The United States Is Arming for a Preemptive Nuclear War

The top American nuclear weapons expert, Dr. Ted Postol, sounds the alarm in an Aug. 29 article on Responsible Statecraft, in which he refers to the new Nuclear Guidance approved by the Biden Administration in March (cf. SAS 35/24). While that document remains highly secret, aspects of it were revealed by the New York Times on Aug. 20, in particular the need to deter Russia, China and North Korea simultaneously.

According to Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus of National Security at MIT, this strategy is actually centered on a program that began two decades ago. As he explains it, it involves “not just a ‘slight modernization’ of weapons components, but a dramatic step towards the capability to fight and win nuclear wars with both China and Russia” (our emphasis).

Technically, this “vast improvement” in nuclear firepower is achieved by adding a so-called “super-fuse” to strategic ballistic missiles which “drastically increases the ‘killing power’” of the warheads they deliver, making it possible — on paper — to knock out all Russian and Chinese land-based nuclear silos simultaneously. The article includes technical details of how the technology works.

Prof. Postol warns: “Couching the development and deployment of these kinds of preemptive strike technologies in misleading terms like ‘enhancing deterrence,’ does not fool the military and political leadership of Russia and China. It instead leaves them no choice but to consider ways of deterring a dangerous U.S. preemption-oriented nuclear-weaponized nation that is constantly striving for better ways to ‘disarm’ large parts of their nuclear forces.” That is likely why President Putin approved the development of the “ultimate doomsday weapon”, the Poseidon robot submarine.

Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated once again on Aug. 27 that the escalation of NATO attacks on Russia, such as in the nominally Ukrainian invasion of Kursk, has led Moscow to “refine” its nuclear doctrine, which now permits the use of nuclear weapons only in response to an enemy attack with the same weapons or other WMD, or if Russia’s existence as a sovereign nation is otherwise threatened. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov reaffirmed to TASS Aug. 31 that Moscow is revising its nuclear doctrine, which he called the “most important aspect of our national security”.

Prof. Postol, who has studied the effects of nuclear weapons in-depth for decades, closes with a stark warning: “No matter how successful a planned preemptive nuclear attack might look like on paper, the reality of a nuclear war initiated with the delusional belief it could be won will be global destruction so great in scale that the very end of human civilization cannot be ruled out.”