A group of children protest in Washington D.C. at the 2019 March For Our Lives Photo by Dominic Gwinn
Good evening, this is The Smoke Eater for Wednesday, May 27, 2020, and we will all go together when we go.
Quick Hit
* Riding above the clouds on a nuclear-powered high-horse *
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Bring Back The Bomb
On Friday I explained the Open Skies treaty, and how the administration's intention to exit the treaty was likely a precursor to the administration leaving the New START treaty, an even more important nuclear arms reduction agreement signed during the Obama administration. Shortly after I published, the Washington Post reported the administration held a meeting about restarting nuclear weapons testing on May 15. Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration reportedly warned about the environmental and political consequences of restarting nuclear testing, and the meeting concluded without any agreement.
Over the weekend, Drew Walter, performing the duties of deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, said that there had no policy change, but that limited testing could happen "within months," likely in Nevada. Popular Mechanics explains that any nuclear testing would probably happen at the Nevada National Security Site (near Las Vegas) with the lowering of a nuclear payload into an unused testing shaft.
Into The Wayback Machine
The U.S. has signed, but never ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), but it has adhered to the treaty's basic framework. When President Clinton tried to get the treaty ratified by the Senate, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, stuck it in legislative purgatory. Democrats eventually sent a letter to Helms demanding a hearing in July of 1999.
Assuming Republicans had enough votes to kill the treaty, the Senate's majority leader, Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott, agreed to a quick vote in an effort to limit debate and additional amendments. Only 18 hours debate occurred, starting on October 5. During the final hearing on October 7, the directors of the three nuclear weapons laboratories reluctantly agreed the to support the treaty provided then-President Bill Clinton's six safeguard conditions were met, and there was adequate funding for the sustained stockpile stewardship program.
After the vote failed, then-Senator Joe Biden accused Republicans of playing politics with the popular treaty ahead of the 2000 presidential election. During a presser, Biden said, "What are you supposed to debate in presidential years? What are you supposed to debate when it comes to who runs this country except the monumental issues of our generation? I challenge anyone -- anyone listening -- to tell me that there's an issue of greater consequence than what the strategic rationale for the United States of America should be. If that is not worthy of debate on the part of George W. Bush, then he should stay as governor. They don't have strategic defenses there."
Ten years later, President Barack Obama promised to resurrect the ban on testing nuclear weapons during his April 2009 speech in Prague. Despite hope for change, the legislation never went anywhere. In 2016, Senate Republicans again blew up efforts to revive the ban on nuclear testing by claiming the Obama administration was attempting to circumvent Congress via the introduction and adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution that urged members not to conduct nuclear tests.
99 Red Balloons
The Trump administration complains Russia and China have conducted low-yield or underground nuclear tests, and both nations deny this. Last year Russia's nuclear agency admitted to testing, "isotope power sources within a liquid propulsion system," after a deadly accident at Nyonoksa, a secretive military testing facility. Radiation levels in the Arkhangelsk region spiked, but not enough to confirm a nuclear weapons test. The U.S. ultimately concluded the explosion was the result of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.
In October, three U.S. diplomats attempted to visit Severodvinsk, a village near the facility, but they were pulled from a train en route by Russian authorities. The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed the diplomats were "lost," and said, "We are ready to give the U.S. embassy a map." In February, a short film from the U.S.-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported a town near the military base had been effectively quarantined, with residents suggesting a cover-up similar to the Chernobyl disaster.
Last month the State Department accused China of secretly conducting low-yield nuclear tests in its 2020 arms-control compliance report. The report doesn't actually have any evidence China is conducting nuclear tests, it simply says the the U.S. thinks China might be because there's construction at the Lop Nur nuclear testing site. Trigger-happy Republicans came to State's defense and argued (in so many words) that you can't prove they're not conducting low-yield tests, therefore they're conducting nuclear tests.
Nuclear weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis criticized State, noting that anybody with Google Earth can look at Lop Nur and see the Chinese were clearly building something, but that evidence was "thin." Lewis notes the U.S. and Russia both conduct similar subcritical tests that wouldn't register on nuclear monitoring devices. In a robust discussion on the Arms Control Wonk podcast last week, Lewis and his co-host, Anne Pellegrino, expanded on this, noting that in order to definitively answer the question one would have to physically inspect the tunnels at Lop Nur -- which would require ratifying the CTBT. Lewis argues, "It may be that you don't want an answer to this question because you don't want to be in the CTBT at all, and it's easier to blame the Chinese than admit that you're the asshole who wants to do hydronuclear tests."
Interestingly enough, the State Department leveled similar accusations against Russia in 2019, accusing them of conducting low-yield nuclear tests at its Novaya Zemlya test site, a testing site similar to the one at Nyonoska. Lewis criticized that report using similar arguments, and commissioned full-color satellite photos of the Novaya Zemlya site. The photos showed Russia moving large hardware that would be used in the transportation/recovery of a weapon system that used a nuclear engine, not a nuclear payload.
And All This Will Happen Again...
In reporting State's 2020 Compliance report, The Wall Street Journal quoted Steven Andreasen, a former member of the National Security Council under President Clinton, saying the U.S. should should, "discuss our concerns with Beijing-and discuss ways to build confidence that such tests are not happening." Unlike the U.S. and China, Russia has signed and ratified the nuclear test ban treaty. However, because the U.S. hasn't ratified the treaty, it's never come into effect or been enforced. Like the U.S., China says it has followed to the terms of the CTBT.
Last Thursday, the administration's arms control envoy, Marshall Billingslea, gave a speech at the Hudson Institute where he boasted about nuclear posturing and concluded with direct threats to Russia and China, saying the U.S., "know[s] how to win these [arms] races and we know how to spend the adversary into oblivion."
Over the weekend conservative columnist Max Boot criticized Trump in the Washington Post for seeming oblivious to the political, tactical, and financial costs of nuclear weapons. Franz-Stefan Gady, an International Institute for Strategic Studies research fellow on the future of conflict and war, told the Slovak-language Pravada that the resumption of testing would only benefit Russia and China. Writing in Just Security today, the director of the Arms Control Association, Daryl G. Kimball, criticized the administration's chest beating, saying, "It would be irresponsible to gamble away New START, or to conduct a nuclear test explosion, in a desperate attempt to coerce unilateral concessions from China and Russia on a new arms control deal."
It was during a December 2015 Republican presidential debate that Trump gave a rambling and incoherent answer about the nuclear triad. According to FOID'd records obtained by The Warzone, on December 21, 2016 Trump was given a brief on the F-35, the state of Air Force One, and the Obama administration's effort to modernization the nuclear triad. One day later, Trump shitposted about increasing U.S nuclear capability, "until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." A day after that, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski asked Trump if he was concerned about starting a new nuclear arms race; Trump replied, "Let there be an arms race." Vox has attempted to explain Trump's policy on nuclear weapons only to come back with the equivalent of a shrugging emoji.
One More Thing...
At the height of his celebrity, music parodist "Weird" Al Yankovic starred in “UHF” as the unlikely manager of a local T.V. station with poor ratings. After achieving success through absurd programing, a larger network attempts a hostile takeover. (via Tubi)
OK, here's a cute critter video: IT'S PRINCE MICHAEL!
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