Nuclear apples and oranges

I just realized that I forgot to make something clear in my latest post about Russian and US nuclear capabilities: a lot of the current debate about a possible US nuclear attack on Russia is a case of comparing apples and oranges.  Let me explain.

My posts dismissing the possibility of a US nuclear attack on Russia are based only on two things:

a) a certitude that any such attack would result in the complete obliteration of the USA.
b) the working hypothesis that the US is a "rational actor".

If you carefully read the writings of those who are warning about a UN nuclear attack on Russia, they fall into two very different categories:

Group A: they say that a nuclear war in unwinnable (Paul Craig Robers is one of them) but that the US leaders are deluding themselves.

Group B: they say that the US has the capability to strike Russia and not be obliterated in a retaliatory strike.

I do not disagree with Group A.  I don't necessarily agree either.  My purely subjective feeling is that the US "deep state" will not risk it all on such a dangerous move and that the top US military comment would not go along with such an insane plan even if ordered.  But I am not a psychic, a psychologist, a psychiatrist or somebody with any kind of access to the US leadership.  I don't know what they are thinking today.  The closest I have ever been to the US elites was in the late 1980s early 1990s - a very long time ago.  So I do not know for a fact that the US is still a "rational actor".  Maybe they have all gone completely insane as a consequence of a massive overdose of imperial hubris.  Could be.

It is Group B which I categorically disagree with.  All I am saying is that there is no conceivable scenario under which the US could strike Russia without risking unacceptable retaliatory damage if only because the current Russian nuclear deterrent is much stronger than the US one and that this will remain true for the foreseeable future.

So let's not compare apples and oranges, rational scenarios and those based on the hypothesis that one side has gone completely insane.  Force planning and psychiatry are different sciences :-)

Kind regards,

The Saker

Short reminder about US and Russian nuclear weapons

A recent article in the LA Times caught my eye yesterday.  It's title was "$40-billion missile defense system proves unreliable".  I urge you to read the full article but the bottom line here is simple: the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, is a catastrophic failure.  Basically, the system is useless and would not even work against a (totally hypothetical) Iranian or North Korean strike with primitive missiles.  And it's not like there are just a few technological kinks which need fixing here or there - the entire system was mis-designed from day 1, just like the latest tri-service "flying brick" the F-35.  Billions of dollars wasted for nothing except making the folks in the US military-industrial complex rich, very rich.  I hope to write up one day a full analysis of why a country which in the past has produced absolutely world class military hardware and weapons systems (like the WWII Jeep or the F-16) is now systematically producing hugely expensive crap, but that is not my purpose today.  Today I want to remind you all of a few basic facts:

1) The entire US nuclear arsenal is hopelessly outdated, especially it's land-based component which is over 30 years old and whose B-1 and B-2 bombers which cannot deliver cruise missiles and whose "stealth" capabilities are no match for Russian air defense systems.  The only part of the US nuclear triad which is more or less in good shape are the US Navy boomers.
2) The US GMD cannot even intercept primitive ballistic missiles.
3) Russia has recently deployed brand new mobile land-based (SS-27, SS-29) and sea based ballistic missiles (R-29RMU2, RSM-56) which are designed to be able to evade future ABM systems.

Please keep that in mind when you hear all this talk about a US first strike on Russia.  What is happening now is a typical self-feeding rumor which somebody started (dunno who) and who get's picked up by more and more people who then end up quoting each other as a proof of the thesis.  So my advice to you is this: the next time you come across an article suggesting that the US is about to nuke Russia (or some variation thereof), see if the author offers a plausible scenario of how this could be done.  This scenario should not just mention some vague "Star Wars" like "secret" technologies (like nukes in space) but mention existing, tested and deployed systems.

There are enough real reasons to be discouraged, disgusted, worried and outright despondent about the world we live in and there really is no need to add a completely artificial nuclear scare to this.

My 2cts.

The Saker

A couple of short pointers about recent rumors

I have decided to take some time off two articles which I am working on today to reassure many of you about some rumors which are being spread by the western corporate media.  I will go this bullet-style.  Here we go:

1) "Russia has massed forces on the Ukrainian border and is about to invade"

NATO and western media corporations are in a panic mode due to what they claim in a threat of Russian invasion for the eastern Ukraine.  According to these sources roughly 50'000 soldiers are poised right across the Ukrainian border ready to strike, and they could reach Kiev in 3 hours.  This is nonsense, at least these conclusions.  From what I know there are indeed a number (dunno how many) Russian units "at readiness" in western Russia, but that really means nothing.  First, this is a normal measure when there is instability right across your border.  The Poles did the same.  Second, having been myself professionally involved in monitoring Soviet military movements during the Cold war I can promise you that if these forces were up to no good, they would not be that easy to detect, assuming they are there in the first place: as far as I know, the Russians gave the Ukrainians unrestricted overflight rights and military observers sent to the border region saw nothing.  Finally, considering th actual state of the Ukrainian military, Kiev is not 3 hours away (on land) for the Russian military, but minutes away should the Russians decide to repeat what they did in Prague in 1968: seize the airport and bring in paratroopers.  When the western media publishes articles comparing the size of the hypothetical Russian invasion force and the hypothetical Ukrainian force they do what military analysts call "bean counting".  These numbers really mean absolutely nothing.  The truth is much simpler: Russian can invade the Ukraine anytime it decides to and there is nothing the Ukrainians or NATO could do about it.  Not a thing.  And this is not due to the fact that Russian soldiers are some "invincible terminators", but to the fact that the Ukrainian state and military have basically imploded and to the facts of geography.  The real reason behind these rumors it to justify NATO as "needed" to "protect" the EU from an "increasingly assertive and aggressive Russia: total and complete bovine excreta.

2) "The Russian military is heavily dependent on the Ukrainian MIC"

This one has some truth to it.  There are specific weapons systems and parts which the Russian military uses nowadays which come from the Ukraine.  The best known example of that is the formidable SS-18 ICBM which was designed in mid-1960s (!) in the Ukraine and is still built there.  And yes, there has been an extremely controversial decision made by the Ministry of Defense to produce more such missiles.  The main reason why this decision was controversial is that the SS-18 uses liquid propellant and that use of a liquid fuel was vehemently opposed by many.  Considering the events in the Ukraine I am pretty confident that this entire project will be scrapped and replaced by something admittedly more expensive, but far more modern: an advanced solid-fuel heavy MIRVed silo-based missile.  As for the rest, yes, there will be sectors which will force the Russians to stop purchasing comparatively cheap Ukrainian systems and replace them by more expensive but also more advanced Russian ones.  So what is bad news for the Russian budget is really great news for the Russian military.  Finally, I predict a totally new trend which will soon make its appearance: Russia will begin purchasing Chinese systems for its military.  The Chinese industry has a formidable potential and while a country like Russia probably could built everything indigenously, this is simply not cost effective.  Even the USA purchases a lot of its military electronics from Japan and even from China.  No, the Ukraine was an ideal partner for Russia because they had the system commonality due to a common Soviet past and because of extremely cheap prices Russians could get from the Ukrainians, but technology bonanza for Russia is coming to and end and this is not necessarily a bad thing.  Anybody who knows the Russian procurement system will tell you that Russia already has enough supplies in everything it needs to last it for a long while, plenty enough to make a transition to indigenous or other foreign supplies (I am thinking of Brazil and India here).

3) "The Ukrainians are going to sell God knows what to God knows whom"

Again, there is some truth to that.  The Ukrainian MIC is in its death throes and everybody in the Ukraine knows that, so now is the time to sell of as much as possible as fast as possible.  This will definitely be a concern for some nations, especially for those who like India face a Pakistan already armed with some Ukrainian built systems, but this is not a game changer because most of what the Ukrainians can sell today is not designed to foreign specifications and because all weapons system contracts are linked to huge "external" political and financial factors (kickbacks, non-military economic measures tied in, licensing, etc.) besides the actual delivery of systems.  From the point of view of major military contracts the Ukraine is really an extremely unattractive partner.  So the most damage which can come from the collapse of the Ukrainian MIC would be the proliferation of some sensitive technologies, a concern yes, but definitely not a major cataclysm: most of the Ukrainian know-how is already getting old, and what is not has probably already been acquired by both the Russians and the Americans.

The bottom line of all that is this: the collapse of the Ukraine has a state definitely creates a long list of potential problems and risks, including a few military ones, but they are most definitely not the most problematic ones.  Furthermore, it is precisely because the Ukraine is imploding that Russia has no incentive at all to invade or even get militarily involved.  The Russians can basically sit tight, hold a steady unwavering course, just like they did in Syria, and wait for reality to kick in with enough power to bring everybody back to their senses, be it the Americans, the Europeans or the Ukrainians themselves.

I hope that these few pointers are useful to reassure you all.

Kind regards,

The Saker

Edward Snowden probably does not know anything of interest to Russia or China

When I hear the corporate media and even most of the blogosphere say that Edward Snowden was a "CIA agent" or "NSA agent" with access to some super dooper secret information I smile: this is mostly likely not the case at all.  Yes, sure, Uncle Sam AND those who dislike the US Empire all have a stake in presenting Snowden as a real hot potato, but in real life he probably can tell the Russians or the Chinese very little which they would not already know.  Why?

Ok.  First look at his resume according to Wikipedia.  Certainly nothing very interesting here: had an early interest in computers, but flunked his first course; then got a GED and then he took a "MS Windows 2000 Systems Engineer w/ Exchange" course at a for-profit entity known as Advanced Career Technologies from February 2002 to May 2002."  W2k + Exchange?!  Hardly something very advanced!  Then he goes to the US Army, fails a Special Forces training (Tim McVeigh anybody?), then he worked as a security guard for the NSA and later the CIA.  He saw himself as such a IT genius that he felt the need to brag about it online.  Then he does twelves month of work in network security for the NSA, in the USA and overseas, before joining  Booz Allen Hamilton.  Does that really strike you are the career path of a computer genius?

Or does anybody seriously believe that the Chinese never suspected that the Anglosphere spied on their telephone network?

Not me.

I guess is that Snowden probably was a competent IT security admin who did a good job learning at his job and who was tasked with mid-level sysadmining at the CIA, NSA and  Booz Allen Hamilton.  So, of course, he knew about PRISM and all the rest of the US surveillance system.  But if for the general public his revelations are sensational (and they are in the political sense), there was nothing new in them for either the Russians or the Chinese.  In fact, Putin openly said so at a recent press conference where he said that nothing of what Snowden had "revealed" was new to them.

Furthermore, let me tell you this.  In the real world technical collection capabilities like PRISM, ECHELON, Carnivore, etc. are all really part of a much bigger system and the folks who actually operate these machines know *nothing* about "who does what" with the information they collect.  Nor are these folks privy to any decision-making mechanisms and nor can they influence them.  Intelligence agencies are highly compartmentalized and folks like Snowden or Manning, for that matter, have only access to a big volume of relatively uninteresting information.  The real "hot" stuff is handled much higher up in the hierarchy, in very separate branches, in highly compartmentalized teams where "need to know" is the key and where regular security clearances mean nothing.  This is why Wikileaks did not contain any really highly classified information.

Now, if Snowden had been a Russian agent, and if he had been deliberately executing intelligence collection requests for them, he could have done a lot.  But in that case he never would have defected or gone public.  The fact is that Snowden never was a Russian or Chinese "agent" and that he is not a spy at all, but a typical whistleblower.  While he never was allowed anywhere near the real world of deep secrecy of intelligence agencies, he did find out enough to be disgusted and he decided to go public.  Good for him!

But to say that he - or Manning - leaked any real secrets to the Russians, or anybody else, for that matter, is ridiculous.  The damage he - and Manning - did to the USA was purely a political one.  This is why neither the Chinese nor the Russians have shown any big interest in him or what he knows.

The Saker