The vanguard
11/17/2020 6:00 AM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 11/17/2020 6:00 AM
On January 20, a few hours before assuming the presidency of the United States, Joe Biden
will receive the instructions and the means to destroy the world
, a sober and Dantesque ritual that he knows well.
In his possession he will once again have the golden codes and the black briefcase that will allow him to launch a nuclear attack.
He already had them as vice president, but now he will be commander-in-chief and the world today is somewhat more dangerous than four years ago.
Biden will arrive at this crucial moment without the information necessary to defend the United States from threats that may emerge from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
Trump denies him the secret military
and diplomatic
intelligence reports
to which he is entitled as president-elect.
In any transfer of powers, the most sensitive part is always the one that refers to state secrets, that information that allows the ruler to anticipate and counter his strategic rivals.
This lack of cooperation between the Trump administration and the Biden team
increases the weakness
of the US It is very likely that Moscow, Beijing, Tehran or Pyongyang will try to take advantage of it.
What's more, last week Trump fired the defense secretary and placed four civilian commanders at the Pentagon, loyal to Trumpism,
supporters of forcing regime change in Iran
and of removing troops from Afghanistan before Christmas against the opinion of the military hierarchy.
This purge, which may be extended to the CIA in the coming days, favors both the withdrawal from Afghanistan and a confrontation with Iran during the last two months of the Trump presidency.
The timing is critical, furthermore, because
the United States' diplomatic ties with Russia and China are badly damaged
.
The relationship with Russia had not been at its lowest point since the end of the cold war, while the commercial, ideological and strategic tensions with China are the worst since Nixon and Kissinger went to see Mao in 1972.
When Biden enters the Oval Office, Washington, Moscow and Beijing will have had an
accelerated arms race for four years,
and one of the first decisions he will have to make is what to do with the New Start treaty, the last one that slows the nuclear rearmament of the United States a bit. and Russia.
It expires on February 5 and the US General Staff believes that it is no longer of much use.
In light of the pandemic, democratic degeneration, the decline of the liberal order, and growing economic inequality, the nuclear apocalypse seems like a 20th century legend, a dystopia that we will not suffer.
After all, from the 70,000 nuclear weapons that threatened the world at the height of the cold war,
we have grown to about 14,000.
Complex scenarios
Furthermore, the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear offensive guarantee strategic stability a priori.
Mutual destruction is assured.
No matter how powerful the first-shooter's offense, the enemy's response will be just as devastating.
Faced with this certainty, the United States and the Soviet Union, instead of accelerating the nuclear escalation,
sought a way to reduce the risks of a confrontation
.
This strategy was maintained after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Now, however, 75 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, things have changed.
Deterrence, as Erin Connoli, a security expert at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation points out, “is re-founded on having powerful arsenals, on the idea that the atomic bombs on Japan ended World War II and brought the peace.
The argument that nuclear weapons are weapons of peace makes their reduction difficult ”.
Russia and the United States own 90% of the world's nuclear arsenal
and have been working to expand and modernize it for four years.
The Kremlin is developing underwater drones and hypersonic systems to launch atomic warheads thousands of miles away, while the Pentagon has raised $ 1.2 trillion to update its nuclear strategy.
The scenarios in which Washington and Moscow would be willing to use atomic weapons have also been expanded to include cyberattacks.
The Pentagon generals who have worked under Trump believe that it
is impossible to recover the strategic stability
of the cold war.
China, Iran and North Korea complicate prevention and deterrence.
There are new cyber and biological technologies capable of causing an impact similar to that of a nuclear attack.
Russia, the United States, China and other countries have offensive strategies that combine several fronts:
nuclear, conventional, cyber,
biochemical and space.
A nuclear arsenal, by itself, no longer deters.
"Having 1,500 strategic nuclear warheads deployed under the conditions of the New Start does not deter our adversaries," said Pentagon General John Hyton, deputy chief of staff and former head of the atomic arsenal.
Managing the uncertainty of an attack
has always been the most difficult task in Washington and Moscow as evidenced by the 1962 missile crisis in Cuba.
Now the unknowns are multiplying.
"We are entering an era of strategic instability," says Elisabeth Sherwood-Randall, a nuclear weapons expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology who was vice minister of energy in the Obama administration.
Iran, for example, has also made great strides in its atomic program during the presidency of Donald Trump.
In March it had enough enriched uranium for an atomic bomb, but in July an explosion, probably caused by Israeli agents, damaged the Natanz nuclear complex.
Today there is no international forum, no diplomatic initiative to prevent atomic proliferation.
The 2015 deal with Iran is dead paper since Trump denounced it.
Biden talks about getting back to where he started, but his own strategists consider it too late.
The Iranians will not accept it, nor will they want to limit their rocket program or support for various Shiite militias, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
They say the United States is not keeping its word.
Them neither.
Today they have ten times more enriched uranium
than they can store under the conditions of the nuclear pact.
North Korea, despite the handshakes between Trump and Kim Jong Un, has continued to improve ICBMs, but
they are not
yet
capable of resisting re-entry into the atmosphere.
More evidence is missing and Kim could order a few before Trump leaves.
This will also improve your negotiating skills with Biden.
As faith in deterrence wanes, the possibility of limited atomic warfare increases.
The pumps are compressed and the means of targeting are more precise.
A study from Princeton University, however, ensures that tactical nuclear wars are not possible.
A confrontation between Russia and the United States would
cause 90 million deaths and injuries in a few hours.
When the time has come to decide on a military intervention and even more so if it is nuclear, what is always lacking is information and time.
To the difficulty of making a decision under enormous pressure, Biden will have to add the complexity of new threats.
As Elisabeth Sherwood-Randall points out, “Today we are faced with abundant new tools of warfare of strategic scope.
The risks of a nuclear catastrophe are increasing, be it by accident, misunderstanding or a mistake caused by stress ”.
Trump further compounds these risks
by denying Biden the information he will need to overcome them.
Xavier Mas de Xaxás. The vanguard
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