I’ve recently written articles for LewRockwell.com on the risk of a “hot” war between Russia and Washington (and I write “Washington” instead of America because I believe even the majority of ignorant Americans who only get information from Legacy Media cable news networks would be against any such war), but now I want to focus on the implications of America’s pulling out of the INF Treaty and Russia’s recent responses. In addition, although not a book review by any means, my writing will reference salient points made in Andrei Martyanov’s new book, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs and also recent posts from his blog, Reminiscence of the Future, since I would rather rely on observations and analyses made by an individual with great expertise and insight into actual Twenty-first century warfare as opposed to Western media pundits without the necessary credentials to be credible sources or analysts. About Mr. Martyanov himself, his publisher’s biography of him states:
ANDREI MARTYANOV is an expert on Russian military and naval issues. He was born in Baku, USSR in 1963. He graduated from the Kirov Naval Red Banner Academy and served as an officer on the ships and staff position of Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. He took part in the events in the Caucasus which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In [the] mid-1990s, he moved to the United States where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group. He is a frequent blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog.
From his Preface to the newly published book, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, Martyanov writes:
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Just recently a respectable, conservative, and to their greatest credit, anti-war publication, The American Conservative, unleashed a scathing, well-justified, criticism on warmongers and Iran hawks such as David Brooks and Bret Stephens, who write primarily for the New York Times. Both Brooks and Stephens, among very many similar others, fancy themselves pundits, analysts, columnists and commentators with a focus on geopolitics and international relations. No doubt, they analyze and comment on those issues and, as is the case with any humanities-educated pundits among leading American mainstream media personalities, they boast an impressive (for media figures) set of credentials in all kinds of disciplines related to media—from history, to political philosophy to journalism. What neither Brooks nor Stephens, as well as the vast majority of [the] American political class, have as credentials is even an infinitesimally small background in the subjects on which all of them are trying to comment, analyze and (for those in position of political power) even make decisions—warfare.
Warfare is a geopolitical tool of the first order. In fact, geopolitics as a field of interaction of nations cannot exist without it. Warfare, in the end, formed and continues to be anchored in the human condition, and as a result, in our political, social, economic and cultural institutions. No understanding of warfare is possible without understanding its most important tools, weapons and people, tactics and operational art. It is precisely the field in which [the] American political class has zero competencies—they simply do not teach nor grant degrees in what amounts to military science in the United States. Obviously, rubbing shoulders with American military top brass and listening to rumors may create among some pundits and political figures an illusion that they know how the military operates or how wars are fought—but it is only an illusion. Truth to be told, regurgitation of the few, beaten to death, political talking points in the media sphere doesn’t require any serious background in anything of substance. On the other hand—writing a graduate thesis on Anti-Submarine Warfare operations in [the] Arctic or on Fractionate Exchange Rates during air operations in [an] EW [Electronic Warfare]-dense environment are the skills of a completely different level and backgrounds of which modern American pundits and an army of armchair “military analysts” cannot conceive. But precisely these skills and knowledge are the key not only to [an] understanding of modern warfare but to grasping [a] geopolitical reality which is increasingly complex and rests on the foundation of the ever-evolving and revolutionary military technologies. To forestall possible accusations of disparagement of the field of humanities leveled against me, it should be noted that my point is completely different here: modern war between nation-states became so complex, in reflection of the tools of such wars, that it is an axiom, not even a theorem, that people who cannot grasp [the] fundamental mathematical, physical, tactical and operational principles on which modern weapon systems operate are simply not qualified in [a] minimal degree to offer their opinions on the issues of warfare, intelligence operations and military technology without [the] appropriate backgrounds. Failing that, what can one think but that they are merely in the business of content provision (filling space/entertainment) or of propagating the official line—of propaganda, in short—mostly with regard to warmongering?
***
I am completely aware how difficult it is today for any person, bombarded by salvo upon salvo of irrelevant, misleading, useless information, to try to get a handle on the historic change unfolding before [his] very eyes. It is impossible to get a handle on this without understanding how politics is defined by elements of power, among which real economic and military factors are the main drivers of this change. In this book, I [try] to give at least some, by far not all, of the ABCs in military affairs and explain how a revolution in military affairs, a real one, many times declared prematurely, now shapes our modern world and how modern weaponry completely and dramatically, indeed in a revolutionary way, has changed the global balance of power, despite many models predicting very different and much less dramatic scenarios…
I can only hope that the knowledge readers will gain through this book will help to increase public awareness of the deadly consequences of even a conventional war between global superpowers and will help to dispel the war propaganda being pushed on the public by ignorant and incompetent pundits who have no business offering even an iota of their opinions on what is today a Revolution in Military Affairs of historic magnitude.
Andrei Martyanov. The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs. Clarity Press. Kindle Edition.
Martyanov makes clear that the most celebrated pundits writing and talking about war (in principally American, British, and European legacy media and think tanks) lack any credible authority or knowledge of the subject matter of modern warfare to speak accurately let alone intelligently on its implications; yet he also affirms in his book that the political leadership of America, regardless of party, is equally—and consequently dangerously—clueless. After all, John Bolton’s background is as a lawyer, while Donald Trump’s is as a “Reality TV” show host and real estate developer (Chris Hedges wrote about Trump’s spectacular and sordid mega-casino failure in Atlantic City in his book America: The Farewell Tour) and Martyanov has written condemnations of the ignorance and arrogance of the bellicose American elites not only in his books but also on his blog.
On Washington’s Withdrawal from the INF Treaty
Recent events, not only Washington’s withdrawal from the INF treaty but Russia’s response, emphasize the need for gaining knowledge although this knowledge, especially obtained from reading and studying Martyanov’s books and his blog posts, will obviously not filter to the media and the vast majority of the American public, the think-tanks, the military, and the political class or their masters (if Whitney Webb’s recent well researched investigative reports are proven to be for the most part true). Rather, this knowledge can help individuals to understand the situation and resist the propaganda that Washington can “win” a war against Russia or China. As Martyanov made clear in his first book, Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, America as a nation has never experienced warfare on its own soil by a foreign power intent on its enslavement and obliteration, as the Russian people during World War II (or “The Great Patriotic War” as Russia recalls it) experienced, resulting not only in the wholesale destruction of their homeland but in the deaths of tens of millions. One cannot begin to understand the Russian perspective on war—the horrors of war—without awareness of this fact, which I discussed in my prior writings for LewRockwell.com, including “Bolton’s Blunder: Hubris and Dead Empire Walking” and more recently “Washington Plays Russian Roulette” but in my informal conversation with Martyanov in “Immortal Regiment,” specifically in which he responded to my question on issues raised by Paul Craig Roberts in his “Where Is The Shame?” in this excerpt below:
Andrei Martyanov: PCR asks many sensible questions but in [the] real world, especially positioned so closely to conflict between superpowers, the answers are not delivered instantly.
How can it be that the American people are undisturbed by their government’s seventeen years of wars based entirely on blatant lies? How can it be that the American people and the Evangelical churches are unmoved by millions of innocent people in seven countries who have been murdered, maimed, orphaned, and displaced by the profit-driven US military/security complex and by the neoconservative ideology in service to Israel?
How can it be that the US media is as effective a propaganda ministry for Washington as the German press was for the Nazis?
How can it be that the European, Canadian, and Australian governments and the citizens of these countries are not ashamed of their participation in these never-ending crimes?
My book is precisely about it…A simple answer to PCR questions is this–none of the societies in Anglophone world is shaped by warfare. Watch this May 9 Immortal Regiment March all over Russia–you may get the answer. The problem is deeper than technical or political, it is civilizational, it is cultural.
That the American lack of such an experience contributes to a dangerous and most likely self-destructive arrogance by its elites, who are to say the people who call the shots, the people in power, especially when it comes to dealing with Russian and Chinese military capabilities, is a sad truism.
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Martyanov writes:
Not surprisingly, and prudently, Russia sees NATO—which is primarily a force controlled by and directed towards the promotion of United States interests with the rest of NATO members being merely subordinate appendages—as a viable threat at her borders and therefore of necessity chooses to also have a force which can fight and defeat any combination of threats emanating from the NATO Alliance in a conventional war. Unlike Iraq, however, Russia possesses conventional weapons which are designed to strike to operational and strategic depth not only in Europe but in North America, thus providing a serious conventional, not to speak of nuclear, deterrent against any attempts on Russia and her vicinity. The increasing nuclearization of American military doctrine, a dramatic departure from [the] 1990s and 2000s when American conventional conventional omnipotence was explicitly declared on many occasions, is a vivid illustration of the dawning realization of the tectonic shift in the nature of warfare…
The 2010 NPR had clearly laid out as one of its main objectives a reduction of the role of the nuclear weapons. This proposed reduction was not due to then President Obama’s general apprehension in regards to nuclear weapons, nor to any set of prudent attitudes by American policy-makers. Rather, it was primarily due to the confidence of the U.S. national security establishment in America’s conventional prowess—the exact American posture predicted in 2008 by Russia’s famed chief designer of nuclear missile technology Yuri Solomonov. Yet, ten years later, in the 2018 NPR [National Policy Review?], nuclear weapons are still listed as a prime “hedge against [an] uncertain future.” The main reason for this shift is a recognition of the revolutionary change in warfare, which created circumstances in which the U.S. Armed Forces are not guaranteed to kill more efficiently and, in fact, would rather be the ones with greater rates of attrition than their enemy.
This state of the affairs was achieved by the Russian ability to attack key military infrastructure which for the last several decades had been considered by the United States both as crucial for the command and control of its forces and as untouchable, primarily due to the fact that the types of enemy the U.S. forces fought were entirely incapable of striking to its operational and strategic depths. This is no longer the case once Russia, in October 2015, launched both the 5,000+ kilometer range capable X-101 and the 2,500-kilometer range capable 3M14 cruise missiles at terrorist targets in Syria from deep within in Russia’s territory. This was the launch heard and viewed around the world.
The significance of this launch, beyond its pure propaganda value, however important, was due to the fact that every single NATO and U.S. installation in Europe, Middle East and parts of North America was now within the range of a salvo of Russian cruise missiles, in both the conventional and nuclear variants. For the first time in history NATO was under purely conventional, non-ballistic, threat, including a definite possibility of its troops’ formations to be under sustained fire impact in their staging areas and on the march. This was not a paradigm shift many in NATO, blinded by their own propaganda and hubris, had expected.
Andrei Martyanov. The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs. Clarity Press. Kindle Edition.
The new book is much more technical and challenging, with mathematical formulae introduced including determining the “function of influence of states,” compared to Martyanov’s prior book. However, whether the Washington “Four Stars,” as Colonel Douglas MacGregor on Tucker Carlson’s program discussing possible hot war against Iran described those officers in the Pentagon who are in power, will obtain and read a copy of Martyanov’s book and hold his conclusions in respect is doubtful to me. How do these observations relate to Washington’s withdrawal from the INF treaty if we accept Martyanov’s argument that Russia’s weaponry is superior not only from the measure of cost-effectiveness, but also the fact that America, lacking advanced metallurgy and other technologies, including the special fuel required, is years away from fielding hypersonic weapons, having not developed even supersonic missiles?
This video, with English subtitles, details Putin’s response to Washington’s recent testing of an extended range cruise missile within days of withdrawing from the INF Treaty:
In his blog post discussing America’s withdrawal from the INF treaty and the immediate testing of a slow-as-molasses cruise missile with extended range entitled “What’s Next In Arms Race? Or, The Forms Must Be Obeyed,” Martyanov started by quoting Daniel Larson from The American Conservative who wrote in “Trump Doesn’t Know How to Negotiate”:
As we have seen, Trump’s bullying, maximalist approach does not work with other governments, and this approach cannot work because the president sees everything as a zero-sum game and winning requires the other side’s capitulation. The result is that no government gives Trump anything and instead all of them retaliate in whatever way is available to them. He can’t agree to a mutually beneficial compromise because he rejects the idea that the other side might come away with something. Because every existing agreement negotiated in the past has required some compromise on our government’s part, he condemns all of them as “terrible” because they did not result in the other party’s surrender.
Martyanov then discusses Trump and Bolton’s intent:
Of course, the foundation of this lack of negotiating skills—yeah, let’s say it is just that, for now—is common for pretty much [of the] majority of [the] US power elite—it is a malignant belief in [their] own exceptionalism. Trump is [a] flesh and blood [example] of this culture, it is just that not having any serious scholarly nourishment or life experiences beyond NYC real estate hustling, he delivers the message in the most crude and risible form. So, Trump is merely a cruder, less sophisticated form of [the] US elites. He, most likely after brainwashing by his very own so-called national security team, simply finished off [the] INF Treaty. He, quite naturally, blamed Russia for violating this Treaty and, in two weeks after [the] INF Treaty’s demise, the United States launched the missile outlawed by this very treaty, thus creating a variety, of mostly sarcastic, reactions in Moscow, who, as we all know from the ever truthful US media, was blatantly violating said treaty. The whole situation could have been really comedic, if not for it being very serious and that was precisely the mood with which Vladimir Putin responded to, what we all knew for years now, [was the] inevitable deployment of American TLAMs [Tomahawk extended range subsonic cruise missiles] in the Aegis Ashore installations and other places in Europe.
***
First, let’s recall what the INF Treaty was about and why the United States decided to kill it. As [I have] stated [repeatedly], the INF Treaty was extremely favorable to the United States for a while because it didn’t cover sea-launched intermediate range weapons—a precise domain in which in the end of 1980s the United States had a vast advantage over Soviet Union, whose main intermediate-range strike capabilities were land-based. Cretin Gorbachev and his “team,” in [a] moment of utter insanity, unilaterally threw in, for a good measure, Operational-Tactical Missile complex (OTR-23) Oka to be eliminated. Then, the USSR collapsed and Russia has unilaterally, again, this time through the will of alcoholic Boris and his team of thieves and robber-barons turned herself into [a] door mat for the combined West. In fact, by the end of 1990s it was difficult to see how Russia’s military could recover at all, granted it was sabotaged every step of the way by Russia’s “liberal” political top. Yet, here we are in 2019 and one has to wonder if Russia is realistically sorry because of INF Treaty demise.
I don’t think she is.
[From Russia Today:]
Russia says it won’t sit idle after the US tested a missile that was banned by the INF. As a response, Moscow has an ace up its sleeves and it won’t need to enter into a Cold War-style arms race, military analysts have told RT. No longer bound by the milestone Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)—which the US unilaterally scrapped—Washington recently tested a ground-launched version of its Tomahawk cruise missile. On Friday, Russian president Vladimir Putin said he is not up for an all-out arms race, but ordered the military to evaluate and find reciprocal answers. So, what is Russia likely to have in store to counter the emerging threat?
Those “newly emerging types of the missiles” are precisely those hyper-sonic maneuvering quasi-ballistic and cruise missiles which Russia developed for all three domains (land, air, sea) for her armed forces and those are already deployed. The only “response” the United States has at its disposal is to go for quantity of good ol’ subsonic iterations of venerable Tomahawk and all kinds of other slow variations of TLAMs such as JASSM or allegedly super-pooper “magical” weapon such as CHAMP. All this is fine and dandy, but the issue for the United States is two-fold:
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1. She doesn’t have hyper-sonic weapons and is years, if not decades, away from fielding a working prototype, forget IOC [Initial Operational Capability?] or fully deployed weapon system.
2. Unlike Russia, American anti-missile systems are….well…let’s recall what Publius Tacitus wrote about that:
A friend of mine who has expertise in these matters wrote me: Any air defense engineer with a security clearance that isn’t lying through his teeth will admit that Russia’s air defense technology surpassed us in the 1950’s and we’ve never been able to catch up. The systems thy have in place surrounding Moscow make our Patriot 3’s look like fucking Nerf guns.
[The] S-500 is already in serial production. What’s coming next is simply a matter of speculation but it has to be understood that Russia [is] not only capable to match and then over-match greatly any strike capability of NATO in Europe or in [the] US proper, Russia [also] has [the] means to blunt if not to completely repulse a massive strike of slow subsonic or theater ballistic missiles on her territory. Numbers should help.
Putin and his advisers continue to express concern with TLAMs being loaded into the MK-41 cells of Aegis Ashore in Deveselu, Romania, and Redzikowo, Poland. Even the brief glance on the map allows [one] to conclude that [the] Polish site will be primarily a threat to [the] Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, due to a relatively short flight time of about 15 minutes (140 miles between Redzikowo and Kaliningrad), while missiles launched from Deveselu would have to be airborne for at least 40 minutes, including half of a path over water, to strike Sevastopol. 40 minutes is a very good time to not only have anti-missile complexes completely engaged (well, 15 minutes is also fairly generous) but to have response delivered to European facilities and to launch at North America [emphasis added]. Strategically, in military terms, for Russia very little changes in terms of ratio of forces. In fact, as I [have written] non-stop for years, Russia has [had the] qualitative edge over the United States in missile technologies for at least a decade, if not more. Russia’s protestations, expected as they are, and having in them a very sincere component of traditional Russian aversion towards any kind of hostilities and arms races, are, nevertheless, primarily of Frank Herbert’s Dune Landsraad’s tradition of “The Forms Must be Obeyed.”
But, diplomatic and media-PR posturing apart, military, [the] balance sheet between Russia and NATO in Europe in case, God forbid, of [a] serious escalation is very clear. NATO (US that is) has a salvo and has no defense against the response to put it in layman’s lingo. NATO can launch at Russia and hope that some of its salvo, most of it subsonic and fairly easily defended against, will leak through multilayered state-of-the-art anti-missile defense. What [shall then come] in response against Europe and [the] US cannot be defended against—[the] US has nothing in its arsenal that can meet and blunt dramatically the salvo of supersonic weapons [and] against hyper-sonic weapons [it has] zero defenses and this will stay such for a long while in this strategic tic-tack-toe game in Europe. Of course, this is [the] European contingency, [yet] there is also a Chinese, [or] Far East, one, but [the] Russian response will be about the same—new anti-missile complexes and new strike weapons on the Far East.
Regarding Martyanov’s statement “[The] S-500 is already in serial production. What’s coming next is simply a matter of speculation,” the modern Pravda Report channel on YouTube does speculate, and this outlet appears to be more reliable than its Soviet predecessor. The below video discusses the next phase in Russia’s air defenses on its YouTube channel titled, “S-700 anti-aircraft missile complex coming to space in 15 years.”
Russia’s next-generation anti-aircraft missile system, S-700, will most likely be completely different. It will differ greatly from conventional anti-aircraft systems. The S-700, as it is believed, will be the first-ever space-based orbital laser missile defense complex, the elements of which will be installed on combat platforms.
Russian military specialist Igor Korotchenko said in a recent interview that Russia may develop the new weapon in 10-15 years.
The comments from the military specialist followed recent remarks from Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who claimed that Russia has not only world-famous S-300 and S-400 complexes, but also the prospective S-500 system, as well as highly secretive projects for the development of S-600 and S-700 systems. The latter, Zhirinovsky said, can “work the way to make all military aircraft in the world stop existing.”
Nevertheless, unless America decides to attack Russia, I believe Putin and his team are doing their best to deescalate tensions between Russia in America, but they can only do so much. Examples include:
Speak calmly to a crazy person!
If Trump wants to believe America is invincible and exceptional and that he’s Napoleon, the Russians will humor him—up to a point. They retain their sense of dignity and having psychological profiles of the people they are dealing with, they understand, I believe, that a carrot has great influence when backed up by a powerful stick, as opposed to Washington’s perpetual use of threats, sanctions and violence. For example, at the recent Russian-based MAKS 2019 aviation exposition, Boeing was an exhibitor, and the news was reported on the site included, “Boeing Company will announce new strategic initiatives and sign agreements with Russian partners at the International Aviation and Space Salon, according to the press service of the American aerospace manufacturer. Boeing will sign a number of agreements with Russian companies at MAKS-2019. ‘Agreements will be signed with Russian partners and will strengthen long-term obligations within the framework of the company’s partnership with the Russian aerospace industry,’ the statement says.”
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Thus, sanctions notwithstanding, Russian companies continue to buy—or at least have an interest—in Boeing products and “god-emperor” Trump, “grand and glorious” though he may think himself has—as of now—not prohibited any such sales to Russia by a vital member of the Military-Industrial complex. Of course, no longer a communist country and having numerous private, “capitalist” enterprises and entrepreneurs, businesses in Russia also can use the courts, see for example this article, “Russian Firm Sues Boeing Over Max Jet, Says Defects Hidden.”
If America’s elites will resist to the bitter end Putin’s and his diplomats’ core concept, as the American based military analyst The Saker has written, of “turning enemies into neutrals,” Turkey shall not. Despite shooting down a Russian jet over Syria years ago, Turkey was weakened by Russian leverage while Erdogan was also helped to survive an ineptly (CIA?) organized coup against him. Here he can be seen shopping for Russian goodies at the MAKS 2019 show, escorted by Putin himself. As I’ve written previously, Washington’s denying Turkey the F-35 wasn’t a wise decision; there are superior and less expensive competitive products manufactured by Russia available.
Putin’s comment following a joint news conference with the Turkish president
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said at a news conference on Tuesday he had discussed the joint production of Russian aircraft with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“We talked about cooperation on the Su-35 and even on the possible work on the new Su-57 plane,” Putin commented following his negotiations with Erdogan, responding to a question from TASS.
“We have plenty of options and we have demonstrated new weapon systems and new electronic warfare complexes,” Putin said.
“To my mind, many things evoked the interest of our Turkish partners not only from the viewpoint of the purchase but also from the viewpoint of the joint production,” the Russian leader added.
“As a matter of fact, we are ready for this and will be actively discussing specific areas,” Putin said.
Russia is proud of its breakthrough developments in the sphere of military and civilian aircraft, Putin pointed out.
According to the Russian leader, the Turkish partners were able to see, in particular, the latest Russian MC-21 medium-haul airliner at the MAKS 2019 air show.
“As I understood, the president [Erdogan] liked it and he liked rotor-craft very much, including Mi-38s and light helicopters that are used for medical purposes as well,” Putin commented.
The Turkish leader has plans to implement the entire program in Turkey for developing aero-medical aircraft, Putin noted.
“We also have such plans on the agenda in Russia,” the Russian leader added.
Erdogan’s comment on the joint plans
Turkey is interested in the joint production of military hardware, including military aircraft, with Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday.
“The joint production [of S-400 air defense systems] is a major step in relations with Russia. There were a lot of rumors on this issue but we didn’t pay the slightest attention to them,” Erdogan said after his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the MAKS aerospace show.
This video (turn on close captioning in English) is of Erdogan inspecting the SU 57:
Here are two videos of the SU-57 in action in action at the MAKS 2019 show. I think it “highly likely” that the American F-35 couldn’t even begin to hope to accomplish what is demonstrated. (I’ve written about the failings of the F-35 in “Turkey Trolls Trump” previously.)
The new “Chernobyl” that wasn’t
Russia’s TASS news agency recently published this article titled, “August 8 accident near Severodvinsk had nothing to do with nuclear tests — diplomat” that noted:
The August 8 accident at a military test site near Severodvinsk had nothing to do with nuclear tests, Russia’s acting Permanent Representative to Vienna-based international organizations Alexey Karpov said on Monday.
“The tragic accident had nothing to do with nuclear tests and does not fall under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT),” he said at a session of the working group on examination and verification issues of the Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).
“All I can say to those especially curious that the tests conducted at the military site near Severodvinsk on August 8 were linked with weapons we were forced to begin to develop as a response measure after the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002,” he said.
He stressed that the August 8 accident posed no threat to public health. “According to the Russian emergencies ministry’s Arkhangelsk region department, radiation in that area is within background levels,” he said. “Radiation levels peaked on the accident day on August 8 at 1.78 microsieverts per hour, or about the same level as during dental X-raying. So, despite media allegations, any environmental disasters in the accident area are out of the question.”
Well, this is obviously Russian propaganda and I’m a Russian troll. Well, then what about the analysis of Scott Ritter? Would the reader concede he is a man of integrity? Recall, “Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.” So it’s interesting to note that my speculation in my piece “Washington Plays Russian Roulette” that the accident didn’t involve the nuclear powered cruise missile “Skyfall” but an entirely different project was essentially confirmed by Mr. Ritter who wrote in his article titled, “The Media’s Russian Radiation Story Implodes Upon Scrutiny” the following:
How the mainstream media reported an August 8 accident at a top-secret missile test facility in northern Russia should serve as a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of rushed judgments via institutional bias.
In the days following the initial report of the accident, the media exploded with speculation over both the nature of the device being tested at the Nenoksa State Central Marine Test Site and the Russian government’s muted response. Typical of the hysteria was the analysis of Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and editor of the blog “Arms Control Wonk.”
Lewis and his collaborators penned a breathless article for Foreign Policy that asked, “What Really Happened?” According to Lewis, the answer was clear: “The reference to radiation was striking—tests of missile engines don’t involve radiation. Well, with one exception: Last year, Russia announced it had tested a cruise missile powered by a nuclear reactor. It calls this missile the 9M730 Burevestnik. NATO calls it the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.”
The Washington Post editorial board joined Vinograd in invoking the imagery of Chernobyl: “If this slow dribble of facts sounds familiar, it is—the same parade of misdirection happened during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.”
They’re all wrong. Here’s the real story of what actually happened at Nenoksa.
Liquid-fuel ballistic missiles are tricky things. Most Russian liquid-fueled missiles make use of hypergolic fuels, consisting of a fuel (in most cases asymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, or heptyl) and an oxidizer (nitrogen tetroxide), which, when combined, spontaneously combust. For this to happen efficiently, the fuel and oxidizer need to be maintained at “room temperature,” generally accepted as around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. For missiles stored in launch silos, or in launch canisters aboard submarines, temperature control is regulated by systems powered by the host—either a generator, if in a silo, or the submarine’s own power supply, if in a canister.
Likewise, the various valves, switches, and other components critical to the successful operation of a liquid-fuel ballistic missile, including onboard electronics and guidance and control systems, must be maintained in an equilibrium, or steady state, until launch. The electrical power required to accomplish this is not considerable, but it must be constant. Loss of power will disrupt the equilibrium of the missile system, detrimentally impacting its transient response at time of launch and leading to failure.
Russia has long been pursuing so-called “autonomous” weapons that can be decoupled from conventional means of delivery—a missile silo or a submarine—and instead installed in canisters that protect them from the environment. They would then be deployed on the floor of the ocean, lying in wait until remotely activated. One of the major obstacles confronting the Russians is the need for system equilibrium, including the onboard communications equipment, prior to activation. The power supply for any system must be constant, reliable, and capable of operating for extended periods of time without the prospect of fuel replenishment.
The solution for this power supply problem is found in so-called “nuclear batteries,” or radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG). An RTG generates electricity using thermocouples that convert the heat released by the decay of radioactive material. RTGs have long been used in support of operations in space. [Emphasis added.] The Russians have long used them to provide power to remote unmanned facilities in the arctic and in mountainous terrain. Cesium-137, a byproduct of the fission of U-235, is considered an ideal radioisotope for military application RTGs.
On August 8, a joint team from the Ministry of Defense and the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, subordinated to the State Atomic Energy Corporation (ROSATOM), conducted a test of a liquid-fueled rocket engine, in which electric power from Cesium-137 “nuclear batteries” maintained its equilibrium state. The test was conducted at the Nenoksa State Central Marine Test Site (GTsMP), a secret Russian naval facility known as Military Unit 09703. It took place in the waters of the White Sea, off the coast of the Nenoksa facility, onboard a pair of pontoon platforms.
***
When the actual testing finished, something went very wrong. According to a sailor from the nearby Severdvinsk naval base, the hypergolic fuels contained in the liquid engine (their presence suggests that temperature control was one of the functions being tested) somehow combined. This created an explosion that destroyed the liquid engine, sending an unknown amount of fuel and oxidizer into the water. At least one, and perhaps more, of the Cesium-137 RTGs burst open, contaminating equipment and personnel alike.
What Will the Future Bring?
In the conclusion to her series of articles referenced above, Whitney Webb wrote:
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal: A postmortem
In 1990, Danny Casolaro began his fateful one-year investigation of “the Octopus,” an investigation that played no small role in his untimely death. Shortly after he was found lifeless in a hotel bathtub, Casolaro’s friend Lynn Knowles was threatened and told the following: “What Danny Casolaro was investigating is a business…Anyone who asks too many questions will end up dead.”
Nearly thirty years later, that same “Octopus” and its “business” remains with us and has become ever more wrapped around the levers of power—particularly in the worlds of government, finance and intelligence.
This MintPress investigative series has endeavored to show the nature of this network and how the world of “the Octopus” is the same world in which Jeffrey Epstein and his predecessors—Craig Spence, Edwin Wilson and Roy Cohn among them—operated and profited. It is a world where all that matters is the constant drive to accumulate ever more wealth and ever more power and to keep the racket going at all costs.
While this network has long been able to ensure its success through the use of sexual blackmail, often acquired by the unconscionable exploitation of children, it has also been a driving force behind many other ills that plague our world and it goes far beyond human and child trafficking. Indeed, many of the figures in this same sordid web have played a major role in the illicit drug and weapons trades, the expansion of for-profit prisons, and the endless wars that have claimed an untold number of lives across the world, all the while enriching many of these same individuals.
There is no denying that such a network is “too big to fail.” Yet, fail it must—otherwise this decades-long cycle of abuse, murder and fraud will continue unabated, destroying and taking even more lives in the process.
Such information can become demoralizing. Yet Lew Rockwell himself wrote in “Rothbard and War,” a talk “delivered at the Ron Paul Institute’s Conference on Breaking Washington’s Addiction to War” these words of advice:
(1) Our rulers are not a law unto themselves.
Let us pursue the subversive mission of applying the same moral rules against theft, kidnapping, and murder to our rulers that we apply to everyone else. Our warmakers believe they are exempt from normal moral rules. Because they are at war, they get to suspend all decency, all the norms that govern the conduct and interaction of human beings in all other circumstances. The anodyne term “collateral damage,” along with perfunctory and meaningless words of regret, are employed when innocent civilians, including children, are maimed and butchered. A private individual behaving this way would be called a sociopath. Give him a fancy title and a nice suit, and he becomes a statesman.
(2) Humanize the demonized.
We must encourage all efforts to humanize the populations of countries in the cross-hairs of the warmakers. The general public is whipped into a war frenzy without knowing the first thing – or hearing only propaganda – about the people who will die in that war. The establishment’s media won’t tell their story, so it is up to us to use all the resources we as individuals have, especially online, to communicate the most subversive truth of all: that the people on the other side are human beings, too. This will make it marginally more difficult for the warmakers to carry out their Two Minutes’ Hate, and can have the effect of persuading Americans with normal human sympathies to distrust the propaganda that surrounds them.
(3) If we oppose aggression, let us oppose all aggression.
If we believe in the cause of peace, putting a halt to aggressive violence between nations is not enough. We should not want to bring about peace overseas in order that our rulers may turn their guns on peaceful individuals at home. Away with all forms of aggression against peaceful people.
The people and the warmakers are two distinct groups. We must never say “we” when discussing the US government’s foreign policy. For one thing, the warmakers do not care about the opinions of the majority of Americans. It is silly and embarrassing for Americans to speak of “we” when discussing their government’s foreign policy, as if their input were necessary to or desired by those who make war.(4) Never use “we” when speaking of the government.
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But it is also wrong, not to mention mischievous. When people identify themselves so closely with their government, they perceive attacks on their government’s foreign policy as attacks on themselves. It then becomes all the more difficult to reason with them – why, you’re insulting my foreign policy!
Likewise, the use of “we” feeds into war fever. “We” have to get “them.” People root for their governments as they would for a football team. And since we know ourselves to be decent and good, “they” can only be monstrous and evil, and deserving of whatever righteous justice “we” dispense to them.
The antiwar left falls into this error just as often. They appeal to Americans with a catalogue of horrific crimes “we” have committed. But we haven’t committed those crimes. The same sociopaths who victimize Americans themselves every day, and over whom we have no real control, committed those crimes.
Ron Paul has restored the proper association of capitalism with peace and nonintervention. Leninists and other leftists, burdened by a false understanding of economics and the market system, used to claim that capitalism needed war, that alleged “overproduction” of goods forced market societies to go abroad – and often to war – in search for external markets for their excess goods.
This was always economic nonsense. It was political nonsense, too: the free market needs no parasitical institution to grease the skids for international commerce, and the same philosophy that urges nonaggression among individual human beings compels nonaggression between geographical areas.
Mises always insisted, contra the Leninists, that war and capitalism could not long coexist. “Of course, in the long run war and the preservation of the market economy are incompatible. Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations….The emergence of the international division of labor requires the total abolition of war….The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another.”
See through the propaganda. Stop empowering and enriching the state by cheering its wars. Set aside the television talking points. Look at the world anew, without the prejudices of the past, and without favoring your own government’s version of things.
Be decent. Be human. Do not be deceived by the Joe Bidens, the John McCains, the John Boltons, Hillary Clintons and the whole gang of neocons. Reject the biggest government program of them all.
Peace builds. War destroys.
The most important thing for us to do is to change and to attempt to spread the word on the potential for peace. I am not a “Russian bot” and I don’t trust any government, including Russia. However, I abhor war except in rare cases. I see no evidence that Russia or China intend to launch a pre-emptive attack on America; in fact, all hostilities, including colored revolutions, are Washington based against both these nations. I believe Russia is responding to Washington’s intent to make it an enemy and its actions are defensive in nature.
Even Martyanov himself, who lives in America and has written on the plight of Americans with sympathy, noted in his new book:
Few of those, however, answer the question as to what military power and balance really are, what is their nature and what is their role in the fight for survival. That brings forth a hugely important moral issue of who is the victim and who is the predator in a dyadic relation of nations.
Without addressing this question, no amount of Offense-Defense or any other reasoning will help in understanding the process of the formation of military power and balance in the modern world. In other words, it matters a great deal why a nation builds its own military power and what it intends to use it for. The answer defines a key condition for a good life for the potential victim—survival, preservation of life, that is, or in other words an ability to live in peace thanks to the strength of arms. There is no good life without peace and liberalism is not capable of defining that as a key component of a good life, due to liberalism and its scholarship living in a complete delusion about the predatory intentions driving its own economic and military (often grossly exaggerated) capability.
Andrei Martyanov. The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs . Clarity Press. Kindle Edition.
To see Russians as people, to “humanize the demonized” as Lew Rockwell put it, Russia Plus with an American named Kyle who speaks Russian on YouTube recently posted this video, “Stereotypes About Americans—What Russians Think?” I think watching a video like this is part of the process.
I would like to close with the story of Russian speaking victim in Ukraine of Washington’s regime change operation. It’s the story of the “Gorlovka Madonna”, something the Western Press never covered but I learned about from a comment on The Saker’s site and she is described in this article along with the horrors of yet another war waged by Washington against innocents, waged by the sociopaths that Ms. Webb wrote about. Read this excerpt and don’t think America will be exempt from such intense human suffering if its rulers continue to pursue their agenda of mass murder and attempt to engage Russia and China in military conflict. The victim was very human; that this doesn’t matter to the sociopaths in power isn’t the point. That it matters to those with a conscience, who will get the message out, who will fight for peace is what’s important.
Read the excerpt; look at the pictures. And perhaps you will feel not only pity but shame.
That’s all we can do. And for those who have faith, continue to pray.
Posted July 29, 2015
Irina Petrenko
Translated from Russian by Kristina Rus
What the “Gorlovka Madonna” died for
A year ago, on July 27 2014, when the East of Ukraine was already at war, a young woman and her little daughter–Kristina and Kira–died from the shelling of Ukrainian forces. This terrible tragedy touched everyone. Kristina then was named the “Gorlovka Madonna”.
Bloody Sunday
Here is what a blogger from Gorlovka, Yana Malkova recalls online:
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“Yes, July 27. I will never forget this day. Five in the morning, the first shelling, the shells on Korolenko, near my house (God saved us – the rocket did not explode) and the territory of addiction treatment center (formerly TB clinic). At 13.30 — second attack, the area of “Melody” shop and medical school (then a mother with a baby was killed in the park in front of her husband) [speaking of Kristina and her daughter] and the third attack — from 18.00 (as we traveled by car from Gorlovka to Donetsk). I called my mom, she was in tears, thought that I could get killed. At that time mother was in Dzerzhinsk, Magdalynovka (near Mayorsk), and she saw Ukrainian “Grads” with her own eyes, continuously firing on Gorlovka. People were just hysterical. The attack continued until night. Chaotic. All over the city. On this day there were the most killed and wounded residents of Gorlovka”.
On the anniversary of the worst attack on Gorlovka a memorial ceremony was held at the cornerstone of the monument to innocent victims of the undeclared war.
“In my hometown of Gorlovka today is a one year anniversary of the terrible events of bloody Sunday. On this day a year ago, we felt the horrors of war: death, several dozen families destroyed, shattered homes, life in the basement, cries of children…This year has brought a lot of grief, turned many heads gray. It is terrible to think that in my city the war claimed the lives of so many children, in the country, which aims to join Europe and is located in the center of Europe. We, living in war, learned to appreciate peace and life like no one else. We do not wish on anyone to go through the horrors of war, and we will never forget them…”
—writes on Facebook Yana Malkova.
