Disintegration of deterrence against nuclear war

In the good old days, the US and USSR relied on mutually assured destruction (MAD) to try to keep people from pushing ICBM launch buttons. Apparently it worked because we're still here and the internet still works. A newer generation or small nuclear weapons has eroded MAD and replaced it with a system that seems to inherently be a one-way ratchet toward nuclear war.

The Global Security Review writes in an article entitled, Escalate To De-Escalate: Russia’s Nuclear Deterrence Strategy:

Russia’s military doctrine encompasses a broad range of potential national security threats, including local, or small-scale wars, regional, or large-scale wars, internal and foreign military threats, the Russian military’s budget, and a host of military-related technical, political, social, and economic issues. Additionally, the doctrine defines the circumstances under which nuclear weapons are to be used by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in response to a threat to Russia’s national security.

The current edition of the Russian military doctrine—when compared to the national security strategy and military doctrine published in 1993—significantly lowers the threshold under which the use of nuclear weapons is permitted. While the 1993 doctrine allowed the first use of nuclear weapons only when the “existence of the Russian Federation” is threatened, the versions published since 2000 explicitly state that Russia “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons to respond to all weapons of mass destruction attacks” on Russia and its allies.

Furthermore, the doctrine released in 2000—and all subsequent versions—allows for nuclear weapons use “in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation.” Succinctly put, Russia’s entire national security strategy is predicated on the concept of nuclear de-escalation.

War on the Rocks describes Russia’s nuclear de-escalation strategy like this:

Since Russia released its 2014 National Defense Strategy, and especially after the publication of America’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, U.S. officials, pundits, and national security wonks have used the phrase either to describe Russia’s strategy, or as a launching point to criticize that description. Buzz phrases like “escalate to de-escalate” tend to spread through officialdom where they are misunderstood and misused as quickly as they are shared. The problem with the term is not that Russia doesn’t have capacity or plans to use calculated escalation (nuclear or otherwise) to contain or terminate a conflict. It’s that such escalation is only one part of a larger strategic approach, and the focus on Moscow’s nuclear threshold risks missing the forest for the trees.

Russia’s approach to conflict is better described as “escalation control,” a concept that was a part of the American strategy lexicon until the end of the Cold War. The United States, facing non-peer adversaries in post-Cold War conflicts, has been able to dominate opponents at any level of conflict where an adversary is capable. Under this framework of “escalation dominance,” careful calculations of thresholds and escalation triggers have been more a matter of preference than necessity for state survival. Russia, on the other hand, has had no such advantage vis-à-vis the West and has instead adopted escalation control — a strategic approach that relies on carefully calculated, proactive measures to ensure a conflict is contained at lower, more acceptable levels. Through this approach Russia can control the level of conflict escalation, dominating the mechanics and circumstances of escalation rather than dominating conflict levels themselves. De-escalating actions are just one tool in this strategy’s larger toolbox.

“Escalate to de-escalate” tends to focus solely on Russia’s thresholds for nuclear weapons use, rather than taking a holistic approach to conflict. De-escalatory strikes are essentially an action to deter further aggression — that is, to control escalation – but such actions do not need to take place in the nuclear realm. For instance, Russia “escalated to de-escalate” in 2015 and 2016, when it deployed S-400 and S-300 air defense systems to Syria, against the backdrop of increasing tensions between U.S. and Russian forces operating in close proximity there. As one U.S. official quipped when asked about the intent behind the 2016 S-300 deployments, “Nusra doesn’t have an air force do they?” The United States took note of the possibility Russians might shoot down a U.S. aircraft. The increased risk that both nations would stumble into a conflict forced the Pentagon to avoid sustained unilateral actions against regime forces (limited cruise missile strikes aside) because the potential gains did not justify the risk of direct conflict with Russia. In ZAPAD-2017, another example, tactical nuclear weapons were not incorporated into the exercise scenario, but the exercise nonetheless showed how Russia planned to use overwhelming artillery and rocket fire to change the enemy’s cost-benefit analysis. De-escalatory actions don’t have to use nuclear weapons.

Scientific American wrote this last month in an article entitled, ‘Limited’ Tactical Nuclear Weapons Would Be Catastrophic:

In the world of nuclear weapons, tactical means an exceedingly large amount of explosive energy and strategic means even larger. Most nuclear weapons today are variable-yield, or “dial-a-yield,” providing a set amount of explosive energy that can range from fractions of a kiloton to multiples of a megaton. (For example, the U.S.’s newest version of its B61 nuclear bomb can release 0.3, 1.5, 10 or 50 kilotons of explosive energy. In comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was about 15 kilotons.) Russia has about 4,500 nuclear warheads in its arsenal. Of these, the ones of largest yield—the “strategic” weapons—are deployed on submarines, bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

But Russia also possesses some 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons kept in storage facilities throughout the country, developed to be used against troops and installations in a small area or in a limited engagement. Such weapons can be launched on the same short-range missiles Russia is currently using to bombard Ukraine, such as its Iskander ballistic missile, which has a range of about 500 kilometers. And these are not the only tactical weapons that could be deployed; the United States has about 100 nuclear “gravity bombs” (with less sophisticated guidance) stationed around Europe.

Tactical nuclear weapons exist because each side fears it would be deterred from using its big city-razing weapons by their very destructiveness. By making nuclear weapons smaller and the targeting more precise, their use becomes more thinkable. Paradoxically, while this makes deterrence threats more credible, it also makes the arms more tempting to use first, rather than simply in retaliation.

No one should imagine, however, that it makes sense to use a tactical nuclear weapon. A thermonuclear explosion of any size possesses overwhelming destructive power. Even a “small-yield” nuclear weapon (0.3 kilotons) would produce damage far beyond that of a conventional explosive.

Small (15 kiloton) Hiroshima-size blast on San Diego

Source: Nukemap: pick your city and bomb size, then hit the Detonate button

Germaine is greatly inconvenienced, but probably survives (maybe)

(property values drops like rock)

🤨 ☹️

Russian Topol (SS-25) 800 kiloton bomb on San Diego

Germaine is incinerated, a less than optimal outcome 

property incinerated and unliveable

😵‍💫😶‍🌫️

Acknowledgement: Thanks to PD for pointing out the Russian nuclear escalation strategy and the GSR and SciAm articles.

Republican neo-fascism in Florida

The New York magazine Intelligencer column writes:

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pitched himself to the Republican elite as the candidate of “competent Trumpism” — a form of authoritarian populism for conservatives who worried that Donald Trump was squandering his power, not abusing it. A picture of what that would look like in operation can be seen in DeSantis’s thuggish effort to bully Disney into supporting, or at least refraining from opposing, his “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Last week, DeSantis declared at a press conference that Disney “crossed the line” by saying it would support the repeal of DeSantis’s cherished anti-gay legislation. “We’re going to make sure we’re fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids,” he warned.

“Fighting back” turns out not to mean refuting or organizing against Disney’s opposition to the law. It means DeSantis using his legislative majority to punish Disney on unrelated legal issues. On Friday, he claimed he was “shocked” to discover Disney has been granted sweeping autonomy to operate in his state:

“I was shocked to see some of the stuff that’s in there. They can do their own nuclear power plant. Is there any other private company in the state that can just build a nuclear power plant on their own? They’re able to do certain things that nobody else is able to do. So I think they’re right to be looking at this and reevaluating and having an even playing field for everybody, I think is much better than basically to allow one company to be a law onto itself.”

Given that this legal status has been widely known for many decades in the state where DeSantis grew up and now serves as chief executive, the governor was no doubt shocked — the same way Captain Louis Renault was shocked to discover gambling in Casablanca.

One obvious tell that DeSantis doesn’t actually care about Disney’s legal status is that his pretext for punishing the firm has changed. On Friday, he cited Disney’s special legal autonomy. The day before, the “special treatment” was a bill regulating social media that exempted theme-park operators.

Another tell is that the latter bill was signed into law by DeSantis with specific input from his staff, as the Tampa Bay Times reports. If Disney’s legislative clout is leading to outrageous favoritism, voters should be furious with DeSantis.

DeSantis is barely making any effort to hide his intentions. As he tells Fox News, “Six months ago, it would have been unthinkable” that Florida Republican legislators “would be willing to reevaluate those special privileges.” It’s almost as if the special privileges have nothing to do with the reason Republicans are looking to punish Disney! Perhaps there is something Disney can put in DeSantis’s hand that would make the thing in his other hand go away.

DeSantis: If Disney Isn’t Stopped from Imposing a ‘Woke Ideology’ It Will Destroy the Country pic.twitter.com/fGcisBn9vL

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 1, 2022

DeSantis is trying to establish an understanding that major corporations can expect favorable treatment from the government as long as they play along with the ruling party’s political agenda. They are allowed — nay, encouraged — to get involved in politics on the condition that they take the correct position. But should they take the wrong position, they will find themselves under legal scrutiny. Suddenly, the regulatory noose will tighten.

This is the method Donald Trump used to intimidate firms with employees who gave him a hard time. Amazon lost a lucrative Pentagon contract in retribution for Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post, and Trump attempted to block a merger by CNN’s parent company to finish the network.

This is also a method that Trump’s favorite dictators — like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin — use to control the political debate in their countries. DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw has fired off more than a dozen tweets celebrating Orbán’s victory in Hungary and ridiculing the idea that his regime is repressive or dangerous in any way. When American conservatives tell us Orbán’s version of competitive authoritarianism is the form of government they aspire to, then show us what it would look like in practice, we’d best believe them.

The concept called “competent Trumpism,” besides being an oxymoron, is what authoritarian leadership by Republican Party elites looks like in action. Republican Party elites really do like the unrestrained power of tyrants and the wealth accumulating capacity of kleptocrats. What Republican elites are doing in Florida is what they intend to do to the rest of the country if they ever get the chance.

Also note the iron fist of Christian nationalism in the source of DeSantis' rage at Disney. To Republican neo-fascists, support for gay people amounts to threatening our parents and threatening our kids. Republicans like that are threatening truth, our democracy, our civil liberties and whatever is left of the rule of law (which isn't much when it comes to dealing with the rich and powerful).

The American political and social divide is deepening

It looks like what we are experiencing socially and politically is a new normal that will persist for a long time, maybe many decades. What is happening is deep mindset drift in two apparently opposite directions. Two different realities, identities and, in view of the deceit and false beliefs that accompany the radical right mindset, alleged moralities are emerging and crystallizing.

The New York Times writes on more evidence of what appears to be a growing, probably irreparable mindset split:

After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families.

When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from out-of-state.

As Republican activists aggressively pursue conservative social policies in state legislatures across the country, liberal states are taking defensive actions. Spurred by a U.S. Supreme Court that is expected to soon upend an array of longstanding rights, including the constitutional right to abortion, left-leaning lawmakers from Washington to Vermont have begun to expand access to abortion, bolster voting rights and denounce laws in conservative states targeting L.G.B.T.Q. minors.

The flurry of action, particularly in the West, is intensifying already marked differences between life in liberal- and conservative-led parts of the country. And it’s a sign of the consequences when state governments are controlled increasingly by single parties. Control of legislative chambers is split between parties now in two states — Minnesota and Virginia — compared with 15 states 30 years ago.

“We’re further and further polarizing and fragmenting, so that blue states and red states are becoming not only a little different but radically different,” said Jon Michaels, a law professor who studies government at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Americans have been sorting into opposing partisan camps for at least a generation, choosing more and more to live among like-minded neighbors, while legislatures, through gerrymandering, are reinforcing their states’ political identities by solidifying one-party rule.

“As states become more red or blue, it’s politically easier for them to pass legislation,” said Ryan D. Enos, a Harvard political scientist who studies partisan segregation. “Does that create a feedback loop where more sorting happens? That’s the part we don’t know yet.”

With some 30 legislatures in Republican hands, conservative lawmakers, working in many cases with shared legislative language, have begun to enact a tsunami of restrictions that for years were blocked by Democrats and moderate Republicans at the federal level. A recent wave of anti-abortion bills, for instance, has been the largest since the landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.   

Similar moves have recently been aimed at L.G.B.T.Q. protections and voting rights. In Florida and Texas, teams of “election police” have been created to crack down on the rare crime of voter fraud, fallout from former President Donald J. Trump’s specious claims after he lost the 2020 presidential election.  

Carrying concealed guns without a permit is now legal in nearly half of the country. “Bounty” laws — enforced not by governments, which can be sued in federal court, but by rewards to private citizens for filing lawsuits — have proliferated on issues from classroom speech to vaccination since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to strike down the legal tactic in Texas.

From what I can tell, as long as the radical right rank and file remain in the thrall of the propaganda, lies and slanders the elites have trapped them in, nothing is going to change for the better. Loss of liberty, respect for truth and democracy will all be cynically painted as victories for liberty, respect for truth and democracy. All of it is dark free speech, so there is nothing that can or will be done to stop the neo-fascist poison from continuing to flow and gain strength.

Most of the business community has slipped quietly back into line with the Republican Party and is now on the side of American fascism. That is the case despite big corporation propaganda asserting otherwise. The press looks to be too weak, inept and subverted by the profit motive to make much difference any more. Voters are the last line of defense, and as polling seems to indicate, they are more on the side to the neo-fascists than the democrats. Inflation is too Biden's fault, Biden is too sleepy and demented, etc., is what just might dismantle what's left of democracy, the rule of law and the civil liberties we enjoy now.

My personal assessment: ~80% of the blame goes to the Republican Party, laissez-faire capitalism, Christian nationalism and their endless cataclysm of lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation and vicious motivated reasoning. The other ~20% goes to everything and everyone else.

Question: Is it irrational or otherwise unreasonable to assign a ~80:20 responsibility split, e.g., because the Republican Party and conservatives are patriots and truth tellers who stand for democracy, truth, the rule of law and civil liberties, not the lying, thieving, tyrannical, socialist, communist, fascist, deep state, red flag, White people and free speech canceling, Christianity-outlawing Democrats and liberals? 

‘We’ve got to stop fooling ourselves’

 Worth repeating:

‘We’ve got to stop fooling ourselves’

Enthusiasm gap keeps getting worse for Dems

The last time the voter enthusiasm deficit was this wide, Democrats lost more than 60 seats in the House.

At the end of October, Republicans held an 11-percentage-point advantage in voter enthusiasm. By January, that margin had ticked up to 14 points. Now, according to the most recent NBC News poll, it has swelled to 17 — a massive advantage that has foreshadowed devastating losses in Congress in prior years.

The latest poll would be bad enough for Democrats. But it’s the trend line that is especially grim, seemingly impervious to a series of events — including President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address and the nomination of a judge to the Supreme Court — that Democrats had predicted might improve their candidates’ prospects in the fall.

It’s beginning to look like nothing is going to bail the party out this year. The last time the enthusiasm gap was this wide, in 2010, Democrats lost more than 60 seats in the House.

“Things could change,” said David Axelrod, previously an adviser to former President Barack Obama, in an email. “But with only a quarter of the country believing things are headed in the right direction, the president sitting at a 40 or 42 [percent] approval and inflation at a 40-year high, the atmosphere clearly is not promising for Democrats to buck historical trends.”

Even without the enthusiasm gap — a measure of voters’ level of interest in the midterm elections — Democrats would be limping toward November. They are saddled with Biden’s weak job approval numbers and have fallen behind Republicans on the generic ballot — two leading indicators of midterm performance.

But now they’re confronting a super-charged Republican electorate, too. In the NBC poll, about two-thirds of Republicans say they have a high level of interest in the midterm elections, compared to half of Democrats. The party’s current enthusiasm deficit is a reversal from 2018, when Democrats retook the House.

The NBC poll wasn’t a one-off. A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll on Wednesday registered a double-digit spread between the share of Democrats and Republicans who are “extremely enthusiastic” about voting in the midterms and a smaller — but still measurable — gap when accounting for voters who say they are only “very” enthusiastic.

More of the ugly details:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/31/enthusiasm-gap-dems-00021774

Conclusion - and a message to unenthusiastic voters: