Hawaii and the Horror of Human Error

That is a “major expansion over Clinton, Bush and Obama,” all of whom attempted to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, Jon Wolfsthal, a former Obama official who worked on nuclear issues, told me. The new strategy views nuclear weapons as “a swiss army knife that can be pulled out to solve a range is issues,” he added. Among several new weapons the document proposes are so-called “low-yield nukes,” which could be placed on existing Trident ballistic missiles launched from submarines, lowering the threshold for use by causing less fallout, limiting the impact zone, and causing fewer civilian casualties.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday Moscow will not support attempts by Washington to modify the Iran nuclear deal, arguing such a move could also complicate diplomacy over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Lavrov spoke days after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would waive nuclear sanctions against Iran for the last time to give Washington and its European allies a chance to fix the “terrible flaws” of the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Pentagon is planning to develop two new sea-based nuclear weapons to respond to Russia and China’s growing military capabilities, according to a sweeping Defense Department review of nuclear strategy. The planned move has ignited a broad debate over future U.S. nuclear strategy at a time when the nation also faces the threat of proliferation, in particular from North Korea’s efforts to expand its arsenal of nuclear weapons and develop long-range missiles capable of delivering them.

A draft of the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review confirms the existence of an underwater nuclear drone made and operated by Russia, a capability the U.S. Defense Department had not previously publicly acknowledged. “In addition to modernizing ‘legacy’ Soviet nuclear systems, Russia is developing and deploying new nuclear warheads and launchers,” stated an unclassified draft of the nuclear posture review first published by the Huffington Post.

The U.S. Air Force announced Tuesday that it has deployed six of its powerful B-52 strategic bombers to Guam amid tensions with nuclear-armed North Korea. The six planes, accompanied by 300 airmen, join three of the air force’s B-2 stealth bombers that were also recently dispatched to the U.S. island territory, home to Andersen Air Force Base, a key American outpost in the Pacific.

NATO supports the idea of a world without nuclear weapons, but doesn't believe it can be achieved by imposing a ban through the United Nations convention on nuclear weapons, the military alliance’s top official said Sunday. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during a speech at a security conference in Sweden that ridding the world of nuclear weapons requires a period of “painful disarmament” that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons cannot guarantee.