German Think Tank Warns of Growing Nuclear War Danger

• German Think Tank Warns of Growing Nuclear War Danger
  by Peter Schwarz, http://www.wsws.org/  
  In September, the German pro-government think tank “Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik” (SWP) published a study on the implications of US policy towards Russia and European security. [1] The 28-page document is aimed at a professional audience and is written in political and military jargon that couches the annihilation of millions of human lives in matter-of-fact terms, as if dealing with the solution to a technical problem.
  –
  But this prosaic language conceals a nightmare scenario. American policy towards Russia, as described by the SWP study, focuses primarily on preparation for a nuclear war, which would involve large parts of Europe. If the results of the study are to be taken seriously, then the risk for the present generation of dying in a violent atomic storm is alarmingly high.
  –
  The study’s author, Dr. Peter Rudolf, an SWP employee, not only provides his own assessment, but references every paragraph with other sources. The text contains 118 footnotes, each of which refers to multiple articles in foreign policy and military journals and statements by leading politicians. The study summarizes the debate that is currently taking place in leading circles of the military and political establishment.
  –
  At its very beginning, the study stresses that the nuclear war danger is not an abstract, hypothetical risk. As “the first and most important structural feature” of US-Russian relations, the study names the “mutual nuclear annihilation capability.”
  –
  Even 25 years after the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia, who together possess “approximately 90 percent of all nuclear weapons in the world,” maintain their strategic nuclear weapons “in constant combat readiness.” “They want to guarantee,” the study says, “if necessary under extreme time pressure, that they are able to make the decision to use nuclear arsenals… This is to prevent one’s own nuclear weapons being eliminated by a first strike.”
  –
  The study points to the very short time frame for decisions as “anything but conducive” to “crisis stabilization.” The flight times of ballistic missiles between the two countries run to “11 minutes for sea-based and 30 minutes for land-based missiles.”
  –
  The risk that a political crisis could “accidentally” result in a nuclear exchange due to these short reaction times is thus extremely high. This risk is further elevated by the ruthlessness with which the US and its NATO allies are escalating the conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe and Syria, and by the advanced planning for a nuclear war.
  –
  read more.

end