Strategic Military Positioning For Nuclear War
Nine days before vacating the White House on January 20th, US President George W. Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 66 on Arctic Region Policy. [6]
The document states that "The United States is an Arctic nation, with varied and compelling interests in that region" and "The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include such matters as missile defense and early warning; deployment of sea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight." [7]
US Arctic claims are based solely on its possession of Alaska, separated from the rest of the continental US by 500 miles of Canadian territory.
National Security Directive 66 exploits Alaska's position to demand US rights to base both strategic military forces - long-range bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons and warships and submarines able to launch warheads - in the Arctic within easy striking distance of Russia, both to the latter's east and over the North Pole.
It also, as indicated above, reserves the right to station so-called missile defense components in the area. The words missile defense are not as innocuous as they may appear. In the contemporary context they refer to plans by the United States and its allies to construct an international interceptor missile system connected with satellites and eventually missiles in space to be able to paralyze other nations' strategic (long-range and nuclear) military potential and to prevent retaliation by said nations should they be the victims of a first strike.
US and NATO interceptor missile silos and radar sites in Poland, the Czech Republic, Norway and Britain to Russia's West - already in place and planned - and an analogous structure in Alaska, Japan and Australia to the east of both Russia and China aim at the ability to target and destroy any intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and long-range bombers left undamaged after a massive military first strike from the US and allied nations.
The term interceptor missile is deceptive. As America's so-called missile defense plans prepare for knocking out ICBMs in not only the boost and terminal but the launch phases, it's a single step from striking a missile as it's being launched to doing so as it's being readied for launch and even as it is still in the silo.
Although in theory both a first strike missile attack and an interceptor missile response need not involve nuclear warheads, they are almost certain to if aimed against a nuclear power, which would be expected to retaliate with nuclear weapons.
The third leg of a nation's nuclear triad, in addition to long-range bombers and land-based missiles, are ballistic missile submarines equipped with submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) capable of carrying nuclear warheads. These could be tracked by space surveillance and in the future hit by space-based missiles.
Russia is the only non-Western, non-NATO country with an effective nuclear triad.
Under the above scenario there is one spot on the earth where Russia could maintain a credible deterrent capability: Under the Arctic polar ice cap.
A report in 2007 said that "Amid great secrecy, NATO naval forces are trying to control the Arctic Ocean to continue the military bloc’s expansion to[ward] Russia, the newspaper Military Industry Herald reported....
“Like in the tensest times of the Cold War, troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are trying to take control of the Arctic route, said the newspaper....[T]he US Navy, in conjunction with its British allies, is meeting the challenge of displacing Russian submarines from the Arctic region.” [8]
The US and Britain held Operation Ice Exercise 2007 under the polar cap and repeated the maneuvers earlier this year with Ice Exercise 2009.
During the 2007 exercises a US Navy website revealed that "The submarine force continues to use the Arctic Ocean as an alternate route for shifting submarines between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans....Submarines can reach the western Pacific directly by transiting through international waters of the Arctic rather than through the Panama Canal.” [9]
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