Vol. 80/No. 21 May 30, 2016
(front page)
Washington launches anti-missile system on
Russian ‘periphery’
“They aren’t defensive systems, they are part of the U.S. strategic nuclear potential deployed on the periphery, in Eastern Europe," Putin said May 13. “We will have to think about how we can fend off the threats to the Russian Federation’s security."
The anti-missile site, which will be run by NATO, is housed at a U.S. naval facility located at a Romanian military base in Deveselu. U.S. Navy Lt. Shawn Eklund told CNN the new facility is capable of firing SM-3 missiles that can intercept “short and medium range enemy missiles."
The Polish site is scheduled to be up and running in 2018.
The anti-missile system, officially called the European Phased Adaptive Approach, was initiated by President George W. Bush and so far also includes a radar system in Turkey, a command and control center in Germany and four naval destroyers with Aegis ballistic missiles that operate in the Mediterranean Sea from a base in Spain.
Tensions between the U.S. and Russian governments have been increasing over the last several years, alongside collaboration between the two in trying to stabilize the situation in Syria and President Barack Obama’s talk of a “reset" in their relations.
Putin boycotted the fourth and final high-level Nuclear Security Summit that Obama hosted in Washington, D.C., March 31 to April 1. The summits ostensibly advance Obama’s goal of “a world without nuclear weapons." In fact, they have been cover for Washington and Moscow to continue to possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal, while trying to prevent more nations from acquiring them.
In 2011 Obama signed the New Start treaty with Moscow, which allowed the Russian government to scrap many of its older silo-based nuclear missiles with upgraded mobile ones. According to Time magazine, Russian delegates told U.S. representatives during an informal discussion that “of course you guys want a nuclear-free world, because then you would dominate the world with your conventional weapons. Why would we ever want to do that?"
Despite portraying himself as an opponent of nuclear weapons, Obama has been stepping up the modernization of the U.S. arsenal. The Pentagon is planning five new types of nuclear warheads that are part of an atomic revitalization over the next three decades. Last year the U.S. military flight-tested the B61 Model 12 in Nevada. Moscow called the tests “openly provocative."
According to Popular Mechanics the B61 has an internal guidance system and a “dial-a-yield," meaning that the explosive power of each warhead can be set by the ground crew. The yield could range from 2 percent of the explosive power of the bomb Washington dropped on Hiroshima during World War II up to three times the power of that blast.
The escalation of development of nuclear weapons, whether “tactical" or otherwise, and Washington’s provocative anti-missiles shield and other moves increase the risk of a world-threatening conflagration.
In April the Pentagon reported that there have been repeated incidents of Russian aircraft buzzing U.S. planes and ships in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and other areas around the former Soviet Union.
After one incident in April, Secretary of State John Kerry said “under the rules of engagement, that could have been a shoot-down."
In another move aimed at Moscow, next month in Poland some 25,000 troops from U.S. Army Europe, Polish forces and other NATO nations will hold Anakonda 16, one of the largest war exercises in Europe in years.
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