I grew up during the Cold War. The idea of mutually assured destruction was sort of reciprocal nuclear blackmail. Nuclear blackmail has been a favorite of movies, novels and TV shows for decades. There is great current fear that terrorists will obtain a nuclear device and use it to blackmail a nation for political purposes. The devastation of a nuclear device has an immediacy and scope that dwarfs the threat of all other weapons that exist today so it is sort of the "trump" card for intimidation.
For years, North Korea has been trying to employ nuclear blackmail to intimidate Japan, South Korea and the United States. It is thought that they have a few small bombs and they do have intermediate range missiles. They regularly threaten to turn South Korean into a radioactive wasteland. Of course, that would be suicide because they would irradiate themselves in the bargain. Lately they have been sending up satellites with more powerful rockets. Critics of the North Korean government point out that these new rockets might be able to carry missiles to the continental U.S.
Lately, Russia has been threatening other nations with its nuclear weapons. Russia has officially changed its nuclear policy and now says that it might respond to conventional warfare with nuclear weapons. Since annexing the Crimea from Ukraine, Putin has bragged that if NATO and Russia went to war in Eastern Europe, he would use tactical nuclear weapons if he was losing a conventional war. Russia has been flying nuclear bombers into the airspace of other countries with their transponders turned off risking mid-air collisions with other planes. In a recent incident over the U.K. , a Russian bomber pilot turned on an electronic system that started a countdown to arm a nuclear bomb. Russia has threatened European nations with nuclear attack if they cooperate with NATO.
The Russians have announced their intention to upgrade their nuclear arsenal and weapons delivery systems. Military sources in the U.S. recently announced that they have evidence that the Russians are developing a high-speed, stealth underwater drone that could carry nuclear bombs right up to the coastal cities of the continental U.S.
I have written about these things before but the reason for this post is that recently, the U.S. military has been talking about the need to spend more money to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal and weapons delivery systems. They also want to create warning and counter measure systems for the new Russian drone subs. They have been talking about the need for more sophisticated warning systems and counter measures in case the North Koreans launch a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland. These are proper concerns for the U.S. military. This is their job.
What angers me is a recent statement from Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of the U.S. Northern Command and Aerospace Defense Command. After talking about the possibility of a North Korean nuclear missile reaching the U.S. and the need for enhancing our detection and countermeasures, he warned that the failure of the US Congress to pass a budget for fiscal year 2016, or a resumption of mandatory budget cuts, could jeopardize the funding needed for such efforts.
There is enormous waste in military spending today. There are vehicles, planes and weapons systems that the military doesn't even want that are demanded by Congressmen to bring jobs to their districts. There are more than a thousand U.S. military bases in over a hundred countries around the world. I can understand nuclear blackmail coming from other countries that are hostile to us but what I reject is nuclear blackmail coming from our own military. If they think that North Korea is a real threat, they can find the money to counter it without threatening the citizens of the U.S. by saying that unless we continue to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary military spending, they will leave us vulnerable to nuclear attack.
Admiral William E Gortney:
