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From Consortium News
Chas Richard STRATCOM 2019.
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U.S. Strategic Command, the branch of the U.S. military responsible for America's nuclear arsenal, tweeted the following on Tuesday:
"The spectrum of conflict today is neither linear nor predictable. We must account for the possibility of conflict leading to conditions which could very rapidly drive an adversary to consider nuclear use as their least bad option."
STRATCOM called it a preview of the "posture statement" it submits to U.S. Congress every year. It was a bit intense for Twitter and sparked a lot of alarmed responses. This alarm was due not to any inaccuracy in STRATCOM's frank statement, but due to the bizarre fact that our world's increasing risk of nuclear war barely features in mainstream discourse.
STRATCOM has been preparing not just to use its nuclear arsenal for deterrence but also to "win" a nuclear war should one arise from the (entirely U.S.-created) "conditions" which are "neither linear nor predictable."
And it's looking increasingly likely that one will as the prevailing orthodoxy among Western imperialists that U.S. unipolar hegemony must be preserved at all cost rushes headlong toward America's plunge into post-primacy.
The U.S. has been ramping up aggressions with Russia in a way that has terrified experts, and it looks likely to continue doing so. These aggressions are further complicated on increasingly tense fronts like Ukraine, which is threatening to obtain nuclear weapons if it isn't granted membership to NATO, either of which would increase the risk of conflict.
Aggressions against nuclear-armed China are escalating on what seems like a daily basis at this point, with potential flashpoints in the China Seas, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, India and any number of other possible fronts.
STRATCOM Commander Charles Richard told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that China's nuclear capabilities are advancing so rapidly that they're not even bothering with intelligence vetted more than a month ago in their briefings because it's probably already out of date, urging an upgrade in America's nuclear infrastructure. Richard reportedly testified that a portion of China's nuclear arsenal has been recently primed for ready use.
The fact that those in charge of U.S. nuclear weapons now see both Russia and China as a major nuclear threat, and the fact that U.S. cold warriors are escalating against both of them, is horrifying.
The fact that they're again playing with "low-yield" nukes designed to actually be used on the battlefield makes it even more so. This is to say nothing of tensions between nuclear-armed Pakistan and nuclear-armed India, between nuclear-armed Israel and its neighbors, and between nuclear-armed North Korea and the Western empire.
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