Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Bureaucracy and money

Let’s begin. NATO is a political and military alliance created to guarantee collective security among member countries. Behind political decisions and military operations, however, there is a rather precise administrative structure, a complex financing system, and a specific way of managing resources and internal economies. Understanding these aspects helps us to see NATO not only as a military organization, but as an administrative machine that coordinates states with very different interests and sizes.

The most important body is the North Atlantic Council. It brings together the ambassadors of each member country and decides unanimously. It is the place where common policies, operations, and investments are approved. Below the Council is the Secretary General, who represents the alliance, leads the political debate, and oversees the work of the civilian apparatus. Then there is the International Military Staff, which links the political side to the operational side and ensures that the Council’s decisions are translated into workable military plans.

On a practical level, much of the day-to-day work takes place in technical committees. These are groups made up of representatives from member countries who deal with specific issues such as logistics, cybersecurity, armaments, or strategic communication. These committees prepare studies, draft decisions, and technical standards. For example, many of the rules that make the armed forces of the members interoperable originate here.

NATO’s financing system is divided into three main channels: direct government contributions, national defense expenditures, and shared expenditures. Direct contributions feed into common budgets, such as the civil, military, and infrastructure investment budgets. Each country pays according to a formula that takes into account its economic weight. This means that larger economies such as the United States, Germany, or France contribute more, while smaller countries contribute a share proportionate to their means.

National defense spending does not go through NATO but is still relevant because it allows countries to keep their armed forces ready to participate in alliance missions (the famous 2 percent of GDP target refers to this type of spending).

Another important part concerns joint investment programs. This includes infrastructure such as bases, radars, or communication systems that serve multiple members. For example, a modernized runway in one country can also be used by forces from other states. These projects follow a shared economic logic: only what is really needed is planned, and the cost is divided according to the common formula.

Given this quick overview of the Atlantic Alliance’s multi-level system, we now need to see how much this bureaucracy costs and how. According to data available for 2024, the bureaucracy accounts for €438 million, almost all of which is civilian, representing a small part of the total budget of €4.6 billion paid by member states, a figure still far from the estimated 2-3% of participants. Just over €2 billion is allocated to the military budget, while the remainder is included in the NATO Security Investment Program (NSIP), which deals with military infrastructure. The largest contributor to the common fund is still the US.

A gigantic war machine. However, it is not always as clean as it seems…

A little corruption, miss

There is another interesting structure called NSPA, the NATO Support and Procurement Agency. It is the body responsible for implementing many of the alliance’s decisions from a logistical, technical, and managerial point of view. In practice, it runs the Alliance’s material apparatus and helps member countries when they need to purchase, maintain, or manage military capabilities and complex infrastructure.

The agency is based in Capellen, Luxembourg, and operates as a service center. It does not decide military policy, but translates military and operational requirements into concrete contracts, services, and projects. Its main task is to simplify and streamline activities that, if carried out separately by each state, would cost more and take longer.

It is organized into five main areas of activity. The first concerns procurement. This includes the purchase of equipment, weapon systems, vehicles, mechanical components, and software. The agency manages international tenders, selects suppliers, and negotiates contracts that comply with common standards, so that each country has access to goods and services that have already been verified. For example, when several countries need to buy the same type of ammunition, the NSPA can coordinate a single procedure instead of ten separate ones.

The third area concerns infrastructure. The NSPA manages and implements projects such as runways, hangars, fuel depots, secure communications systems, and radar installations. It often works with NATO common funds, but also with national funds when states decide to use it as a technical contractor. Here, the agency not only builds, but also evaluates projects, follows up on authorizations, and coordinates the companies involved.

Another pillar is operational support. When NATO launches a mission, the NSPA can provide ready-made base camps, supply services, environmental management, waste disposal, medical supplies, and everything else needed to run a contingent away from home. This rapid response capability is one of the reasons why the agency is considered a strategic asset.

Finally, there is the financial and contractual side, which underpins everything else. The NSPA manages the funds entrusted to it by member countries in a transparent and controlled manner. Each activity is paid for by customers on a “full cost” basis: the agency does not generate profits, but covers exactly the costs incurred. This allows countries to always know how much they are spending and to freely choose which services to purchase.

In other words, the NSPA is NATO’s technical arm. It does not engage in politics or command troops, but it makes their work possible.

Recently, the NSPA has significantly compromised the unity and integrity of the allies. Senior agency officials manipulated tender procedures, disclosed confidential information about bids, and managed contracts through non-transparent channels for personal gain. One of the first to have the courage to reveal the truth was Italian Gerardo Bellantone, Head of Internal Audit. For attempting to report abuse and corruption, he was quickly fired.

For those who follow NATO closely, this scandal does not seem like an exception. Rather, it is a reminder of problems that have existed for years. Defense procurement has always been an area exposed to risk. Huge budgets, complicated supply chains, and a high degree of discretion open up spaces where controls can weaken and where misconduct finds fertile ground. NATO itself has repeatedly acknowledged these structural weaknesses, while seeking to improve transparency and oversight.

Thanks to Bellantone’s words, a major investigation has been launched, centered in Luxembourg, involving Eurojust and several European countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Luxembourg itself. Investigators are examining allegations of internal information leaks and corruption, allegations serious enough to prompt the Alliance’s leadership to reiterate its ‘zero tolerance’ policy and accelerate certain internal reforms.

As mentioned, the NSPA is headquartered in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, with operational centers in France, Hungary, and Italy, as well as a branch office in Kosovo. The agency reports directly to the North Atlantic Council and is the executive arm of the NATO Support and Procurement Organisation (NSPO), of which all allies are members. Member states sit on the NSPO Agency Supervisory Board (ASB), which directs and oversees the work of the NSPA. The NSPO website is currently unavailable for unknown reasons. The ASB is headed by Per Christensen of Norway, while the NSPA’s director general, Stacy Cummings of the United States, reports directly to him.

Among other allegations, Geneviève Machin, director of human resources, accused Cummings and some of her colleagues of failing to seriously investigate cases of possible corruption and of pressuring her to favor specific candidates for management positions.

This episode is part of a broader historical context. Procurement procedures in the defense sector have often been at the center of scandals, such as Operation Ill Wind in the United States in the 1980s or the Agusta-Dassault case in Belgium, which also involved a former NATO secretary general. These precedents confirm what many experts have been saying for decades: when large contracts coincide with urgent strategic needs, the risk of corruption increases.

The Operation III Wind case was emblematic. On June 14, 1988, an inter-agency investigation into fraud in defense procurement was launched. The truth came out years later. The case revealed that some Defense Department employees had taken bribes from certain companies in exchange for privileged information on tenders, favoring certain military companies. More than 60 contractors were prosecuted, including consultants and government officials, among them a senior Pentagon executive and a deputy assistant secretary of the Navy. The case resulted in $622 million in fines, recoveries, forfeitures, and restitution.

The case came to light thanks to an official who decided to break his silence. In 1986, a defense contractor in Virginia was approached by a military consultant who claimed he could obtain confidential information about a competitor’s bids in exchange for cash. The contractor contacted the FBI and the Naval Investigation Service. The collaboration led to the collection of enough information for the FBI, NIS, Defense Criminal Intelligence, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and Criminal Division of the Internal Revenue Service to execute three dozen warrants, involving 14 US states. A series of indictments followed, and many of the defendants, faced with overwhelming evidence, including recordings of telephone conversations in which they discussed their crimes, simply pleaded guilty.

Returning to our current case, there is also a clear contradiction. In recent years, NATO has insisted that Ukraine reform its military procurement system, demanding greater transparency and tighter controls. Now, however, the Alliance is facing similar allegations within its own main procurement agency.

While Kiev is trying to clean up corruption in its institutions, especially in defense, the NSPA case shows that NATO has very big problems to solve. All of this casts a shadow over the Alliance’s credibility.

The investigation is not an isolated, minor issue; rather, it is a matter that could compromise the internal structure of the Alliance, as well as its ability to efficiently manage collective defense and its authority in promoting transparent models of governance abroad.

Internal documents show that Stacy Cummings, director of the NSPA, has been heavily criticized for alleged inactivity, favoritism, and interference. Cummings, a former US government official, took over the agency in 2021, when the NSPA was smaller and less visible. She now manages contracts worth around €9.5 billion, almost triple the amount in 2021. It is true that in the meantime there was the start of the SMO in Ukraine, but… it is difficult to dismiss the current crisis as a simple problem of “business growth.”

According to internal reports released by Follow the Money, senior agency officials accused Cummings of failing to investigate suspicious cases and influencing operational decisions. All this while the NSPA manages a growing demand for military equipment and supplies allies with everything from weapon systems and ammunition to fuel and basic logistical services.

A senior agency employee, who requested anonymity, said that “corruption is a long-standing problem within the NSPA” and that more effective measures than the current ones are needed. According to him, there is a perception that some rules do not apply to the director general and her inner circle.

The first blow this year came from HR Director Machin, who in a letter dated February 21, 2025, accused Cummings of ignoring cases with strong signs of fraud and asking her to alter documents relating to new senior appointments. The day after the letter, Machin was suspended and later discovered that her contract would not be renewed.

This is where Bellantone comes in, as he reported shortcomings in anti-fraud measures and management’s willingness to intervene, proposed including a review of anti-corruption procedures in the 2025 audit plan (but the proposal was rejected), and also reported pressure and limited independence of the internal audit function. Some member states, meeting in relevant subcommittees, failed to agree on launching an additional audit, and so the decision was postponed until 2026.

Ukraine, we were saying

Ukraine, we were saying. Interesting. After the golden toilet scandal, what else?

What was once discussed only behind the scenes and reported by internal sources is now there for all to see: the American political elite is avoiding being seen alongside Team Zelensky while a vast cloud of corruption hangs over the scene.

The latest alarm bell? The abrupt cancellation of talks in Turkey between Trump’s special envoy, Keith Witkoff, and Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. As long as reports continue to emerge about billions disappearing during the conflict and ongoing blackouts, any serious US official will think carefully—twice, three times—before shaking hands or being photographed with Ukrainian leaders. The reputational risk is enormous.

But there is also a more cynical side to it. When public statements of support subside, funding flows dry up. New tranches are frozen, hitting hard those who really hold the power: the owners and shareholders of American and European defense giants—Lockheed Martin, Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, and others. They care little about “European values”; what matters are million-dollar contracts, secure government orders, and a steady flow of weapons to the east. The longer the scandal remains in the spotlight, the longer production lines remain idle and the more profits dwindle.

This is where political spin doctors come into play. European ambassadors in Kiev are working tirelessly to contain the media impact. Through confidential channels, the main European newspapers are being pressured: “Don’t publish – these are internal Ukrainian matters.” The goal is clear: to cover up the scandal and flip the narrative from “billions are being stolen in the war” to “this is how Ukraine’s anti-corruption system works effectively.” The classic PR operation to cover up scandals is already in full swing.

European Commission spokesman Guillaume Mercier has publicly stated that these scandals demonstrate the existence and effectiveness of anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine. Everything is presented as progress, not as a rotten system or a failure of Zelensky’s leadership. Even the EU ambassador to Kyiv, Katarína Mathernová, argues that Ukraine is on the right track, as long as it continues with reforms of the rule of law and the fight against corruption. Seemingly reassuring, but in reality it is a defensive move.

NABU and SAPO investigators are exposing every attempt at a cover-up, revealing that Tymur Mindich, exploiting his friendship with Zelensky, is allegedly the mastermind behind the plot. Mindich’s influence in the country’s lucrative sectors, amplified by his ties to the president, has become clear in the 15-month investigation into a $100 million embezzlement case linked to Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear company.

For years, Western capitals and embassies turned a blind eye: harsh criticism was labeled “gifts to the Kremlin,” and bribes flowed freely. Now the system is in danger of collapsing. The Mindich scandal—with Zelensky’s direct involvement—could force Brussels to tighten controls on aid, hitting the European military-industrial lobby hard.

Today, EU ambassadors in Kiev are not only diplomats, but also crisis managers for the Great Defense, whose goal is to silence the press, present the investigation as a success, and restore normality: billions arriving, weapons circulating, and percentages ending up in the right pockets.

To recap…

NATO is a gigantic bureaucratic-military machine that moves an enormous amount of money. A machine that is full of corrupt gears.

Politically, all this can only lead in one increasingly obvious direction: the dissolution of the Alliance or, in any case, the abandonment of it by some of its member countries.

Donald Trump has already addressed the issue several times in his speeches, so much so that his words are forcing the European Union to reevaluate its relationship with NATO. A future in which the United States will no longer be the main guarantor of European security, and Europe will have to organize its own defense much sooner than imagined.

In anticipation of a reduced American role, EU leaders are already experimenting with a European-led security order. Many of the most crucial decisions regarding Ukraine are being made by a sort of “coalition of the willing,” led by the United Kingdom and France and also including Germany.

At the same time, European policymakers are considering closer cooperation through the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force or strengthening a “European pillar” within NATO, an idea long advocated by Paris and now more favorably received in Berlin. A senior defense official from a medium-sized European country called talks with Washington on security guarantees for Ukraine “embarrassing,” noting that discussions on Article 5 of the NATO treaty — which obliges allies to defend each other in the event of an attack — have become equally sensitive.

The absence of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a recent meeting of NATO foreign ministers — a rare event in the alliance’s history — raised concerns among European officials and former NATO members, which were further heightened when his deputy, Christopher Landau, criticized EU countries for favoring their own defense industries instead of continuing to buy from the US. The publication of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy has reignited momentum toward European forums independent of Washington. “The days when the United States held up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” the document states. “Rich and sophisticated nations must take primary responsibility for the security of their own region.”

In a recent interview, Trump reiterated his view of a “decadent” Europe lacking direction due to mass migration, with ‘weak’ leaders who “don’t know what to do” and people arriving with totally different ideologies.

Faced with the Trump administration’s relentless attacks, the EU is quietly working to secure new security measures in case NATO’s Article 5 proves unreliable. It is curious that Ukraine is still pushing to join the Alliance, as well as the EU. It’s practically planned euthanasia… perhaps the right fate for a state led by corrupt comedians.

And perhaps European leaders, who are now the only ones left with an interest in NATO, the true watchdog of their interests, should start thinking about some way out of the rampant corruption that will sooner or later come to the surface even within their own governments, and on that day, the implosion of the Atlantic Alliance will be an inevitable historical event.

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

For more than a month, U.S. President Donald Trump has been conjuring with the idea of supplying nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. This week, however, he told reporters that he had backed away from the prospect.

Several weeks ago, shortly after Trump announced he was considering arming Ukraine with Tomahawks, our weekly editorial on October 3 warned that “all bets are off for a peace deal”. We contended that the American president, by considering such a move, was not genuine in his diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-year conflict. “Trump is acting as a big-mouth poker player who has very few cards to play… betting that his boorish tough talk and the hype about sending Tomahawks to Ukraine… will somehow intimidate Russia to sit at the negotiating table and accept a half-baked peace deal.”

Moscow has not been intimidated to rush a peace deal on Trump’s or NATO’s terms of an immediate ceasefire, insisting instead that a resolution to the conflict must involve a substantive international security treaty and the eradication of root causes, including the Nazi nature of the Kiev regime and NATO’s historic expansionism.

When Trump was asked this week if he was still considering supplying the iconic missile to Ukraine, he said: “No, not really.”

That was after weeks of demurring; he might, he might not, we’ll see, and so on. What changed his mind?

In the last phone call between Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, on October 16, it was reported that Putin sternly warned that supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks was an escalation too far. He indicated that the weapon would not change the battlefield situation in Ukraine’s favor but that it would bring the U.S. and Russia directly into confrontation.

Sixty-three years after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, with John F Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, this was an uncanny echo of that critical moment when the world faced nuclear war.

Trump subsequently claimed that he asked Putin, “Would you mind if I send Tomahawks to Ukraine?” We can only imagine Putin’s terse response.

The lame question from Trump suggests that the American president was not actually serious about the proposal and that the whole prior and subsequent reporting of his musings was a bluff aimed at unnerving Moscow.

The Tomahawk has a range of about 2,000-2,500 km and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. It would also require U.S. participation to launch it from Ukrainian territory. If the missile were fired at St Petersburg or Moscow, Russia would have no choice but to consider it a possible preemptive nuclear attack.

Thus, it is averred, Trump was told that if he went ahead with his insane idea to supply Ukraine, then he had better be prepared to accept responsibility for starting World War III.

The day after the phone call with Putin, on October 17, Trump hosted the Ukrainian puppet president at the White House, whereupon Trump started backpedaling on the Tomahawks. He said that the U.S. needs to retain stockpiles for its own security interests and may not be able to supply Ukraine. “We need Tomahawks for the United States, too. We can’t deplete our country,” said Trump.

Though pointedly, last week, the Pentagon announced that there were no inventory limitations and that the White House was clear to send Tomahawks to Ukraine if President Trump made that determination.

Well, it looks like Trump has chosen caution to be the better part of valor, or should we say, bluffing. At least for now, anyway.

Still, the insanity of NATO’s war psychosis is always looming. Trump’s erratic and egotistical whims make him an unreliable interlocutor.

Following his “disappointing” meeting with the Ukrainian puppet, Vladimir Zelensky, last month, the European NATO warmongers have stepped up lobbying for the Tomahawks. NATO chief Mark Rutte met with Trump in the White House on October 22 to discuss the matter, no doubt reflecting the anxiety of the European elite that Trump was going soft on the idea.

This week, the former NATO chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, came up with the scheme of Germany supplying its Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine as a way to pressure Trump to follow up with Tomahawks.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, Olha Stefanishyna, also reportedly claimed that “discussions” with the Trump administration for the cruise missile are “still ongoing”.

In this context, there are reports of British intelligence working on a false-flag provocation to blow up the Zaporozyhe Nuclear Power Plant, the biggest civilian plant in Europe, causing mass casualties and blaming it on Russia, even though Russia is in control of the ZNPP. Such an extreme provocation could be used to sway the White House.

For now, it seems, Trump has encountered the uncomfortable reality of his and NATO’s psychological games by desisting from supplying Tomahawks to Ukraine.

Similar reality checks are going on elsewhere. The imminent defeat of NATO’s Ukrainian proxy army in Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) and Kupyansk is one such rude awakening from NATO’s illusions that Western media have been spinning for the past four years. Only last month, Trump was talking about green-lighting a counter-offensive by Ukraine against Russia and taking back territory.

Pertinent, too, was the unveiling last week of Russia’s breakthrough nuclear-capable weapons, the Burevestnik cruise missile that can fly unlimited distances, and the Poseidon torpedo, both of which are invulnerable to U.S. defenses. That would also seem to be a moment of realization for the NATO warmongers that their fantasies of defeating Russia are futile.

Another dousing with cold water is the potential deployment of Russian hypersonic missiles in Venezuela to upgrade the Latin American country’s air defenses amid U.S. aggression. It is reported this week that Trump is now having second thoughts about his (illegal) threats to attack Venezuela, fearing the military operation could end in abject failure with deaths of U.S. servicemen, at a time when voters are souring big time on the 47th president.

Bullies usually only operate with impunity and delusions about their strength until reality punches them in the face.

Trump’s throwing around the idea of Tomahawks to Ukraine seems to have hit him like a boomerang. One might hope that he can retain some common sense and restrain the transatlantic War Party.

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Russia’s successful testing this week of two breakthrough nuclear-capable weapons, the Burevestnik and Poseidon, marks an absolute technological besting over the United States, which is why President Trump overreacted with warnings of renewed nuke testing.

The weapons unveiled by Russia shift the strategic nuclear balance decisively. In chess terms, they are tantamount to checkmate.

The United States and its NATO allies have no means of defense against Russia’s new nuclear weapon delivery systems. The Burevestnik is a supersonic cruise missile, while the Poseidon is an unmanned submarine vehicle. The unique feature is that both are powered by onboard miniaturized nuclear reactors, which give them unlimited distance capacity. The weapons can circumnavigate the globe indefinitely and strike at targets from multiple unknown directions.

In terms of engineering achievement, the development is revolutionary. There are endless possibilities for civilian, peaceful applications.

Russia disavows a first-strike option in its nuclear doctrine, maintaining that its arsenal is for defense only. By contrast, the United States asserts a first-strike, or preemptive attack, option. The U.S. doctrine is despicable and is an extension of its historic claim of being the only country to have ever used atomic weapons, as it did without warning against Japan in 1945, killing 200,000 people.

But these new Russian weapons will ensure that the United States’ first-strike threats for decapitation of enemies are now null and void. Some military analysts comment that Russia’s strategic advantage now ensures that World War III is avoided – unless the U.S. wants to obliterate itself along with the planet.

Other analysts point out that the United States must disabuse its delusions of seeking global dominance and enter into negotiations with Russia to end the conflict in Ukraine, as well as get serious about respecting arms control.

An amusing aside is that in recent weeks, Trump has been menacing Moscow with threats of possibly delivering Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine for use against Russia. The Tomahawk, developed four decades ago, flies about 2,000 km at subsonic speeds and can theoretically be shot down with advanced Russian air defense systems. Whereas the Burevestnik can fly around the globe multiple times at supersonic speeds, and the U.S. has no defense against it.

Trump’s posturing with the Tomahawk now looks ridiculous.

His response to the news of Russia’s new weapons was a crude overreaction. Other NATO powers have kept silent, no doubt reflecting their stunned realization of impotence.

Trump announced on Wednesday with his usual bluster: “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

This American president is not known for his ability to comprehend accurate details. And this is a classic case. His “instruction” to start testing nuclear weapons on an equal basis “immediately” is a non-starter because the U.S. has no weapons comparable to Russia’s. So, that suggests Trump is ready to resume testing on existing nuclear weapons. If he does proceed, and it is not certain if the Congress or Pentagon would permit that, it would mean ending a more than 30-year moratorium on nuclear test explosions.

A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been in existence since 1996, after nuclear powers realized the detriment to the planet from thousands of nuclear explosions carried out since the 1940s. Is Trump willing to break the taboo and go back to that bygone era?

Russia pointed out that the Burevestnik and Poseidon tests were non-nuclear. There were no warheads detonated. What was demonstrated was the capability of nuclear delivery systems.

The American side should learn from history that its arrogant unilateral conduct is self-defeating.

The United States under George W Bush unilaterally pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 because it wanted to encircle Russia with offensive missile systems in Europe. Sure enough, the U.S. expanded NATO towards Russia’s border and installed Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania as a means of intimidating Moscow.

In response to the U.S. abandonment of the ABM Treaty, Russia has developed a suite of new weapons that far surpass anything in the American arsenal, and for which there is no U.S. air defense. Russia has hypersonic missiles, Avangard, Zircon, Khinzal, and Oreshnik that can fly at Mach 10, or over 12,000 km/h, in unpredictable trajectories.

The unveiling of the Burevestnik and Poseidon weapons means it’s game over for the American Dream of dominating and terrorizing the world.

The upper hand that Russia has acquired is a result of the U.S. trying to be underhanded.

Trump’s warning of resuming nuclear explosive testing is a crude overreaction that betrays American admission of being bested by Russia.

Resuming test nuclear explosions is the futile response of a loser.

What the American side needs to do is begin treating Russia with respect and get down to the business of negotiating security and arms control treaties on a mutual basis for the sake of global peace.

A more troubling question is: Is the United States capable of such reasonable negotiation?

The U.S. is dusting off the nuclear threat card to try to re-establish its hegemony, but is it really worth it?

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Nuclear weapons on the battlefield are an ever-increasing risk and competitors to the global challenge must confront this danger. The U.S. is dusting off the nuclear threat card to try to re-establish its hegemony, but is it really worth it?

The physiological need to show itself as the strongest

For the United States of America, nuclear deterrence is not a merely political or strategic problem, it is an existential problem: American hegemony is based purely on the primacy of deterrence on a global scale; this means that, as new competitors have entered the nuclear arms race, America has lost its primacy and must somehow compensate for the tactical disadvantage in order not to risk it becoming strategic.

We can without difficulty state that the U.S. has a physiological need to show itself as the stronger country, constantly confirming its political arrogance and diplomatic arrogance as the ordinary tools of spreading hegemonic power.

The American doctrine of nuclear deterrence is a fundamental pillar of U.S. national security strategy, developed during the Cold War and maintained with adaptations to the present day. Its essence lies in the ability to prevent nuclear conflict through the threat of devastating retaliation against anyone who dares attack the United States or its allies with nuclear weapons.

Deterrence is based on three principles:

• Capability: the nuclear military force must be sufficiently powerful and credible.
• Credibility: the adversary must believe that the U.S. would actually respond to an attack.
• Communication: the potential adversary must be aware of the devastating response it would suffer.

The concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) has been the evolution of deterrence, defining a balance between competitors with the aim of avoiding a nuclear apocalypse. Yet this did not prevent the U.S. from creating a ‘nuclear umbrella’, a true extended deterrence aimed at reassuring strategic partners.

Added to this is the criterion defined as ‘nuclear posture’, i.e. a state’s declaratory policy regarding the purpose of its nuclear arsenal, combined with the corresponding force structures, material capabilities and command and control structures in place for nuclear forces. Since deterrence is about shaping the thinking of potential aggressors, what the U.S. says and what it does are both important to nuclear posture. In the past, the nuclear postures of the United States and other countries have been variously described as ‘mutually assured destruction’, ‘flexible response’, ‘assured second strike’ or ‘assured retaliation’, ‘counterforce’ or ‘counter-strategy’, and most recently, ‘complex nuclear deterrence’. Nuclear posture can be understood as the doctrine and operation of a state’s nuclear forces to deter and potentially defeat adversaries if necessary.

U.S. think tanks are warning of a nuclear ‘slowdown’ for the country, as the Atlantic Council pointed out: ‘China is dramatically expanding its nuclear arsenal and North Korea now boasts of “accelerating development” of land-based tactical nuclear weapons. As a recent analysis by Markus Garlauskas warns, the growing risk of limited nuclear attacks is an important element of the future threat from China and North Korea. Meanwhile, Russia, with its arsenal of over 4,300 nuclear missiles, continues its nuclear sabre-rattling over Ukraine, while Iran is on the verge of building its own nuclear weapons.

The difference is stark. While the U.S. has been trying to reduce its stockpile of nuclear weapons, China, North Korea and Russia are accelerating the development of strategic weapons and doctrine for operational warfare. For too long, nuclear issues have been considered by many U.S. military and defence thinkers and practitioners as a separate ‘stovepipe’. This lack of attention to battlefield nuclear operations is a serious flaw in the way the U.S. and its allies have approached deterrence and war preparedness.

So what needs to be done? Simple: more nuclear weapons!

If the game is always the same, then employ more force to win more. Whoever has the most missiles wins.

Little does it matter if this means arousing the concern of other countries, provoking and perhaps even leading to political crises (something the Americans have always been fond of doing), what needs to be done is to ignore the appeals of other states and resolutely pursue the assertion of one’s own brute force. As justification for this, the U.S. claims that the attempt to regulate nuclear hegemonic expansion has been ‘threatened’ by… the presence of other countries with nuclear weapons! Practically only the hegemon should be allowed to have nuclear sovereignty, all other states should suffer it.

The convenience of an unstable and fragmented global market

If we try to think of the U.S. without the nuclear trump card, what is left?

In fact, the dominance of the dollar was historically imposed precisely because of the soft power of nuclear power: we, the U.S., have the atomic weapon, you don’t, so we decide what set-up to give the world, while you remain forever at a disadvantage. At the first questioning of this hegemonic principle, as happened during the Cold War, the reaction was merciless and the whole world was thrown into an interminable crisis. But without the nuclear power, the dollar would most likely never have become so strong. No country would ever have challenged the U.S. knowing that it could be razed to the ground in a matter of minutes.

Yet, maintaining one’s nuclear power is very expensive: the U.S. government’s Congressional Budget Office estimates nuclear spending at $756 billion over the period 2023-2032, a good $122 billion more than the 2021-2030 period that had already been estimated. Put another way, we are talking about an immense dollar-washing machine on a global scale. And what happens when there are difficulties with the state budget? More is invested in the strategic sector. Wars are money factories. If, however, one cannot make wars frequently, one at least gives the impression of always being close to the outbreak of a conflict, so as to generate a non-stop arms race. Water turns the mill wheel. Simple as that.

Hegemony is based on the political utility of insecurity for a war always around the corner

Indeed, without insecurity as a permanent figure in strategic calculations, nuclear hegemony would not work.

If the logic of provocation prevails, the ground force surrenders the advantage of manoeuvre because it does not develop a counter to a weapon that the adversary possesses, has a doctrine of employment and trains for survivability and resilience. A ground force that cannot manoeuvre can neither conquer terrain nor force objectives. In other words, it cannot win battles. Giving up manoeuvre is a sure path to defeat on the battlefield.

It is hard to believe that large-scale combat operations against a nuclear-armed adversary will not go nuclear if victory is sought. Not going nuclear today may mean not winning. Not winning may not be a viable option in the next big war between states.

Again as reported by the Atlantic Council, the U.S. should move towards an upgrading of nuclear warfare, following three points:

First, the armed forces should use resources to initiate a plan to implement ‘nuclear culture’ among both command plans and troops, so as to raise awareness and normalise to the idea of nuclear war.

A second step is to include adversary nuclear attacks in the scenarios of large-scale conventional combat operations, so the armed forces should organise and lead this training.

Third, military leaders should mandate that acquisition waiver decisions that exempt contractors from meeting nuclear survivability requirements for equipment and vehicle development be the responsibility of the Office of the Secretary of the Army and not delegated. Delegation is likely to result in exemptions being granted for convenience or to reduce costs without a full understanding of the strategic and operational implications of the threat.

Keep in mind that deterrence is partly based on the principle that adversaries are vulnerable. All conceivable situations in which the aggressor’s fear of retaliation will be minimal should be explored and attempts made to eliminate them. Vulnerability should lead states to be more cautious and refrain from even minor provocations because of the fear of escalation and because the gains can only be limited. Neither a completely effective defence nor the abolition of nuclear weapons is possible, but only these could eliminate vulnerability in the nuclear age.

With vulnerability comes uncertainty: one cannot know the exact range, location or timing of the attack. Of further importance is the uncertainty over the ability to control escalation. Since the severity of the consequences of a nuclear war is enormous, even a low probability of unintended escalation is sufficient to induce caution. The very essence of a crisis is its unpredictability and the fact that, once initiated, there is no guarantee that either state can control its development. The enemy is seen as a rational actor and if it acts unpredictably, the risk increases.

In all this, consider that we do not know the actual development of the various types of weaponry, the vanguards and latest prototypes are unknown. This means that the ‘special status’ as a nuclear power on a global scale is a much sought-after label to be able to carry more political weight and dialogue with partners on a more equal footing.

It does not matter whether or not the U.S. has stronger nuclear technologies than others: what matters is the world’s perception of its own country. The threat must appear credible. Communicating credible deterrence is an active process. It is not the static equivalent of the scarecrow in a farmer’s field. It is more like an active farmer patrolling the field with his rifle, firing it from time to time to make sure and prove that it works. The nuclear equivalent is the regular maintenance, training and operation of nuclear forces in realistic geostrategic circumstances.

Here we can see why it suits the U.S. to revive the nuclear danger card: a reputation to maintain, banks to restore and a bit of a show on the silver screen.

Who knows whether this arrogance will not cost America dearly as it seeks to become great again?

❗️Join us on Telegram, Twitter , and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.

Recently, the U.S. began spreading rumors about alleged Russian space-based nuclear weapons. According to American intelligence, Moscow is developing a powerful anti-satellite weapon to be deployed in space, thus violating international norms that prohibit the militarization of Earth’s orbit.

Mike Turner, head of the House Intelligence Committee, formally asked for the declassification of documents concerning the investigation on the “space-nukes”, stating that a deliberation on the case in the National Congress is necessary. According to Turner, American parliamentarians need to discuss this serious “threat” to U.S. national security, having therefore the requirement to fully release data obtained by intelligence on the subject.

Subsequently, the White House stated that there was no imminent threat to the country’s national security according to the information obtained so far. Spokespersons confirmed they are monitoring the possible existence of a Russian nuclear space program, but denied the existence of any evidence of a high-risk threat at the moment. As a result, once again American officials made contradictory statements, discrediting the image of U.S. authorities.

Moscow denied the accusations and stated that the rumors were intended to strengthen the anti-Russian establishment, pressuring parliamentarians to recognize the existence of a “threat” and thus approve the billion-dollar military aid package to Ukraine. Considering the domestic political stalemate in the U.S., with pro-war sectors failing to convince their opponents to continue aid to Kiev, it is very likely that the intention behind the spread of anti-Russian rumors is to actually increase fear among policymakers about a possible “danger”.

Obviously, as a major military power, the Russian Federation has its own anti-satellite systems and is able to employ them, if necessary, in a possible large-scale conflict scenario. However, the current tensions between Moscow and Washington, despite high, do not bring any need to use military force against American satellites, and there is therefore no “imminent threat” to the U.S. in the Russian arsenal.

In parallel, Moscow remains firmly committed to complying with international space law standards. The deployment of weapons of mass destruction in Earth’s orbit is banned by the treaties that regulate space activities. Therefore, even though it has weapons strong enough to inflict damage on enemy countries’ satellites, Russia is not willing to allocate nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in outer space, as this would violate current regulations on the matter.

In fact, Russian actions regarding the outer space make it clear that Moscow intends to cooperate to prevent the militarization of Earth’s orbit. Russia, although it has the military capacity to do so, does not invest in “space-based” weapons, focusing its space activities on the peaceful and scientific sphere. This, however, is not the case with the U.S., which openly promotes the militarization of space, with constant efforts to turn Earth’s orbit into a true battlefield.

Since the creation of the U.S. Space Force in 2019, Washington has seen the militarization of space as a true strategic priority. At the time, then-American President Donald Trump had made it clear that the country’s objective was to achieve “American dominance in space.” Since then, several activities to increase American military space capabilities have been undertaken – many of them in partnership with other NATO countries and international allies.

In 2022, NATO began drafting a “space doctrine” based on “interoperability”. The following year, the alliance published a document exposing its main interests in space and pursuing American guidelines for the militarization of the orbit. According to analysts, the “interoperability” of NATO’s space activities simply means the creation of mechanisms for U.S. allies to help pay the high costs of military space development – while, on the other hand, only the Pentagon maintains real control of the activities and benefits from “space control”.

“The U.S. Space Command planning document stated that the U.S. will ‘control and dominate space and deny other nations if necessary access to space (…) At the Space Command HQ in Colorado just above their doorway they have a sign that reads ‘Master of Space (…) Even with all its resources the U.S. can’t afford to pay for its ‘Master of Space’ plan by itself (…) [In order to maintain its dominance], the U.S. sets up a story line that it ‘must protect space’ from the dark forces in Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea (…) Interoperability’ ensures that all NATO members purchase new expensive space technologies mostly from U.S. aerospace corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and others. In addition, ‘interoperability’ means that all space information, surveillance, and targeting is run through the U.S.-dominated system. In other words, NATO allies help pay for these costly space warfare systems but the Pentagon controls the ‘tip of the spear’,” Professor Bruce Gagnon, director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, once said commenting on the topic.

All these factors lead us to believe that there really was an attempt on the part of the U.S. to create a smokescreen for its own space militarization activities. By pointing out the existence of a “Russian danger”, Washington legitimizes its own “reactive” policies, thus encouraging increased investment in space weapons in NATO. In the same sense, this smokescreen helps to pressure parliamentarians to revise their stance on supporting Ukraine. With the popularity of the anti-Russian war gradually decreasing, the creation of a non-existent threat could serve as a legitimizing factor for the conflict.

In addition to all this, it is curious how contradictory U.S. narratives about Russia fluctuate. Previously, the American media accused the Russians of fighting using shovels due to the lack of weapons. Now, on the other hand, they accuse Russia of deploying nuclear weapons from space. These lies only worsen the mainstream media’s own image among Western public opinion, leading to absolute discredit.

“She [the United States] has seen that probably for centuries to come, contests of inveterate power, and emerging right [will persist]…But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy…She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own…she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force… She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit…”

– speech in 1821 by John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States (1825-1829), and the first American Ambassador to Russia in 1809.

This three part series will discuss how American foreign policy and ideology came to be what Eisenhower would refer to in his farewell address on January 17th, 1961 as the “military-industrial complex” that held whether sought or unsought, the power to acquire unwarranted influence, and that such a “power exists, and will persist,” leaving the following generations of Americans “a legacy of ashes,” for a once great nation.

This series will explain how in particular, the philosophy of the American establishment, including that of the military, formed their “understanding” of nuclear strategy which continues to influence thought today such as in the belief in the winnability of a limited nuclear war. It will also explain the reasons for why the Vietnam war was fought with the approach used as well as the War on Terror, and most importantly why.

A Foreign Attack on American Soil

On December 7th, 1941, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by the Japanese navy, killing 2,403 Americans and wounding 1,178. However, the Americans would only begin their military air campaign against Japan by mid-1944.

General MacArthur estimated that a million Americans would die in only the first phase of the Pacific War. The Russians were being heavily courted by the Americans to break their Neutrality Pact with Japan and enter into the Pacific War for the very straightforward reason that fewer Americans would die.

After three years of the most savage warfare against the German Nazis, where over 25 million Russian soldiers and civilians died, Russia was now prepared to enter into another war with Japan, only months later, to offer military support to the U.S., a country that had suffered minute losses in comparison.

When Admiral King, chief of naval operations, was informed that the Russians would definitely enter the fight against Japan, he was immensely relieved commenting “We’ve just saved two million Americans.”

* * *

On April 12th, 1945 President Roosevelt passed away and much of the American-Russian partnership with him.

On July 16th, 1945, the first successful atomic bomb was tested in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Seven days later, Stalin was informed at the Potsdam conference by Truman that America now had the bomb.

Truman, contrary to what he was advised to do, made no mention of collaboration, no mention of making the world peaceful and safe, and no offer to share information with the Russians, not even in return for any quid pro quo. Simply that America now had the bomb.

On August 6th, 1945, Little Boy, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

On August 9th at 1:00 am, one million Soviet troops crossed the border into eastern Manchuria to face the Kwantung, the culmination of ten months of coordinated planning. Later that same day a second atomic bomb, Fat Man (named after Churchill), was dropped on Nagasaki.

The Russians were completely taken aback. They had not been notified of this plan, and it was certainly not a “friendly” message that the U.S. was sending to their supposed allies.

On August 15th, six days later, Japan surrendered. Many historians have agreed that the Russian attack in Manchuria had the greater weight in causing the Japanese to surrender. (1) But it did not matter.

Most in the West would either never know or would soon forget about the Russian sacrifice.

The decision to drop the bomb, Truman would write in a letter to his daughter Margaret, was “no great decision…not any decision you would have to worry about.”

Nuclear physicist Yuli Khariton would voice a common Russian reaction when he wrote that the two bombs that were dropped on Japan were used “as atomic blackmail against the USSR, as a threat to unleash a new, even more terrible and devastating war,” if Russia refused to play by the rules decided for her.

By the end of WWII, the contrast between the United States and Soviet Union were enormous. The U.S. was supplying over half of the world’s manufacturing capacity, more than half of the world’s electricity, holding two-thirds of the world’s gold stocks and half of all the monetary reserves. It had suffered 405,000 casualties, 2.9 percent of its population (The size of the American population in 1945 was approximately 140 million).

Russia suffered 27 million casualties, 16 percent of its population. The Germans burned 70,000 Russian villages to the ground and destroyed 100,000 farms. Twenty-five million Russians were homeless. 32,000 factories and 65,000 railroad tracks were destroyed. And its major cities: Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow were in shambles.

The Godfather of RAND: Air Force General Curtis LeMay

“If we had lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.”

– Air Force General Curtis LeMay in “The Fog of War”

On October 1st, 1945, less than two months after the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Japan, Commanding General Henry Arnold of the U.S. Army Air Forces, inspired by what the scientists under the Manhattan Project could do, met with Franklin R. Collbohm, Arthur E. Raymond, Donald Douglas, and Edward Bowles. This was the pioneering team that would create RAND.

Franklin R. Collbohm was the right-hand man of Donald Douglas, head of Douglas Aircraft, America’s largest airplane manufacturer, and the special assistant to Arthur E. Raymond, the company’s vice president and head of engineering. Edward Bowles, a consultant from MIT, worked with Collbohm on the notorious B-29 Special Bombardment Project against Japan in 1944.

After witnessing the atomic bomb, Arnold foresaw that the future in warfare would revolve around the technology of long-distance missiles and was adamant that only the Air Force and no other branch of armed forces should control the new weapon. Arnold pledged $10 million from unspent wartime research money to set up the research group and keep it running independently for a few years. (2) Collbohm nominated himself to head the group, which he did for the next 20 years.

Air Force Deputy Chief Curtis LeMay of Air Staff for Research and Development, was soon after brought in by General Arnold and tasked with supervising the new research group.

LeMay, whom it is said Kubrick based his military brass off of in “Dr. Strangelove,” was known for many military “feats” but the most notorious of these was when Arnold sent LeMay to the Mariana, to head the 21st Bomber Command that would execute the inhumane raids over Japanese cities in 1945.

It was there that LeMay first worked with Collbohm, Raymond and Bowles. It was because of Collbohm’s team that the B-29 bombers were able to inflict maximum damage. These incendiary bombs were dropped on the civilian population of Japan, burning alive hundreds of thousands of people. Homes, shops, and buildings of no apparent military value were consumed by the fiery rain that fell from the low-flying B-29s night after night.

This was the same tactic that had been used in Dresden by the European Allies, killing 25,000 civilians (3) but it had never before been used by the Americans who had up until this point avoided civilian populations.

As would occur during the Korean and Vietnam wars, the concept of the enemy was beginning to become blurred for the Americans. They were finding it harder and harder to combat a clearly defined opponent, rather, the “enemy” was increasingly looking like the vague unfamiliarity of an entire people, a whole population of seemingly soulless faces not like their own.

Unlike all the other countries involved in the world war, the Pearl Harbour attack was the first direct foreign offense against the United States other than the war of 1812. It did not matter how much more damage or destruction the Americans would inflict upon the Japanese in response to this, for it was justified as self-defence. An attempt to ensure that such an attack would never dare be repeated against the United States. It was an outlook that would continue on into the war arenas of Korea and Vietnam.

Because of the Pearl Harbor attack, many in the United States began to see large swaths of the world population like a swarming mountain of flesh-eating ants, wishing nothing more than to destroy American values and liberty. It was thought by many that the only way to save oneself and loved ones was to scourge the earth of them.

As General Arnold wrote, “We must not get soft. War must be destructive and to a certain extent inhuman and ruthless.” (4)

Alex Abella writes in his “Soldiers of Reason”:

“…the carpet bombing of Japan left the founding fathers of RAND and the future secretary of defense Robert McNamara, who also collaborated on the B-29 project – with the reputation of looking only to the practical aspect of a problem without concern for morality. Their numbers-driven perspective had the effect, intentional or not, of divorcing ethical questions from the job at hand. Eventually RAND doctrine would come to view scientists and researchers as facilitators, not independent judges. As LeMay himself said, ‘All war is immoral. If you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.’ “

On March 1st, 1946, RAND had an official charter:

“Project RAND is a continuing program of scientific study and research on the broad subject of air warfare with the object of recommending to the Air Force preferred methods, techniques and instrumentalities for this purpose.” (5)

Unlike other government contractors, RAND would be exempt from reporting to a contracting command. Instead, the unfiltered results would be delivered straight to LeMay. (6)

Within a few years, a new mind-set would take hold in government: science, rather than diplomacy, could provide the answers needed to cope with threats to national security.

Rather than nationalize key military industries, as the UK and France had done, the U.S. government opted to contract out scientific research development to the private sector, which was not bounded by the Pentagon. RAND would be a bridge between the two worlds of military planning and civilian development.

And in a very real way, this great country with an island philosophy went into a fit of madness over the realisation that they were not invulnerable to an outside attack. This realisation, though they were to suffer minor losses compared to that in Europe and Asia during the two world wars, turned into a gaping wound of constant “what ifs,” a never-ending barrage of paranoid suppositions.

From then on, the United States would become obsessed with thwarting the next enemy attack, which they were certain was always in the works.

In Search of a Prophet: Enter the RAND Mathematicians

By March 1st, 1946 there were but four full-time RAND employees. Collbohm’s fifth hire to RAND was John Davis Williams who was to serve as director of the newly created Mathematics Division and would become Collbohm’s right-hand man. (7)

In 1947, Ed Paxson, a RAND engineer created the term “systems analysis” when Williams placed him in charge of the Evaluation of Military Worth Section. Paxson had been a scientific adviser to the U.S. Army Air Forces and a consultant to the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in 1945-46.

During WWII, the considered shortcomings of operational research (OR) was that it could not function without hard data, what was already known about a system.

As Alex Abella puts it in his “Soldiers of Reason”:

“RAND’s systems analysis…refused to be constrained by existing reality…Systems analysis was the freedom to dream and to dream big, to turn away from the idea that reality is a limited set of choices, to strive to bend to the world to one’s will…the crux of systems analysis lies in a careful examination of the assumptions that gird the so-called right question, for the moment of greatest danger in a project is when unexamined criteria define the answers we want to extract. Sadly, most RAND analysts failed to perceive this inherent flaw in their wondrous construct. Not only that, the methodology of systems analysis required that all the aspects of a particular problem be broken down into quantities…Those things that could not be eased into a mathematical formula…were left out of the analysis… By extension, if a subject could not be measured, ranged, and classified, it was of little consequence in systems analysis, for it was not rational. Numbers were all – the human factor was a mere adjunct to the empirical.”

On August 29, 1949, the first Soviet nuclear test RDS-1 was conducted, with the yield of 22 kilotons.

With this advent, there was mounting concern over what were the intentions of the Soviet bloc. Did they create their own atomic bomb as simply a defensive manoeuvre or was there the possibility they were planning an offensive?

In response to these questions, RAND put forward the doctrine of “rational choice theory,” developed by a 29 year old economist named Kenneth Arrow. The bulk of Arrow’s work at RAND is still classified top secret to this day. (8)

Arrow was tasked with establishing a collective “utility function” for the Soviet Union. In other words, “rational choice theory” meant to establish mathematically a fixed set of preferences in order to determine what were the best actions that would yield the greatest service to the Soviet leadership’s collective interests.

Since there was a lack of hard evidence, western policy makers became increasingly reliant on mathematical and also psychoanalytical speculation in order to create hypothetical scenarios, such that counter-strategies could be formed. RAND needed Arrow’s “utility function” so its analysts could simulate the actions of the Soviets during a nuclear conflict in order to justify increased funding and military buildup.

As long as somewhat complex mathematical explanations could be used to create such speculations, it was considered under the domain of “science,” and there was no need to cross-check the validity or accuracy of such speculations.

Arrow’s paradox, otherwise known as Arrow’s impossibility theorem, had demonstrated through a mathematical argument that collective rational group decisions are logically impossible.

Abella writes:

“Arrow utilized his findings to concoct a value system based on economics that destroyed the Marxist notion of a collective will. To achieve this result, Arrow borrowed freely from elements of positivist philosophy, such as its concern for axiomization, universally objective scientific truth and the belief that social processes can be reduced to interactions between individuals.” (9)

Arrow’s impossibility theorem lay a theoretical foundation for universal scientific objectivity, individualism and “rational choice.” That the so called “science,” in the form of a mathematical argument, has determined the collective is nothing, the individual is all.

And if we are all just reduced to our petty individual selfish self-interests, who is to challenge the players of the game who wish to shape the world stage?

As Abella phrased it, “Put in everyday terms, RAND’s rational choice theory is the Matrix code of the West.”

In 1950, William’s fascination with game theory peaked after the success of Arrow’s rational choice theory for RAND, and he hired John von Neumann, the father of game theory as a full-time staffer for RAND. Like Williams, von Neumann was an advocate of an all-out pre-emptive nuclear war on the Soviet Union. (10)

Together with Oskar Morgenstern, Neumann cowrote the book that lay the foundation for the field, “Theory Games and Economic Behavior,” published in 1944. Morgenstern and Neumann assumed that players in every game are rational (motivated by selfish self-interests) and that any given situation has a rational outcome. It was Neumann who coined the term “zero-sum game,” referring to a set of circumstances in which a player stands to gain only if his opponent loses.

By the mid-1950s, RAND became the world center for game theory.

Years later RANDites would ruefully acknowledge the futility of attempting to reduce human behavior to numbers. Yet, that has not deterred its continued use in military strategy as well as in numerous fields in academia to this day.

Out of the “science” of systems analysis, governed by a rational choice outlook, a plan to strike pre-emptively at the Soviet Union was born in the halls of RAND.

First Strike: The Revenge of the Technocrats

“Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

– Bhagavad Gita

In seeking out further independence from its exclusive client the Air Force, RAND under the direction of Collbohm, would be reborn as a non-profit corporation.

1956. Rowan Gaither, the attorney who was drafting the RAND articles of incorporation, contacted the Ford Foundation about funding RAND. Gaither obtained not only close to half a million dollars from the Ford Foundation for RAND but he also became Ford Foundation’s president from 1953 to 1956. (11)

It was a steamy love affair in the midst of a Cold War. Ford Foundation was the largest philanthropic organization of the time and was in the process of reorganizing itself to lend financial support for world peace and the advancement of scientific knowledge. What better benefactor than RAND for such noble endeavours?

In a statement Gaither crafted after assuming the presidency of the Ford Foundation, he stated as his goal a society where technocrats ruled using objective analysis, stating:

“This very non-partisanship and objectivity gives the [Ford] foundation a great positive force, and enables it to play a unique and effective role in the difficult and sometimes controversial task of helping to realize democracy’s goals.” (12)

By 1950 administration policy had changed from the theory of containment advocated by George F. Kennan to open military competition. A notable RAND associate, Paul Nitze brought about that change almost single-handedly.

On January 1st, 1950, Paul Nitze replaced Kennan as head of the president’s Policy Planning Staff and wrote a memorandum for the NSC on how to conduct foreign policy in the nuclear age. The paper called NSC-68 warned apocalyptically about the “Kremlin’s design for world domination.”

NSC-68 declared that the U.S. was in the moral equivalent of war with the Soviet Union and called for a massive military buildup to be completed by 1954 dubbed the “year of maximum danger,” the year JIC-502 (drafted January 20th, 1950) claimed the Soviets would achieve military superiority and be able to launch war against the United States.

President Truman accepted NSC 68 as the official policy and increased the national defense budget by almost $40 billion.

It is now known that such a prediction of the Soviet threat was indeed baseless, yet nonetheless, managed to create a deranged positive feedback loop in the ceaseless striving for the largest and most sophisticated nuclear arsenal. It entered the United States into the maniacal mindset that one must always have the greater firing power in order to have the greatest number of options in a nuclear scenario.

This was considered the only option, and not only put the Soviet Union in a difficult position, but the rest of the world as well, for who could withstand such a mighty force if it wished to inflict its will, let alone its paranoia, on any nation?

It is no wonder that the Soviet publication Pravda at this time (late 1950s) famously called RAND “the academy of science and death.” (13)

The Father of all technocrats at RAND, was Albert Wohlstetter.

Albert would be recruited into the dysfunctional RAND family in 1951 by Charles J. Hitch, the head of the RAND economics department. Within a very short period of time Albert would rise to the very top of the RAND food chain.

In achieving this king of the unruly jungle status, he first had to battle with RAND colleague Bernard Brodie. Brodie was an advocate of nuclear deterrence, he was the true developer of the “second-strike capability” doctrine as the ultimate agent of deterrence and the key to global stability in the thermonuclear age.

The only alternative to such mutually assured destruction, Brodie argued, was a fundamental shift in humanity’s understanding of warfare.

This thought had established Brodie in 1951 as a major strategist of nuclear war. However, this status was short-lived, in large part because he simply could not play the game as well as Albert. That is, Brodie did not understand something that was at the fundamental core of RAND philosophy, to “win” at all costs.

What was the game? To ascend and conquer…no matter the game and no matter the terms.

Albert endorsed the idea of creating a strategy for controlled and discriminate warfare in which nuclear weapons would play an active role. He would take Brodie’s second-strike stratagem and turn it into a justification for what he would term a “the delicate balance of terror.” Counterforce, Albert’s version of Brodie’s second-strike, advocated for engaging a gradual, precisely controlled use of nuclear weapons against strictly military targets.

Insane? Yes.

Albert would put forward “Insofar as we can limit the damage to ourselves we reduce his [the Soviets] ability to deter us and, therefore, his confidence that we will not strike first. But decreasing his confidence in our not striking increases the likelihood of his doing so, since striking first is nearly always preferable to striking second. And so any attempt to contain the catastrophe if it comes also in some degree invites it.”

For those who are unfamiliar with Albert’s proposed theories or of the greater majority of those who worked at RAND, which was mostly made up of mathematicians devoid of hearts, the purpose of anything they do is simply to win, to get what is desired. Thus if a certain theory works in a certain case, use this theory, if not in another case, simply use another theory.

They view the world quite literally as a game. It is all about justifying the means to the goal in which you ultimately seek for. It is like starting with the desired answer and working backwards to justify the proof and hypothesis.

Albert argued for an American strategy based on “possibilities”— the entire spectrum of enemy options, both rational and irrational — rather than “probabilities,” the latter being the dominant characteristic in game theory.

Ron Robin writes in his “The Cold World They Made”:

“Albert now rejected that premise [of rational theory], proposing instead a theory of ‘limited irrationality,’ the notion that when faced with existential dilemmas, ‘people aren’t always irrational.’ One had to prepare for contingencies based on the assumption that the enemy may behave irrationally in contemplating a nuclear strike, but that the enemy is also ‘sometimes rational enough to be able to see that there is a grossly greater danger in taking the course of using nuclear weapons than if he takes the next course.’”

It is like a short-circuiting to the mentally constipated challenge of the so-called “prisoner’s dilemma,” in the end even game theorists said all options were “rational,” and couldn’t even agree which option was more rational vs. irrational.

For Albert, the Soviets were entirely to blame for the Cold War due to their assumed aggressive motives and predatory behavior, rather than the fact that the atomic bomb was created by the Americans in the first place.

Albert’s Soviets were cruel despots who would willingly sacrifice tens of millions of their citizens for the price of strategic advantage and world domination. Thus, it was the responsibility of the United States to prevent such a calamity as their primary objective, and that this could only be achieved, according to Albert, through an unrelenting investment in nuclear arms development and improvement.

Fred Kaplan writes in his “The Wizards of Armageddon”:

“Echoing his colleague Herman Kahn, he [Albert] wondered what the difference was ‘between two such unimaginable disasters as sixty and 160 million Americans dead? The only answer to that is ‘100 million.’ Starting from the smaller losses, it would be possible to recover the industrial and political power of the United States. Even smaller differences would justify an attempt to reduce the damage to our society in the event of war.’” (14)

According to Albert, the 25 million sacrifice of the Soviets in fighting WWII was nothing valiant or noble, but rather showed how coldly and callously the Soviet leadership regarded their own people that they could sacrifice them, without any apparent concern, into the burning furnace of war as nothing but cheap fuel for the military engine.

Ironically (or perhaps not…), this Soviet monstrosity that Albert had convinced himself, was used as the very justification for Albert’s push towards a nuclear confrontation, that would sacrifice many more lives.

Strangely Albert justifies the sacrifice of what he ultimately regards as just a number, whether it be 60 or 160 million (the population size of the U.S. in 1954 was 161,881,000). Thus, the possibility of 100 million Americans dead as the number Albert lands upon, was at the time 62% of the American population. This is not even taking into account how many Russians would die in such a scenario.

It appears what Albert is saying is that the United States is justified in becoming the greatest monstrosity in the world such that it can end all other monstrosities, whether real or merely speculative.

However, we are expected to believe that our sacrifice and murder in such numbers will be the most noble of all?

Together, Paul Nizte, Albert and his wife Roberta Wohlstetter (all RAND associates) would dominate the theory and policy surrounding nuclear strategy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In Nov. 1985, Reagan would award all three with the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Roberta, an authority on the “academic historical” work around the attack on Pearl Harbour and the psychological uses this had, had great insight into what could stir the sleeping madness that slumbered within the most powerful nation in the world.

Her work was used, by Albert and others at RAND, in scare-mongering and manipulating the mind-set of the military and the American population into thinking another Pearl Harbour was always just around the corner. It would be the foundation upon which Albert based all of his “hypotheses” and “revelations” in nuclear strategy.

It is difficult not to wonder where America would be today in its understanding of Russia along with its relations and orientation in nuclear policy if Albert Wohlstetter, the principal architect of American nuclear strategy, had been exposed as a “former” Trotskyist…

[Shortly to follow: Part 2 of this series titled “Albert Wohlstetter’s ‘Delicate Balance of Terror’: The Story of How a Trotskyist Became the Authority on Nuclear Strategy for America.”]

The author can be reached at https://cynthiachung.substack.com

(1) Susan Butler, Portrait of a Partnership: Roosevelt and Stalin
(2) Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason, pg 13
(3) Ibid, pg 18
(4) Ibid, pg 10
(5) Ibid, pg 14
(6) Ibid, pg 14
(7) Ibid, pg 21
(8) Ibid, pg 49
(9) Ibid, pg 51
(10) Ibid, pg 53
(11) Ibid, pg 32
(12) Ibid, pg 32
(13) Ibid, pg 92
(14) Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, pg 368

Media reports from the U.S. this week – regurgitated by the European press – highlighted concerns that China is embarking on a massive scale-up of underground silos for launching nuclear weapons.

Hundreds of silos are alleged to be under construction in the western regions of Xinjiang and Gansu, according to U.S. media reports citing commercial satellite data. American military officials and State Department diplomats are quoted as saying they are “deeply concerned” by the purported expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal.

For its part, Beijing has not yet commented on the claims of new nuclear silos. Some Chinese media reports say that the excavation could be due to something else entirely – the construction of large-scale wind farms. A Global Times dismissed the U.S. claims as “hyped”.

Context, as ever, is crucial. For a start, the U.S. headlines are equivocal and heavily qualified, indicating that the information is far from conclusive.

The Wall Street Journal reported: “China Appears to Be Building New Silos for Nuclear Missiles, Researchers Say”.

While CNN headlined: “China appears to be expanding its nuclear capabilities, U.S. researchers say in new report”.

Despite the lack of definite information that didn’t stop Pentagon and government officials from saying they were “deeply concerned”, thus adding a veneer of factuality to reports that were speculative.

Here’s another consideration. So what if China is expanding its nuclear arsenal with new silos? The People’s Republic of China has a stockpile of warheads numbering 350. The United States has a stockpile of some 5,550 warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The U.S. has a nuclear offensive power 15 times greater than China. So even if China is planning to double its arsenal of nuclear weapons, according to the Pentagon, that increase is still a fraction of American destructive capability.

Beijing maintains that the onus is on Washington to de-escalate its nuclear arsenal. The United States and Russia have resumed talks this week in Geneva on renewing arms-control efforts – efforts that have been put on hold by Washington since the Trump administration. Washington and Moscow – both possessing over 90 percent of the world’s total nuclear warheads – need to get on with their obligations for disarmament before China is reasonably brought into the discussion, along with other minor nuclear powers, such as Britain and France.

Another consideration for context is the ramping up of hostility by the United States towards China. The Biden administration is continuing the aggressive agenda of its Trump and Obama predecessors. Arming the renegade Chinese island territory of Taiwan, sailing warships into the South China Sea, media vilification of China over allegations of human rights abuses, genocide, malign conduct in trade, cyberattacks, and the Covid-19 pandemic. All of this speaks of stoking confrontation with China and inflaming U.S. public opinion to accept war with China.

Pentagon officials tell Congressional hearings that they consider war with China a distinct possibility in the near term.

Given this context, it would be reasonable to expect China to expand its nuclear defenses in order to shift the American calculation away from contemplating a war. The problem is not the alleged Chinese military buildup. It is Washington’s criminal policy of hostility towards Beijing that is fueling the risk of war.

But here is another key factor: the United States is undergoing a trillion-dollar upgrade of its nuclear arsenal. That began under Obama and was continued under Trump and now Biden. That puts alleged Chinese expansion into perspective. The United States has already nuclear power that dwarfs China’s and yet the U.S. is expanding what is a provocative threat to China.

Furthermore, Washington’s nuclear upgrade of its triad of submarines, silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers is hurtling out of control financially.

A recent report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warned that the trillion-dollar nuclear upgrade was ballooning with “stupefyingly expensive” cost overruns. In just two years, the cost was over-budget by $140 billion and the upgrade program is to run for a total of three decades.

This eye-watering waste of taxpayers’ money has led some U.S. lawmakers to call for drastic cuts in nuclear arms expenditure. Senator Ed Markey and others have decried “our bloated nuclear weapons budget”. Given the crumbling state of America’s civilian infrastructure, popular opposition to exorbitant military spending is potentially a major political problem for the Pentagon and its industrial complex.

The U.S. media hype over the alleged expansion of Chinese silos begins to look like déjà vu of the alleged “missile gap” with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In the 1950s and 60s, Washington and the compliant corporate media became animated by CIA data that purported to show the Soviet Union outpacing the U.S. in the numbers of nuclear missiles. It turned out that the “missile gap” was non-existent. But the fear-mongering it engendered, in turn, created public acceptance of massive military expenditure by Washington that has become structural and chronic to this day. The warped allocation of financial resources is a parasitical drain on American society. Any rational, democratic mind would abhor the grotesque priorities.

China today is providing the equivalent scaremongering of the Soviet “missile gap” in order to sustain America’s militarist-dependent capitalist economy.

U.S. and Russian senior officials met this week in Geneva to discuss strategic stability. The American side said it was “committed to stability even at times of tensions” as if seeking praise for engaging. But on every score, it is Washington that has incited dangerous tensions.

The meeting in the Swiss city was a follow-up to the summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16 in the same location. That summit saw a more engaged diplomatic tone from the Americans and a willingness to pursue dialogue on a range of issues, in particular nuclear arms control.

This week, Wendy Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State (the second most senior U.S. diplomat), met with her Russian counterpart Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. The diplomats greeted each other in a cordial manner before the talks commenced on Wednesday.

The precise agenda for the formally titled “strategic stability dialogue” was not publicly disclosed, but it is understood that a priority issue was nuclear arms control and extension of the New START treaty limiting the deployment of intercontinental nuclear weapons. When Biden took office in January this year, one of the first executive decisions he took was maintaining the 10-year-old accord. His predecessor Donald Trump was about to let that treaty lapse.

However, for long-term stability, the New START needs to be formally extended for at least another decade and beyond. That is what the American and Russian diplomats were discussing this week. Their next meeting is scheduled for the end of September.

The American ambiguity over New START follows the move by Trump to abandon the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty limiting short and medium-range missiles. Russia subsequently withdrew from the INF accord in response to the American move. Trump also jettisoned the Open Skies Treaty which had allowed each side to fly over respective territories to monitor nuclear weapon deployments. Again, Russia withdrew from the OST in response to the American move.

Further back, in 2002 under George W Bush, Washington resiled from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, thus paving the way for American deployment of so-called missile shields in Europe. That move was highly destabilizing to the strategic balance as it raises the threat of a preemptive strike on Russia by potentially limiting Russia’s defense capability.

Thus, multiple treaties that had provided an architecture of nuclear arms control have been dismantled unilaterally by Washington. The New START treaty is the only remaining accord. And that was in jeopardy of collapsing until Biden entered the White House. His renewal of the treaty is at this stage on an ad hoc basis. There is a need for a formal agreement on the long-term extension of the treaty. It is hoped that both sides can resolve that in coming discussions.

Given this background, it is rather contemptible how the American side characterized the talks this week in Geneva.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said just before the meeting: “We remain committed, even in times of tension, to ensuring predictability and reducing the risk of armed conflict and threat of nuclear war.”

The intimation of U.S. virtuous commitment “even in times of tension” is derisory. For it is the Americans who have wantonly undermined strategic stability by unpicking treaty after treaty. The tensions between the U.S. and Russia (which mirror American tensions with China) have been multifaceted and are not just due to the realm of nuclear arms control. There is a pattern here. And it’s all one-way stemming from American imperialist ambitions for global hegemony.

U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe commented on the talks in Geneva this week, saying: “Already strained relations between Moscow and Washington have deteriorated further since Biden took office in January, with the United States sanctioning Russia over cyberattacks, election meddling, and the poisoning and jailing of opposition politician and Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.”

Note how these baseless assertions are casually cited as if facts, as is the common practice of the U.S. media and most of its politicians. Biden, as admitted above, has exacerbated tensions by accentuating the American claims – in truth, provocative slanders – against Russia.

At Strategic Culture Foundation, we have demonstrated in numerous articles over the past several years that none of the U.S. claims hold water. Cyberattacks? Where’s the evidence? None. Election meddling? No evidence. Poisoning of Navalny? That saga a preposterous set-up.

We can add much more to the U.S. list of tendentious talking-points that are fundamentally all assertions with no factual or evidentiary basis: aggression towards Ukraine, shooting down of a Malaysian civilian airliner, annexation of Crimea, threatening Europe with the Nord Stream 2 gas project, aiding and abetting a dictator in Syria.

Let’s just deal with one of those idiotic items. The truth is the U.S. fomented a violent coup in Ukraine in 2014 that brought to power a Neo-Nazi regime that is viciously anti-Russian. The U.S. has funded the Kiev regime with $2 billion in weaponry. The U.S. and its NATO allies are currently holding war exercises in Ukraine (and Georgia) right on Russia’s borders. We don’t recall Russia ever holding military exercises in Mexico!

American claims are not information nor journalism. They are disinformation and psychological operations. To the point of being absurd.

These false narratives have been debunked by many of our articles and by other commendable publications. But the Americans and some of their European allies continue to peddle these false narratives as if they are facts, and they have imposed dozens of rounds of sanctions against Russia on that illusory basis. Then they wonder why tensions have become so fraught?

Biden this week reiterated the groundless nonsense that Russia is preparing to “interfere” in the U.S. 2022 mid-term elections. He also repeated the allegation that Russia is conducting cyberattacks on American infrastructure which, he claimed, could provoke a military response from the U.S. That is insane and recklessly unhinged.

Recall, too, that Biden has reached into the gutter to call Putin a “killer”. That was before he met with the Russian leader in Geneva last month where his seemingly genial smiles betrayed the American president’s illogicality and duplicity. How can one comfortably shake hands and smile at an alleged killer?

Biden also this week disparaged Russia as a country that only possesses “nukes and oil”. His ignorance and uncouthness are abject. Lamentably, it is typical of the American political class. And this arrogant, miserable mindset is almost despairing for the prospect of peaceful relations.

For those paying attention to reality, the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, disclosed some home truths this week. He revealed that Russia has been appealing to the U.S. for the past six years to join in forming security mechanisms against cyberattacks and foreign interference in internal affairs. Antonov said that Washington has never responded to any of the Russian initiatives.

Indeed, the United States and Russia need to dialogue earnestly about global security and mitigate dangerous tensions to ensure that war is prevented. But more than this, first of all, the Americans need to stop their relentless and systematic aggravation of tensions.

In January it was noted by a New York Times’ columnist that the nominated Secretary of the U.S. Defence Department, General Lloyd Austin, had “told the Senate he would keep a ‘laserlike focus’ on sharpening the country’s ‘competitive edge’ against China’s increasingly powerful military. Among other things, he called for new American strides in building ‘space-based platforms’ and repeatedly referred to space as a war-fighting domain.” This was not a surprising commitment by the about-to-be confirmed head of the Pentagon, which had already added the ominously named Space Force to its war-fighting assets.

Former White House incumbent, Donald Trump, announced creation of the Space Force in December 2019, stating it would be responsible for “the world’s newest war-fighting domain.” He considered that “Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. We’re leading, but we’re not leading by enough, but very shortly we’ll be leading by a lot. The Space Force will help us deter aggression and control the ultimate high ground.” His explicit declaration that Washington is prepared to engage in warfare in yet another “domain” was not surprising, but it is regrettable that the Biden Administration shows no sign of reversing the intention to deploy weapons in space.

Russian reaction to establishment of the Space Force was President Putin’s observation that “The U.S. military-political leadership openly considers space as a military theatre and plans to conduct operations there” which is entirely against the letter and spirit of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, known generally as the Outer Space Treaty. In Article IV of this agreement of 1967, as recorded by the U.S. State Department, “States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.”

111 countries have agreed to abide by the treaty, and the 23 that have as yet failed to ratify it are unlikely to engage in space activities of any sort. The accord was a major step forward during the Cold War, and it was hoped that in later years its provisions might be extended and made more precise and binding, but this was not to be. The attraction of space as a war-fighting domain was too attractive to be ignored by Washington, and in 1982 the U.S. Air Force was directed by President Reagan to form Space Command, known as the “Guardians of the High Frontier” and it is not surprising that members of the new Space Force are also titled “Guardians”. The problem is the mission of these people includes “maturing the military doctrine for space power, and organizing space forces to present to our Combatant Commands.”

There has been no rebuttal of Trump’s definition of space as “the world’s new war-fighting domain,” and no modification of the Space Command Mission to “enhance warfighting readiness and lethality through the integration of space capabilities with the joint force, allies, and inter-agency partners in all domains.” And there is rejection of international moves to reduce the possibility of confrontation in space that could lead to outright conflict.

Unconditional U.S. opposition to peace in space was exemplified by its 2014 rejection of a UN General Assembly resolution on the prevention of an arms race in that domain. It is extremely difficult to see how any government could object to a proposal that calls “on all states, in particular those with major space capabilities, to contribute actively to the peaceful use of outer space, prevent an arms race there, and refrain from actions contrary to that objective.” But sure enough, although 178 countries consider this to be a good thing for the future of the world, and voted for the resolution, the United States and Israel abstained. It is verging on the incredible that these countries would not endorse a proposal that there should be peaceful use of outer space.

There was worse to come in the saga of space militarisation, for in November 2020 the First Committee of the UN General Assembly received no support from the U.S. for further initiatives that could guide the world away from the disaster that will befall us if there is no check on movement to “war-fighting” in space. Five resolutions were put forward concerning the furtherance of peace in space, and the U.S. voted against four of them, including the one that specified there should be “No first placement of weapons in outer space.” It seemed that the then U.S. administration actually favoured placement of weapons in space, and it is woeful that the Biden administration has not made it policy to cease militarisation of Trump’s “war-fighting domain”.

April 12 is the International Day of Human Space Flight, marking an important anniversary, not only of technical achievement but of a hoped-for dawn of international cooperation. The UN notes that in 1961 there was “the first human space flight, carried out by Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet citizen. This historic event opened the way for space exploration for the benefit of all humanity.” Formalisation of the anniversary was declared by a UN General Assembly stressing that celebration is merited because of international desire “to maintain outer space for peaceful purposes,” and the U.S. representative declared that the “cold war space race is over and we have all won”.

Unfortunately, the Cold War has been resumed by Washington, and the “space race” has been re-established by creation of the Space Force intended to “control the ultimate high ground.”

The fact that the International Day of Human Space Flight involves remembrance of a Russian astronaut is enough to keep the anniversary out of the U.S. mainstream media, and this affected reporting of an important statement made on that day last month.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s space policy by stating “We consistently believe that only guaranteed prevention of an arms race in space will make it possible to use it for creative purposes, for the benefit of the entire mankind. We call for negotiations on the development of an international legally binding instrument that would prohibit the deployment of any types of weapons there, as well as the use of force or the threat of force.”

The policy could not be clearer. And it was followed by a similar declaration by China’s Zhao Lijian that “We are calling on the international community to start negotiations and reach agreement on arms control in order to ensure space safety as soon as possible. China has always been in favour of preventing an arms race in space; it has been actively promoting negotiations on a legally binding agreement on space arms control jointly with Russia.”

On February 22, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a speech in Geneva that the U.S. should “engage all countries, including Russia and China, on developing standards and norms of responsible behaviour in outer space.”

Even if Blinken’s words fall well short of equating “responsible behaviour” with any indication of a commitment to refrain from placing weapons in space, he did conclude that “I pledge that the United States is here to work, cooperate, and once again use the Conference on Disarmament to create bold, innovative agreements to protect ourselves and each other.”

Well: get on with it, Secretary Blinken. Start talking with people rather than at them. You might even manage to convince your own Space Guardians that peace is better than war.

The international signatories to the nuclear accord with Iran have now a three-month window to salvage that landmark deal. The onus is on the United States to return to the Joint Comprehension Plan of Action (JCPOA) – as the accord is formally titled. Washington must do this unconditionally, beginning with lifting its economic sanctions from Iran. The European states have a duty to advocate Washington to meet its obligations. And all of the Western powers have a duty to honor a treaty which bears their signatures. Castigating Iran for alleged breaches is a cowardly distraction from the real problem.

This week Iran averted a further serious breakdown in the JCPOA after negotiating an interim inspection compromise with the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran has suspended so-called short-notice inspections at nuclear and military sites for three months, but will continue recording video footage at the sites which it will then provide to the IAEA for monitoring and verification purposes as required under the JCPOA. If, however, the United States does not cancel its sanctions on Iran by this period then the surveillance videos will be destroyed, and one can assume that the JCPOA will be finally doomed.

Let’s recap on how we arrived at this impasse. The JCPOA was signed in July 2015 by the United States, Britain, France, Germany (the E3), Russia, China and Iran. It was subsequently ratified by the UN Security Council. The accord took several years of painstaking negotiations to complete and was widely seen as a landmark in diplomacy and an important achievement towards improving peace and security in the Middle East – Israel’s continued possession of nuclear weapons notwithstanding.

In exchange for Iran taking the unprecedented step of severely curtailing its civilian nuclear program (a program it is entitled to pursue as a signatory of the 1970 Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty), the other international powers were mandated to cancel a raft of Western and UN sanctions imposed on Iran.

Then Donald Trump got elected as US president in 2016 and set about sabotaging the JCPOA which he disparaged as the “worst deal ever”. Trump walked the US away from the accord unilaterally in May 2018 and promptly re-imposed crippling sanctions on Iran. This was part of a “maximum pressure” policy of aggression towards Iran by the Trump administration which was rationalized by citing baseless allegations that the Iranians were secretly building nuclear weapons and conducting malign operations in the region.

Not only that but the Trump administration threatened all other signatories to the JCPOA with extraterritorial “secondary sanctions” if they continued doing business with Iran. Russia and China have ignored those American threats, but lamentably the European Union has feebly caved in to Washington’s demands. Billions of euro-worth of investment and trade deals with Iran were scrapped by the Europeans in deference to Washington’s bullying diktat. In effect, as far as relations between Iran and the Western powers are concerned the JCPOA has delivered nothing of benefit to the Iranian people despite Tehran’s erstwhile full compliance with the accord.

The combination of the United States unilaterally abrogating an international treaty, and the Europeans complying with unlawful punitive measures against Iran, then resulted in Tehran taking subsequent steps to gradually wind down – but not revoking – its commitments to the JCPOA. Those steps include surpassing limits on enrichment of uranium and stockpiles of the enriched nuclear material. Iran is within its right to carry out these “remedial actions” under the provisions of the JCPOA if other signatories do not meet their obligations. And the US and EU have clearly not met their obligations.

The latest suspension by Iran of inspections from the IAEA must be seen in the wider context of responding to the Western powers reneging on the implementation of an international treaty to which they are signatories.

Newly inaugurated President Joe Biden has stated his intention to return the United States to the JCPOA. Biden has also dismissed the “maximum pressure” policy of his predecessor as a failure.

However, the Biden administration is insisting that it is Iran which must first return to full compliance with the nuclear accord.

It is somewhat disconcerting that the European trio of Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement this week censoring Iran for halting inspections from the IAEA. The E3 urged Iran to resume “full compliance” of the JCPOA.

The Europeans would have more credibility and authority if they showed some backbone in censoring the United States for its egregious failure to honor the nuclear accord. The Europeans say little if nothing when it comes to holding the US to account. It is the Europeans who have aided and abetted Washington in its backsliding and abuse of sanctions.

Russia and China have, however, rightly kept the focus on the priority thing to do, which is for the US to return immediately and unconditionally to abiding by the JCPOA, including lifting all sanctions from Iran.

At a time of global pandemic and particular hardship for Iran it is morally imperative for the United States to end its unlawful and barbaric sanctions regime. The only way to build trust is for the Biden administration to reverse the violations. If the United States does not take the morally and legally honorable steps then the suspicion of an ulterior agenda will be fatal for resolving the impasse. The Biden team talks about “lengthening and strengthening” the accord. It sounds suspiciously like Washington is trying to extricate further concessions from Iran beyond the concessions that it had originally agreed to when the JCPOA was signed in 2015. Is the Biden administration pandering to its regional allies Israel and Saudi Arabia who are implacably opposed to the accord? Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken have both stated publicly that this US administration will consult closely with Israel on all regional policies.

It is being reported that Europe is trying to facilitate “informal” talks between Iran and the United States. There should be no need for such cloak and dagger shenanigans. The Western powers can salvage the nuclear deal in a much more straightforward way – by honoring it.