Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Do We Still have Wargasm?

With all the talk about Iran and its nuclear program the media does not widely report on the question of, what is the US currently doing to reduce our nuclear weapons and their delivery systems?  Last summer President Obama proposed to negotiate with Russia further reductions in each sides nuclear weapons (http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/fresh-us-nuclear-guidance-relies-some-cold-war-elements/).  What are the current status of such talks?  In talking about Iran's nuclear ambitions it would be good to show the world what the US is currently doing to reduce nuclear weapons in the US and Russia.
Even with the new START treaty (see below) is the US still basically using the cold war concept of Wargasm?   From the book "The Many Worlds of Hugh Everitt III" author Peter Bynes defines Wargasm as "Cold War operations researchers often used sexualized language to describe the doctrine of launching the entire arsenal of nuclear weapons in a first or second strike".  This is the old 1950-60's doctrine known as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).  There is a good reason I guess that this conversation is not being discussed publicly  in that annihilation from nuclear weapons is no longer in the minds of people as it was in the 60's and it is nice to keep it that way.  The question is what is currently happening in further START negotiations?  What we have in place with Russia now is New START which is:

New START as defined in Wikipedia:
 (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) (Russian: СНВ-III, SNV-III) is a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation with the formal name of Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. It was signed on 8 April 2010 in Prague,[3][4] and, after ratification,[5][6] entered into force on 5 February 2011.[1] It is expected to last at least until 2021.
New START replaced the Treaty of Moscow (SORT), which was due to expire in December 2012. In terms of name, it is a follow-up to the START I treaty, which expired in December 2009, the proposed START II treaty, which never entered into force, and theSTART III treaty, for which negotiations were never concluded.

Under terms of the treaty, the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers will be reduced by half. A new inspection and verification regime will be established, replacing the SORT mechanism. It does not limit the number of operationally inactivestockpiled nuclear warheads that remain in the high thousands in both the Russian and American inventories.[7]

I guess this goes along with START I:

START I as defined in Wikipedia:
 START(Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994.[1] The treaty barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads atop a total of 1,600 ICBMssubmarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers. START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80 percent of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. Proposed by United States President Ronald Reagan, it was renamed START I after negotiations began on the second START treaty.

The START I treaty expired 5 December 2009. On 8 April 2010, the replacement New START treaty was signed in Prague by U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev. Following ratification by the U.S. Senate and the Federal Assembly of Russia, it went into force on 26 January 2011.

New START is with the Russian Federation while START I is with the USSR.  So I guess they both go together.  These have dramatically reduced our nuclear arsenals.  But is our nuclear weapon policy still Wargasm?  What is currently happening in arms reduction negotiations?

One avenue for arms reduction so to stop producing tritium in both countries.  Is it possible to verify production of tritium by both sides?  Since tritium is necessary in thermonuclear weapons a ban on tritium production would be arms reduction by physics since tritium has a half life of about 10 years.  The question is: Would it be difficult to verify the complete stopping of the production of tritium at reactors or accelerators?



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