Successful testing of US ICBMs ends the era of nuclear energy stability

This month, the United States successfully conducted an intercontinental ballistic missile test (ICBM): Sent to the Hawaiian Islands, the rocket was destroyed by another launched from a ship before entering Earth’s atmosphere.

Amid a growing threat of atomic bombs, this detonation has again intensified it, however risking destabilizing the precarious nuclear balance, according to Bloomberg’s editorialist.

The intercontinental ballistic missile that flew over the Pacific was a fake, designed to test new interception technology. The satellites detected it and alerted a Colorado airbase which in turn relayed information to a Navy destroyer stationed north-east of Hawaii, the USS John Finn. The latter launched his own rocket which hit and destroyed the rocket in flight.

At first glance, this type of technological witchcraft would be a reason not only to charm but to celebrate the promise of US protection against missile attacks from, for example, North Korea. But in the strange logic of nuclear strategy, an innovation designed to increase safety can have the opposite result.

And that’s because this new interception technology breaks the link between offensive and defensive at the heart of all calculations in nuclear scenarios, writes Andreas Kluth in Bloomberg.

Since the Cold War, stability, and therefore peace, has been preserved through the grisly reality of mutual assured destruction, or MAD. Another description is the mutual vulnerability in which no nation would strike first if it were sure of an immediate response of the same nature.

However, if one of the players is equipped with a shield (American air defense systems are called Aegis) this situation is no longer valid. So opponents, mainly Russia, but increasingly China, will assume that their deterrence capacity is no longer effective because they will not be able to respond successfully in a similar way.

For this reason, the defensive escalation has become almost as controversial as the offensive escalation. Russia protested against American land interception systems in Eastern Europe and Alaska. But this month’s test is the first to be performed on a ship with a move which means it won’t be long before the United States or another nation guarantees protection in all directions.

It’s an uncertainty that could complicate an already confusing situation in which the United States and Russia, which own about 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads, have given up on two arms control treaties in the past two decades, while the only one standing, Nuovo START, expires February 5, just 16 days after Biden’s inauguration. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which for five decades prevented the media from obtaining it, is also in serious trouble and will be renegotiated next year. Iran’s intentions remain unknown.

At the same time, the United States and Russia are modernizing their arsenals, while China is gearing up as quickly as possible. Among the new weapons are warheads carried by hypersonic missiles so fast that the leader of a targeted nation has only a few minutes to decide on the threat and how to respond. The arsenal also contains so-called tactical warheads with lower loads making them suitable for conventional wars, which lowers the threshold for their use.

Consequently, the risk of a nuclear war being launched accidentally, due to a miscalculation or false alarms, increases especially when the scenarios involve terrorism, criminal states or conflicts in space. 84 nations without nuclear warheads have signed a treaty banning nuclear weapons that will go into effect next year, in a kind of protest against all this madness. But none of the nine nuclear-armed nations and their allies will ever sign it.

In return, the nuclear powers will understand the news of successful interception tests as a push for a new arms race, then produce even faster missiles equipped with even more lures and countermeasures, new warheads with ever more flexible uses in greater variety. of strategic scenarios, will also be equipped with shields.

This situation must be stopped. The leader in the best position to take the initiative and end this madness is the president of the United States to swear by. As soon as he takes office, Biden is expected to propose a five-year extension of the new START treaty to buy time and at the same time invite China and the other nuclear powers to the negotiating table. The priority would be to sign a declaration from the nine nations that the sole purpose of the newspapers is to discourage them and that they will not be used aggressively. At the same time, these nations should provide security guarantees and aid to nuclear-free nations and create new communication protocols for the crisis, while agreeing to limit and monitor not only offensive but also defensive weapons. .

VIDEO The Pentagon tests the interception of the intercontinental ballistic missile on water for the first time

The American missile system, a $ 40 billion scarecrow INFOGRAPHY

Russia has tested a rocket that exceeds 8 times the speed of sound VIDEO