People's Democracy

THE NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM

Pushing The Arms Race - III

N M Sundaram

YES, president Putin nailed the truth of America’s intent. It is not merely encircling Russia and creating fresh hotbeds of tension and war in the world. The underlying reason is to push forward with its agenda of militarisation. The obvious reason is to assert its supremacy as the only super power. The other known reason is controlling world oil and energy sources. The less understood reason is to keep its huge military-industrial complex with continuing orders for producing new and more and more sophisticated and dangerous armaments in order to keep them fed with their life-blood of profits and super profits.

One needs to carefully study the subject of US armaments industry and the deadly toys they keep on manufacturing. Let us consider how dangerous they are for peace and stability on earth; let us consider how destructive they are and how dangerous to human kind.

CLUSTER BOMBS

A cluster bomb is a munitions container that breaks open in mid-air and disperses hundreds of small bombs or submunitions called bomblets. These bomblets are usually designed to explode on impact, just before impact or a short time after impact shooting out hundreds of sharp steel shrapnel, at high velocity, over a wide area. Cluster weapons are carried by a variety of delivery systems, including bombs dropped from aircraft, rocket launchers and artillery projectiles. Depending on the delivery system, the submunitions from one munitions container may cover an area the size of several football fields, or be dispersed over an even wider area up to 100 acres. Cluster weapons are designed to explode close to the time of impact, so that their effect is felt during the time of military engagement. But often they do not and remain hibernating for long periods. The failure rate is sometimes as high as 30 per cent.

The comparatively higher explosive charge than anti-personnel landmines, coupled with the fragmentation pattern, as compared to landmines, make cluster bombs more lethal, causing more upper-body injuries and deaths. In effect, the dropping of these bombs result in a reckless and unregulated creation of mine fields. Like land-mines these bombs are in clear violation of international humanitarian law. This is the reason why the cluster bomb is described as ‘Wicked Bombs, Beyond Landmines.’ (Source: The Acronym Institute 1998) Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark decried the use of cluster munitions by the US Army in the Gulf War, including the alleged use of cluster munitions banned under international conventions.

These bombs were extensively used in a number of war theatres, including the Gulf war, in 1991 and the ongoing Iraq war. There were many other theatres too like Afghanistan, Lebanon in 1970 (by Israel), Yugoslavia/Kosovo and Laos, both in 1998, where cluster bombs were used indiscriminately.

Public outrage and revulsion after seeing pictures of napalm victims in Vietnam put an end to its use as an incendiary weapon. The lesson of the landmine campaign also shows that similar public outrage and a well-informed debate can help to stigmatise such weapons and prevent the countries using such weapons from manufacturing and using them in the future. A call by a meeting of 46 countries took place in Oslo, Norway on February 24, 2007, for abandoning use of cluster bombs and such other weapons was frustrated by the US, Israel and some other countries.

DEVISING NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The United States is one of the five recognised nuclear weapons states under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). But the US is seen to be dragging its feet on this. The American Senate did not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in October 1999. Still the Bush administration took the position of abiding by the moratorium on nuclear testing. However, the Nuclear Posture Review - 2001 suggests that the United States might seek to develop, and possibly test, new types of nuclear weapons in the future.

The New York Times in its issue dated March 3, 2007 carried an article by the famous columnist, William J Broad stating that the US had decided on a new generation nuclear warhead and had even decided to give the contract of designing it to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Livermore was chosen after a competition to design the new nuclear warhead. The article said that this would be “the nation’s first new nuclear weapon in nearly two decades….” It also reported that that “the research could lead to a long, expensive process to replace all American nuclear warheads in the next few decades with new designs.”

A broad cross section of public opinion has already started criticising the decision. Among the arguments in opposition is that “a new design for the nuclear arsenal is unneeded and is a potential stimulus to a global nuclear arms race.” Daryl G Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a group in Washington said: “This is a solution in search of a problem,” … “There is an urgent need to reduce these weapons, not expand them. This will keep the Chinese, the Russians and others on guard to improve their own stockpiles.” The critics included lawmakers like Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstien, from California, who said: “What worries me is that the minute you begin to put more sophisticated warheads on the existing fleet, you are essentially creating a new nuclear weapon. And it’s just a matter of time before other nations do the same thing.” (Ibid)

The first to undergo replacement would be W-76 a warhead for missiles deployed on submarines. To understand what more destructive power is being created, the nature and capacity of the present warheads and missiles carried by American submarines requires to be understood in depth.

OHIO-CLASS SUBMARINES & TRIDENT II MISSILES

Ohio-class submarines carrying among others Trident II D-5 missiles is the latest and the most sophisticated of all subs in history. They are more popularly known as Trident II nuclear submarines. These subs are best explained in the language of the Human Rights crusader and former American Attorney General Ramsey Clark: “The ultimate reliance on force has been the nuclear arms race. The Trident II nuclear submarine is a powerful symbol of the mindless will to dominate. Here is a single boat, about the size of the Washington Monument, capable of launching 24 missiles while submerged. Each missile can be equipped with 12 or more independently targeted, maneuverable nuclear warheads. Each warhead may have an explosive force ten times greater than the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. Each warhead can strike within 300 feet of a predetermined target, anywhere with-in a 7,000-mile radius. Hundreds of cities can be leveled within minutes, a million or more persons incinerated in each. Many more will suffer grievous injury, unbearable pain and shortened lives. Life in the planet may be imperiled.” (Ramsey Clark, in his foreword to the book ‘Freedom Under Fire’ by Michael Linfield -1990)

If this be the destructive potential of the nuclear warheads slated to be replaced, one can only imagine what kind of a devils contraption the new ones would be!

Trident II missiles are sixth in the generation of the series of the US Navy's Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM), a program which started in 1956. Trident II was preceded in series of missile systems by the Polaris (A1), Polaris (A2), Polaris (A3), Poseidon (C3), and Trident I (C4). The first deployment of Trident II was on the USS Tenessee, in 1990. While Trident I was designed to the same dimensions as the Poseidon missile it replaced, Trident II is larger. The Trident II D-5 is a three-stage, solid propellant, inertially guided FBM with a range of more than 4,000 nautical miles (4,600 statute miles or 7,360 km). It is also more sophisticated with a significantly greater payload capability. The missile's range can be increased by reducing the frontal drag by about 50 per cent through a device called the aerospike. Within about two minutes of the launch, after the third stage motor kicks in, the missile is propelled in excess of 20,000 feet (6,096 meters) per second. All in all, no greater monster destroyer has ever been introduced in warfare.

The ten Trident submarines in the Atlantic fleet were initially equipped with the D-5 Trident II missile. The eight submarines in the Pacific were initially equipped with the C-4 Trident I missile. In 1996, the Navy started to refit the eight submarines in the Pacific to carry the D-5 missile. (Source: NTI Profile – Working for a Safe World – nti.org)

A new Nimitz-class carrier in the name of the Senior Bush, George H W Bush is undergoing fittings and is shortly to be commissioned, adding to the nuclear fire power of its existing nine carriers. It would be the most modern and sophisticated ever and would be equipped with its formidable radar systems, air surveillance crafts, missiles and nuclear weapons.

BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Though the United States destroyed its biological weapons by 1970 and is in the process of destroying its stockpile of chemical weapons, some critics allege that elements of US government’s bio-defence research are in violation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC).

We have discussed only some of the deadly weapons and their carriers being manufactured. We have also discussed the imperative of war for imperialism. These are by no means exhaustive. American imperialism contrives new excuses to keep the war production thriving and the armaments industry (the military industrial complex) well provided for with super profits. It is the urge to protect the vested interests rather than protecting freedom that has prompted the United States to launch wars on every conceivable occasion. The talk of freedom and democracy is nothing but rhetoric to beguile the public. As Ramsay Clark said, “It follows that freedom is the preservation of peace. The very quest for freedom involves finding ways of preventing war.” Norman Thomas wrote in his ‘Is Conscience a Crime’ (1927): “That is one of the indictments of war; its first casualties are liberty and truth.”

(Concluded)