News Release

U.S. Nuclear Stance Toward Russia Increasing Existential Threats

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GREG MELLO, gmello at lasg.org, @TrishABQ
Mello is executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group. The group put out a statement on the U.S. government’s major nuclear policy statement, the Nuclear Posture Review. A new NPR was release on Fridayafternoon — which was last updated in 2010.

The Los Alamos Study Group’s statement is available at: “Nuclear Posture Review Calls for Continuing Weapons Modernization — Minus ‘Interoperable’ Warhead, Plus New Nuclear Attack Options.”

Mello said today: “What is most ‘missing in action’ in this document is civilian leadership. Trump is not supplying that. In part the fault for this comes from Democrats — who, allied with the intelligence community and other military-industrial interests, insist that the U.S. must have an adversarial relationship with Russia. There is no organized senior-level opposition to the new Cold War, which is intensifying week by week. This document reflects, and is just one of many policies embodying, the new and very dangerous Cold War.

“Unfortunately the ‘hard power’ approach that we see in this NPR eliminates better options as it proceeds and creates the enemies it needs to justify high military expenditures. Fear is used to create more fear — and more appropriations. In that sense, our nuclear missiles are aimed at Congress. They are also aimed at the American people, whose nuclear fears were consciously cultivated and used as a social control mechanism by government in the first Cold War.

“The low-yield Trident warheads are a gratuitous self-inflicted wound on the supposed rationale of the nuclear mission. … [A]ny use of nuclear weapons — anywhere, against any adversary, with any yield, under any circumstance — will immediately lead to existential dangers for the United States and the world. …

“Starting in Obama’s second term, neoconservatives began to be ascendant. Their goal was then and is now to conquer — to ‘break’ — Russia, in the summation of Henry Kissinger, and to contain China, and thus to rule the world. That is the context of this document, and that is why it is consequential and frightening. To say, ‘Look at the terrifying things Trump is saying!’ is to miss the deeper point that successful conflict with Russia has been the entire thrust of U.S. policy for several years now. This is just another expression of it, in the nuclear weapons arena.”