Wild Turkey with H-Bombs: Failed Coup Raise Calls for Denuclearization

John LaForge

An explosive cocktail of military instability mixed with 11-foot long US nuclear bombs raises the specter of accidental or suicidal detonation in or near Turkey. This risk was brought into extreme relief by the attempted military coup there in mid-July.

In June, I warned in CounterPunch magazine and elsewhere that the Pentagon’s 50 to 90 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs deployed at Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey are too dangerous to keep so close to a warzone — Incirlik is 100 miles from Islamic State territory — especially with racists Donald Trump and Ted Cruz pursuing the White House. Journalists with the Los Angeles Times, the Japan Times, Foreign Policy, or the San Antonio Express News don’t read my columns, but suddenly the Pentagon’s nuclear bombs in Turkey are a hot topic.

Tobin Harshaw reports for Bloomberg July 25 — although he mischaracterized the bombs — “Until recently, the question of whether the United States should continue to station nuclear missiles [sic] in Turkey was of interest only to a passel of national-security geeks and nonproliferation advocates. One failed coup later, the discussion has spread to CNN, The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere.”

Harshaw went on to validate an analysis by Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of Int’l Studies, who argues that in the wake of the failed coup, “Turkey is not a sensible base for nuclear deterrence.” But in the irrational, self-contradictory realm of nuclear war planning, the B61s are being stored at Incirlik because military hawks insist on “maintaining the capability to attack Iran” with H-bombs, Harshaw reported. Never mind that Russia and Pakistan would doubtless retaliate with their nuclear warheads if the US used its own against Iran.

The reasons why our military’s so-called “forward deployment” of the B61s amounts to nuclear madness were only highlighted by the bloody, hapless coup inside Turkey. The B61s’ uselessness and vulnerability — anti-war protesters have regularly snuck into NATO bases where B61s are stored — have been broadcast by major news outlets from New York to Tokyo:

1) The Los Angeles Times reported July 23: “The base was an operational center of the attempted coup,” which, US military experts said, demonstrated “a worrying level of instability in Turkey’s military command close to the B61s.” Wikipedia lists 20 terrorist strikes inside Turkey since 9/11.

2) The B61s stored at Incirlik are designed for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation’s long-range, high speed F-15E jet fighter and for Lockheed Martin’s F-16 jet fighter, according to the Washington Post. But none of these planes are based at Incirlik or in the Turkish Air Force. As the LA Times reported, “The US does not have aircraft at Incirlik qualified to deliver the weapons.” (“In order for the weapons to actually be used, the US would have to fly a squadron of aircraft into Incirlik to load the bombs, all of which would be observed by Russia and possibly make the base a target for a first strike,” the Times reported.)

3) The B61s are designed to prevent unauthorized use as they have safeguards known as “use controls” and “permissive action links.” But Robert Peurifoy, formerly of the Sandia National Laboratory where he, according to the LA Times, “designed the first use controls on weapons based in Europe,” said that the “use controls may only impede and delay a terrorist. … Either you keep custody or you should expect a mushroom cloud.”

4) General Eugene Habiger (USAF Ret.), a former commander of all Air Force and Navy strategic nuclear weapons (he led the Strategic Command from 1996 to 1998), told the San Antonio Express News July 22 “the bombs no longer have any military usefulness.” And Gen. Habiger warned, “It’s a very, very dangerous weapon in terms of military consequences, political consequences, and I think what happened in Turkey highlights the potential unintended consequences of having nuclear weapons forward deployed if there is no military requirement.”

5) The B61s will almost certainly never be used, according to Aaron Stein, a Turkey analyst at the Atlantic Council, who spoke to the LA Times. This common knowledge moved Gen. Habiger to ask, “Why does NATO need nuclear weapons?”

Why indeed. As Jeffrey Lewis noted June 18, “after the events of the past weekend, leaving them in place seems positively terrifying,” and wild Turkey becomes that latest and best reason ever to permanently remove US nuclear weapons from other countries

SIDEBAR

How powerful is the B61 gravity bomb?

* Bloomberg News says the B61 is a “variable-yield” device, meaning the size of the explosion can be between .3 kilotons [300 tons] and 340 kilotons of TNT equivalent.

* The Los Angeles Times reports that it can be programed to have between 300 tons of TNT explosive force [.3 kilotons], and 170,000 tons [170 kilotons].

* Nuclear weapons analyst John Pike, with www.globalsecurity.org, says “yields range from “a few hundred tons to 160 kilotons.”

* The Nuclear Weapons Datebook, Vol. 1 (Ballinger, 1988) says the yield is from 100 to 500 kilotons.

To compare: the US Army Air Corp’s Hiroshima bomb, which incinerated 7 square miles and killed 140,000 people, was 15 kilotons.