Lew Rockwell Institute

Last week U.S. President Donald Trump published a confused tweet about nuclear testing:

…  Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.  …

Some media panicky wrote that Trump had ordered to detonate nuclear warheads.

I disagreed with that interpretation:

All nuclear warheads the U.S. has are under the control of the Department of Energy. It is the sole agency that can do test explosions of nuclear warheads. The nuclear delivery vehicles which are used to deploy the war heads are under the control of the Department of Defense (or ‘Department of War’ as Trump calls it).

Trump said “Because of other countries testing programs” and “start testing … on an equal basis” both in reference of nuclear delivery vehicle tests of other countries.

Trump thereby likely meant to order the DoD to test its nuclear delivery vehicles, just like Russia has recently done. He did not order the DoE to test nuclear war heads.

The testing of nuclear delivery vehicles, like intercontinental missiles, is a routine that has been done every year since those exist.

It is nothing to panic about.

On Sunday the Energy Secretary confirms that no nuclear explosions are involved (archived):

The nuclear testing ordered by President Trump will not involve nuclear explosions, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday, adding that the testing would involve “the other parts of a nuclear weapon” to ensure they are working properly.

Mr. Wright’s comments came four days after Mr. Trump made the declaration that he was ordering the U.S. military to resume nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with other countries, raising the specter of a return to the worst days of the Cold War.

“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are systems tests,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on the Fox News show “The Sunday Briefing.” “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions.”

Noncritical or subcritical explosion test are those where, for example, the chemical explosives which, within a nuclear warhead, are supposed to initiate the nuclear fission are tested for their stability. That is, like testing the wiring of a warhead detonator, routine stuff which every country that has nuclear weapons does on a regular basis.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is where the U.S. is doing these tests:

Subcritical experiments allow researchers to evaluate the behavior of nuclear materials (usually plutonium) in combination with high explosives. This configuration mimics the fission stage of a modern nuclear weapon. However, subcrits remain below the threshold of reaching criticality. No critical mass is formed, and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs—there is no nuclear explosion.
…
Although subcrits don’t create self-sustaining nuclear reactions, in many ways, they harken back to the days of full-scale nuclear testing. Since the 1992 moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing, subcrits have provided valuable data related to weapons design, safety, materials, aging, and more. This information helps scientists determine if America’s nuclear weapons will work as intended.

These experiments are legit even under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They are, just as I had said, no need to panic.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump’s Nuclear Weapon Tests Won’t Include Nuke Explosions appeared first on LewRockwell.

It should come as no surprise that Russia has spent so much money miniaturizing nuclear power plants and equipping its delivery systems with them: 9M730 Burevestnik missiles and Status-6 Poseidon torpedoes. The United States is dispersing its nuclear technology by providing Australia and South Korea with nuclear-powered submarines, and by supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles. But in this arena, the Pentagon is technically outmatched.

US President Donald Trump hailed the agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping as a major success. The United States will reduce the tariff on major Chinese goods by 10%, bringing it down to 47%. In exchange, China will resume purchasing US soybeans and postpone for one year the restrictions on rare earth mineral exports to the US. In reality, this is a limited and precarious trade truce.

Significant was the statement made by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi before the meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. He warned that “a multipolar world is emerging,” urging an end to “the politicization of economic and trade issues, the artificial fragmentation of global markets, and the use of trade wars and tariff battles.” “The frequent withdrawal from agreements and the failure to uphold commitments, while blocs and cliques enthusiastically form, have subjected multilateralism to unprecedented challenges,” Wang asserted, without naming specific countries but clearly referring to the United States.

During the meeting, President Xi Jinping emphasized, “China and the United States should be partners and friends. This is what history has taught us and what reality demands.” The United States’ position is demonstrated by the fact that, just minutes before the meeting with Xi Jinping, Trump stated he had ordered the Pentagon to launch nuclear weapons tests “on an equal footing” with China and Russia. In reality, China has not tested nuclear weapons since 1996, and Russia has not tested them since 1990. And although the United States has never ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which prohibits the detonation of such weapons, past presidents have adhered to the Treaty.

On Truth Social, Trump claimed that Beijing currently ranks third in the world in terms of nuclear weapons, after Russia and the United States, but that “within five years it will be on par with us.” Trump fails to mention that China maintained a limited nuclear arsenal for decades, consisting mostly of medium-range defensive weapons unable to reach the United States, and that it began producing long-range nuclear weapons after the United States threateningly deployed nuclear weapons on its border.

At the same time, Trump gave South Korea the green light to build a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying nuclear missiles. The submarine will be built in the United States at a shipyard purchased by a South Korean company in 2024. Australia, too, through the AUKUS agreement with the United States and Great Britain, will be able to acquire nuclear-capable attack submarines clearly aimed at China and Russia. In Europe, Ukraine is receiving, via NATO under US command, weapons with increasingly long ranges capable of striking targets deep inside Russian territory. Soon, weapons of this type could be manufactured directly in Ukraine through “joint production” agreements with NATO defense industries. Ukraine could thus possess weapons with dual conventional and nuclear capabilities directed against Russia.


It should come as no surprise that, in such a situation, Russia is producing and testing newly designed nuclear delivery systems: the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, capable of striking heavily fortified targets at any distance, and the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater vehicle, capable of autonomously reaching enemy shores and triggering a radioactive tsunami with the underwater detonation of a high-yield nuclear warhead. A weapon analogous to the Russian Poseidon is likely also being developed by China.

This article was originally published on Voltaire.net.

The post The Policy of Nuclear Gunboats appeared first on LewRockwell.

Two Democrat federal judges are doing their best to give President Trump the budgetary authority that Congress refuses to use, and Trump looks the gift horse in the mouth.  Instead of bickering with the judges, he should just accept their gift.  It would allow a smooth transaction from a dysfunctional democracy riven with faction and hate into a well functioning autocracy free of special interest control of a corrupt legislature.

President Trump has been ordered by the judiciary to begin making SNAP payments on November 5 despite the absence of a congressional authorization.  Some say this is rule by judges.  I see it as judicial recognition that US democracy is so dysfunctional it must be replaced by an autocrat who can keep the government functioning.  This is the end fate of all democracies, and America has now reached this point.

Obama-appointed US federal district judge John McConnell has ordered Trump to pay the 42 million Americans with entitlements to working Americans’ incomes the benefits in the absence of Congressional authorization.  

The Democrats refuse to pass a budget because they say Trump is “crushing people all across the country” by attempting to limit free health care to immigrant-invaders who walked into the US to collect free food, housing, and medical care.

As it is more important to Democrats that immigrant-invaders are supported by American taxpayers than to continue legislative control over the federal budget, Trump should accept the gift of power and dispense with the no longer needed Congress.  

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