U.S. developing new nuclear weapons to counter Russia, China

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives January 16, 2018

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What does the left worry about when it comes to national defense? Apparently it worries that we might have some weapons in our arsenel that it's not impossible for us to ever use. Find the clip if you can of Joe Scarborough during the 2016 general election campaign, freaking out because some of Donald Trump's national security advisors said he'd asked some of his national security advisors, if we're building nuclear weapons, why can't we use them? To Scarborough, this was evidence of a madman. To me, it was the sort of question you ask when you want to understand the thinking of those who might soon be working for you, and the realities attached to the deadliest weapons on Earth.

The fact of the matter is that China and Russia have nuclear weapons, and are developing new ones, and they're not building them for the purpose of never, ever, under any circumstances, using them. They're building them to gain strategic advantage, which was easy to do when Barack Obama was disinclined to counter them. That has now changed, as the U.S. is preparing to develop two new kinds of nuclear weapon, which are "low grade" and might even be used some time you filthy commies:

Supporters of the Pentagon’s plan say it is time for the U.S. to update its nuclear forces to deal with changing threats some three decades after the end of the Cold War. Critics worry that the Pentagon’s search for more flexible nuclear options could lower the threshold for their use. One weapon, which experts say could be deployed in about two years, is a “low yield” warhead for the Trident missile, which currently is deployed with more powerful warheads on the Navy’s submarines that carry ballistic missiles. The U.S. also would pursue the development of a new nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile, reintroducing a system that was retired from the American arsenal in 2010. The development of the two weapons is among a broad range of recommendations in the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review, a major reassessment of the U.S. nuclear strategy and programs that was commissioned about a year ago by President Donald Trump.

That strategy, which is expected to be formally unveiled later this month, has yet to be approved by the president. The Pentagon has dismissed an unclassified draft of the strategy, which was published last week by HuffPost, as “pre-decisional,” while more updated drafts are also circulating. But the plans to field the new nuclear systems have strong support in the Pentagon and are expected to go forward, according to people familiar with the review. A major question at the heart of the Pentagon review is how to respond to military strategy and programs in Russia and China, which American officials say provide a more prominent role for nuclear weapons. In effect, the Pentagon argues that since adversaries have failed to follow the U.S. in de-emphasizing the role of nuclear weapons, Washington needs a greater range of nuclear options to counter its potential foes, especially for carrying out limited strikes.

The left has done a very effective job of associating any use of nuclear weapons with ending life on the planet. That would actually take a massive deployment of a significant percentage of ours, Russia's and China's nuclear arsenal. It is possible to develop weapons that use nuclear warheads but can be deployed is limited, strategic situations. No one wants a war using any kind of nuclear weapons, of course. But it does no good to be ill-prepared or incapable of countering a threat. The Russians and the Chinese knew Obama was a product of the left-wing nuclear freeze movement, and had no interest in countering their nuclear activities with anything that would put America on an equal footing in terms of capabilities. It is one of the reasons the Russian military became so adventurous during Obama's presidency. Not only did he not want to stop them, if it came down to a superpower showdown, he couldn't. The U.S. might be able to win a ground battle with conventional troops, although such a battle would probably be fought closer to Russia's turf so we'd be at a distinct disadvantage there too. But a nuclear showdown? We didn't have the hardware. And they were building more while we were busy socializing health care. One way to prevent a conflict is to prevent your enemy from getting ideas because they have bigger guns than you do, or because you have such big guns that everyone knows you'll never use them. This is a step designed to make our nuclear arsenal fit the potential threats we might face. I suppose that terrifies the left, but what's important is that it should make the Chinese and the Russians think twice about whether they really have a strategic advantage, and whether they really want to test that premise. Lefties always fret that when we do things like this, we will "only provoke our enemies." Maybe it's time to make it clear that our enemies have provoked us, and the response is at hand.