From: Tom Atlee
To: undisclosed list
Subject: ** The Nuclear Dragon Wakes Up. Will We? **
Date: Friday, May 28, 1999 10:52 PM

Dear friends,

It has now been said formally, openly, by a top Russian official: "The world has never in this decade been so close as now to the brink of nuclear war." So writes Viktor Chernomyrdin in the Washington Post. He also says that "Before the air raids, 57 percent of Russians were positively disposed toward the United States, with 28 percent hostile. The raids reversed those numbers to 14 percent positive and 72 percent negative. Sixty-three percent of Russians blame NATO for unleashing the conflict, while only 6 percent blame Yugoslavia."

The next article below informs us that Russia, which is collapsing from within, has a GNP "the size of Belgium's (and falling).... [and] maintains in excess of 3,000 nuclear warheads in very high states of launch readiness." This is done "to compensate for weaknesses in Russia's conventional forces, for gaping holes in the old Soviet early warning network and for the vast launch readiness of U.S. nuclear forces." The U.S., it turns out, maintains about 3000 weapons of our own on hair-trigger alert -- with another 3000 backup -- many targeted at Russia's already crumbling factories.

The author asks: What's the point? Do all these nuclear weapons make you feel safer? Perhaps they did in the days of a strong USSR with much to lose, when strategies "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD) made a sort of psychotic sense. But that reality is changing fast. How much sense does it make to threaten a collapsing country with an increasingly unstable political leadership that will soon have nothing to lose?

Does our society have the capacity to stop and reflect when it finds its actions are not producing anything like the desired response? This question applies to far more than the Balkan War and nuclear weapons, of course. It points out a common denominator to every major collective problem we have (including Y2K). The Balkan nuclear issue is only the most clear, present and total danger.

One last note: We are all participants. Even the spectators are participants. Just ask the sports leagues and the performance companies. The show is on. How will the crowd respond?

Coheartedly,

Tom

Thanks to Wendy Tanowitz and Scott Hess for alerting us to the following:
_ _ _ _ _

Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 09:55:52 -0700 (PDT)
From:
Subject: Yugoslavia and danger of nuclear war

http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/27/244l-052799-idx.html

'Impossible to Talk Peace With Bombs Falling'
By Viktor Chernomyrdin
Thursday, May 27, 1999; Page A39

I deem it necessary to express my opinion on the Kosovo situation as the warfare escalates and the danger grows of a shift to ground operations, which would be even bloodier and more destructive. I also want to comment on certain ideas put forward by President Clinton in his contribution of May 16 to the New York Times.

In particular, I am anxious to express my opinion of his premise that "Russia is now helping to work out a way for Belgrade to meet our conditions," and that NATO's strategy can "strengthen, not weaken, our fundamental interest in a long-term, positive relationship with Russia."

In fact, Russia has taken upon itself to mediate between Belgrade and NATO not because it is eager to help NATO implement its strategies, which aim at Slobodan Milosevic's capitulation and the de facto establishment of a NATO protectorate over Kosovo. These NATO goals run counter to Russia's stance, which calls for the introduction of U.N. forces into Kosovo with Yugoslavia's sovereignty and territorial integrity intact.

Moreover, the new NATO strategy, the first practical instance of which we are witnessing in Yugoslavia, has led to a serious deterioration in Russia-U.S. contacts. I will be so bold as to say it has set them back by several decades. Recent opinion polls back this up. Before the air raids, 57 percent of Russians were positively disposed toward the United States, with 28 percent hostile. The raids reversed those numbers to 14 percent positive and 72 percent negative. Sixty-three percent of Russians blame NATO for unleashing the conflict, while only 6 percent blame Yugoslavia.

These attitudes result not so much from so-called Slavic fraternity as because a sovereign country is being bombed -- with bombing seen as a way to resolve a domestic conflict. This approach clashes with international law, the Helsinki agreements and the entire world order that took shape after World War II.

The damage done by the Yugoslavia war to Russian-U.S. relations is nowhere greater than on the moral plane. During the years of reform, a majority of Russians formed a view of the United States as a genuine democracy, truly concerned about human rights, offering a universal standard worthy of emulation.

But just as Soviet tanks trampling on the Prague Spring of 1968 finally shattered the myth of the socialist regime's merits, so the United States lost its moral right to be regarded as a leader of the free democratic world when its bombs shattered the ideals of liberty and democracy in Yugoslavia. We can only regret that it is feeding the arguments of Communists and radical nationalists, who have always viewed NATO as aggressive, have demanded skyrocketing defense expenditures and have backed isolationist policies for Russia.

Now that raids against military targets have evidently proven pointless, NATO's armed force has moved to massive destruction of civilian infrastructure -- in particular, electric transmission lines, water pipes and factories. Are thousands of innocent people to be killed because of one man's blunders? Is an entire country to be razed? Is one to assume that air raids can win a war?

I should like here to turn to the lessons of recent history. The U.S. Air Force and the RAF dropped several hundred thousand bombs on Berlin, yet it took a Soviet Army offensive, with its toll of several hundred thousand lives, to seize the city. American air raids in Vietnam proved pointless, and the Russian Army suffered setbacks in Chechnya. Serbs see NATO and the Americans as aggressors against whom they are defending their native land. I do not think a ground war will be a success, and I am sure it will bring tremendous bloodshed.

Further, it will no longer be possible to thwart the proliferation of missiles and nuclear arms -- another negative consequence of NATO's policy. Even the smallest of independent states will seek nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles to defend themselves after they see NATO's military machine in action. The danger of global instability looms, with more new wars and more victims.

More bombing makes it pointless to plan a return of refugees. What will they come back to -- homes in debris, without electricity or water? Where will they find jobs, with half of all factories in ruins and the other half doomed to be bombed in due course? It is time for NATO countries to realize that more air raids will lead to a dead end. No fewer than half of the refugees are not eager to leave a prosperous Europe to return to a devastated Kosovo to live side by side with war-embittered Serbs. Of this, I am sure. Clearly, every hundred Kosovars will have to be indefinitely protected by one or two soldiers; that is how NATO's presence in Yugoslavia will become permanent.

Also, sooner or later NATO will be expected by the world community to pay Yugoslavia for damages, to compensate the bereaved families of innocent victims and to punish pilots who bombed civilians and their commanders who issued criminal orders.

Thus, the bloc is headed for a Pyrrhic victory, whether the conflict ends with the Serbs capitulating or in an invasion of Yugoslavia. The campaign will not achieve its main goals. Not all refugees will come back to Kosovo, which will remain in some form under Yugoslav jurisdiction, and many billions of dollars will be spent re-building the country from the ruins.

Now, a few words about the ethnic Albanian paramilitaries. They are essentially terrorist organizations. Of this, Russia is sure. They are making money chiefly from drug trafficking, with an annual turnover of $3 billion. As it maintains close contact with these paramilitaries and modernizes their weaponry, the West -- directly or indirectly -- encourages the emergence of a major new drug trafficking center in that part of the world. It also encourages the paramilitaries to extend their influence to neighboring countries. The Greater Albania motto may soon start to take hold. This will mean more bloodshed, more wars and more redrawings of borders.

The world has never in this decade been so close as now to the brink of nuclear war.

I appeal to NATO leaders to show the courage to suspend the air raids, which would be the only correct move.

It is impossible to talk peace with bombs falling. This is clear now. So I deem it necessary to say that, unless the raids stop soon, I shall advise Russia's president to suspend Russian participation in the negotiating process, put an end to all military-technological cooperation with the United States and Western Europe, put off the ratification of START II and use Russia's veto as the United Nations debates a resolution on Yugoslavia.

On this, we shall find understanding from great powers such as China and India. Of this, I am sure.

The writer, a former prime minister of Russia, is President Boris Yeltsin's special envoy for Kosovo.

) Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company _ _ _ _ _
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/25/138l-052599-idx.html

Invitation to Nuclear Disaster

By Michael Krepon

Tuesday, May 25, 1999; Page A15

Unless concerted action is taken soon to reduce nuclear dangers, conditions will be coming into place for a dreadful accident, incident or even a nuclear detonation of Russian origin. The problems posed by Chinese nuclear espionage pale in comparison with the dangers inherent in Russia's domestic plight, its aging arsenal, stressed-out command and control and lax export controls. Moreover, the current U.S. nuclear posture exacerbates current dangers by requiring the deployment of 6,000 nuclear weapons, approximately half of which are on hair-trigger alert.

Russia, whose GNP is now the size of Belgium's (and falling), cannot match U.S. nuclear force levels. Over the next decade, deployed Russian nuclear weapons on strategic forces may well dip below 1,000 - six times below the number allowed by the START II treaty, which has been held hostage by the Russian Duma since January 1993.

At present the Kremlin retains as many of its nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert as possible. This is done to compensate for weaknesses in Russia's conventional forces, for gaping holes in the old Soviet early warning network and for the vast launch readiness of U.S. nuclear forces. Independent estimates suggest that Russia maintains in excess of 3,000 nuclear warheads in very high states of launch readiness.

This is a recipe for disaster. The CIA's unclassified assessment of the "fail-safeness" of Russian command and control is not reassuring. Although the CIA says nuclear safety is not a concern as long as current security procedures and systems are in place, stresses in the Russian command and control system are growing, and are aggravated by the high launch readiness of U.S. nuclear forces.

In January 1995 Russian forces mistook a scientific rocket launched from Norway for a U.S. attack, thus activating President Boris Yeltsin's nuclear "suitcase." In September 1998 a deranged Russian sailor killed seven of his shipmates and barricaded himself inside the torpedo bay of his nuclear attack submarine. Security forces recaptured the boat, which may or may not have had nuclear weapons on board. In September 1998, a guard at a facility holding 30 tons of plutonium shot other guards and then escaped, heavily armed. The list of incidents of this kind in Russia that we know about is chilling.

How does the U.S. maintenance of 6,000 deployed nuclear weapons, half on hair-trigger alert, help this country deal with such dangers? With Russian forces projected to decline dramatically over the next decade, what useful purpose is served by maintaining bloated nuclear arsenals at such high states of launch readiness?

While U.S. nuclear forces have been downsized with the end of the Cold War, U.S. nuclear doctrine and targeting requirements have changed relatively little. We still maintain massive attack options, with the potential for many hundreds of nuclear detonations. We still place Russia's crumbling industrial capacity "at risk," even though these factories have become liabilities rather than assets for the Kremlin. We still maintain forces at very high launch readiness, even though there is no longer a doctrinal requirement to launch quickly in the event of a Russian nuclear attack.

Capitol Hill has barely addressed the dangers inherent in interlocking U.S. and Russian nuclear postures. Extensive targeting lists and high Russian alert rates reinforce high U.S. alert rates. This vicious circle will be extremely dangerous as strains on Russian command and control continue to grow. As long as the U.S. strategic posture involves keeping our nuclear guns out of their holsters with the triggers cocked, there is no chance whatever of persuading Russia to take its dangerous and aging nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert.

These nuclear dangers are badly compounded by congressional insistence that the United States maintain a force level of 6,000 deployed warheads -- the maximum allowed under START I -- until the 1993 START II accord finally enters into force. In this way, national decisions on the proper size of U.S. strategic forces are determined by the most retrograde delegates of the Russian Duma, who have blocked ratification of START II.

What could the United States conceivably do with 6,000 deployed nuclear warheads in the post-Cold War era? Why is it in the national security interest of the United States to wait for action by Russia's unpredictable and erratic legislature before taking new initiatives to reduce nuclear dangers? Doesn't it make more sense to accelerate the process of deep reductions now?

Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) has a better idea than waiting for the Duma. He would strike the legislative requirement to remain at 6,000 deployed weapons and proceed instead with parallel, reciprocal, verifiable reductions.

Without accelerated reductions and new initiatives, such as a stand-down of alert nuclear forces, we invite tragedies on a massive scale.

The writer is president of the Henry L. Stimson Center.

) Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

-- Critt Jarvis (middleground@critt.com), May 29, 1999

Answers

Thank you Critt. sobering reading.

For an alternate take, check out Dr. jonathan Coleman in the www.sightings.com archives - he was on last week.

basically said that the first US grunt to set foot on Yugo soil - Russia would launch the opening salvoes of WW III...

well worth a listen, also cover manoeuverings in the stock market by the fed, the bubble, and when it will burst...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 29, 1999.