corbett cold war 2 0 and the threat of nuclear warfare

*As the world’s attention turns to events in eastern Europe, rising
tensions between the world’s nuclear superpowers is once again raising
the specter of the cold war. And just as in the cold war, this conflict,
too, brings with it the prospect of nuclear warfare. This is the GRTV
Backgrounder on Global Research TV.*

**TRANSCRIPT**

This is James Corbett of
`corbettreport.com <http://www.corbettreport.com/>`__ reporting for
`Global Research TV <http://grtv.ca/>`__ in downtown Hiroshima, Japan in
the Peace Memorial Park in front of the A-bomb dome that marks the
hypocenter of the blast that tore through this city 69 years ago,
claiming tens of thousands of lives in the blink of an eye and tens of
thousands more through the ravages of radiation poisoning in the days,
weeks, months and years that followed.

The Peace Park is a place of prayer and vigil, a place for quiet
contemplation of the horrors of nuclear warfare, the silence punctuated
only by the peals of the Peace Bell rung by those wishing for the
abolition of nuclear warfare. But now, despite the best wishes of those
here in the Peace Park and countless others around the world, the
specter of nuclear warfare once again hangs over the globe.

Last month’s nuclear security summit at the Hague saw the usual
politicians spouting the `usual
platitudes <http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/25/politics/obama-nuclear-security/>`__
about the need to reduce the threat of nuclear warfare.

But this was far from your average nuclear security summit. Tensions in
Ukraine between Russia and the NATO powers provided a dramatic subtext
to the meeting, with the G7 powers meeting behind the scenes to `suspend
Russia from the
G8 <http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/g7-leaders-put-g8-on-hold-until-russia-c...`__
and make the boldest steps yet in what is already being dubbed the “New
Cold War.” And just as in the original cold war, the threat of nuclear
warfare between the great powers is the unspoken fear raised by the
conflict.

In line with the rising geopolitical friction, stories have begun to
emerge that both sides have heightened their levels of nuclear
readiness. NATO, for its part, has continued build-up of its European
“missile shield.” In February, the USS Donald Cook `arrived at
port <http://rt.com/op-edge/us-missile-shield-russia-361/>`__ in Rota,
Spain to begin its deployment as part of the so-called Ballistic Missile
Defense plan. It is the first of four advanced destroyers that the US is
deploying as part of the shield, which they say is aimed at defending
the continent from the theoretical future threat from a theoretically
nuclear-armed Iran.

That these destroyers, and NATO’s missile shield in general, is being
deployed to counter a threat from Iran is `not
believed <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjmiyOgO66g>`__ outside of
narrow America-centric propagandistic circles, however.

In truth, the term “missile defense” is a misnomer, as it is a
universally acknowledged tenet of nuclear warfare doctrine that advanced
missile defense systems are integral to “escalation dominance,” or the
ability to engage in warfare at any level of violence, including nuclear
warfare. And the threat that NATO envisions does not come from Iran, a
nation that has never been shown to be pursuing nuclear weapons, let
alone actually possessing them, but Russia, still the world’s second
nuclear superpower.

This was made explicit in the last round of Russia-NATO missile shield
consultations, started in Lisbon in 2010 and now `officially
suspended <http://russialist.org/ria-novosti-us-move-to-suspend-missile-defence-dis...`__
by the Pentagon in the wake of recent developments in Ukraine. The
consultations, launched on the premise that the two sides could work
together on countering any supposed threat from outside Europe, had been
deadlocked for years after Washington stonewalled Moscow’s demands for a
legal guarantee that their strike forces would not target Russia’s
deterrence capabilities.

Meanwhile, Russia, for its part, is also ramping up the nuclear
posturing. According to a `new
study <http://blogs.fas.org/security/2014/04/newstartdata-3/>`__ by the
Federation of American Scientists, Moscow deployed 25 new strategic
nuclear launchers in the past six months, bringing its total of deployed
launchers to 498 with 1512 associated nuclear warheads. And just last
Thursday, the Russian military held a massive three-day nuclear exercise
involving 10,000 soldiers in its Strategic Missile Forces.

These developments seem light years removed from the `feelgood
rhetoric <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTB-LDWoETA>`__ about nuclear
disarmament that the UN Security Council was spouting at the beginning
of the Obama presidency.

This rhetoric, of course, was always just that: rhetoric. The US
government has never seriously considered giving up its nuclear
stockpile, or even renouncing a first-use nuclear doctrine.

As `Dr. Yuki
Tanaka <http://www.hiroshima-cu.ac.jp/modules/peace_e/content0033.html>`__
of Hiroshima University explains, the Obama administration has not
simply continued the aggressive Bush-era stance on America’s nuclear
arsenal, but actually extended it.

In reality, the Obama administration has simply reaffirmed and even
extended the existing US nuclear policy allowing for a first-strike,
offensive nuclear war against its enemies.

In its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the US government admitted that it
reserves the right to wage a first-strike offensive nuclear war,
although it hoped to work toward the goal of one day setting policies to
restrict nuclear deployment to defensive situations. The Obama
administration’s `2013 Nuclear Employment
Strategy <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/19/fact-sheet-nuclear...`__
document only reaffirms this:

“The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review established the Administration’s goal
to set conditions that would allow the United States to safely adopt a
policy of making deterrence of nuclear attack the sole purpose of U.S.
nuclear weapons. Although we cannot adopt such a policy today, the new
guidance re-iterates the intention to work towards that goal over time.”

Increasing the risk is the development and deployment in recent years of
a greater number of so-called “tactical nuclear weapons,” supposedly
designed for battlefield use to focus a nuclear attack on a pinpoint
target. The B61-11 nuclear bunker buster, for example, has been
envisioned as one weapon that could be deployed in a future attack on
Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. As the Union of Concerned
Scientists pointed out in 2005, however, such a strike would invariably
cause an uncontrollable radioactive fallout that could lead to `millions
of
deaths <http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/solutions/us-n...`__
throughout the region.

The threat of nuclear warfare is not limited to the Middle Eastern or
Eastern European theatres. The situation in East Asia, with
nuclear-armed North Korea backed by nuclear-armed China increasingly
coming into conflict with South Korea and its nuclear-armed US military
backers. As Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on
Globalization `explained last
year <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2xO7Cn_xDU>`__ in a speech in
Korea commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Korean armistice, the
situation is exacerbated by the nuclear posture of the world global
superpower, the United States.

As tensions continue to rise, and as the policies allowing for the use
of so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons continue to be hardwired into
place, the goal of the abolition of nuclear warfare seems as far away
today as it ever has. And for the citizens of Hiroshima, Japan, the
dream of a nuclear-free world remains just that: a dream, unrealized, in
a fitful and restless sleep, punctuated only by the solemn admonition of
the Peace Bell, “Never again! Never again!”

For Global Research TV, this is James Corbett.