The Folly of Leaving the ABM Treaty, 20 Years Later. Withdrawing from the ABM Treaty was an early Bush blunder, but it is one whose costs we continue to pay even now.

In his piece he refers to Mr. James Acton of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (LOL)))  who also laments, not unreasonably, this blunder with the ABM Treaty. Acton writes:

Obviously it is true but another (third) count Acton misses (not surprisingly for a person working for Carnegie Endowment) the fact that neither Bush and his neocon-infested administration nor other administrations which followed had any clue what they were dealing with. Namely, Russia. Remarkably Larison IS on record about the utter ignorance of the US establishment, both political and what passes in the US for intellectual, on the account of the world outside. But if there is a country that represents a complete caricature in the American elitist mind it is Russia. The other count on which the US establishment is ignorant is a real war (I doubt Mr. Acton understands it either) and, more generally, the nature of the conflict on the global scale. It is a cultural issue and even most smart people such as Mr. Acton do have serious difficulties penetrating the depth of it. 

Surely, Acton's background as a physicist makes him somewhat more predisposed to rational thinking but here too we immediately are reminded that cultural ignorance doesn't spare even PhDs in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge. Acton does admit that what Russia does technologically pretty much nullifies US efforts in ABM defenses but that is as far as it goes. For starters, Acton lies, even if he doesn't understand it (which is even more damaging), and I return to the first quote from him, read attentively:

Yet those defenses have succeeded in fueling arms races with Russia, whose hostility toward the United States is alive and well. 

Judging by the looks of Acton and, especially, the start of his activity as a scientist which falls on the second half of the first decade of the 2000s, it is reasonable to assume that he met the collapse of the Soviet Union and the immediate consequences of this collapse in 1990s being of fairly tender age and having zero life experiences and self-awareness to assess the times when Russia not only was NOT hostile to the US, but with incredible energy tuned herself into a doormat for the United States up to the point of self-humiliation. Russians loved and admired the United States and then Yugoslavia happened. He doesn't remember that, I do. So, he lies following a classic BS taught in the Anglo-world as "history", hence his other quote from him.

Acton does not recognize (he can't) that starting from the late 1980s USSR (and then Russia) was surrendering one after another, in an act of unprecedented historical generosity, bordering on folly, her strategic advantages. Not that the United States didn't benefit from those--the list is very long. But Russia learned her lesson. Mr. Acton, evidently, did not, if he ever knew what that lesson was. I am sure he was never taught that in Cambridge--for that, you need to attend a serious higher military educational facility. That is why what is highlighted in yellow is preposterous and could be only the product of a person with whiteboard life experiences and zero foreign policy, military and geopolitical acumen. 

                     LESSON IN REALISM FOR JAMES ACTON:

No normal nation, especially Russia after her experiences with what Pat Buchanan described as:

would trade any of her growing military-technological advantage over the United States, especially when the United States has zero on offer! Not because the US is holding back, but because there is nothing of value, bar general geopolitical favors, to offer in exchange. Because you don't exchange 3M22 Zircon for F-35; you do not trade S-550 or A-235 Nudol for THAAD or AEGIS ashore. Would Acton trade his 2020 Ferrari Pista Coupe (Russians, and other Slavs here, you keep your mouths shut) for Chevrolet Citation without cash? Would he trade his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge for an AA in creative writing from a local community college? The answer seems obvious. Geopolitics is not a charity. But Acton's arrogance and ignorance of the modern history of the last 40 years shows. What can possibly the United States offer Russia and her people, who observe the American collapse in real time and whose only concern is not to allow the United States and its lapdogs to unleash a [cataclysmic] war in a desperate attempt to hold on to an elusive power for a little bit longer?

Russia is not trading her military edge; she is using it to keep the combined West within limits until it either sorts itself out or collapses into oblivion but without taking the rest of the humanity with it. But to understand that, one has to know Russia and her history, especially starting from 1812. It is now too late to cry about the fate of the ABM Treaty, what is done--is done. Time to face consequences--a concept [that] modern Western elites will learn soon. In fact, the process has already started. Ah yes, I warned 8 years ago that the time to negotiate is now until it is too late and the time of the ultimatums, not concessions, comes. Well, Mr. Acton, that time has arrived and it is not the West which issues them. Because any treaty with the West and its leader, the United States, is not worth the paper it is written on.'

  Appendix  

The US First Strike Doctrine And the Threat of Nuclear War Prabir Purkayastha / Newsclick Dateline: 08 Aug 2013   EVERY year, August 6 and August 9 are remembered for the horrific nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The stick-like figures drawn from memory by little children depicting the horrors they saw as they marched through their devastated cities still haunt us. In a matter of moments, 2,40,000 were killed and wounded, most of the wounded dying painfully from radiation sickness, cancers and other diseases soon after. This is what launched the nuclear disarmament movement and “Never Again” remains the most powerful cry of all peace-loving people. The cold war and nuclear competition saw major nuclear powers – the US and Soviet Union [the latter in response to US deployments]– amass nearly 60,000 warheads and brought the world close to extinction.  The nuclear forces were always on hair-trigger alert and even a small incident or a wrong decision would have rapidly escalated to nuclear strikes and counter strikes, wiping out all life on this planet. Even a limited exchange would have seen a nuclear winter and the end of all human civilisation. This was the nuclear theories of MAD – or mutual assured destruction – and this living on the edge of annihilation was what supposedly preserved nuclear peace. In the entire cold war period, the US always believed that a first strike option was crucial as it would have lost a land war in Europe. The need for nuclear escalation, even if the other side was using convention weapons, was central to its military doctrine. We might be pardoned for thinking that with the cold war being officially over, the danger of nuclear weapons is no longer a major threat to the world. The US however does not think so and continues not only with its nuclear doctrines of first strike but has extended it now to nuclear primacy. In simple terms, it now believes it has got the capability to wipe out the nuclear forces of the other side – the two key ones being Russia and China – and catch the retaliatory strike with its anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs). Its nuclear doctrine not only contains the belief that it can win a nuclear war against Russia and China, but also contains propositions that US can use a nuclear strike against countries that may have chemical and biological weapons in a pre-emptive attack. If we look at what the US has done since the collapse of Soviet Union, the grand design of the US to have position of nuclear primacy – the only power that can wage a nuclear war and win without much damage – becomes clear. The steps it has taken after 1991 are: To withdraw from the ABM treaty Build missile shields in Czech Republic, Romania and Alaska Locate four Aegis missile defence destroyers in Rota, Spain Extend NATO to Russia's neighbours even after Russia dismantled the Warsaw pact [decades ago] A similar encirclement of China is also underway. Why was the ABM treaty so important? Before the ABM treaty, the nuclear calculations were that any first strike would result in most of a country's nuclear arsenal being destroyed. Therefore, to preserve a credible retaliatory strike, the number of weapons had to be much larger than required for a strike on the enemy. This would ensure that a country striking first would still face a devastating counter strike from the country that it had attacked. It is this need to have enough retaliatory strike capacity that continuously pushed up the arsenals of the US and the Soviet Union. In this numbers game, it dawned on the policy makers that ABM's would push up the need for even more weapons, as a retaliatory strike could be thinned out by such defensive missile shields. It is this realisation that ABM's would push up the already bloated arsenals of the nuclear powers even more that led to the ABM treaty being signed and the decision taken to scale down the nuclear warheads. This was the start of the SALT negotiations and the START agreements. The new START agreement has a target of scaling down the nuclear warheads of the two countries – the US and Russia – to 1,550 by 2018. The attempts by the US to establish nuclear primacy through higher accuracy of its missiles, pinpointing targets and ABM shield therefore threatens the entire structure of even limited nuclear disarmament that the two countries have taken. Other nuclear weapon countries have much smaller warheads. The three NPT designated nuclear weapon countries – China, UK and France – have 250, 225 and 300 respectively. The other nuclear powers, Israel is estimated to have 80, Pakistan between 100 and 120, and India between 90 and 100. North Korea has probably around 10 or less warheads. The official position of other nuclear weapon countries is that they will join in the nuclear disarmament discussions once the arsenals of the two major countries are comparable to theirs. China has a theory of credible minimum deterrence. Unlike the US, both Russia and China have always declared that they will not use nuclear weapons unless attacked with nuclear weapons first. The US had withdrawn from the ABM treaty with the arguments that there were “rogue” states and rogue non-state players demanding the development of a missile shield. Initially, they had also argued that the missile shield being deployed was against Iran.  Russia had asked the US that if the shield was for other countries and not Russia, Russia was willing to join the US in creating such a shield. The US has spurned all such advances and its deployment in locations where the country being targeted is obviously Russia makes it clear that the ABM shield is central to its doctrine of nuclear primacy.