But is Piers capable of understanding?

And since when does Israel - or its US sponsor - care about international law?

"A shame"

 

Oooh.  Strong words.

War between two nuclear powers could end sooner than you'd like.

Trump called India’s confirmed military operation against Pakistan “a shame” and that he just learned of the news ahead of his Oval Office event Tuesday evening.

  CNN

A shame.

Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front (TRF), claimed responsibility for the attack on social media but it has reportedly since walked back that claim, according to multiple local media reports. Pakistan has denied involvement. India has not publicly blamed any group for the attack but has justified its retaliatory moves as a response to Pakistan’s alleged “support for cross-border terrorism.”

Mimicry of American justifications for military operations. Might as well just set the world on fire now.

And another thing

A state department office tasked with negotiating and implementing nuclear disarmament treaties has lost more than 70% of its staff over the past two years, as the Trump administration moves towards a world without arms control for the first time in nearly half a century.

The Office of Strategic Stability and Deterrence Affairs, normally a repository of expertise and institutional knowledge that does the heavy lifting of arms control, has been whittled down from 14 staffers at the start of the Trump administration to four, according to the former staffers. The state department declined to comment.

  

Christ, fourteen sounds like a very low number for arms control purposes.

The state department has instead focussed its arms control efforts on “creating the environment for disarmament” (CEND) shifting the onus for disarmament from the nuclear weapons powers to non-weapons states.

What??

An invitation to a 2 July state department conference on the subject invites non-nuclear states to come up with “measures to modify the security environment to reduce incentives for states to retain, acquire, or increase their holdings of nuclear weapons”.

How absurd! That's like a gun-toting gang of thieves rounding up a group of neighbors and saying, "You guys figure out how you're going to make us want to stop robbing you."  Oh, hey, wait. That's called a protection racket.

The shift in approach comes as the administration claims to be conducting a review on whether to extend the New Start agreement limiting US and Russian strategic nuclear warheads, or find an alternative to it that would include China and new weapons systems.

Vladimir Putin has said Russia is in favour of a New Start extension, but warned that time is running out.

“If we do not begin talks now, it would be over because there would be no time even for formalities,” Putin told the Financial Times.

[...]

Frank Rose, under-secretary for arms control until 2017, said he had tried to rebuild the strategic stability bureau when he was in office, especially by recruiting a young generation of experts.

“We’ve got a real problem,” Rose said. “Regardless of your views on whether we should extend New Start or negotiate a new agreement, you need to have career expertise to actually do the negotiations.”

[...]

The White House said the leaders agreed to keep talking about a “21st-century model of arms control, which President Trump stated as needing to include China”.

China has ruled out participation in an arms control agreement with US and Russia whose nuclear arsenals are 20 times bigger than the Chinese, estimated at less than 300 warheads. Even if Beijing were willing, a trilateral agreement would require extensive and prolonged negotiation. But former officials and arms control experts in Congress say there have been no serious consideration of what to do when New Start expires in February 2021.

The Trump doctrine.

After an exodus of most of the office’s staffers at the end of last year, [Pranay Vaddi, a former member of the strategic stability office,] said: “The bottom line is that, for a myriad of reasons, the state department isn’t equipped [to pursue arms control negotiations]”

They don't want to.

Few experts believe that the downgrading of the state department’s capacity to negotiate disarmament agreements is a case of negligence. It is more widely seen as a deliberate strategy directed by John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, and a lifelong opponent of arms control agreements which he sees as unnecessary constraints on US sovereignty.

Over little more than a year on Bolton’s watch, the US has pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which will terminate on 2 August.

Bolton is also reportedly pushing for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 but not ratified by a Republican Senate, to be withdrawn from Senate consideration and “unsigned”, as a possible prelude to a resumption of US nuclear testing.

[...]

Bolton’s previous record suggests that he is much better at knocking non-proliferation accords down than building them up. His earlier scalps include the Agreed Framework with North Korea and the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty. In his memoir, Surrender is not an Option, Bolton boasts of the bureaucratic cunning involved in sinking these agreements, and derides the diplomats in the state department as appeasers.

[...]

Arms control advocates argue Bolton has convinced Trump to insist on Chinese participation fully aware of Beijing’s adamant refusal, as a “poison pill” to kill off prospects of a new arms control treaty.

[...]

The assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance, Yleem Poblete, resigned in May after clashing with her boss, Andrea Thompson.

Thompson, the under secretary for arms control and non proliferation who does not have a background in arms control, has herself been weakened by a scandal involving undisclosed connections with the boyfriend of [convicted Russian agent Maria Butina, Paul Erickson.] [ed: link added and emphasis mine]

[...]

According to several sources, the NSC tried to stop a meeting between Andrea Thompson [...] and Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov in Geneva in January, according to two sources familiar with the arrangements.

The meeting went ahead but was kept brief, in the face of Bolton’s resistance to setting up a permanent dialogue with the Russians. A second Thompson-Ryabkov meeting in Prague on 12 June wrapped up after two hours and a half-hour lunch, with no timetable for future meetings or a plan for negotiations.

Impeach Trump. Ditch Mitch and send Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer home. The whole world depends on it.

Brinksmanship with Iran

Trump started something he may not be able to stop by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal because it was brokered by Obama.  Meanwhile, Bolton and Pompeo are licking their chops.

Iran announced on Monday that it will break the limit for its uranium stockpile agreed to in the Obama-era nuclear deal within the next 10 days.

[...]

“Iran’s reserves are every day increasing at a more rapid rate. And if it is important for them (Europe) to safeguard the accord, they should make their best efforts... As soon as they carry out their commitments, things will naturally go back to their original state,” Kamalvandi said, adding that there is still time to keep under the threshold "if European countries act.”

Iran has already made clear its intentions to ramp up its uranium enrichment after the United States pulled out of the nuclear agreement and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

[...]

The announcement comes as tensions between the U.S. and Iran grow after the Trump administration accused Tehran of attacking two oil tankers Gulf of Oman, though Iran has denied any involvement.

[...]

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said on Sunday that the attacks "warrant a retaliatory military strike."

  The Hill

While we're distracted by the memo brouhaha...

The so-called “bloody nose” strategy, referring to a limited preventive strike against North Korea, has gone public following the withdrawal of Victor Cha’s nomination as US Ambassador to South Korea. The bloody nose is one of the Donald Trump administration’s military options: a small-scale, limited surgical strike against North Korean nuclear sites or other nuclear facilities that ostensibly would not provoke a response from North Korea.

There’s no way to know how seriously this strategy has been discussed at the White House.

  Hankyoreh

I think I can guess at least as far as one participant is concerned.

To begin with the idea that North Korea “wouldn’t dare” strike back against the US is both sad and dangerous. It’s based on a US-centered mindset that equates a North Korean counter-strike with the end of the Pyongyang regime. But with Trump administration hardliners describing Kim Jong-un as “irrational and unpredictable,” it’s not clear how they are predicting he would reach the same military conclusion as them.

[...]

The people advocating the bloody nose approach are either hardliners with military backgrounds or laypeople in terms of military and security issues. In most cases, their understanding of the Korean Peninsula or North Korea is close to zero. These people seem to possess authority that far outstrips their abilities. They’re also arrogant and rash.

That's the whole damned Trump administration.

According to Cha’s Washington Post piece, some ultra-hardliners have argued that the risk of endangering the lives of the 230,000 Americans living in South Korea if the bloody nose strategy escalates is worth taking in terms of “long-term interests” and the “safety of Americans living in the continental US.” The fates of 50 million South Koreans don’t even warrant a mention.

Both of these points are mind-boggling, but not, I think, unusual for US military discussions.

The reason hardline voices have gotten so much louder in the White House lately has much to do with the discussions occurring between South and North Korea for the Pyeongchang Olympics. It appears to be an attempt to stop a climate of reconciliation from forming on the peninsula.

[...]

Depending on how the mid-term elections in November turn out, [Trump] could find himself a lame duck. This raises the troubling question of whether he might consider a strike against North Korea as a way out of his domestic political crisis.

We might consider ourselves lucky if we make it to the midterms.

Indeed, White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger reportedly said in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North might help in the midterm elections.

See what I mean?

This coupled with the news that Trump ordered a six-month readiness for nuclear testing and the development of a new type of nuclear weapon for a "limited nuclear war," is actually quite alarming.  But we're busy with the idiot memo.

I hope you don't live in Nevada

Since 1993, the Department of Energy has had to be ready to conduct a nuclear test within two to three years if ordered by the President. Late last year, the Trump Administration ordered the department to be ready, for the first time, to conduct a short-notice nuclear test in as little as six months.

[...]

But the purpose of such a detonation, which the Administration labels “a simple test, with waivers and simplified processes,” would not be to ensure that the nation’s most powerful weapons were in operational order, or to check whether a new type of warhead worked, a TIME review of nuclear-policy documents has found. Rather, a National Nuclear Security Administration official tells TIME, such a test would be “conducted for political purposes.”

  

At least, I guess, they now admit what they're doing.

The point, this and other sources say, would be to show Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Iran’s Ayatullah Ali Khamenei and other adversaries what they are up against.

Like they don't already know?

“We must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression,” Trump said on Jan. 30 during his State of the Union address.

That's never stopped acts of aggression in the past, but, hey, who knows, maybe everybody in the world has suddenly grown fearful of puffed up chests.

“Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.”

And will never be there if our leader keeps expanding our nukes and destroying our relationships with the other countries of the world. It would take magic, indeed.

Trump has openly threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” and has been hostile toward international agreements. He reportedly called for more, not fewer, nuclear weapons in a July 20 Pentagon briefing, where military advisers were upbraided for presenting global reductions in nuclear stockpiles as progress.

Trump has criticized New START, which reduces and limits nuclear arms in the U.S. and Russia, as a bad deal. He has repeatedly questioned the multilateral deal under which Iran suspended its nuclear program, and promised to decertify it in May if changes aren’t made. He has publicly undermined Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s diplomatic talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, instead warning North Korea about his “much bigger & more powerful” nuclear button. “The long-standing strategic policy of the United States has been to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons,” says Andrew Weber, who spent 30 years on nuclear-weapons issues in the State and Defense departments before retiring in 2015. “That idea seems to have been balled up and thrown out the window.”

[...]

Foreign nations have issued dire warnings in response. China’s Ministry of National Defense in January urged the Trump government to abandon a “Cold War” mind-set, and view matters more “rationally and objectively.” Russian President Vladimir Putin in December accused the U.S. of violating a landmark Cold War–era nuclear arms deal and carrying out an aggressive military policy that “seriously affects security in Europe and in the whole world.” Both China and Russia are upgrading their nuclear weapons. Other nuclear powers, such as North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel, continue to build new systems.

[...]

A new nuclear-arms race would not be limited to two superpowers seeking strategic balance in a Cold War but would include many nations, including foes in regions where hot wars are a regular occurrence.

[...]

The Trump administration is planning to take a step toward developing a new generation of nuclear weapons this month in its Nuclear Posture Review, a strategy document for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

[...]

The new warhead, known as a tactical nuclear weapon, would be delivered by a submarine-launched missile against an advancing army. It differs from a strategic weapon, which is designed to destroy cities and hardened military targets. America needs battlefield nukes, the Trump team says, to match and deter adversaries’ tactical arsenals. In an escalating fight with Russia or China, the U.S. military could engage in a “limited nuclear war” rather than leveling whole cities with strategic weapons.

A limited nuclear war. If we don't want to level whole cities, why do we need nuclear weapons?

Trump’s new plan also expands the President’s “first use” of nuclear weapons to circumstances that include “non-nuclear strategic attacks” against the U.S. or its allies. That could mean cyberattacks on nuclear command and control systems or civilian infrastructure, like the electricity grid or air-traffic-control system, arms-control experts have concluded. Previous Administrations limited the threat of a nuclear response to mass-casualty events, like chemical- and biological-weapon attacks.

So, they want to bring a knife to a gunfight, that's not our fault.

Arguments over U.S.-Russia nuclear deployments are not new. Strategists have long disagreed about whether to counter Moscow’s nuclear threat with escalation or restraint. It’s a high-stakes game of nuclear poker. The Trump Administration, in its aggressive approach, is betting on coercion. “We have to have this strong stance in order to get Russia to return to the negotiating table,” says Laura Cooper, a top Pentagon Russia expert.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.