Stop the Democrats’ unilateral cuts in the US nuclear deterrent!
The Left never ceases to attempt to weaken, sabotage, and undermine the US and its defenses. Its biggest target these days is the nuclear deterrent.
As the House moves to consider the annual defense authorization bill, the Democrats have filed a slew of amendments which, if they pass (God forbid), would deeply and unilaterally cut America’s already barely sufficient nuclear deterrent – at a time when no one else is cutting theirs and all adversaries of the US are GROWING and MODERNIZING their nuclear arsenals.
The Intercepts blog at DefenseNews.com reports that an entire slew of such amendments will be introduced by the Democrats during the floor debate; they’ll also attempt to cut the defense budget further, deeper than sequestration.
The Left absolutely must be stopped from cutting the (already barely adequate and aging) nuclear deterrent any further. By any means necessary. Here’s why.
Cutting the US nuclear deterrent – contrary to the Left’s lies – has not and will never make America and the world more secure. On the contrary, there is abundant evidence it will make America, its allies (including Israel), and the world much less secure, and the world will get much less peaceful.
Why? Because cutting America’s defenses makes the US, its allies, and the world less secure, not more. It is military strength that safeguards peace and security, and military weakness that jeopardizes them.
Nowhere is this more obvious tha in the nuclear deterrence realm. Cutting the US nuclear deterrent further will make it too small and thus much easier for America’s potential adversaries, like Russia and China, to destroy in a disarming first strike – which Russia reserves the right to conduct, and which China has refused to rule out.
Cutting America’s arsenal will also reduce the number of enemy assets (bases, units, stockpiles, industrial facilities, etc.) that the US can hold at risk and threaten to destroy in retaliation – thus precipitously reducing America’s retaliatory power. This is what the Dems’ treasonous policies would do.
Russia’s and China’s nuclear arsenals, militaries, and base infrastructure are so large and so reduntant and disperses that the US needs thousands, not mere hundreds, of nuclear warheads to deter them – especially to deter both of them. And both of them will have the ability to reduce the US arsenal in a preemptive first strike, if it’s cut as deeply as the Dems’ and their pacifist bankrollers like the Council for a Livable World want to.
Russia has 2,800 strategic and up to 4,000 tactical nuclear warheads, deployed and nondeployed. It has 434 ICBMs (most of them multiple/warhead/armed), 251 strategic bombers (each carrying up to 6 nuclear cruise missiles and many also carrying a nuclear freefall bomb), and 14 ballistic missile subs with 16-20 missiles each, and 4-12 warheads per missile, depending on its type (Sinyeva missiles carry only 4 warheads; Liner missiles carry 12). Russian boomer subs can launch their missiles while being homeported.
Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal is even larger. It consists of up to 4,000 warheads in various forms: nuclear depth charges, nuclear bombs, warheads for short-range missiles, nuclear artillery shells, etc. Russia can deliver them by many means: surface warships, submarines, cruise missiles, artillery pieces, SRBMs, etc.
What’s more, Russia and China are GROWING, not shrinking, their nuclear arsenals. Russia has been doing so since New START ratification – as allowed to do so by that one-sided treaty, which requires cuts only in the US arsenal. Russia is adding warheads as well as delivery systems. It has resumed Tu-160 bomber production from stockpiled parts.
China also has a large arsenal – contrary to the false claims of pacifist groups. It has at least 1,800, and up to 3,000, nuclear warheads according to General Viktor Yesin (former Russian missile force chief of staff) and Professor Philip Karber, respectively. It has recently built 3,000 miles of tunnels and bunkers for its nuclear missiles and warheads. You don’t build such a vast network for only a few hundred warheads.
China currently has 87 ICBMs (20 DF-4s, 36 DF-5s, at least 30 DF-31/31As, and at least one DF-41), over 1,600 SRBMs, hundreds of ground-launched cruise missiles, at least 100 MRBMs (DF-21s and DF-3s), 6 ballistic missile submarines (5 Jin class, 1 Xia class, with at least 12 nuclear-armed missiles per boat), and 440 nuclear-capable aircraft (H-6, Q-5, JH-7).
Both Russia and China are also rapidly modernizing their entire arsenals of warheads and delivery systems. Russia is developing or producing several new ICBM types: the Yars silo-based and Yars-M road-mobile ICBM, a rail-mobile ICBM, the “Avangard” ICBM (little is known about it), a “pseudo-ICBM” with a 6,000 km range, and another ICBM recently mentioned by deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin. Plus the “Son of Satan” ICBM intended to replace the SS-18 heavy ICBM.
Russia is also developing a next-generation bomber and has recently fielded the Kalibr sub-launched cruise missile, the Kh-102 air-launched cruise missile, new warheads, and the Su-34 attack aircraft.
Moscow is not only growing its arsenal but also becoming more aggressive as well. In the last 12 months, Russia has practiced simulated nuclear bomber strikes on US missile defense facilities five times, each time flying dangerously close to US or allied airspace, and three times flying into Air Defense Identification Zones – forcing US or allied fighters to scramble. For more, see here and here.
“Who told you that the Cold War was ever over? It transforms; it is like a virus,” said Russian KGB/FSB defector Sergei Tretyakov in an interview with FOX News in 2009.
And yet, the Left wants America to disarm unilaterally in the face of such an aggressive Russia wielding thousands of nuclear weapons!
China is also modernizing by fielding new ICBMs (DF-31As, DF-41s), a new air-launched cruise missile (CJ-20), the new Jin class of SSBNs, improved variants of the JL-2 sub-launched ballistic missile with a 12,000 km range, and a sub-launched cruise missile. It’s also developing a new class of SSBNs (follow-on to the Jin class) and has ordered 36 Tu-22M bombers. Concurrently, both China and Russia are also developing missile defenses.
Moscow and Beijing aren’t the only nuclear threats to America, though. North Korea has 8-12 nuclear warheads, ICBMs capable of reaching the US, and – through its successful satellite test conducted last December – demonstrated capability to mate nuclear payloads to missiles, confirmed by the DIA and by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. North Korea has, since the last crisis, announced it will GROW, not give up, its nuclear arsenal – and has recently test-fired several SRBMs again. Meanwhile, Iran is racing towards nuclear weapons.
And yet, the Dems want America to dramatically and unilaterally cut America’s nuclear deterrent in the face of all of these nuclear threats! What’s more, they lie that cutting America’s deterrent unilaterally will make her and the world safer and more peaceful!
Do you see the idiocy of this, Dear Reader?
Meanwhile, America’s allies are slowly losing trust in America’s nuclear umbrella, which is being continually cut and undermined by the Dems. Already, 66.5% of South Koreans want their country to have nuclear weapons, and Japan has recently opened a facility that can produce enough plutonium for 3,600 warheads in several months if need be… that is, if the US cuts its nuclear umbrella further.
If the US continues doing so, America’s allies will have no choice but to develop their own arsenals, as they cannot afford to bet their security, and indeed their very existence, on the Democrats’ “unilateral disarmament will make us safer” fantasies – or on America breaking free of Democrat rule in 2016.
What’s more, the US needs to be able to deter nuclear threats not only today, but well into the future – decades from now. That cannot be done with a tiny nuclear deterrent, because the arsenals of America’s adversaries, already large, will only grow in the future. Thus, so must America’s arsenal.
Remember: in the nuclear deterrence business, there is zero allowable margin of risk and zero room for error.
Cutting America’s nuclear deterrent has only made her, her allies, and the world much less secure and peaceful. The US has reduced its arsenal by over 75% since the Cold War’s end; stopped designing, producing, or testing new warheads; hasn’t deployed a new ICBM since 1986 and a new bomber since the early 1990s; hasn’t modernized its nuclear warheads or facilities since the Cold War’s end; and is not seriously modernizing what arsenal it has left.
(This is a deliberate Obama administration policy: their Undesecretary of State for Arms Control has said, “We’re not modernizing. That has been one of the basic tenets and principles of our policy.”)
Meanwhile, Russia has begun rebuilding its nuclear arsenal, China has dramatically increased its, and two new states – Pakistan and North Korea – have joined the nuclear club. Iran is well on its way there, defying all international sanctions.
Judged by the results, “arms control” – cutting the US nuclear arsenal deeply – has been an utter failure which has made America, its allies, and the world dramatically less secure while encouraging nuclear proliferation.
The US should do the exact opposite of what the Democrats demand. It should modernize and grow, not cut, its nuclear arsenal.
UPDATE: The debate is now ongoing on the House floor. Liberal Democrat Jim Cooper of Tennessee, one of the most vociferous Democrat opponents of America’s nuclear deterrent, has just made the ridiculous statement that
“What’s good for a missile base in Wyoming is not necessarily good for our country.”
The missile base he referred to is Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in WY. Do you believe, Congressman, that having a strong, large, and dispersed nuclear deterrent, consisting of three legs (ICBMs, bombers, submarines) is a bad thing? That having a large nuclear deterrent to dissuade Russia, China, and North Korea is a bad thing? Because that is exactly what you suggest when you make such claims.
This is not about one missile base in Wyoming. This is about preserving the nuclear deterrent – the part of our defenses which is responsible for protecting America and its allies against the gravest threats we face – Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. And ICBMs are by far the cheapest, most ready, and most responsive part of that deterrent, costing only 1 bn dollars per year to maintain. No real savings can be achieved by cutting them. Congressman Cooper is a fool and needs to apologize to the folks in WY and to the Air Force.
UPDATE #2: The House has passed an amendment to preserve America’s current ICBMs in operational status, thus barring Obama from scrapping them. While 7 Democrats voted for it, 4 pseudoconservative “libertarian” Republicans voted against it: Justin Amash of MI, Mick Mulvaney of SC, Thomas Massie of KY, and Putin lover Dana Rohrabacher of CA.
In so doing, these 4 RINOs essentially voted to give Obama a free hand to scrap America’s ICBMs – the cheapest, most ready, most responsive, and most dispersed leg of the nuclear triad, joining 185 liberal Democrats – their true ideological allies.
There is absolutely NO excuse – military, fiscal or other – for what they’ve done. The entire ICBM fleet costs only 1 billion per year to maintain, so even scrapping it completely would save only 1 bn dollars – not even a drop in the bucket that the budget deficit is.
In addition to being the cheapest, the ICBM leg of the triad is also the most ready, most responsive, and most dispersed one, deployed in 450 different (and hardened) siloes across North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming and with a 95-99% readiness rate at any moment. It could be launched minutes after the President giving the order.
And perhaps that’s why the Left – including leftist anti-defense Republicans like Amash, Massie, Mulvaney, and Rohrabacher have targeted it – because it’s so powerful, so ready, and so responsive at such a little fiscal cost.
The only good thing they’ve done by voting against maintaining America’s ICBMs is to show the entire nation that they are pseudoconservatives and are, in fact, strident anti-defense liberals/libertarians, and do not belong in the GOP or in the Congress.
There is NO excuse for voting AGAINST preserving ICBMs – the cheapest, most ready, and most responsive leg of the nuclear triad.