western experts to ascertain what happened. 

They're testing development of a nuclear engine for cruise missiles.

To whom would that seem like a good idea?

Or, "what could go wrong?"

"Think of it like a mini Chernobyl on a missile," MIT's Narang said. 

"It's an air-breathing cruise missile and they put an unshielded mini nuclear reactor on it. Obviously, that's pretty bats--- insane. 

"We tried this in the 1960s and gave up for a reason, and this is why. It's very risky."

Thursday's accident is the latest sign that Russia's attempts to succeed where the U.S. failed are not going to plan. 

This is the latest of several failed tests since they started in 2017.

Cheryl Rofer, a retired chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb in New Mexico, believes Putin will never succeed.

"There are basic and fundamental engineering considerations that suggest that a nuclear-powered cruise missile with a very small power source will be very difficult or impossible to build," she wrote on the Nuclear Diner website Sunday.

That's because of how difficult it is to make this type of missile light enough but with enough power to fly. 

But the main reason it was abandoned in the past is the design has the potential to spread radioactive particles over the ground as it flies. 

In the 1960s, the U.S. did not want to test its rocket in Nevada or over the Pacific because of the risk it could veer off course and cause an environmental catastrophe.

"Is it dangerous? Yes!" Lewis said. 

"I think the phrase 'flying nuclear reactor' tells you all you need to know. 

"You've got air blowing through an open nuclear reactor and spewing out the back."

Putin is worried US anti-missile technology, reputedly now practically useless, will improve sufficiently to provide the US with what American policy leaders - though perhaps only the loonier - might think of as a first strike capability.

An unlimited range cruise missile looks like an answer, and a nuclear engine looks like the way to power it.

Undermining NATO?

Setting a moral view above realism and practicality?

Sanders backs Warren after Liz Cheney attacks 'no first use' nuclear policy

This issue was fought out during the Cold War, when the view emerged that a first use of nukes would be immoral and the US and NATO publicly and even ostentatiously refused any commitment to a "no first use" policy.

Both they and the Warsaw Pact nations knew the latter would quickly crush the former in a purely conventional war.

The only way NATO could effectively deter that was by leaving the door open to first use of nukes on the battlefield.

And so they did.

The issue was not, I must say, first use of strategic nuclear weapons against anybody, against any Warsaw Pact nation or, in particular, against the Soviet Union.

Lacking a first strike capability as everybody then was, a threat of that sort would be (a) a threat to commit suicide and hence (b) not very credible.

The NATO theory was that first use of tactical nukes on the battlefield would cause any Warsaw Pact invasion of the West to fail without so endangering the Soviet Union as to provoke them into use of strategic nukes against anyone on the NATO side and setting off a global thermonuclear war.

And that the Russians, knowing this, would not launch such an invasion.

Reagan's deployment of cruise missiles was also a necessary piece of the deterrence puzzle, given the unwillingness or inability of the NATO countries to match or surpass the conventional forces on the Soviet side.

Maybe all that has changed with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the partial dismemberment of the Soviet Union, leaving behind a considerably smaller and less powerful Russia with a much enlarged NATO crowded right up against its borders, but I don't know that it has.

Anyway, the current flap seems to be about a different issue, first use of strategic nuclear weapons, what people used to call a first strike.

And that seems odd.

Nation A was said to have a first strike capability against nation B just in case A could launch a strike that would prevent significant nuclear retaliation by B.

Back in the day, it was considered destabilizing and hence highly undesirable that either side, NATO or the Warsaw Pact, should have such a capability.

So far as I know, that is still the standard view and nobody actually has a first strike capability.

So I don't really see what this is about or how it fits into the strategic picture.

Bernie Sanders has defended his rival for the Democratic presidential 2020 nomination, Elizabeth Warren, after her policy against pre-emptive use of America’s nuclear weapons was attacked by the daughter of one of the architects of the Iraq war.

Warren reiterated her support for a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons during the second round of Democratic presidential debates this week.

“It makes the world safer,” the Massachusetts senator said during the debate. “The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively, and we need to say so to the entire world.”

Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, attacked Warren’s policy on Twitter, asking “which American cities and how many American citizens are you willing to sacrifice with your policy of forcing the US to absorb a nuclear attack before we can strike back?”

Cheney's attack was inconsequent enough, but Sanders' rejoinder was equal to it.

“Taking national security advice from a Cheney has already caused irreparable damage to our country,” Sanders wrote on Friday, in response to Cheney’s attack on Warren.

Cheney’s attack on Warren echoed the [equally mystifying- PV] response of one of Warren’s Democratic rivals during the debate, the Montana governor, Steve Bullock, who said he did not support a “no first use policy” because, “I don’t want to turn around and say, “Well, Detroit has to be gone before we would ever use that.”

Meanwhile, we are still in NATO

Serious Buchananites need to consider how we might deal with issues of nuclear balance and security from outside NATO.

Hard enough nut to crack from within, no?

Nato and Russia trade barbs after collapse of nuclear arms treaty

C&L in the lead, this morning.

The Russians are coming and racism, racism!

That's all they've got, the left-wing-noise-machine.

A furious shit-storm of both.

So, not a globalist, that means, I think.

Trump's intelligence pick is attempt to 'neutralise' spy agencies, say ex-officials

John Ratcliffe’s nomination follows announcement Dan Coats will leave after disagreements with Trump over policy and intelligence

Donald Trump’s nomination of an inexperienced but loyal partisan to become the director of national intelligence (DNI) is an attempt to “neutralise” US spy agencies as an independent and objective voice on global affairs, former intelligence officials warned.

Oh, is that what they are? They don't have their own, Cold War II, globalist agenda?

<snip>

“Trump is consolidating his personal control over the intelligence community,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA intelligence officer. He said the current directors of the CIA and FBI have found their hands tied increasingly when it comes to accurate intelligence assessment, by risk of being fired for something at odds with Trump’s views.

“I fear that there is a slow takeover of the norms and procedures of governance by this president, amassing unprecedented executive power,” Mowatt-Larssen, now at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, added. 

“To do that he needs to neutralise or at least silence the intelligence community. He has been doing that for three years, but this takes it to the new level.”

The story emphasizes Ratcliffe is an ardent, Hannity-like Trumpist trumpet.

The idea is that he will corrupt the intelligence community and heap discredit upon its clear-eyed, candid, and disinterested vision.

Um.

But that isn't really the main issue, is it?

A natural ally for the nationalist parties of Europe

Italian PM to address claims League sought money from Russia

The Cold War is soooo over.

And in European eyes, Communism is just gone.

Russian power, much diminished in any case, is no threat at all to capitalism or representative government, and Russia is not exporting any sort of revolutionary and crazy ideology just the thing to terrify everyone.

And Putin's authoritarianism, for these folks, just doesn't much matter; if it's anybody's problem, it's the Russians'.

Fewer Europeans, every day, have any interest in NATO and its Cold War II.

More and more people, not just in America but in Europe, and anywhere on the political spectrum but notably on the right, when asked "Should you or your kids be willing to fight and die in a full-scale, pan-European and maybe even global war for the independence of Estonia?", are inclined to answer with a wholly unabashed, "No."

They are equally skeptical of NATO and wholly opposed to the EU superseding Europe's individual nations as a military power.

And just as European parties of the West were not much bothered by, and often actually colluded in, American meddling in their elections to keep power out of the hands of anybody soft on defense against the Soviet bloc back in the day, some parties now seek or tolerate Russian meddling on behalf of nationalists seeking to lead their countries away from the old Cold War alliances and even, sometimes openly and specifically, the power of the US.

Talk of war intensifies

And perhaps so does the actual danger of war.

Britain prepares for possible war with North Korea

Theresa May's government prepares to support America in a war with NK.

Mattis urges military 'to be ready' with options on North Korea

Australians fear North Korea standoff will lead to war

Moscow says escalation of tension on Korea peninsula unacceptable

South Korea threatens to drop blackout bombs on North Korea

Corker: Trump setting US 'on the path to World War III'

Trump's talk is a major betrayal of his official America First-ism that positively thrills his base of white Harley-riding trailer trash, who surely see it as entirely about defending America and not at all about defending South Korea.

They are, after all, ignorant and stupid admirers of bullies, a boatload of deplorables, and that is why they chose him in the first place.

He knows his people and is more in tune with them than the Buchananite publicists whose claims to speak for them are lies, as are the claims of conventional GOPsters to speak for the American people, or even just Republicans.

What about that anti-war propaganda?

MSNBC, CNN, and the other Democrat media are pushing an anti-war propaganda reminiscent of their propaganda against Bush pere's war on Iraq.

At that time we were warned that Iraq's was the third or fourth most formidable military in the world and an attack on that country would involve massive casualties and material losses on our side at best and bog us down like Vietnam in prolonged warfare ending in failure at worst.

When Bush pulled the trigger, Schwarzkopf crushed the Iraqi forces in less than two weeks.

This time we are being told we cannot do anything at all of a military nature about North Korea because of two things.

First, the NKs would launch a massive artillery attack on Seoul generating hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilian deaths right off the bat.

Second, the NKs would respond by launching a general war for the peninsula, a war that would be even more horrific in its results than the historic Korean War.

Though dreadful, neither of these results would involve a North Korean nuke hitting a US city.

Would they not be preferable to that, for the US, if not for anyone living on the peninsula?

But in any case is it so sure those two things would happen?

So the US military would not or could not preemptively destroy the NK artillery threatening Seoul?

So the NKs really are stupid enough to put the survival of their regime in gravest danger and put at risk massive numbers of their own civilian population merely out of pique that we had destroyed their nuclear program or taken limited action to coerce them to abandon it?

So the economically starved NK regime can field conventional forces more potent and dangerous to our own - our own combined with the SK forces and (if the war lasted long enough) forces from Japan or other East Asian allies - than could Iraq, back in the day, an Iraq we were told by the antiwar propaganda of that time would possibly even defeat our forces?

Well . . . .

None of which is to say The Duce should roll the dice.

But if he doesn't will America at last seriously consider abandoning our military commitments to defend SK and perhaps Japan against NK?

Or will we claim to be willing to defend SK and Japan even at the price of an NK nuke attack on our cities, even though we were so obviously unwilling to risk anything to keep defense of those countries safe for our cities?

If you were a South Korean or a Japanese, would you believe such assurances?

That's different from the question would you pretend to believe such assurances?

And, by the way, did appeasement convince Hitler he ought not to fight everybody else in Europe?

Or did it only allow him to better prepare for a war he intended to fight, all along?

Time is running out. NK and the diminishing tenability of globalism.

If the idea is to stop NK getting a deliverable bomb the clock is at about five minutes to midnight.

Diplomacy and sanctions are not working and will not work.

If there is a military move to be made the time is here or almost here.

Trump calls North Korea 'dangerous' and 'great threat' after overnight nuclear test

MSNBC live now says official sources say evidence is consistent with the NK claim what they have now is a totally successful test of a hydrogen bomb.

In a very short time it will be time to get used to being in NK's nuclear crosshairs, if we don't take a military option that heads that off.

And then we will all have to think again about whether Trump's campaign position that we ought to drop our alliances with SK and Japan and let them get nukes, if they want, to defend themselves, was all that crazy.

The alternative is to let Seoul and Tokyo hide behind Chicago and Saint Louis, making our own cities targets of NK nukes in case of a new war on the peninsula.

Which is more and which is less acceptable?

Throughout all this, and reaching all the way back to the 2016 campaign, it has emerged that the policy of the Dems at MSNBC and CNN is every bit as globalist as the most hard-core neo-cons in DC, with even the peaceniks among them joining in the vigorous bashing of Bozo's America First initiatives by Hillary's neocon and globalist allies.

These media libs have been all along, and are today as well, supporting all of our Cold War alliances, vigorous expansion of NATO, and continued anti-proliferation.

The difference - the crucial difference - being that the commitment of MSNBC and CNN is to nothing but bluff, while the commitment of the neocons, though perhaps also ultimately questionable, is at least in some surface respects more genuine.

As evidence I cite the neocon calls for US arms for Ukrainian forces fighting a small but hot war with Russia, greater deployment of US forces to NATO countries on Russia's very border, and military action against NK.

So there are really three alternatives, as far as the military side of globalism goes.

Republican/neocon interventionist: Continue and expand our Cold War alliances with public promises and the real intention of going to war to defend our allies.

Democratic/liberal interventionist: Continue and expand our Cold War alliances with public promises but no real intention of going to war to defend our allies.

Buchananite/Bannonite/peacenik/isolationist/erstwhile left anti-imperialist: Publicly renounce our Cold War alliances and back away.

Asked less than an hour ago by a reporter whether the US would be taking military action against NK Trump replied "We'll see".

In my opinion, the rise of a nuclear NK and the further proliferation of nukes to other "Axis of nuts" regimes as dangerous, crazy, and inimical as they are provides increasing power to the main argument against continued American globalism, real or faux.

Continued American globalism at best limits the threat posed to us by proliferating and escalating regional conflicts, nuclear or not, only by increasing the threat of a global thermonuclear war having the US among its first targets.

More and more as the nuclear club comes to include ever more irresponsible and threatening regimes, that will not seem like or be a good trade.

Particularly given the obvious truth that regional conflicts do not inevitably involve us, or anyone at all, in anything remotely like global general war, anyway.

Politicians and pundits pointing to the two World Wars and to the Cold War as refutations of withdrawal from globalism are totally full of wild blueberry muffins.

Trump to Kim: Fire on Guam and I'll fire on you!

Trump warns N Korea that US military is 'locked and loaded'

"Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong-un will find another path!" he tweeted.

And in another place, in person, to the cameras, he specifically warned that the planned and ready military response would occur if Kim fired on Guam.

As to the broader issue of NK pursuit of nukes to hit the US with, Trump did not say military action would not happen if Kim did not fire on Guam.

It's not just about Guam.

The Duce's first warning of unprecedented "fire and fury" came before the North Koreans started threatening Guam.

American media are still treating this as an occasion for mocking, correcting, and bashing Trump and not seeing this has become every bit as serious, in its regional way, as the Cuban missile crisis, and more serious than the runup to Bush the Elder's invasion of Iraq.

What Trump is doing is scary but not foolish and not without reason, no more than what Kennedy did about Cuba and rather less than what Bush pere did to Iraq.

So far as any attention is given to possible military events the focus, previously on what Kim's artillery would do to Seoul, is now on what his missiles would do to Guam in just 14 minutes.

Zero attention is being paid to the threat facing North Korea and what American forces could do, very quickly and without question, to Kim, Pyongyang, North Korean forces, and the North Korean nuclear missile program.

References are numerous to the much less threatening language of others in the administration, as though everyone had forgotten we only have one US President and he, not his staff and not his department heads, is the Commander in Chief and calls the tune.

The Secretary of State is not the President, the National Security Advisor is not the President, Donald Trump and only Donald Trump is the President.

Yet the cable networks' military experts are talking as if Trump's threats were of course mere bombast and certain not to be fulfilled, so that what actually would happen if NK fired on Guam would be very little, and at most defensive moves such as use of anti-missile systems to knock down NK's shots.

Contrast all that irresponsible foolery with the utter seriousness with which the press treated every word out of Bush the Elder's or Jack Kennedy's mouth, about what the US would do and was ready to do, about their crises.

And with the reactions of China, Russia, and South Korea.

China warns North Korea: You’re on your own if you go after the United States

China won’t come to North Korea’s help if it launches missiles threatening U.S. soil and there is retaliation, a state-owned newspaper warned on Friday, but it would intervene if Washington strikes first. 

The Global Times newspaper is not an official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, but in this case its editorial probably does reflect government policy and can be considered “semiofficial,” experts said.

Russia does not accept a nuclear North Korea – Lavrov

“Now [North Korea] claims that it has legal rights to make nuclear weapons and has already [done so],” he said. 

“But you know our position: we don’t accept the fact that North Korea could possess nuclear weapons.”

Both Russia and China have a “range of proposals” aimed at preventing what could become “one of the deepest conflicts” and a “crisis with a big number of casualties.”

According to the Russian foreign minister, there is the strong risk that Washington and Pyongyang could engage in military conflict.

South Korea Says U.S. Promises Coordination in Standoff With North

Of course not thrilled, SK is nevertheless not complaining of what Trump is doing, or demanding he stop, withdraw, or moderate his warnings to Kim.

This is a quiet but public assurance that they are on board.

Pat Buchanan defends his Duce - and Putin's Russia

Is Trump’s Russia Policy Being Hijacked?

All the same, he's in bed with Putin, too

But unlike Trump, he's wearing his nightie and isn't actually spooning.

Tillerson rejects $80 million to fight Russian and ISIS propaganda

Russia supporting North Korea ecomomically

MSNBC today.

Why term limits are a good idea

Vladimir Putin: 'I may not leave Russian presidency'

Asked what he plans to do when he leaves the presidency, Vladimir Putin paused and smiled. 

“But I haven’t decided yet if I will leave the presidency,” the Russian leader replied, to laughter and applause from an audience made up almost entirely of Russians who were born after he first became president in 2000.

That could never have been said by a man who valued republicanism and his country.

George Washington, for example.

Possibly the most shocking - and revealing - thing Fyodor has said to date

After emerging from his long meeting with Vladimir Putin, Trump tweeted, “Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.”

Star-struck or just sucking up, when he shook hands for the cameras with Putin at the G20 he said, quite emphatically and making a quite deliberate sound-bite, "It's an honor to meet with you."

And now this?

Let's give the fox full access to our henhouse?

Who says he's Vlad's butt-boy?

Bipartisan ridicule forces Trump to retreat from joint Russian cybersecurity plan

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “Setting up a joint working group on cybersecurity with the country that hacked our election infrastructure is a nonsensical and absurdly inadequate response to the Russian threat.”

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, said of the proposal: “I don’t think we can expect the Russians to be some sort of credible partner in a cyber security unit, I think that would be dangerously naïve for this country, if that’s our best election defense, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow.”

Democrats were joined in their criticism by Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) who tweeted, “Partnering with Putin on a cybersecurity unit is akin to partnering with Assad on a chemical weapons unit.”

He has appointed a commission to investigate the wholly imaginary three to five million illegal aliens whose votes account, he says, for Hillary's entire popular vote victory in November.

He has not appointed a commission to investigate Russian hacking and other meddling with the election on his behalf.

Trump’s besieged voter suppression commission hit with ACLU lawsuit

And this.

White House: New Economic Sanctions On Russia, Iran Constrains President’s Authority

Marc Short, the White House legislative director, told reporters that the administration backs the new sanctions on Russia and Iran. 

But he appeared to object to a key part of the legislation that would give Capitol Hill a much stronger hand in determining Russia sanctions policy. 

The bill would require a congressional review if President Donald Trump attempted to ease or end penalties against Moscow.

“Our concern is that the legislation, we believe, sets an unusual precedent of delegating foreign policy to 535 members of Congress by not including certain national security waivers that have always been consistently part of sanctions bills in the past,” Short said.

Following his lengthy meeting on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany, Trump said he wants to move forward “working constructively with Russia”

Officials from the Treasury and State departments met last week with House congressional staff to voice their concerns over the congressional review section of the bill. 

The officials said the provision would infringe on the president’s executive authority, according to an aide knowledgeable of the discussions.

Well, fuck you, Mr. Putin

Russia threatens to treat U.S. coalition aircraft as targets over Syria

Russia on Monday angrily condemned the downing of a Syrian aircraft by a U.S. fighter as a “flagrant violation of international law,” and said its forces will treat U.S.-led coalition aircraft and drones as targets if they are operating in Syrian airspace west of the Euphrates while Russian aviation is on combat missions.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said it is suspending an agreement to minimize the risk of in-flight incidents between Russian and U.S.-led coalition aircraft operating over Syria.

Russia, which has provided military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2015, was reacting to U.S. military confirmation that a U.S. F-18 Super Hornet shot down a Syrian Su-22 fighter-bomber on Sunday. 

The Syrian jet had just dropped bombs near members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a militia aligned with the U.S. military in the campaign against the Islamic State.

Andrea Mitchell is outraged, outraged that the president is being soft on the Russians about this, er, outrage.

Biggest story of the day buried by US media

It distracts from Bozo and anyway upsets the exaggerated Cold War II anti-Trump narrative.

Russia may have killed the boss of ISIS.

The French step up in Syria

Macron warns over Syrian chemical weapons in frank meeting with Putin

French president tells the Russian leader that use of chemical weapons in the conflict would lead to immediate response, while urging cooperation over Isis.

.  .  .  .

Macron said France would show “no weakness” if chemical weapons were used, and would immediately respond.

French spies amassed and publicly released evidence last month that indicated the Assad regime had used toxic sarin gas on the town of Khan Sheikhun, an attack that provoked the US to launch missiles on a Syrian air base in its first targeted attack against the Syrian president’s forces.

First I've heard it was them.

Must have missed it.

Go, NATO.

McCain speaks out

Vladimir Putin is a bigger threat than Isis, John McCain says

The advocate of Cold War II.

This is interesting about North Korea.

“I don’t think it’s acceptable to have an intercontinental ballistic missile — or a missile aimed at Australia — with a nuclear weapon on it, and depend on our ability to counter it with an anti-missile capability.”

Is Kim Jong-un Castro with his own nukes?

During the Cuban missile crisis, Castro hotly urged Khrushchev to nuke the US.

The nukes on the island were the Russian's, not his.

Maduro leads Venezuela towards chaos

Venezuela's latest corporate target is Spain's Telefonica

Uncompensated seizure of private property for public use.

Maduro's announcement comes just a day after General Motors (GM) said authorities unexpectedly seized its auto manufacturing plant in Venezuela, showing a "total disregard" of its legal rights.

Huge swaths of Venezuela's economy have been nationalized in recent decades, including private oil, telecommunications, energy and cement businesses.

. . . .

The recent large-scale protests erupted after Maduro's administration barred opposition leader Henrique Capriles from holding political office for the next 15 years. 

At least nine people have been killed in the protests. Maduro has been accused by the opposition of behaving like a dictator.

In late March, the loyalist-backed Supreme Court tried to strip the opposition-led National Assembly of its powers, but quickly reversed course after a severe public outcry. 

The Supreme Court also blocked all reforms from opposition lawmakers.

GM isn't the only company in crisis in Venezuela

Latin America nations condemn Venezuela violence

And in a further lurch to the left, reminding us not only of Allende's subversion of the Chilean state but of Hitler's brownshirts and Mussolini's blackshirts, we see this.

Venezuela's Maduro to provide guns to 400,000 loyalists amid peaking tension

Venezuela's purely local mess can quickly become a national security problem for the US if Maduro allies his Bolivarian Revolution with Russia or China, or worse still with North Korea or Iran.