Pence Prepares for the Presidency

© Eric Gay/AP Vice President Pence (center right) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (center in wheel chair) help move debris during a visit to an area hit by Hurricane Harvey in Rockport, Tex., on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2017. He hugged victims of Hurricane Harvey and comforted those with tears in their eyes. He prayed and posed for photos, at one point blaring his message of support into a bullhorn. And he donned durable blue gloves and cleared brush, working up a sweat as he dragged debris away from a damaged white mobile home.

Put another way, he did what many other presidents have done in the face of disaster. But the blue jeans-clad man who spent Thursday communing with victims of the 1-in-1,000-year flood event in Southeast Texas was Vice President Pence — not President Trump.The images of Pence’s trip to Texas on Thursday offered a striking contrast between Trump — who came under bipartisan criticism for initially failing to seem to empathize with those affected by the devastating storm — and his No. 2, who spent the week performing relief duties. White House officials said the president and the vice president were merely working in tandem to coordinate the federal government’s response to Harvey, magnifying their efforts through complementary skill sets. Trump, after all, visited Texas on Tuesday — though he steered clear of flood areas or victims — and plans another trip to the Gulf Coast on Saturday. Trump also took several moments Wednesday to address “the deeply tragic situation in Texas and Louisiana” before a scheduled speech on taxes in Missouri.
But Harvey put an uncomfortable spotlight yet again on Pence, underscoring the delicate balance the vice president must manage in supporting and complementing the president — while never overshadowing him.
In many ways, Pence’s handling of Harvey — from his visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency Monday to the slew of local radio interviews he did — would be routine but for the president he serves, a man whose own instinct for public displays of compassion are often unconventional. During Trump’s visit to southeastern Texas on Tuesday, he managed to place himself squarely in the eye of the storm, at one point convening an impromptu if brief political rally. (“What a crowd! What a turnout!” he enthused).
Pence, said Ron Klain, a chief of staff to both former vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, “is doing normal stuff in an abnormal situation.”
“A lot of this other stuff is kind of de rigueur for a vice president, but when you have the president behaving oddly, as he did the other day in Texas, there is an interesting role for the vice president,” Klain said. “If both the president and the vice president console victims, if both are busy speaking out about the loss, if both are busy doing the things that are normal in this situation, then what the vice president is doing is just additive to the situation. What’s striking here is that what the vice president is doing is in some ways substituting for what the president is doing, and that’s what makes it more in the spotlight.”
White House officials said every relief action Pence took this week was part of a methodical, coordinated effort between his and Trump’s teams, with a particular emphasis on communication — one of the most important roles they think the administration can perform during a natural disaster. Trump’s initial Texas trip was intentionally focused on coordinating federal, state and local response, while Pence’s visit two days later offered more latitude to focus on the survivors who are just beginning to rebuild their lives, officials said.
“It is important to over-communicate in a natural disaster to get your message out, and the president deployed the vice president and his whole team to communicate directly to the people in the path of the storm throughout the week,” said Jarrod Agen, Pence’s deputy chief of staff. “That’s leadership and smart management, and that’s what the president provided and directed.”
The president, one senior White House official said, was eager to head to Texas on Tuesday to clearly convey his support for those suffering but was conscious of not wanting to interfere with search-and-rescue efforts or divert resources. His trip on Saturday, the official added, will allow him to personally connect with those affected by the storm.
The two men have been speaking “multiple times” a day, aides to both said, and their teams have been working in lockstep to coordinate the administration’s response. Pence’s speechwriter, for example, checked in with the president’s aides before Pence delivered a speech Wednesday in West Virginia, to better amplify Trump’s message.
“As someone who works closely with both of them, and has witnessed their round-the-clock attention to this crisis, you cannot put a piece of tissue paper between the president and the vice president on their leadership, their management and their messaging of the White House and federal government’s response to Harvey,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “Their messages are repetitive, not competitive.”
Scrutiny of his role has left Pence’s allies and aides exasperated at times, believing that the media hypes — and overanalyzes — just about everything he does. Early in the administration, Pence weathered a spate of articles about how he seemed to be in the dark on several issues, including a high-profile incident in which former national security adviser Michael Flynn misled the vice president about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Later, news reports said Pence was operating as more of a shadow president with Oval Office aspirations of his own.
Pence can’t, his aides argue, be simultaneously out of the loop and angling for the top job.
“I think the media is looking for a way to drive a wedge between the president and the vice president, and suggest that there are different approaches and different strategies that show division,” said Marc Short, the White House’s director of legislative affairs who previously was a longtime Pence aide. “Whereas I think the White House looks at it and says, ‘There are very complementary and different skill sets that each bring, and therefore it is better to utilize both.’ So the strategies are actually intentional and, in my mind, complementary and harmonious.”
Some of the images of Pence dealing with Harvey, however, raised eyebrows, including photos of him over the weekend in the Situation Room flanked by Cabinet officials while Trump video-conferenced into the meeting from Camp David.
Pence’s Twitter account also sent out — and then deleted — a photo of him seated behind a desk making calls to senators whose states were hardest hit. An aide said Pence was uncomfortable with the tweet because he preferred the focus to be on first responders and heroic Texans, not himself.
In Texas on Thursday, Pence — a loyal-almost-to-the-point-of-obsequious soldier — was careful to repeatedly invoke Trump, including during a news conference at the end of his visit. He made clear he was simply bringing tidings of support and gratitude from the president.
Arriving in Rockport, Tex., Pence told the gathered crowd he had called Trump from Air Force Two.
“Just tell them we love Texas,” Pence said Trump told him to convey.
At that, a woman in the crowd returned attention back to where Pence is most comfortable — away from himself and squarely on his boss: “We love Trump!” she cried.

Even Russia Fears Trump’s Sanity

The Pew Research Center released Tuesday the results of a nationwide survey of people’s views toward Trump’s conduct and handling of his role as president, finding that 58 percent of respondents “don’t like” the way the Republican leader has carried himself in office. The same percentage lack confidence in his ability to wield the world’s second largest nuclear weapons arsenal, especially as Trump garners controversy over his responses to nuclear-armed North Korea’s continued defiance of U.S. attempts to disarm the reclusive, Communist state.
“Majorities say they are not too confident or not at all confident in him on each of these issues (58 percent on nuclear weapons, 59 percent on immigration), including more than four-in-10 who say they are not at all confident in him on these issues,” a report accompanying the survey results read.
In this handout photo released by the South Korean Defense Ministry, a U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer nuclear-capable bomber (left) drops a bomb during a South Korea–U.S. joint live-fire drill in South Korea, on July 8. President Donald Trump’s “fire and fury” threats to use military force to disarm nuclear-armed North Korea have added to anxieties in the U.S. that the Republican leader’s unpredictable demeanor could lead to disaster. South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images
After initially boosting U.S. military presence to pressure North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in April, Trump has adopted an increasingly hardline stance against the ninth nuclear weapons power. Evading Trump’s red line on a sixth North Korean nuclear weapons test, Kim instead opted to test his country’s first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in July, and a second one later that month. Arguably even more significant than another nuclear test, the successful ICBM launch put the U.S. within range of North Korea for the first time ever.
In response, Trump threatened “fire and fury” against North Korea and has made deeply disputed claims about the U.S. military’s capabilities. He said he had improved the country’s nuclear arsenal since taking office in January and later that U.S. missiles were “locked and loaded” in preparation to attack North Korea.
Earlier this month, nuclear experts shared pictures of themselves chugging wine in concern over the president’s heated words and the consequences they might have. Trump has previously called for an increase in nuclear arms, reversing a decades-long trend of reducing weapons of mass destruction among the world’s leading powers.
Faith in Trump’s ability to handle decisions in regard to nuclear weapons was divided by ideology. Some 77 percent of Republicans expressed trust in the president, compared to only 11 percent of Democrats. Republicans were less confident in Trump’s nuclear weapons policy than they were in his ability to negotiate favorable trade agreements with other countries (86 percent), make good appointments to the federal courts (83 percent) and make wise decisions about immigration policy (80 percent).
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President Donald Trump said in a February 23 Reuters interview that he wants to ensure the U.S. nuclear arsenal is at the “top of the pack,” saying the U.S. has fallen behind in its weapons capacity. Federation of American Scientists/Stockholm International Peace Research Institute/U.S. Department of Energy/U.S. Government Accountability Office/U.S. Department of Defense/U.S. Air Force/Congressional Research Service/Reuters
Trump’s willingness to flex his nuclear muscles and recent testing of the B61-12 high-precision nuclear bombs have also got the world’s foremost nuclear weapons power concerned. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the U.S.’s latest, most accurate nuclear bombs could make Trump more likely to use them.
“The advantage of the new modification of the B61-12, according to U.S. military experts themselves lies in the fact that it will be, as they put it, ‘more ethical’ and ‘more usable,’” Mikhail Ulyanov, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Nonproliferation and Weapons Control Department, told the state-run Tass Russian News Agency.
“From this we can conclude that the clearing of such bombs for service could objectively lead to lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear arms,” he added. “This, we can imagine, is the main negative impact of the ongoing modernization.”

Most Americans have little or no confidence in Trump in dealing with nuclear weapons, immigration

The Iranian Korean Nuclear Axis

The North Korean Axis of Middle East Proliferation
by Matthew RJ Brodsky
August 31, 2017 12:26 P
Last week, Reuters revealed the existence of a confidential U.N. report claiming that two North Korean shipments bound for the government agency in charge of Syria’s chemical weapons were intercepted in the past six months.
Put in its proper context, the news of the shipments, both of which violated existing international sanctions, is further evidence of North Korea’s nefarious role in spreading weapons of mass destruction and missile technology to other rogue regimes across the globe. The U.N. report highlights the extent to which North Korea has been a principal strategic partner to Iran and Syria for decades. Understood correctly, it should have major implications not only for how the U.S. handles the saber-rattling regime of Kim Jong-un but for how the Trump administration chooses to approach Iran today.
Pulling a single thread reveals the tangled web of relations between Pyongyang, Tehran, and Damascus. Take, for instance, the 2007 Israeli raid that destroyed Syria’s covert nuclear reactor. North Korean scientists provided the technology and material for that reactor, which, according to former CIA director Michael Hayden, was “an exact copy” of a North Korean reactor. “The Koreans were the only ones to build these reactors since they purloined the designs from the British in the 1960s,” Hayden recalled. Ten North Koreans who “had been helping with the construction” of the Syrian reactor were killed in the Israeli strike, according to media reports at the time.
In 1991, then-Syrian president Hafez al-Assad made a military-acquisition alliance with North Korea, which allowed him to purchase missiles from the North, and gave him access to the expertise needed to produce more-advanced weapons domestically. North Korea also helped the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center construct a missile complex in Aleppo used for fitting chemical weapons on Scud missiles in the early 1990s. A quarter century later, it turns out the two recently intercepted North Korean shipments were headed for the same Syrian agency.
The timing is suspect as well. The U.N. report specifically addressed shipments intercepted in the last six months. The Assad regime only retook Aleppo from the rebels in December 2016. It doesn’t take an expert, then, to guess at the likely contents of the shipments.
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the two states signed a “scientific cooperation” agreement. The year was 2002 — the same year that the existence of Iran’s own plutonium reactor in Arak was publically exposed. Tehran appeared to understand the benefits of redundancy; it was an insurance policy if something should befall its own burgeoning nuclear program. That helps to explain why Iran financed the North Korean nuclear venture in Syria to the tune of $1 billion. It was only then, in 2002, that the construction of Assad’s al-Kibar plutonium reactor began in earnest.
Although Israel destroyed the site five years later, denying Iran the dividends from their investment, they were impressed by the cooperative agreement reached between the Kim and Assad regimes in 2002. The result was a duplicated and expanded science-and-technology deal inked between Iran and North Korea a decade later.
The North Korean Nexus with Iran
Of course, the bilateral collaboration between Pyongyang and Tehran predates that 2012 agreement. For example, WikiLeaks exposed a February 2010 diplomatic cable from confirming Iran’s purchase of 19 advanced ballistic missiles from North Korea — missiles that put Western European capitals within Tehran’s reach.
The watershed year between the two states came in 2012, as President Obama was concluding his disastrous nuclear deal with Tehran.
Just as Iran’s Shahab-2 missile is modeled on North Korea’s Hwasoong-6, Iran’s Shahab-3 missile also matches North Korea’s Nodong. That shouldn’t be too surprising, considering that Iranian scientists and military officers frequently attend North Korean test launches of long-range ballistic missiles and have maintained a presence at North Korean nuclear-test sites for at least the last decade. It’s only natural that such curiosity would run both ways, too: From the 1990s onward, dozens of North Korean scientists and technicians are also known to have worked inside Iran.
The watershed year between the two states came in 2012, as President Obama was concluding his disastrous nuclear deal with Tehran. According to detailed analysis published in February by Israel’s BESA Center, since reaching their cooperation agreement, North Korea and Iran have been working on “miniaturizing a nuclear implosion device in order to fit its dimensions and weight to the specifications of the Shahab-3 re-entry vehicle.” The authors of that analysis went on to conclude that, “the nuclear and ballistic interfaces between the two countries” are “long-lasting, unique, and intriguing,” and that North Korea is ready and able to clandestinely assist Iran in circumventing the nuclear deal, while Iran is likely helping North Korea upgrade its own strategic capacities.
The Parchin Connection
It should set off alarm bells that North Korea and Iran have been working together to overcome some of the remaining challenges that prevent Pyongyang from targeting the U.S. homeland with nuclear warheads — namely, the warhead-miniaturization process and the perfection of its long-range ballistic missiles. But it should set off sirens that some of that work has been carried out at Parchin, the Iranian facility that Tehran insists is a military site and keeps off limits to international inspections.
Parchin should be familiar. When Obama administration officials were cooking up their nuclear deal with Iran, they repeatedly promised that critically important “anytime, anywhere” inspections would have to be part of the agreement. What happened instead was that they folded like a tablecloth, as they did on every declared red-line issue crucial to verifying Iran’s past nuclear-related military activity.
In 2015, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei personally and repeatedly rejected any access to what he called military sites, including Parchin. So Team Obama came up with a secret side agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which would allow Iran to inspect its own site and provide its own soil samples.
Anyone could have guessed what would happen next.
In 2015, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei personally and repeatedly rejected any access to what he called military sites, including Parchin.
“Despite years of Iran sanitizing the site and the Iranians taking their own environmental samples, the IAEA nonetheless detected the presence of anthropogenically-processed (‘man-made’) particles of natural uranium,” reads a new report released by the Institute for Science and International Security.
After years of Iranian denials and attempts to block access to the site, it turns out “substantial evidence exists that Iran conducted secret nuclear weapons development activities at Parchin,” including “the presence of uranium particles” and “a variety of other evidence of work related to nuclear weapons,” the report claims. It goes on to note the many suspicious site alterations that Iran made after the IAEA requested access in 2012 — which, again, is when Iran and North Korea signed their science-and-technology cooperation agreement.
It is also worth mentioning that in November 2012, the IAEA reported that Iran completed the installation of some 2,800 centrifuges at its Fordow uranium-enrichment facility, which was built and buried deep inside a mountain near the city of Qom. That report also noted that Iran installed more centrifuges at its fortified, underground fuel-enrichment plant in Natanz. Both facilities were producing uranium enriched up to 20 percent — a level useful only in the production of nuclear weapons.
Add it all up, and it becomes clear that because of Mr. Obama’s nuclear deal, the U.S. and the IAEA don’t know the scope of Iran’s past nuclear activities at precisely the moment when that knowledge is critical. The same lack of access afforded by the deal also prevents the U.S. from grasping the range of North Korea’s nuclear efforts, specifically experiments relevant to the detonation of a warhead that took place at Parchin. And the kicker is that a growing chorus of analysts today is calling for the Trump administration to negotiate a similar agreement with Kim Jong-un. Let that sink in for a moment.
An Evolving Axis
Fifteen years ago, many scratched their heads at President George W. Bush’s inclusion of North Korea alongside Iraq and Iran in what he described as “an axis of evil.” Few recall that North Korea was actually the first of the three countries he listed in his 2002 State of the Union address, followed by Iran. It’s quite clear now that the third state on that list should have been Syria rather than Iraq. After all, according to Hayden, by 2001 the CIA was gathering “scattered, unverified and ambiguous information” regarding nuclear ties between Syria and North Korea. Even if the literal picture presented by Israel didn’t become clear until a few years later, by 2002 the two had signed their scientific-cooperation agreement and Iran’s plutonium reactor had become public. The writing was on the wall.
The recent sanctions-busting North Korean shipments to Iran highlight how dangerous it is to seal a structurally defective nuclear deal with a rogue state while leaving other distressing aspects of that state’s behavior untouched. They should make it abundantly clear that we must seriously address this blooming axis of proliferation, because any bilateral agreement with one of its members can be easily undone by another.

The Canadian Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7:7)

Dolgert: Here’s why Canada should get nuclear weapons

STEFAN DOLGER

Published on: August 29, 2017 | Last Updated: August 29, 2017 9:21 AM EDT

Dozens of protesters staged a demonstration at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to mark the 72nd anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Justin Sullivan, Getty Images JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,
Please consider inaugurating a nuclear armament program. Please begin this process now.
I never imagined writing something like this. American by birth, but now also a Canadian citizen, I’ve always regarded the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a stain on my birth nation’s honour. But the time has come to face reality, and the foreign minister’s June speech reasserting Canadian sovereignty is only the beginning of the reckoning.
We are in many ways living through a replay of the 1930s: a world struggling in the wake of economic cataclysm, fascists rising across Europe and an authoritarian in power (this time in the United States) cultivates support from the radical right.
Tyranny is on the march, and there is no clear end-point in sight. We can no longer assume that our country’s safety is assured, and even proposals for anti-missile defence don’t go far enough because they assume a democratic U.S. – the very thing that is now in question.
Alarmist? Maybe. But the consequences of a misstep now — the 21st-century equivalent of 1933, the year of Hitler’s ascendance — are dire, and we can’t regain later the time that we lose now. Nuclear programs take time to initiate, and in order to be prepared for our version of 1939 (the start of the Second World War), we cannot allow these to be “the locust years,” as Winston Churchill described the time wasted between 1933 and 1939.
So this is 1933. Start the countdown.
America is on a quest to demonize Muslims, round up Mexican immigrants, restrict trade, break up NATO and help Vladimir Putin divvy up the world. If you want to understand Donald Trump’s foreign policy, think “Mafia Protection Racket.” Just change the little shop-owners, forced to pay up, into little nations across the globe.
Canada is a small shopkeeper not so well-positioned to resist this new racket.
To understand what it’s like being beside a bully in today’s world, look at Ukraine. Perhaps the greatest mistake that country made after the breakup of the USSR was to get rid of its nuclear weapons. The consequences? Russia seizes Crimea and effectively invades eastern Ukraine by arming Russian secessionists there. This could also happen to Latvia and the Baltic states.
Could it happen here? For more than a century, Canadian policy could assume that, while the U.S. might be an 800-lbs gorilla on our doorstep, at least the gorilla played by the rules. But Trump has said the old rules won’t apply, and his selection of white nationalists and conspiracy theorists to powerful roles in his administration indicates he is not kidding.
Most troublingly, recent Congressional Republican capitulation on “L’Affaire Russe” shows us that the famed “checks and balances” of the U.S. Constitution mean little, and that the path to American authoritarianism is wide open.
To plan for the day when the U.S. is more like Putin’s aggressive bear, Canada must be able to protect itself without anyone’s assistance. A conventional military buildup is nonsensical, given the size disparity between the U.S., Russia, and ourselves.
But as Israel, Pakistan and North Korea have shown, nuclear arms are a pragmatic deterrent for small nations adjacent to populous neighbours of uncertain motives.
Yes, this might provoke the ire of Trump or Putin, and hasten the conflict it means to stave off. That risk must be carefully weighed. But what do you think Ukraine would do, given the chance to go back and keep its nukes?
Was Ukrainian disarmament rewarded with Russian pacifism? Who, other than Putin, is Trump’s model for strong leadership? And, speaking of Putin, who is looking to contest Canada’s future Arctic claims? If you think Trump will support us against Russia’s coming provocations, think again.
Rather than trigger a crisis, I expect this strategy would preserve the peace, by forcing potential aggressors to acknowledge a far more potent Canadian response.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that America is our enemy. Canada just needs to prepare to ensure its own security in an uncertain world, which requires having the resources to face any potential future conflict.
Starting a nuclear program is not easy. It takes time and research to determine the most practical options for Canada. It will also require withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a step with major ramifications that requires careful consideration.
Importantly, however, we should not think that such a program would be inherently “un-Canadian.” For two decades, during the Cold War, we had up to 450 nuclear warheads permanently stationed on Canadian bases (though these were not under exclusive Canadian control). We need to trust in ourselves even more now, and stop relying on others to protect us.
Maybe I’m being alarmist. Maybe. But at what point does alarmism become prudence? Not when an aggressor makes the first overt threats – by then it’s too late. If 1933 (i.e. now) is too soon, then when? At some point we must be ready to start the discussion about protecting ourselves, and three years’ grace is about the best we can hope for.
After that we have to rely on the United Kingdom or United States to bail us out … Oh, wait.
Stefan Dolgert is an associate professor in the department of Political Science at Brock University in St. Catharines, and can be found on Twitter @PosthumanProf.

North Korea preparing for sixth nuclear test

North Korea may be preparing for sixth nuclear weapon test, South Korea says
Melissa Quinn
South Korean officials are warning that North Korea may be preparing for a sixth nuclear weapon test, according to a report.
During a parliamentary session, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told South Korean lawmakers it picked up signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct another nuclear test at its Punggye-ri underground test site, CNN reported Monday.
Pyongyang last held a nuclear test in September, when the rogue regime detonated what it said was a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on a missile. Analysts, though, said it is almost impossible to verify North Korea’s claim.
Kim Byung-kee, a member of South Korea’s Democratic Party, said the South Korean intelligence agency reported that North Korea “has completed its preparation to carry out a nuclear test at Tunnel 2 and Tunnel 3 of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.”
The lawmaker added that the National Intelligence Service also detected activity indicating Tunnel 4 was being prepared for additional construction work. Work on the tunnel was stopped last year.
North Korean officials told CNN the U.S. could be punished for going forward with its U.S.-South Korea military exercises, which are taking place on the Korean Peninsula.
Pyongyang said the exercises, which are conducted annually and began Aug. 21, come at the “worst possible moment.”
The North Korean officials said “the Americans would be wholly responsible” if there was an escalation with “catastrophic consequences.”
While North Korea prepares for its sixth nuclear weapons test, the rogue regime has continued to test missiles, with the most recent test occurring Saturday.

The French Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7:7)

France’s Nuclear Arsenal Could Kill Millions of People in Minutes
Kyle Mizokami
France was the fourth country to join the so-called “Nuclear Club,” and at the height of the Cold War maintained its own nuclear triad of land-based missiles, nuclear-armed bombers and ballistic missile submarines. Today, France’s sea-based nuclear deterrent is the home of most of its nuclear arsenal, with four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, of French design and construction, providing constant assurance against surprise nuclear attack.
France’s nuclear weapons arsenal began in earnest on February 13th, 1960, with the country’s first nuclear weapons test. The test, code-named “Gerboise Bleue” (Blue Desert Rat) confirmed that France had the know-how to build its own weapons. It also confirmed that France had the nuclear know-how to part ways with the United States and NATO and chart its own course versus the Soviet Union.
France began working on its own naval nuclear propulsion program in 1955, under what was known as Project Coelacanth. The first effort to build a nuclear-powered submarine, Q.244, was to be the first of five nuclear ballistic missile submarines. The effort to develop Q.244 was a failure, due to the inability of nuclear engineers to sufficiently miniaturize the reactor, and the submarine was cancelled in 1959. A subsequent project to develop a land-based reactor, PAT 1, was a success and led to development of Q.252, which became the submarine Le Redoutable.
At the same time, France’s defense industry was working diligently to produce a submarine-launched ballistic missile. The result was the M1 MSBS, or Mer-Sol Balistique Stratégique (Sea-Ground Strategic Ballistic Missile). The M1 was a two stage rocket with a 500 kiloton warhead and a range of 1,553 miles. This was sufficient range for a French ballistic missile submarine in the Bay of Biscay to strike Moscow.
France’s first generation missile submarines, the five submarines of the Le Redoutable class and the single L’Inflexible submarine, were all built at the Cherbourg shipyards and completed between 1971 and 1980. The cancellation of Q.244 may have been fortuitous, as it allowed the United States to make pioneer engineering decision in nuclear ballistic submarine design, something also seen in the Soviet Union’s first generation Yankee-class ballistic missile submarine. The overall layout of the Redoutable class was very similar to the U.S. Navy’s second generation Lafayette-class ballistic missile submarines, with fin-mounted hydroplanes and sixteen missile silos in two rows of eight directly behind the fin.
The first two submarines, Le Redoutable and Le Terrible, carried the M-1 missile, while the third, Le Foudroyant, carried the improved M-2 missile with a longer 1,841 mile range. The next two submarines, L’Indomptable and Le Tonnant had a mix of M-2 missiles and the new M-20, which had the same range but a gigantic 1 megaton thermonuclear warhead. The last submarine, L’Inflexible, carried missiles of a completely new design. Designated M4, the missiles had a 2,474 mile range, allowing them to strike as far east as Kazan.
At the height of France’s nuclear weapons arsenal, 87 percent of France’s nuclear arsenal was in submarines. France’s nuclear submarine fleet, the Force Océanique Stratégique (FOST), was based at Ile Longue in Brest, and FOST submarines were sent on two month patrols off the coast of France and Portugal. Three submarines were to be at sea at any one time, with a fourth also ready to go to sea.
Starting in the mid 1980s, all submarines except for Le Terrible were outfitted with improved M-4A and then M-4B missiles with ranges of up to 3,720 miles and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, allowing each missile to carry six 150 kiloton warheads. The MIRVing of the M4 increased the firepower of each submarine sixfold.
In addition to their nuclear firepower, the Redoutable class submarines had four 533-millimeter torpedo tubes for self-defense, capable of launching the L5 Mod. 3 anti-submarine torpedo and the F 17 dual-purpose torpedo. They could also launch the SM 39 Exocet anti-ship cruise missile, but the primary mission of ballistic missile submarines is always to avoid detection until their nuclear missiles are needed.

North Korea Fires More Nuclear Missiles

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Saturday that that the projectiles were fired from an area from the North’s eastern coast and flew about 250 kilometers (155 miles).

The JCS says the South Korea and U.S. militaries were analyzing the launch.
The launch comes weeks after North Korea created a tense standoff with the United States by threatening to lob some of its missiles toward Guam.
North Korea also successfully flight-tested a pair of intercontinental ballistic missiles in July that analysts say could reach deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected

South Korea and the Nuclear War (Daniel 8:8)

South Koreans want their own nuclear weapons but doing so risks triggering a wider war

Jeff Daniels | @jeffdanielsca
Published 9:37 AM ET Thu, 24 Aug 2017
A man walks past a television screen showing file footage of a North Korean missile launch, at a railway station in Seoul on April 5, 2017.
Jung Yeon-Je | AFP | Getty Images
North Korea has nuclear weapons — and a majority of South Koreans support getting them too, but the consequences of doing so could be far reaching.
U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons in South Korea were removed in 1991, but since then North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests and achieved alarming success in its ballistic missile program. Based on reports, the North has the capability to produce several dozen nuclear bombs.
“It’s not really a good solution for a country like South Korea to remain non-nuclear when its neighbors are becoming nuclear and becoming quite aggressive,” said Anders Corr, a former government analyst and principal at consulting firm Corr Analytics.
Polling done by Gallup Korea has shown nearly 60 percent of South Koreans would support nuclear armament, according to Yonhap news agency. The largest support is found among residents age 60 and above.
Some suggest that the opinion surveys reflect the anxiety level of some South Korean residents about what the true aims are of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, an unpredictable and brutal leader known for taking risks. The 33-year-old dictator has become more forceful in threats and stepped up the regime’s missile testing program even as the communist country struggles against increasing sanctions.
“Given the situation we’re now facing a nuclear-armed North Korea, maybe it is time for the United States to really take a look at this option,” said In-Bum Chun, a retired lieutenant general in the Republic of Korea Army and now is a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Reintroducing tactical US nukes
“We’ve been saying that ‘all options are on the table,’ and maybe we should take a look at this in more detail,” the general said. “Maybe the United States might think that this is another situation where Korea having nuclear weapons, or reintroducing tactical U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea becomes an option.”
However, the retired South Korean military officer said that any discussion about Seoul getting its own nuclear weapons arsenal should first be done in Washington and should be started if it hasn’t already. Also, he said the assumption must be that if the North Koreans were to get rid of their nuclear weapons, so would the South Koreans (if they had them).
“The goal is denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Chun said. “There is still hope for sanctions and other means to persuade North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons. So we need more time on this.”
The U.S. currently protects the security of South Korea with nuclear weapons that can be delivered via bombers and submarines. Some have suggested that with South Korea having its own nukes it could perhaps respond faster than the U.S.
In recent months, the U.S. has demonstrated its capability to strike the North by flying B-1B Lancer bombers over the Korean Peninsula.
“The U.S. could back South Korea up with nuclear weapons but that could be a very dangerous proposition, especially if China (its closest ally) were in the war,” said Corr, who has experience in military intelligence.
North Korea orders more ICBMs
On Wednesday, North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency said its leader had ordered more intercontinental ballistic missiles. The regime test-fired two ICBMs last month, and data from the July 28 launch of a Hwasong-14 missile showed the weapon can reach half, if not most, of the continental U.S.
China’s semiofficial Global Times newspaper said in an op-ed this week that Pyongyang’s ongoing nuclear and missile programs “posed security threats to the Asia-Pacific region. However, a hard-line attitude or military strikes against Pyongyang would only provoke the country to take retaliatory measures.”
If South Korea were to arm itself with nuclear weapons, China would likely protest and probably take the matter to the United Nations as a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which South Korea is a signatory but not North Korea.
Yet there also are concerns South Korea getting its own nukes could trigger a wider U.S.-China war because if Seoul were to use the weapons against North Korea, the regime’s longtime ally Beijing might respond with an attack of its own that might include targeting U.S. military bases in South Korea or the Asia-Pacific region.
Perhaps a hint of Beijing’s anger is its economic boycott against South Korea for allowing the deployment of the U.S.-supplied THAAD anti-missile shield, which China claims allows the U.S. and South Korea to look deep into China to monitor military activities.
“I think South Korea acquiring nuclear weapons is possible, but unlikely,” said James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Seoul could face sanctions
Acton said it’s understandable there’s uneasiness from South Koreans watching their neighbor to the north develop nuclear weapons, but added that there’s still not been a serious debate about the costs of acquiring nuclear weapons. “If there was a very serious discussion of the costs, I think you would find much less support for nuclear weapons,” he said.
For instance, Acton said if South Korea were to arm itself with nuclear weapons it would a violation of the country’s international commitments, which means Seoul “would be very likely to have serious sanctions imposed on it.” Also, he said the U.S. might decide to no longer offer its own security commitments to South Korea.
“The costs to South Korea of acquiring nuclear weapons are actually very, very high,” said Acton. “For South Korea, a country that’s become successful through international trade and engagement, the sanctions would be incredibly painful and damaging.”
Back in the 1970s, South Korean President Park Chung-hee secretly began a nuclear weapons development program. Once the U.S. learned about it, the U.S. pressured Seoul to halt the program. As was the case then, it remains U.S. policy to oppose the spread of nuclear explosives in the region.
At the same time, another option is the U.S. could redeploy tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea. But doing so would violate the 1992 Seoul-Pyongyang joint agreement on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang violated its end of the agreement in 2006 when it exploded its first nuclear device under Kim Jong Il, father of the regime’s current young leader.
Also, bringing back tactical weapons to South Korea could make the U.S. perhaps an even bigger target of North Korea and its communist neighbor, China. Pyongyang recently threatened to lob ballistic missiles toward U.S. military bases on the Pacific territory of Guam, which hosts the Air Force’s B-1B bombers and a Navy submarine base.
Reliability of security guarantees
“For as long as U.S. security guarantees are reliable, I don’t think South Korea has any need at this time for nuclear weapons,” said Acton. “The U.S. has pledged to defend South Korea, including if necessary with the use of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”
That said, South Korea has “serious concerns about the reliability of those guarantees under President Donald Trump,” Acton said. He said Trump has done “a lot to disrupt the U.S.-South Korean relationship — and I think it’s very important that the disruption stop.”
Experts say the areas where Washington has strained the alliance include Trump’s threat to terminate a “horrible” trade deal with South Korea as well as suggestions in April by the president that Seoul should pay $1 billion for the THAAD (or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) anti-missile defense system.
Also, Trump suggested on the presidential campaign trail that South Korea should pay more money for its own defense, even suggesting that if it doesn’t he would be prepared to yank the roughly 28,000 U.S. forces stationed on the peninsula. And after he took office some allies became nervous since Trump was seen as slow to support NATO’s Article 5, the collective defense clause of the alliance.
“Donald Trump’s statements about allies needing to pay their fair share and his hesitation about whether the United States would back up NATO’s Article 5 commitment … has all given people in South Korea greater anxiety about the American military commitment to help protect South Korea,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy group
According to Kimball, the introduction of nuclear weapons into South Korea, either by the U.S. or by South Korea pursuing its own indigenous nuclear program, would have far more negative consequences than some people might otherwise think.
“It would further solidify North Korea’s commitment to keep its own nuclear weapons and initiate an arms race in East Asia involving China and South Korea that would not be necessarily stable,” said Kimball. “The allure of South Korean nuclear weapons on the superficial level is understandable, but you look at the consequences and they would cause much greater insecurity for South Korea than they would provide security.”

Korea is not a Shia Horn (Daniel 8:8)

Tillerson Suggests North Korea May Soon Be Ready for Talks

Gardiner Harris and Eileen Sullivan

A military parade celebrating the 105th birthday of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, in Pyongyang in April. Wong Maye-E/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In some of the most conciliatory remarks to North Korea made by the Trump administration, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson complimented the government in Pyongyang for going more than two weeks without shooting any missiles or blowing up any nuclear bombs.

“I’m pleased to see that the regime in Pyongyang has certainly demonstrated some level of restraint,” Mr. Tillerson said, suggesting that the brief pause in testing may be enough to meet the administration’s preconditions for talks.

“We hope that this is the beginning of the signal we’ve been looking for,” he said, adding that “perhaps we’re seeing our pathway to sometime in the near future of having some dialogue. We need to see more on their part. But I want to acknowledge the steps they’ve taken so far.”

That was the carrot. As for the stick, the Trump administration announced new sanctions against China and Russia on Tuesday as part of its campaign to pressure North Korea to stop its development of nuclear weapons and missiles.

The two moves are part of the Trump administration’s dual-track strategy for taming the nuclear threat from North Korea — ratcheting up economic pressure on the government through sanctions while simultaneously offering a diplomatic pathway to peace.

That second approach has gradually softened in recent months. In his first trip to Seoul, South Korea, in March, Mr. Tillerson appeared to make North Korea’s surrender of nuclear weapons a prerequisite for talks. At that time, he said that negotiations could “only be achieved by denuclearizing, giving up their weapons of mass destruction,” and that “only then will we be prepared to engage them in talks.”

In recent months, he has suggested that Pyongyang only had to demonstrate that it was serious about a new path before talks could begin, suggesting that a significant pause in the country’s provocative activities would be enough. And three weeks ago, he went out of his way to assure the North’s leaders “the security they seek.”

Then , a little more than two weeks ago, the United Nations Security Council passed its toughest sanctions yet against North Korea. And the next day, Mr. Tillerson met with his counterparts in South Korea and China in an effort to increase pressure on Pyongyang.

The United Nations sanctions were already starting to have an impact curtailing trade in China and infuriating Chinese seafood importers, who had to return goods to North Korea.

Mr. Tillerson’s remarks Tuesday were particularly noteworthy because they were made in a news conference that was otherwise devoted to discussing the Trump administration’s new approach to the war in Afghanistan.

There is fierce debate in the administration over what course to take with North Korea — and whether a combination of diplomatic outreach and military threats would change North Korea’s current direction. Tension between the United States and North Korea has escalated over North Korea’s recent missile tests. Most intelligence assessments have concluded that the North has no incentive to begin negotiations until it demonstrates, even more conclusively than it has in recent weeks, that its nuclear weapon could reach the United States mainland.

But Mr. Tillerson’s diplomatic outreach has been repeatedly undercut by President Trump’s bellicose rhetoric, including a threat to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangered the United States.

The new sanctions issued by the Treasury Department affect six individuals and 10 organizations with financial ties to Pyongyang’s weapons program. They represent a gradual increase in pressure on China, which has long frustrated the United States for economically supporting the regime in Pyongyang. Some 90 percent of North Korea’s trade is with China.

“It is unacceptable for individuals and companies in China, Russia and elsewhere to enable North Korea to generate income used to develop weapons of mass destruction and destabilize the region,” Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in a statement on Tuesday.

In June, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank, a Chinese company and two Chinese citizens to crack down on the financing of North Korea’s weapons program, the first set of secondary sanctions against North Korea that directly targeted Chinese intermediaries.

“I think it’s a significant action by the Trump administration,” Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit group in Washington, said of the new round of sanctions.

Tuesday’s actions appeared to be part of a larger campaign to pressure individuals, businesses and countries with financial ties to North Korea, said Mr. Ruggiero, a former official in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes at the Treasury. “It looks like the beginnings of a broad pressure campaign,” Mr. Ruggiero said.

Among the Chinese companies sanctioned on Tuesday is Mingzheng International Trading Limited, considered by the Treasury Department to be a “front company” for North Korea’s state-run Foreign Trade Bank, which has been subject to American sanctions since 2013.

In June, United States prosecutors accused Mingzheng of laundering money for North Korea and announced that the Justice Department would seek $1.9 million in civil penalties.

The new United States sanctions address how other nations tolerate North Korea’s behavior, particularly China, said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

“These sanctions expand the U.S. blacklist for companies tied to North Korea’s economic activity and are designed to curb the hard currency available to Pyongyang,” Ms. Rosenberg said in an email. “I think we should expect more sanctions of this nature, including more designations to highlight the role of China to enable North Korea’s illicit aims.”

Expect the Nuclear Fire of Revelation 15

Opinion: The age of nuclear deterrence is over

By Joschka Fischer

Published: Aug 23, 2017 4:50 p.m. ET

BERLIN (Project Syndicate) — As someone who was born in 1948, the risk of a nuclear World War III was a very real part of my childhood. That threat — or at least the threat of East and West Germany both being completely destroyed — persisted until the end of Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Since then, the risk of nuclear-armed superpowers triggering Armageddon has been substantially reduced, even if it has not disappeared entirely. Today, the bigger danger is that an increasing number of smaller countries ruled by unstable or dictatorial regimes will try to acquire nuclear weapons.

The situation in Asia today has the nuclear attributes of the 20th century and the national-power dynamics of the 19th century. That could prove to be a highly inflammatory cocktail.

By becoming a nuclear power, such regimes can ensure their own survival, promote their local or regional geopolitical interests, and even pursue an expansionist agenda.
In this new environment, the “rationality of deterrence” maintained by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War has eroded. Now, if nuclear proliferation increases, the threshold for using nuclear weapons will likely fall.
As the current situation in North Korea shows, the nuclearization of East Asia or the Persian Gulf could pose a direct threat to world peace.
Consider the recent rhetorical confrontation between North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump, in which Trump promised to respond with “fire and fury” to any further North Korean provocations. Clearly, Trump is not relying on the rationality of deterrence, as one would have expected from the leader of the last remaining superpower. Instead, he has given his emotions free rein.

This would be a major security challenge for any U.S. administration.
Ultimately, there are no good options for responding to the North Korean threat. A U.S.-led pre-emptive war on the Korean Peninsula, for example, could lead to a direct confrontation with China and the destruction of South Korea, and would have unforeseeable implications for Japan. And, because the China-South Korea-Japan triangle has become the new power center of the 21st century global economy, no country would be spared from the economic fallout.
Even if the U.S. continues to allude to the possibility of war, American military leaders know that the use of military force is not really a viable option, given its prohibitively high costs and risks.
When North Korea achieves nuclear-power status, the American security guarantee will no longer be airtight. A North Korea with nuclear weapons and the means to use them would add pressure on South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear capacity, which they could easily do. But that is the last thing that China wants.
The situation in Asia today has the nuclear attributes of the 20th century and the national-power dynamics of the 19th century. That could prove to be a highly inflammatory cocktail. And at the same time, the international system is becoming increasingly unstable, with political structures, institutions, and alliances around the world being upended or called into question.
Much will depend on what happens in the U.S. under Trump’s wayward presidency.
The investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia ahead of the 2016 presidential election, and the failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) have shown the administration to be unstable and ineffective. And agenda items such as tax cuts, the Mexican border wall, and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement — to say nothing of Trump’s own emotional outbursts — are fueling America’s radical right.
Instability within the U.S. is cause for global concern. If the U.S. can no longer be counted on to ensure world peace and stability, then no country can. We will be left with a leadership vacuum, and nowhere is this more dangerous than with respect to nuclear proliferation.
Another nuclear danger looms this fall. If the U.S. Congress imposes new sanctions on Iran, the nuclear agreement between that country and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany) could fail. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani publicly announced just last week that Iran could abandon the deal “within hours” in response to new sanctions.
In light of the North Korea crisis, it would be the height of irresponsibility to trigger a gratuitous nuclear crisis — and possibly a war — in the Middle East. And a return by the U.S. to a strategy of regime change in Iran would likely be self-defeating, because it would strengthen the country’s hardliners.
All of this would be taking place in a region that is already riven by crises and wars. And, because Russia, China, and the Europeans would stick to the nuclear deal, the U.S. would find itself alone and at odds with even its closest allies.
Today’s nuclear threats demand exactly the opposite of “fire and fury.” What is needed is level-headedness, rationality, and patient diplomacy that is not based on dangerous and fanciful threats of force. If the last superpower abandons these virtues, the world — all of us — will have to confront the consequences.
This article was published with permission of Project Syndicate — The New Nuclear Danger

Joschka Fischer was German foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998-2005. Fischer entered electoral politics after participating in the anti-establishment protests of the 1960s and 1970s, and played a key role in founding Germany’s Green Party, which he led for almost two decades.

Category: daniel 7:7