Nuclear strategy – The Optimistic Conservative

TOC Ready Room 26 October 2022: 101st Airborne in Romania; Kanye, China, and other wonders

What’s wrong and right with Russia-Ukraine, China and computers, and Ye.

This will be a rough-and-ready Ready Room, intended to spray a few current topics out there without going in-depth on any of them. I really mean it this time, so throw rotten fruit if you catch a glimpse of over-analysis out here in the heathery rough.

The first topic is the headline teaser: deployment of the U.S. 101st Airborne to Europe. CBS did a segment this past week in which its crew accompanied soldiers of the 101st on field activities in Romania, just “a few miles” from the border of Ukraine.

CBS gets an exclusive sneak peak: "The US Army's 101st Airborne is practicing for war with Russia just miles from Ukraine's border"

"It's not just about defending NATO territory," correspondent @charliecbs reports. "They're fully prepared to cross over into Ukrainian territory" pic.twitter.com/XE2OfHZV4o

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 22, 2022

A great deal was made of the point that the 101st hasn’t deployed to Europe since World War II. Continue reading “TOC Ready Room 26 October 2022: 101st Airborne in Romania; Kanye, China, and other wonders”

The Shakiest Nukes in the West

“Listen up, yo: I’m deterring you now”

In case everyone in Northeast Asia missed it, in spite of their intelligence and early-warning networks which have assuredly been tracking it in fine detail, the Obama Defense Department announced on Monday that the U.S. has been deterring North Korea by sending B-52 bombers on practice runs in its vicinity. The specter of nuclear deterrence was clarified by Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter:

Deputy defense secretary Ashton Carter said during a visit to South Korea on Monday that the bomber flights are part of the U.S. “extended deterrence”—the use of U.S. nuclear forces to deter North Korea, which conducted its third underground nuclear test Feb. 12.

Nukes! I say. Nukes! Pay attention, dudes.

As Bill Gertz demurely puts it, Continue reading “The Shakiest Nukes in the West”

Bushehr: And So It Begins, Part I

Bushehr: it’s the geopolitics.

Danged if I didn’t write about the reactor at Bushehr just a few days ago. It looked like maybe Iran was practicing her defensive measures for a reactor start-up – local air defense, trying to get Israel preoccupied with attacks from multiple axes – because the start-up could be imminent. I hoped, writing that earlier piece, that Russia still had doubts about the wisdom of defying US policy and UN sanctions to this extent. But apparently the Russians are satisfied that we’re not going to do anything.

That’s no surprise at this point. Indeed, there are few real surprises lurking out there anywhere, at this point. Someone, somewhere, has predicted almost everything that’s going to happen, and a lot of people are aware of most of the predictions. If we were to put things in terms of a familiar analogy, the main question is probably Continue reading “Bushehr: And So It Begins, Part I”

Master Strategist Cheats at Candyland

Obama, outmaneuvered? WAY.

Ed Morrissey’s question at Hot Air today – whether Obama has been outmaneuvered by Iran in the game of Uranium Gotcha – reminded me immediately of a September 2009 piece that now begs for resurrection. In the original item at the Huffington Post, Joseph Cirincione offered the following sober assessment of Obama’s skills in the wake of his revelation about the once-secret Fordo uranium enrichment site near Qom: Continue reading “Master Strategist Cheats at Candyland”

It Depends on What the Meaning of “Nuclear Posture” Is

The Obama Nuclear Posture Review is pretty bad.

I see more of a departure from previous policy in Obama’s new Nuclear Posture Review than Max Boot does. Although the administration isn’t putting theatrical exclamation points on it, Hillary Clinton’s announcement on Tuesday that the new NPR reflects a reordering of priorities is meaningful. In truth, it’s an understatement.

What Obama is actually doing is changing the nature and purpose of the nuclear posture review, as established by Clinton’s (1994) and Bush’s (2002). The earlier NPRs were strategy documents about the defense of the U.S. and our allies. Obama’s NPR doesn’t address defense strategy; it merely assumes that a certain number of strategic weapons platforms will be sufficient for any unlikely contingencies in that regard, and concentrates instead on a series of declarations about moving toward a non-nuclear world and discouraging the threats of terrorist nukes and nuclear proliferation.

These are certainly valid threats, but they’re not the threats we maintain a nuclear deterrence posture for. The emphasis on them in an NPR amounts to a substantial repurposing of the review. Continue reading “It Depends on What the Meaning of “Nuclear Posture” Is”