Doe U.S. Nuclear Posture Create Increasing Risk of Nuclear Attack on U.S. Homeland?

Does U.S. Nuclear Posture Create Increasing Risk of Nuclear Attack on U.S. Homeland?
–by John Lewallen, lewallen@mcn.org, avoidingnuclearwar.com
Nov.27, 2018
House Armed Service Committee to Challenge Trump’s Nuclear Weapons Posture
Great news posted this Nov. 14 on : Rep. Adam Smith (D.Wash.), the new chair of the House Armed Services Committee, plans to challenge the threatening and dangerous nuclear posture of the Trump administration. At a speech for the Ploughshares Fund, Rep. Smith called for a complete redo of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, continuation of multilateral nuclear weapons control treaties, and adoption of a “no-first-use” nuclear weapons policy to reduce provocative threat.
Here are some thoughts focused on convincing members of all political parties and President Trump that the U.S. needs to immediately announce a no-first-use nuclear posture, and reduce weapons and deployments consistent with a minimal deterrence strategy, to avoid an accidental or pre-emptive strike against the U.S. homeland from Russia, China, or North Korea.
I’m including reasons why Republicans should support signing the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and why it is essential that we all work to overcome the dangerous coverup of nuclear EMP weapons deployed in missiles and satellites.
I’ll be watching progress of Rep.Smith’s efforts, which I believe we should ask our legislators to fully support.
The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review Creates Risk of Strategic Attack on U.S. Homeland
Strategic nuclear war, involving risk of nuclear missile attacks against U.S. cities and now the possible use of high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) bombs to collapse computerized civilization continent-wide, is a catastrophically unfavorable field of battle for the United States.
The 2018 nuclear posture review defines four nations as major strategic threats against the U.S. which must be deterred with a huge nuclear arsenal based on expansion of the “nuclear triad” developed to confront the Soviet Union. These nations are Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.
In order to deter nuclear attack on their nations, Russia and China have a longstanding strategy of maintaining “Second-Strike Threat Credibility”: the perceived ability to impose a nuclear counter-attack on the U.S. homeland even if the U.S. has hit them with a nuclear strike intended to destroy their military completely. Now North Korea apparently has gained second-strike threat credibility against the U.S.
The 2018 nuclear posture review claims that renewal and expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is necessary because China, Russia, and North Korea have expanded their nuclear arsenals and become more threatening. Actually, the U.S. drives the whole ongoing war of nuclear threat confrontation by developing more first-strike weapons, deploying them around these nations, and threatening “pre-emptive first strike” if the U.S. believes an attack against them is imminent.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly explained, U.S. attempts to set up strategic missile defense and threatening deployments force Russia to develop counter-forces to maintain second-strike threat credibility and deter attack from the U. S.
This insane “game” is very expensive and puts the whole U.S. in increasing peril of nuclear attack, either by accident or as a pre-emptive strike. No nation is suicidally crazy enough to initiate nuclear attack against the U.S.
It is urgent that the U.S. immediately de-escalate nuclear threat confrontation. President Trump’s 2017 attack threats against North Korea provoked a North Korean threat to detonate an H-bomb over the Pacific for the first time since the 1960s, leading to ongoing peace talks with the United States. (See my analysis “Did A North Korea Nuclear EMP Bomb Threat Lead to Peace Talks With President Trump?” posted at avoidingnuclearwar.com.) Similar direct negotiations with China and Russia are urgently needed.
Trump also ended the “war games” threatening attack against North Korea, calling them “provocative.” The whole U.S. nuclear posture is “provocative,” and could provoke nuclear attack against the U.S. homeland.
Why Republicans Should Support Signing the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear weapons are the great equalizers; or, in military jargon, the ultimate asymmetrical weapons. The probable possession of just one nuclear EMP bomb capable of wiping out U.S. computerized civilization was enough to cause the U.S. to stop threatening North Korea with attack. For the U.S. military strategists focused on protecting the homeland with maximum military strength, it is essential to reverse current strategy of escalating nuclear threat. Avoidance of nuclear war is the only sane strategy to prevent national suicide.
U.S. nuclear posture drives the whole worldwide war of ongoing nuclear threat confrontation. By joining the treaty banning nuclear weapons, and accepting the need to phase out the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the U.S. may be able to keep the “nuclear taboo” in place which has kept anyone from detonating a nuclear weapon in battle since the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. The U.S. can retain the few nuclear weapons essential for deterring nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland, and take full advantage of its superiority in non-nuclear weapons until general reconciliation occurs on Earth.
Current peace talks started with North Korea by President Trump should be supported by everyone. They challenge the entrenched inertia of a “nuclear-industrial complex” which is trying to stop them. It will take concerted effort to overcome this complex, but our national survival depends on moving toward de-escalation of nuclear confrontation. We need thoughtful Republican leadership to keep from dragging ourselves into catastrophic nuclear war.

Ending the Coverup of Nuclear EMP Bombs in Missiles and Satellites
The probable deployment of nuclear electromagnetic bombs (HEMP) in missiles and satellites by Russia, China, and now North Korea is so challenging to the U.S. nuclear-industrial complex that to this day there is a coverup of their very existence. Very few strategic analyses include HEMP weapons, even one of which, if detonated high above the U.S., could destroy computer chips in line of sight continent-wide and in space, completely destroying U.S. electronic civilization.
We owe our current survival to President Trump’s recognition that he needed to begin peace talks with North Korea to avoid a threatened detonation of an H-bomb over the Pacific, which possibly would be the first HEMP event since the global computerized network came into existence.
There is no military defense against a HEMP attack on the U.S. Peace with HEMP-armed nations is our only path to national survival. I believe HEMP weapons, which in all scenarios of strategic nuclear war are used initially to wipe out U.S. computer chips nationwide, make the whole concept of fighting strategic nuclear war nihilistically absurd, and all the weapons in the2018 nuclear posture review useless and obsolete.
I’m asking everyone to print and read the EMP Commission “Statement for the Record” issued on October 12, 2017, titled “Empty Threat or Serious Danger: Assessing North Korea’s Risk to the Homeland,” by Drs. William R. Graham and Peter Vincent Pry. Dr. Graham, who served as an advisor to President Reagan, has led the study and presentation of accurate public information about HEMP weapons since the discovery of HEMP in the Starfish Prime H-bomb test in 1962. While I disagree with his military defense approach to the HEMP threat, this information is impeccable and the effort to protect the U.S. electronic grid from both HEMP attack and inevitable coronal mass ejection from the sun is urgently needed.
President Trump is the first president to take Graham et.al. seriously. On October 9, 2018, at Trump’s direction, the Department of Homeland Security issued a “Strategy for Protecting and Preparing the Homeland Against Threats of Electromagnetic Pulse and Geomagnetic Disturbances,” essentially a statement of intention which will need a lot of support to put into effect.
Please share these perspectives and use what you like in your writings and lobbying. I would love to receive “peer review.” At 76, I’m mostly homebound and very focused on working with you and my beloved wife, Barbara, to avoid nuclear war. We are, in fact, creating the world every delightful moment!
–John Lewallen <lewallen@mcn.org>