RANT: I'LL SEE YOUR DRONE AND RAISE YOU A BABY NUKE.

    

WITH THE COCK-UP in West Asia (Middle East) threatening to ignite into something larger and more dangerous these past few months, we’ve been neglecting that other war, the one in eastern Europe, namely NATO versus Russia. Of course it’s really the collective West—Europe, America and cucks like Canada—who are in the fray supplying weapons and money to Kiev. So, it’s not just Ukraine fighting Russia, though it's Ukrainian soldiers who are the ones doing the dying, saving us the distress of seeing coffins draped with Canadian flags arriving home. So, there’s that.

But after four-plus years of war, the end game is closer than we imagine. To be clear: Russia is winning the war. It will succed in defeating Ukraine and its Western backers. All along the nearly 1300km front line, Russia is advancing at a relentless pace, if a slow one, because its main war aim is to attrit the Ukrainian army until it is a spent force. The capture of territory is secondary to the Kremlin’s goal of destroying Ukraine’s NATO trained, supplied and armed military that, in addition to the possibility of "defensive" nuclear-capable cruise missile installations along its border, it considers the force and its NATO backers as an existential threat to the Russian nation. Naturally, the Americans would feel similarly threatened if China, say, were to build missile installations at Windsor, Ontario aimed at Washington. Of course, the Americans would take action to eliminate such a threat along its border. [see: "radioactive ashtray". Ed.]

IN UKRAINE'S NORTH, the city of Kharkiv may once more be in Russian hands by summer’s end. Next is Sumy, a city of 250,000 and the last metropolitan region standing between Russian forces and Kiev. Russia will probably encircle and lay siege to the city, as it has done to other Ukrainian cities, cutting off supplies and weaponry. But the big question is: Will the Russians move on Kiev? Or will they move south on Odessa where, in recent weeks, it has been bombing port facilities and infrastructure in a bid to cut off weapons shipments and eliminate naval drone launching sites. When Russia finally takes the historic port city, Ukraine will be cut off from the Black Sea, becoming a land-locked rump state.

 

THERE IS SOME TALK about Russia finally taking the gloves off and winding up the war, taking all of what it calls Novo Rossiya (“New Russia”) that includes much of eastern Ukraine where most of the population is ethnically Russian and whose first language is Russian. It’s tragic to think that Ukraine could have saved so much blood and treasure and remained whole [except for Crimea] had it signed off on the “Istanbul Accords” in 2022 during the early months of the conflict. But pressure from the West, notoriously through the efforts of then-British PM Boris Johnson acting as Western point-man, put the kibosh to the peace treaty by guaranteeing NATO’s full support (save for troops) if Zelensky would tear up the deal. He did and here we are today.

OF LATE there has been an increase in Russian drone and missile attacks on Kiev and on energy and weapons manufacturing facilities elsewhere in Ukraine, and these may portend a change in the pace of the war.

 

👉THERE HAS ALSO BEEN A CHANGE in rhetoric as the NATO-Russia conflict grinds on, namely the use (or more accurately the lack of use) of the term “deterrence”. During the Cold War, the word was always present when analyzing the threat levels of proxy conflicts between the world’s two nuclear super-powers, the USSR and America. Each, with vast arrays of nuclear weapons between them, took deterrence very seriously, as they struggled for dominance in proxy wars and regime change operations over the decades. The intensity of these proxy campaigns was tempered by how far they could push the other before a threat became existential, where the survival of the nation was perceived to be at stake, and where the use of nuclear weapons was seen as a last resort. 1962’s “Cuban Missile Crisis” is a case in point, where the USSR, in response to the United States installing Titan nuclear-armed missiles in Türkiye, some months later installed similar weapons in Cuba, in a dangerous game of ‘tit-for-tat’. With both sides seeing the other’s actions as an existential threat, the world came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war. What ultimately stopped this horrific escalation was the deterrence factor embedded in the M.A.D. principle (“Mutually Assured Destruction”). In this scheme, each side realizes that regardless of who strikes first, that country would be destroyed by a deadly counterstrike, leaving both, along with much of the northern hemisphere, a smoldering, radioactive ash-heap. It also helped that both President Kennedy and the USSR’s Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s served during WWII where they saw first hand (particular in Kennedy’s experience) how modern, industrialized conventional warfare could devastate whole regions of the globe, a factor, surely, in their assessments of how apocalyptic—by orders of magnitude greater—the use of nuclear weapons would be. Each calculated the mega-deaths and devastation that would follow if their armies unleashed the deadly force of their nuclear arsenals. Thakfully, in the end, each was deterred from attacking the other.

 

TODAY, WE SEEM TO BE BLITHELY IGNORANT of nuclear weapons and their destructive power or else we foolishly assume we can survive a nuclear war with minimal damage and even emerge victorious.* For decades, Russia has said the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1992 was threatening existentially to it, with Ukraine in NATO being an absolute red line. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Ukraine was a neutral state with a pledge of neutrality written in its constitution. Subsequent pro-Western administrations in Kiev eventually changed this status and NATO came courting with armaments and money, until 2022 when Zelensky prepared to launch an attack into the Donbass region to quell dissent and silence calls for separation from Ukraine by the two oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk whose populations voted to join the Russian Federation. In late February of 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in defence of the ethnically Russian people of the Donbass and to make it clear it would no longer tolerate a pro-Western government in Kiev that was armed and equipped with the latest NATO weapons, tech and training.

 

FOUR YEARS ON and Ukraine has been emboldened, using long-range drones and missiles to attack deep into Russian territory, and while these assaults do not threaten or degrade Russia’s war-making capacity or change the inevitable Russian victory to come, nevertheless they indicate Ukraine and the West, particularly the Europeans, no longer are deterred by Russia’s array of nuclear weapons. Recall the incremental goading of Russia by NATO through its proxy, Ukraine, as the “defensive” military alliance introduced various weapons, weapon systems, munitions, tanks, missiles, drones, etc. into the conflict, gauging Russia’s response to each escalatory move by NATO and the West. Recall in June of last year how Ukraine attacked Russian heavy lift bombers—part of Russia’s strategic (read: nuclear) defence force. On what planet [Apparently, this one. Ed.] is it a good idea to attack bombers tasked with the delivery of nuclear-armed cruise missiles and gravity bombs? Recall also in May of 2024 how Ukraine used drones to attack Russia’s early warning radars used to monitor American ICBM launches, should that fearful day ever come. During the Cold War such provocations would have been unthinkable.

YET TODAY, European leaders issue bellicose statements demonizing Russia as they gin up their respective populations to prepare for war with the Slavic giant by decade’s end.

👉WTF, Charlie Brown! What are these bloodless pricks trying to do?! Instead of diplomacy and crafting a security architecture for Europe that includes Russia in a treaty everyone can (mostly) live with, it’s warwarwar! with most NATO-allied nations singing from the same hymn book. [Canada, America’s brown-nosed rent-boy, is in on this clusterfuck, don’t forget, and balls-deep as they say. Since 2022 the Liberal government in Ottawa has sent war materiel and armaments to Ukraine and committed 25 billion dollars to the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian government under Huckster-in-Chief, Zelensky. [Cha-ching! Ed.]

 

THE POLITICAL ELITES in Europe and the Collective West that have gotten us into this mess have to go the way of the dodo. And soon. There are stirrings in Germany, Spain and Poland, for example, but Europeans need to take these little Napoleans out to the collective woodshed and give them a good hiding! There is hope (and danger as well) as populations in Western nations are increasingly at odds with their governing elites. We all see the emperor has no clothes.

 

👉TODAY, we stand at an inflection point where change and violence walk side by side to that inevitable fork in the road, and which path we’ll be on is yet to be decided.  Let’s hope the drones and long-range cruise missiles we are currently firing into Russia don’t trigger the use of a tactical nuke or two by Moscow. Can’t say we haven’t been warned.😱 Isn’t that enough to deter us to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict instead? Stay tuned!     

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE. _____________________________________

 

*Hence Trump’s recent musings around creating a “golden dome” over North America (or just the U.S. if Carney refuses to pony up billions of dollars for the scam project).  And, as it was with Regan’s pie-in-the-sky “Star Wars” missile shield of the 1980’s that proved to be unworkable so, too, will Trump’s version of the same boondoggle which will prove even more unworkable in this age of hyper-sonic ballistic missiles armed with multiple nuclear warheads that can travel thousands of miles per hour. It should be noted that if guardian missile arrays could protect the United States, say, from incoming ICBMs (“Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles”), this would be a destabilizing factor in the M.A.D. deterrence architecture. If one side believes it can launch a pre-emptive strike on its foe and not be devastated by a retaliatory response or, more importantly perhaps, if the foe thought such a defensive umbrella would work blunting its own retaliatory attack, then the options to launch before such a system could be put in place becomes all too real.

RECALL that during the Cold War, both Russia and the United States had one or two defensive missile batteries ‘guarding’ their capitals. That’s all. In other words, the installations were symbolic as part of the ABM “Anti-Ballistic Missile”) treaty of 1972 between Russia and the United States that limited each side’s ABM missile arrays to one site each, thus ensuring both sides had a healthy respect for the other side’s nuclear arsenals—i.e., the M.A.D. deterrence formulation that kept in check the establishment of ABM systems on a continental scale. [Regan’s Star Wars ballistic missile shield scheme didn’t get off the drawing board, and Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defence proposal will prove equally unworkable.

 

IN 2002, the ABM treaty was foolishly walked away from by George Bush Jr. during whose tenure additional anti-ballistic missile sites were established in the U.S. That a working ABM defensive shield has not been developed to date speaks to the physical impossibility of stopping an all-out attack with hundreds, even thousands of missiles raining down death and destruction by the mega-tonnage. Same goes for Russia. Any ABM system on the drawing board that’s been ‘gamed-out’ has been assessed as unworkable and a non-starter. [See Professor Ted Postol’s explainer (here.)] Thus, for thirty years both countries were deliberately left vulnerable, with no ABM shield capable of stopping more than a handful of incoming ICBMs, thus ensuring each side would mind their p’s and q’s and respect each other’s “red lines”. Or else. That’s deterrence, folks. Something we need to remember.

 

 

RANT: WHAT'S A LITTLE OIL AMONG FRIENDS?

  

Get the New! and Improved! housewife-helper, K-Tell’s Trump-O-Manic!*

 

FRIENDS, watch how easily its blades shred any and all laws, rules of decorum and engagement, standards of statesmanship, international treaties, probity and diplomacy of all sorts. Its ergonomic design makes quick work of slicing and dicing those pesky treaties, agreements and contracts old and new. A must have for every authoritarian’s kitchen. On sale wherever fascism is on the march! Buy two and get the second one for half price! Going fast! Deal is good until Armageddon envelops the globe in a nuclear fireball. No refunds.

 

👉WELL, I GUESS most of us were relieved that TACO¹ Trump came through with his usual climb down from launching further missile and jet sorties against Iran on April 8/26. The two-week ceasefire is barely holding though. Israel, for its part, has redirected its war machine against Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza² but particularly Lebanon, where its kill rate, some days, is comparable to last year’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian population of Gaza. In Lebanon, over 2,000 have been killed, (including 166 children) and 6,800 wounded, since the start of March, with Israel giving Lebanon the ‘Gaza treatment’, levelling entire villages and ethnically cleansing the Lebanese ever northward with the goal of creating a DMZ south of the Litani River. Israeli bombardments of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, are meant to destabilize the country and compel the government to disarm the Hezbollah militias, something, if attempted, would probably lead to civil war, which would be just fine with the Israelis; a dysfunctional Lebanon is one less competitor in the Levant and they get to hover up Lebanon’s offshore oil and gas reserves, as well.👍 

 

TRUMP claims to have phoned Israeli PM Netanyahu asking him to scale back his attacks on Lebanon. Bibi apparently said ceasing IDF attacks on Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire deal. So, bombs away! Yada yada yada…😉 Israel has said it is currently holding talks with Lebanon on “disarming Hezbollah”. [Hezbollah militias, like Iran’s missilery, are the only defences strong enough to stand against Israel aggression. Ed.] We’ll see how that goes, but is there anyone who believes a single word uttered by these fucks?🙎 

 

IN THE MEANWHILE, US VP Vance went to Pakistan last weekend to hold talks with the Iranians. He brought along Trump’s son of a bitch-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump golfing buddy Steve Witkoff, both of whom shouldn’t be anywhere near a negotiating table—and were specifically not invited by Iran given their duplicitousness in previous negotiations that were performative and a cover to launch surprise attacks on Iran (last June and February 28, this year). After a marathon bargaining session, Vance left Islamabad having failed to reach an agreement with Tehran.  

 

WITH THINGS SHIFTING so swiftly, I thought I would wait until Armageddon to file a final report, but my better angel convinced me to note a few of the twists and turns in this increasing shit-show brought to you by the Washington Inepts (a.k.a. “the Epstein Class”) and their entourage:

 

👉RECALL THAT IRAN Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz following the February 28 surprise attack by Israel and the United States, allowing only friendly countries or countries that pay a ‘transit fee’ safe passage through the Strait. Obviously, America and its allies (including most of the Gulf Arab states that host American military bases, most of which have closed BTW, perhaps permanently, following Iranian bombardments) are mostly excluded from the Hormuz unless they make some sort of arrangement with the Iranians. 

Iran’s action in the Hormuz Strait interdicts approximately 20% of the world’s petroleum shipments causing oil prices to rise and stock markets to fall. The United States responded, after last weekend’s ceasefire talks failed, by ‘blockading the blockade’😂 saying it will stop all ships passing through the Hormuz, including ships paying their way, so as to further squeeze the Iranians. 

Question: Will the U.S. board and capture Chinese or Russian ships, or French or British vessels as they enter and emerge from the Strait? Are they that foolish? And do they plan to stop Iranian registered ships? NOTE: Iranian oil added to world oil supplies and is crucial in keeping oil prices down. Most of Iran’s oil infrastructure remains intact for this reason. And Trump initially allowed Iranian oil to be shipped throughout the war so there would be no oil shortages globally affecting gasoline prices, and anger voters at home. 

👉Will Trump target oil refineries and fields in Iran if the conflict erupts again? This would initiate Iranian bombardments of the Gulf States’ infrastructure in those countries that continue to host American military bases and allow their air space to be used by American and Israeli warplanes. If Gulf oil is cut off altogether, a global depression by the fall would be inevitable, perhaps one worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

IRAN HAD FOUR demands going into the the ceasefire between Iran and Israel/United States that went in force on April 8, wobbling like a bowlful of Jello on a train. Iran complained that Israel’s continued bombing of Lebanon was a violation of the ceasefire agreement. Israel said “Nah-uh” and Trump TACO-ed and did his usual nothing to restrain the Israelis. The Iranians brought up this issue up a major concern during the ceasefire talks with Vance.

 

Islamabad talks: Iran's major agenda items: 1. It has a right to enrich uranium to levels commensurate with use in a civilian nuclear industry. 2. Downsizing Iran’s missile force is unacceptable as Iran considers it a critical deterrent against attacks from Israel, a state that has (undeclared) nuclear weapons (between 90-200 warheads). 3. Return of Iranian frozen assets and removal of all sanctions that have for so long immiserated the Iranian population. 4. Accepting Iran’s sovereignty over the Hormuz Strait. These are Iran’s top four agenda items. There are others, including a cease-and-desist order stopping further Israeli aggression against Iran, but also their violence against Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank.

HOWEVER, THE FACT THAT Trump sent diplomatic lightweights instead of a professional negotiating team to Islamabad suggests the U.S. president didn’t expect any breakthroughs last weekend and never really wanted any. Instead, the Americans are spinning the narrative that Iran was uncooperative during the talks, in order to justify their own, illegal war against Iran. 

👉The Iranians came to the talks with few expectations and left with no illusions.

 

THE BLOCKADE is only days old and already economies around the world are shaky. A prolonged blockade of the Strait, along with the American ‘counter’ blockade—if that is even feasible—may lead to a global recession, even a depression if vital supplies of Gulf oil, natural gas, fertilizers, urea, helium³ etc., are not reestablished.😰

 

The ceasefire is set to end next week, and the Iran War will probably reignite. More fun for West Asia, and for us too. So, drop your cocks and grab your socks! Hold onto your hats, too!

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE. _______________________________________________________

 

* Keep away from pets and children.

 1. “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

 2. “Since the ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza took effect six months ago, Israeli attacks have killed at least 738 people and injured more than 2,000. In total, since launching its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has killed or injured at least 10 percent of the enclave’s population, killing more than 72,000 people, the majority of them women and children, and injuring at least 172,000 others, with thousands more buried under the rubble and presumed dead.” (Al Jazeera) And lest we forget: Israel has bombed Gaza thirty-six out of the last forty-days.

3. Helium is rare on earth. It is created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy elements like thorium and uranium. The world’s largest deposits are found in the South Pars and North Dome gas fields in the Persian Gulf seabed. It is used to make semi-conductors, and for high-tech, medical, and aerospace applications. 

 

p.s. There are some hardliners who seek to revoke Israel’s membership in various international organizations, athletic events or things like EuroVision. I disagree. I think Israeli athletes, entertainers, etc., should be allowed to attend all venues. However, their participation should be limited to silently hanging their heads in shame.

 

"Egads! What have we done!"

 

 

 

RANT: A MADMAN'S OLYMPICS!

 

IN HONOUR OF the Winter Olympics being held in Italy this week, I thought I would give my choices of medal winners for a conflict, country or action that is most likely to lead to a nuclear war in our not-so-distant future. Here goes:

 

BRONZE:

Third-place winner of the coveted trophy for civilizational extinction goes to the massive idiot currently president of our great neighbour to the south, Donald J. Trump, who so needs validation of any kind that he’ll scarf down like a box of chocolates the Nobel Peace Prize medallion gifted to him from Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado.*

President Trump wins third-place on the podium for his “Golden Dome” missile defence project, which the Congressional Budget Office projects a cost ranging from $161-billion to a whopping $542-billion over 20 years, and if acted upon will become an enormous black hole, sucking up the dwindling treasure of the American empire, and for all that, is doomed to fail because the physics doesn’t add up.

 

“Intercepting even a single, nuclear-armed intercontinental-range ballistic missile or its warheads . . . is extremely challenging,” said physicist Frederick Lamb, chair of the APS study group. “The ability of any missile defense system to do this reliably has not been demonstrated.” (z.me.science.com)

 

THE REASON ICBMS ARE SO DIFFICULT to intercept, beside their speed, is because they can ‘change’ from launch time to ground zero. Ballistic missiles of this nature, carrying nuclear payloads, sufficiently large to have the moniker “city killers”, applied to them, operate in three phases. The first is the “boost phase”, when the missile lifts off from its silo, mobile launcher, submarine or warship, gathering speed for around five minutes until the booster rocket burns-out and disengages from the second-stage delivery module that holds the munitions. This second or “mid-course” phase, lasts roughly twenty minutes, and during which time the warhead is released from the delivery module. [Note: Each delivery module may contain several warheads. Ed.] The warhead arcs through space above the earth’s atmosphere where there is no air friction to slow it down. Speeds of up to 24,000 km/hr can be reached here. The third phase, the “terminal phase”, begins as the warhead reaches the apogee of its arc and begins to fall, rapidly, increasing in speed as gravity take hold, until the warhead detonates at “ground zero”. Speeds of up to 29,000 km/hr. can be achieved in this final phase which last mere minutes! Note that the missile and warheads travel ballistically, that is unpowered, since the booster rockets were jettisoned at the end of the launch phase. Hence the "B" in ICBM. Think of a softball lobbed in from left field to the catcher’s mitt. Same thing, except for the megatons.

 
BUT I SAID ICBMs change during their flight, making them harder to shoot down. In the second, mid-course phase, the warhead is still inside the missile’s “delivery module”. This second stage of the rocket contains one, perhaps several warheads, along with some surprises. Each warhead is equipped with jets on its sides to steer the munition to an individual target other than the main target at the terminal or nadir of the ICBM's journey. 

THE 'CHANGE' I MENTIONED occurs at this stage of an incoming ICBM when multiple warheads, along with dummy warheads, “chaff”, even balloons and debris are released, along with the “city killer” munitions, all traveling at the same speed--thousands of kilometers per hour, with the 'surprises' disguising the real munitions. Because there is no air to slow or destabilize their flight, the surprises continue gathering speed, along with their megaton buddies, until their downward arc brings them into contact with the atmosphere. Some burn up upon reentry, but all cause ground radar and satellite imagery no end of trouble as technicians try to distinguish warheads from chaff. If it were possible to intercept and destroy an ICBM in its launch phase and perhaps in the mid-course of its arc, it is well-nigh impossible to interdict a descending ICBM during its terminal phase, given the speeds it achieves in the minutes or seconds before it detonates over ground zero.

 

    Hoooweeee! Hot dang! I gotta get me some of those!

IT IS IMPORTANT to understand that Early Warning detection systems use ground-based radars and satellite imagery [See Ted Postol’s explainer, here] to track a missile's launch and trajectory. The launch, say, of a Russian ICBM would be captured by satellite cameras because of the tell-tale exhaust plumes it expels as it is ground-launched, the rocket appearing to the satellite's camera as brighter than the surrounding landscape, and with characteristics well-known to alert ground-based radar operators who track the ascending missile which will be at its slowest speed and is most vulnerable to anti-missile (ABM) attacks. However, it is in its boost phase for only a few minutes, and can possibly be shot down by an ABM missile if the defensive array is close enough to the launch site. More on this in a bit.

  

WE NOW HAVE A PICTURE of an incoming ICBM surrounded by decoys and chaff. For high-altitude ABMs to launch and literally crash into the falling angel of death ICBM missile or else explode near to it and damage the ICBM with shrapnel, they must first distinguish between real and fake warheads. They can’t shoot down everything in the sky. 👉A demonstration of how difficult this can be is to take a piece of construction paper and perforate it with dozens of small holes, say the size of your ballpoint pen nib. Then place the construction paper on an overhead projector and turn it on. You should see a dark background with dozens of tiny holes. That’s what radars see in the downward arc of a modern ICBM, coming in at ten-or-fifteen-thousand km/hr and only minutes to decide what 'dot' to target. And that’s just one incoming missile! Modern ICBMs are equipped with multiple warheads, each of which come with their own surprises to fool defence radars and satellite arrays.

 

THE BEST TIME to shoot down an ICBM would be during its launch phase when it is traveling slower, and doesn't have camouflaging chaff accompanying it. But if the ABM launcher is sited too far from the launching ICBM, it will never be able to intercept the missile in time.

SO, LONG STORY LONGER than I wanted (sorry about that), Trump's “Golden Dome” won’t work as advertised (like his casinos). There would be too much chaff or simply too many incoming warheads for the system to fulfill it’s stated purpose, namely the absurd notion of shielding the entire continental United States from a nuclear attack.¹

I’LL JUST BRIEFLY NOTE that the Americans already have “layered” ABM defence systems with specific missile batteries configured to launch anti-missile missiles during each stage of an attacking ballistic missile (boost, mid-course, terminal), but their effectiveness is sketchy. THAAD, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) with its anti-missile array, was used in the recent so-called Twelve-Day War, where an enormous amount of detection, data processing and communications coordination is needed to ‘mesh’ the layers together tightly enough to create a seamless defence barrier against potential, incoming nukes. Ronald Regan’s 1980s’ Strategic Defence Initiative (AKA “Star Wars”) had the same goal—to protect the United States from a nuclear attack. It was an idea whose time had not yet come forty years ago, and Trump’s “Golden Dome” is idea whose time has also not yet come. Not by a longshot. 

 

RECALL THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP CREATED in his first term in office the “Space Force” wing of the American military, which sounded lame and ‘Star Trekkie’ to me at the time. What would the newly enlisted starship troopers do? To that point, there’s scuttlebutt around that Trump wants to create an armada of satellites to not only monitor threats and coordinate data on potential missile launches, but also to establish space-based satellite platforms for “kinetic” attacks and "pulse weapons" that would be used as part of the Golden Dome's ABM defence network. And presumably the new Space Force will play a significant role. However, costs are prohibitive, with some analysts suggesting that ten-thousand satellites would be needed just to monitor the continental United States and it's any ones guess as to how many satellites equipped with ABMs would be needed to support the Golden Dome's ground-based, anti-ballistic missile batteries.  This could very easily lead to the weaponization of space, even with nukes!😱 Long-term, the effectiveness of the system to counter novel missile arrays and countermeasures from ICBM-possessing adversaries is questionable. This new emphasis on using space-based observation satellites and 'attack' satellites to create a impenetrable barrier to any and all ICBM (and cruise missiles, bombers, etc.) is dangerous, as we shall see. 

“Golden Dome would require massive con­stellations to locate and destroy missiles…Trump’s goal of reliably intercepting hundreds or even a thousand or more Russian and Chinese missiles would likely require tens of thousands of satellites.”  (zemescience.com)

 

THERE’S MORE MEAT TO THIS MATTER but for now I’ll summarize how much of cockup (and how dangerous!) Trump’s plan is to build an overly robust ABM system. First, we should all remember the old maxim, “The best laid schemes ‘o mice anʽ men gang aft aglay.” 

 

👉Another point to consider is a matter of history, the 2001 decision by the Bush administration to opt out of the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty with Russia, leaving the US free to develop ABMs to supposedly defend against potential ICBM attacks from “rogue” nations like North Korea and Iran. Russia saw this as a threat when the United States began preparations to site AGEIS missile arrays in Poland and Romania, ostensibly to counter incoming missiles from Iran. GMAFB! The Russian government expressed concerns that such sites, with such arrays, could easily be reconfigured to host offensive, nuclear-armed missiles aimed at Russia, only minutes away from Moscow. The Kremlin’s concerns went unheeded. 

 

SO, OVER the course of the next decade, Russia developed ‘work-a-rounds’ to counter missile threats so close to their homeland that could also penetrate with their speed and maneuverability ABM arrays sited in the continental USA by bringing online a new family of hyper-sonic missiles which could potentially take out nearby NATO installations and bypass any defensive systems available to the United States.

America made a bet that it could develop a system that was robust enough to blunt incoming ICBMs—to ward off a first strike by Russia, for example, or if America struck Russia first with nukes (not an impossibility as things stand today) it would then  rely on its Golden Dome to stave off a nuclear retaliation from Russia. As it stands, America is holding a losing hand. The solution is not some mythical 'shield' that will only act to destabilize the strategic balance of power which relied on a certain level of transparency, communication, and as little 'surprise' as possible. One pillar of this structure was the NewSTART treaty which capped the number of deployed warheads and launch vehicles, including strategic bombers. Transparency in the treaty was achieved with another treaty called "Open Skies" which allowed US and Russian aircraft to fly over designated air strips observing the other country's strategic bombers as they sat--in the open--so their number could be verified. Recall last year when the Zelensky regime targeted Russian strategic bombers as they sat exposed, as per NewSTART treaty regulations, and how much of a dumfuk episode that was. Now, there are no nuclear weapons treaties left, transparency is fading and trust is vanishing. Good job, everyone!

 

POINT IS, as Newton wrote centuries ago: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” And now that there’s no strategic arms treaties at all between the United States and Russia, there is the dangerous possibility of a nuclear arms race.² It’s called going up the “escalation ladder” where one side does something and the other side reacts in kind. Back and forth they go as the first one escalates, then the other does likewise. Then it's onward and upward the two nuclear powers climb until...? 

 

INSTEAD of working to tamp down the atomic threat, these moves by the Trump administration to opt out of treaties and push against the boundaries of decades-old Great Power management regimes with respect to nuclear weapons, something that probably saved everyone's bacon in the decades following WWII. It's called deterrence. 

👉UP UNTIL THIS LAST DECADE or so, countries, principally the United States and Russia, made strategic decisions based on deterrence. Each assumed the other’s nuclear arsenal would be sufficient to kill them--no matter who launched first, the return fire would kill the primary aggressor. In other words, it would be mad to start a nuclear conflict with another nuclear power. [That's pretty obvious, sensi. Ed.😉] Both would be destroyed. Mutually Assured Destruction—the MAD principle was in force for decades, even at the end of the Cold War. The threat of nuclear war was sobering to those who grew up under the shadow of The Bomb. Now, not so much.

 

TRUMP’S PLOY to make the United States invulnerable to ICBM missiles (and the whole panoply of missiles, bombs and drones) not only destabilizes the deterrence principle that has kept nuclear powers from launching or threatening to launch against one another. And this pipe dream of Trumps, this bid to create an impenetrable shield  is dangerous because it spurs the development of novel nuclear warhead delivery systems like Russia's hyper-sonic Oreshniks and stealthy Poseidon torpedoes, as well as expanding their nuclear stockpiles to be better equipped to overwhelm such defences with more and more nukes. One step up the escalatory ladder begets another step up by a competitor, then another and another until….?

 

SO THE BRONZE MEDAL for bringing us closer to our civilization's destruction than we've ever been goes to Donald Trump who, though he doesn’t get the gold (again), is doing his darndest to bring down boundaries and guardrails that, however imperfect they may be, have nevertheless kept the atomic genie inside the bottle, lo these years. So it goes. 

 

CHEERS, JAKE.

 _____________________________________      

* Ms. Machado and other ‘bad picks’ for the Nobel Peace Prize aside, if the award gets any cheaper, they may have to install the medallions with GPS trackers, so they won’t get lost, or land-filled, or accidentally tossed out with old bowling trophies and public-speaking awards won by NPP laureates and their children. Just say’in.

P.S. Didn’t I read somewhere that Machado was seen in Washington wearing a T-shirt that says: “I went all the way to Oslo and all I got was a lousy million bucks!"?

 

1.  But what about brain-eating zombie hordes!? How will the dome protect us from those? Why is no one talking about this?

 

2. As for China: It is a recognized nuclear weapons state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); it has signed (but not ratified) the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT); it is, however, a signatory to the Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) treaty; it has not signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TTNW); but has adopted a "no first use" of nuclear weapons doctrine (since 1964); at this time, China opposes joining any trilateral arms control negotiations with the U.S. and Russia, which is just as well, considering the United States just blew off extending NewSTART (Strategic Arms Treaty) with Russia which expired 5 February 2026. This treaty had been in place since the Cold War and was highly successul in reducing the nuclear weapons stockpiles of the United States and Russia.

[Worringly, China has announced, also recently, that it is adding additional ICBM missile silos for its nuclear arsenal and will begin a build-out of its nuclear warhead stocks. Buckle up! Ed.]  

 

[STAY TUNED FOR THE SILVER AND BRONZE MEDAL WINNERS COMING SOON TO  A GROUND ZERO NEAR YOU. Ed.]