Lawmakers Push for Changes to Nuclear Posture

Lawmakers urge changes to nuclear policy - “In addition to potential budget cuts, the White House is mulling several other disarmament initiatives. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that they included a five-year extension of the New START agreement, United Nations approval of the unratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and a public pledge that the United States would never use nuclear weapons unless another nation used them first—as well as the cancellation of the Long-Range Stand Off (LRSO) weapon program to replace aging cruise missiles,” writes Joe Gould for Defense News.

--“Following the report came the letter signed by House Armed Services Chairman Ranking Member Adam Smith, D-Wash., and others, which backed the no-first-use policy declaration and eliminating the launch-on-warning nuclear posture as ‘steps that could avoid an unintentional or hasty start to unprecedented and catastrophic nuclear devastation.’ Nuclear modernization plans have become unaffordable and untenable in the face of statutory budget caps, the letter warns.” Full article here. http://bit.ly/2ac4dgq

Incirlik nukes and the Turkish coup - “Little more than 100 miles from the territory held by the violent extremist group Islamic State, there is a little piece of Americana. It has an eight-lane swimming pool, a baseball diamond and housing tracts built on carefully manicured cul-de-sacs. The Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey has some other iconic American assets: several dozen B61 thermonuclear warheads,” write Ralph Vartabedian and W.J. Hennigan for the Los Angeles Times.

--“But the failed military coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week has ratcheted up long-standing concerns about the military usefulness and security of the Incirlik armory, America’s largest foreign stockpile of nuclear weapons. Security remains at the highest level, FPCON Delta. Electrical power was restored only Friday after a week-long blackout that strained living conditions at the base. The 3,000 U.S. service personnel stationed there have been ordered to remain inside the gates.” Full piece here. http://lat.ms/2alezd3

70 years after the Baker test - “On July 25, 1946, the United States Navy carried out the fifth detonation of an atomic bomb in history, in a lagoon at Bikini Atoll, in the South Pacific. The device was anchored about ninety feet beneath a barge, and when it exploded it sent up an immense column of radioactive seawater, topped by a flattened white mushroom cloud. The column rose some six thousand feet, then collapsed back into the lagoon, generating a wave that was nearly the height of the Chrysler Building,” writes Alex Wellerstein for the New Yorker.

--“There was considerable concern that detonating a bomb underwater could have unexpected, perhaps disastrous consequences. Percy Bridgman, a professor at Harvard University and the recipient of that year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, speculated in a letter to a colleague that ‘if the bomb is exploded in the ocean the hydrogen may be converted to helium with an astronomical release in energy.’ This was an updated variation on the fear, first voiced before Trinity, that an atomic blast might set the atmosphere on fire.” Full piece here. http://bit.ly/2au5ijb

Tweet - @NTI_WMD: What #NATO members said, or didn't say, about #nuclear weapons. Read our analysis: https://t.co/lJ7FibxwTL

The possibility of no first use - “An American president who decides to be the first since Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cross the nuclear threshold, regardless of the provocation, would be widely reviled as the most dangerous person in the world. Presidents would do everything in their power to avoid this, which makes a first-use posture a hollow threat, no more than a psychological crutch. Russia, Pakistan and North Korea might need this psychological crutch; the United States doesn’t,” writes Michael Krepon for Defense One.

--“Doing away with the fiction of first use would also reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy and make it even harder for others to cross this threshold first… At some point, the leader of the most powerful nation in the world will have the wisdom to announce that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to retaliate against their use by others.” Full piece here. http://bit.ly/2atmuoC

Has proliferation ended? - “Fifty years after the international community began efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to states beyond those recognized in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the era of nuclear proliferation may be over. It may be argued that this is only a temporary respite and the next case of proliferation is surely just around the corner, but no new cases or even suspected cases of proliferation have arisen in over a decade,” writes Todd Robinson for The National Interest.

--“States have... have also become much more capable of discouraging others from engaging in nuclear proliferation. Iran, for example, had one of the most significant and advanced nuclear infrastructures and a strong motivation to acquire nuclear weapons, but ultimately ended its pursuit because the United States and others were able to both cut off existing avenues of acquisition and alter the decision-calculus within the leadership of the Islamic state.” Full article here. http://bit.ly/2a8GGzR

Quick Hits:

--“BBC staff offered chance to survive nuclear holocaust - but wives left at home,” for The Telegraph. http://bit.ly/2a6OwG5

--“A Year After Iran Deal, Oil Flows But The Money’s Stuck,” by Ladane Nasseri and Matthew Martin for Bloomberg. http://bloom.bg/2aqhumq

--“N. Korea warns US of ‘terrifying price’ over nuke tensions,” by Vijay Joshi for the AP. http://wapo.st/2ab5l0u

Events:

--“The Missile Defense Agency and the Color of Money,” with Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, former Missile Defense Agency director; Todd Harrison, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); and Thomas Karako, CSIS. July 29 from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. at CSIS, 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW, Washington. RSVP online. http://bit.ly/29SGdNj

--“Vincent Intondi, Montgomery College, book presentation on African Americans Against the Bomb. Aug. 2 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at Potters House, 1658 Columbia Road NW, Washington. RSVP online. http://bit.ly/2a8DT4t

--"Bike Around the Bomb," by Global Zero. August 6 at 10:00 a.m. at Lafayette Square, Washington. http://bit.ly/29nDRaF

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