Andre Damon
After withdrawing from the landmark Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, the United States has been barreling ahead with its preparations to fight a nuclear war with China, Russia, or both, by testing and stockpiling dangerous new weapons in a nuclear arms race.
In an interview with Fox News, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the United States military is changing its focus from “low-intensity conflict,” such as the war in Afghanistan, to “high-intensity conflicts against competitors such as Russia and China.”
The US tests a ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missile that was banned under the INF treaty
Key to fighting such “high-intensity conflicts” is the United States’ arsenal of nuclear weapons, which Esper called “strategic forces.”
“Our strategic forces are a key deterrent to nuclear war. I think a strong, reliable, capable, ready deterrent is really what prevents nuclear war from happening in the first place,” he said.
In the Orwellian language of the “Defense” department, preserving “peace” is accomplished by expanding America’s “deterrent,” another name for the hellish nuclear weapons that can kill billions of people within an hour.
Esper made no secret of who he is seeking to “deter,” saying “China is the number one priority for this department.” He claimed China is trying to “push the United States out” of the “Indo-Pacific theater.”
Air Force Airmen perform seal checks on their gas masks during a chemical, biological, and nuclear defense class [Credit: US Air Force]
The term “theater” was defined by military theorist Carl Clausewitz as “a portion of the space over which war prevails.” Esper thinks the Indo-Pacific region—home to more than half of the world’s people—is, to the surprise of its inhabitants, a military “theater,” and one over which the United States supposedly has claim, despite being located on the other side of the world.
But to secure this supposedly God-given right to dominance over Asia, the United States—the only country to use nuclear weapons in World War II—is making active preparations to ring the entire Chinese mainland with nuclear-capable missiles.
Missiles that could reach the Chinese mainland from places like Japan and South Korea were banned under the INF treaty, which the United States pulled out of earlier this year.
The United States, Esper said, now needs “to be able to strike at intermediate ranges” to “deter Chinese bad behavior,’ as if he were talking about disciplining a child, not annihilating a country of nearly 1.4 billion people.
The United States is moving full-speed ahead with the deployment of new missiles. The Pentagon said Monday it had tested a ground-launched, Tomahawk missile, which would have been banned under the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty.
Earlier this month, Esper said that he would like to begin deploying medium-range missiles near China within a matter of “months.” Once conventional missiles are deployed, those with nuclear warheads will inevitably follow.
The INF treaty was signed on December 8, 1987, between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, after protracted arms control negotiations. It prohibited the deployment of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
The treaty mandated the elimination of intermediate range missiles for the United States, the Soviet Union, and its successor states.
Donald Trump smiles with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi [Credit: US Air Force]
The United States said that it was withdrawing from the INF in response to Russia’s development of the Novator 9M729 missile, which is based on the earlier SSC-X-4 ground launched cruise missile that the US claimed violated the treaty. Despite the fact that Russia invited the United States to inspect its missile production facilities, the US was unable to seriously substantiate the charges that nominally led it to repudiate the treaty.
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