Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Cuba

  • The Missile Crisis that Never Went Away

    This article was originally published by Truthdig.


    Fifty years after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War, the US and Russian nuclear confrontation continues. Both nations still keep a total of approximately 800 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), armed with more than 1,700 strategic nuclear warheads at launch-ready status, able to be launched with only a few minutes warning.


    The US now has 450 land-based Minuteman III missiles that carry 500 strategic nuclear warheads. As their name implies, they require at most several minutes to be launched. The US also has 14 US Trident submarines and normally 12 are operational. Each Trident now carries about 96 independently targetable warheads and 5 Tridents are reportedly kept in position to fire their missiles within 15 minutes. This adds another 120 missiles carrying 480 warheads that qualify as being “launch-ready”.


    The missiles and warheads on the Trident subs have been “upgraded” and “modernized” to make them accurate enough for first-strike weapons against Russian ICBM silos. Missiles fired from Trident subs on patrol in the Norwegian Sea can hit Moscow in less than 10 minutes. 


    Russia is believed to have 322 land-based ICBMs carrying 1,087 strategic nuclear warheads; at any given time, probably 900 of these are capable of being launched within a few minutes warning. Many of the Russian ICBMs are more than 30 years old. According to a former high-ranking Soviet officer, the commanding officers of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces have the ability to launch their ICBMs directly from their headquarters, by-passing all lower levels of command.


    The Russians also have nuclear submarines with ballistic missiles kept at launch-ready status, although Russian subs are not always kept in position to launch (unlike the US Tridents). Missiles launched from Russian submarines on patrol off the US East Coast can, however, hit Washington, D.C., in about 10 minutes.


    The combined explosive power of US and Russian launch-ready nuclear weapons is roughly equivalent to 250 times the explosive power of all the bombs exploded during the 6 years of World War II.  It would require less than one hour for the launch-ready weapons to destroy their targets.


    Both the US and Russian presidents are always accompanied by a military officer carrying “the nuclear football” (called cheget in Russia), a communications device resembling a lap-top computer, which allows either president to order the launch of his nation’s nuclear forces in less than one minute. Both nations still have officers stationed in underground ICBM command centers, sitting every moment of every day in front of missile launch-consoles, always waiting for the presidential order to launch.


    For decades, hundreds of US and Russian ICBMs have been kept at high-alert primarily for one reason: fear of a surprise attach by ICBMs or SLBMs. Since a massive nuclear attack will surely destroy both the ICBMs and the command and control system required to order their launch, the military “solution” has always been to launch their ICBMs before the arrival of the perceived attack. And once an ICBM is launched, it cannot be recalled.


    Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, both the US and Russia developed and deployed highly automated nuclear command and control systems, which work in conjunction with a network of early warning systems and their nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. The possession of this complex integrated network of satellites, radars, computers, underground missile silos, fleets of submarines, and bombers give both nations the capability and option to launch most of their ICBMs upon warning of attack. 


    This creates the possibility of an accidental nuclear war triggered by a false warning of attack. During peacetime, when political tensions are low, conventional wisdom has it that there is essentially no chance that a false warning of nuclear attack could be accepted as true. However, during an extreme political crisis, or after the advent of military hostilities, such a false attack warning could become increasingly likely and vastly more dangerous.


    ICBMs remain out of the sight and the minds of most Americans, yet all the necessary military ingredients for Armageddon remain in place. And despite past presidential announcements that another Cuban Missile Crisis is “unthinkable,” it certainly remains possible.


    It is naïve to assume that we will never again be in a military confrontation with Russia – particularly when US/NATO forces and US nuclear weapons remain stationed near Russian borders in Europe, and we continue to surround Russia with missile defense facilities in the face of military threats against these facilities from the Russian president and top Russian military leaders. 


    In March, 2012, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote to one of us (in a personal letter), “One cannot help agreeing to the conclusion that the deployment of missile defense system at the very borders of Russia, as well as upbuilding the system’s capabilities increase the chance that any conventional military confrontation might promptly turn into nuclear war.”


    What happens if NATO collides with Russia somewhere in Georgia, Kaliningrad or perhaps Ukraine, shots are fired and Russia decides to carry out its threats to take out US/NATO Missile Defense installations? What happens if the US should have a president who considers Russia the US’s number one geopolitical foe?


    For many years it has been standard Russian military procedure to preemptively use nuclear weapons in any conflict where it would be faced with overwhelming military force, for example, against NATO.  The Russians oddly call the policy nuclear “de-escalation,” But it would be better described as “limited nuclear escalation. It was developed and implemented after the US broke its promise not to expand NATO eastward (following the reunification of Germany) and NATO bombed Serbian targets.


    The Russian “de-escalation” policy presumes that the detonation of nuclear weapons upon the opposing side will cause them to back down; it is essentially a belief that it is possible win a nuclear war through the “limited” use of nuclear weapons. But in the case of NATO, the war would be fought against another nuclear power. 


    Suppose that NATO responds instead with its US tactical nuclear weapons now based in five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey)? Once an exchange of nuclear weapons takes place, what are the chances that the war will remain “limited”?  


    US and Russian strategic war plans still contain large nuclear strike options with hundreds of preplanned targets, including cities and urban areas in each other’s nation. As long as launch-ready ICBMs exist, these plans can be carried out in less time than it takes to read this article. They are plans that spell disaster for both countries and for civilization.


    Cooperation, rather than conflict, still remains possible. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov writes, “Despite the growing hardship we do not close the door either for continuing the dialogue with the US and NATO on missile defense issues or for a practical cooperation in this field. In this respect we find undoubtedly interesting the idea of a freeze on US/NATO deployments of missile defense facilities until the joint Russian-US assessment of the threats is completed.”


    This could be an important step towards lowering US-Russian tensions, which continue to revolve around their more than 60-year nuclear confrontation. Ending this confrontation can prevent the next Missile Crisis. Another important step would be the elimination of first-strike ICBMs that continue to threaten the existence of our nation and the human race.  This would increase the security of the American people, even if it were done unilaterally.


    The US and Russia remain obligated under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue negotiations in good faith on nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.  Fifty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is well past time to conclude these negotiations.  No issue confronting humanity is more urgent than bringing such negotiations to a successful conclusion and moving rapidly to zero nuclear weapons.

  • Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis at Fifty

    David KriegerFifty years ago this month, the world teetered on the precipice of a nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union during the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis.  We were fortunate to have survived that crisis, thanks largely to the restraint shown by President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev. 


    Now, fifty years later, there is no immediate crisis such as that in 1962 over Soviet nuclear-armed missiles being placed in Cuba. There are, however, still some 19,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine nuclear-armed nations: the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Approximately 95 percent of these weapons are in the arsenals of the US and Russia.  Some 2,000 of them are kept in a state of high alert, ready to be immediately launched upon an order to do so at any moment of any day or night. 


    Although the Cold War ended more than 20 years ago, the possibilities for crisis are still with us.  NATO has expanded to the Russian borders, despite US promises not to do so, and has begun placing missile defense installations near the Russian borders.  Despite US and NATO assurances to Russia that these installations are to protect against an Iranian missile launch, Russian leaders view these installations as undermining their strategic deterrent force by making them vulnerable to a first-strike attack.  They have said that they will target these US missile defense installations.


    In another US-Russian confrontation over Georgia, such as occurred in 2008, or some other regional dispute, it is possible that tensions could rise to the point of nuclear crisis between US and Russian military forces.  Of course, this would be crazy, but it is far from impossible.  What would make the world safer?  What might we expect from national leaders who should have learned from how close the world came to nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis?


    First, for the US and NATO to make Russia a partner in any missile defense plans focused on Iranian missiles.  Second, for the US to remove its approximately 180 remaining tactical nuclear weapons located in five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey).  Third, for the US and Russia to take seriously their legal obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race at an early date, for nuclear disarmament in all its aspects and for a treaty on general and complete disarmament.


    We know now that a regional nuclear war would have global consequences.  Atmospheric scientists have modeled a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities.  Such a war would put enough soot from burning cities into the upper stratosphere to reduce warming sunlight for a decade, lowering surface temperatures on earth to the lowest levels in 1,000 years.  This would result in shortened growing seasons, crop failures and famine that would kill hundreds of millions of people, perhaps a billion, throughout the world. 


    The scientific modeling showed that there would be a Nuclear Famine, and it would be triggered by using less than half of one percent of the world’s nuclear explosive power.  Such a famine could be initiated not only by India and Pakistan, two countries that have been to war over Kashmir on several occasions, but by any of the Nuclear Nine.  The US and Russia could each trigger a far more devastating Nuclear Famine by a nuclear attack on the other side’s cities, an attack which would be suicidal even if the other side did not respond in kind.


    When thinking about nuclear weapons and their dangers, we would do well to remember the words of General George Lee Butler, former commander-in-chief of the United States Strategic Command, responsible for all US strategic nuclear weapons: “Nuclear weapons give no quarter.  Their effects transcend time and space, poisoning the Earth and deforming its inhabitants for generation upon generation.  They leave us wholly without defense, expunge all hope for survival.  They hold in their sway not just the fate of nations but of civilization.”


    Nuclear weapons do not protect us.  Rather, they make us vulnerable to annihilation.  It is relatively easy to put them out of our minds, but to do so is to evade our responsibility as citizens of the world and of nuclear-armed countries.  Nuclear weapons imperil our common future – they imperil our children and their children and all children of the future. They imperil all we hold dear.   We must speak out for a world without nuclear weapons.  It is a moral and legal imperative and we would be well advised to act now before we are confronted with the equivalent of another Cuban Missile Crisis.