The Saker — A much needed “Likbez” about Russian Tu-160 bombers in Venezuela

A war between the USA and Russia will probably happen soon unless the USA changes its suicidal political course

One truth which is never mentioned by the AngloZionist propaganda is that Russia has retreated as far as she can and that there is a broad consensus in Russia among both the political elites and the people that Russia cannot retreat any further. God knows that even if all the “Putin caved in” propaganda is nonsense, it remains nonetheless true that the perception of the western elites is usually a strange mix of dismissing Russia while, at the same time, presenting Russia as the number one enemy on the planet. I don’t know whether the people making these statements really believe them or not, but the resulting policy is one of a total and never-ending hostility mixed in with a quasi-religious belief in the superiority and even invulnerability of the “collective West.” And this is precisely the kind of mindset which results in stupid and bloody wars! Let me repeat this again: Russia has already done all she can to avoid a war with the USA, and there is nothing else she can do; in contrast, every single US policy towards Russia is bringing us one step closer to an almost inevitable war.…

The Vineyard of the Saker
A much needed “Likbez” about Russian Tu-160 bombers in Venezuela
The Saker

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists — How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability

The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing—boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three—and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike....

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (1 March 2017)
How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze

Hans M. KristensenMatthew McKinzieTheodore A. Postol

Atomic Scientists — How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze

First strike capability, neutralizing nuclear deterrence.

Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability—a capability that would require Russia to undertake countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear forces. Tense nuclear postures based on worst-case planning assumptions already pose the possibility of a nuclear response to false warning of attack. The new kill capability created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used in response to early warning of an attack—even when an attack has not occurred.

The increased capability of the US submarine force will likely be seen as even more threatening because Russia does not have a functioning space-based infrared early warning system but relies primarily on ground-based early warning radars to detect a US missile attack. Since these radars cannot see over the horizon, Russia has less than half as much early-warning time as the United States. (The United States has about 30 minutes, Russia 15 minutes or less.)

The inability of Russia to globally monitor missile launches from space means that Russian military and political leaders would have no “situational awareness” to help them assess whether an early-warning radar indication of a surprise attack is real or the result of a technical error.

The combination of this lack of Russian situational awareness, dangerously short warning times, high-readiness alert postures, and the increasing US strike capacity has created a deeply destabilizing and dangerous strategic nuclear situation.
When viewed in the alarming context of deteriorating political relations between Russia and the West, and the threats and counter-threats that are now becoming the norm for both sides in this evolving standoff, it may well be that the danger of an accident leading to nuclear war is as high now as it was in periods of peak crisis during the Cold War....

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze
Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie and Theodore A. Postol

The Saker calls BS on the report.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Dangerous risks of W76-1/Mk4A with new AFS
The Saker

Eric Zuesse — America’s Secret Planned Conquest Of Russia

Why Russia is so touchy. It's under attack by the US strategically, but not yet tactically.

The U.S. government’s plan to conquer Russia is based upon a belief in, and the fundamental plan to establish, “Nuclear Primacy” against Russia — an American ability to win a nuclear war against, and so conquer, Russia.

This concept became respectable in U.S. academic and governmental policymaking circles when virtually simultaneously in 2006 a short-form and a long-form version of an article endorsing the concept, which the article’s two co-authors there named “nuclear primacy,” were published respectively in the world’s two most influential journals of international affairs, Foreign Affairs from the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security from Harvard. (CFR got the more popular short version, titled “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”, and Harvard got the more scholarly long version, which was titled “The End of MAD?”.)

This article claimed that the central geostrategic concept during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Mutually Assured Destruction or “MAD” — in which there is no such thing as the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. conquering the other, because the first of the two to attack will itself also be destroyed by the surviving nuclear forces of the one responding to that attack — will soon be merely past history (like the Soviet Union itself already is); and, so, as the short form of the article said, “nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United States”; and, as the long form said, “the United States now stands on the cusp of nuclear primacy.” In other words: arms-control or no, the U.S. should, and soon will, be able to grab Russia (the largest land-mass of any country, and also the one richest in natural resources).…

A far less influential scholarly journal, China Policy, published later in 2006 a critical article arguing against nuclear supremacy, but that article has had no impact upon policymaking. Its title was “The Fallacy of Nuclear Primacy” and it argued that, “American nuclear supremacy removes the root source of stability from the nuclear equation: mutual vulnerability.” It presented a moral argument: “U.S. leaders might try to exploit its nuclear superiority … by actually launching a cold-blooded nuclear attack against its nuclear rival in the midst of an intense crisis. The professors discount significantly the power of the nuclear taboo to restrain U.S. leaders from crossing the fateful threshold. If crisis circumstances grow dire enough, the temptation to try to disarm their nuclear adversaries through a nuclear first-strike may be too strong to resist, they argue.”...

The co-authors of (both versions of) the article that had proposed and endorsed nuclear primacy, then published in 2007 (this one also in International Security), a response to that critical article. This reply’s title was “U.S. Nuclear Primacy and the Future of the Chinese Deterrent”. But it had no more impact than did the obscure article it was arguing against.
Thus, nuclear primacy has become U.S. policy, and MAD no longer is U.S. policy (though it remains Russian policy). The U.S. government is planning to take over Russia (basically, to install a puppet-regime there). That’s the reality....

Whether Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, will continue with that longstanding (ever since 24 February 1990) plan to conquer Russia, or instead finally end the Cold War on the U.S. side (as it already had ended in 1991 on the U.S.S.R.’s), isn’t yet clear.

This is what happens when what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex” takes over the country, and everything (including the ‘news’ media) serves it, rather than the military-industrial complex’s serving the public.

It fits in with the massive data which indicates that the U.S. government is run by an aristocracy or “oligarchy”, instead of run by people who represent the public — a “democracy.” Obama as President fit right in.

Of course, that's no secret to Russia — or China, which is next on the list. But it looks like the plan is to "do Iran" first.

These excerpts only scratch the surface of this well-documented article. Read it and understand the deviousness behind the US narrative — the actual fake news — for domestic consumption flogged in the US media's daily news cycle.

Zero Hedge
America’s Secret Planned Conquest Of Russia
Eric Zuesse, investigative reporter

Sputnik — Nuclear Poker: Why the US Can't Trick Russia Into Changing Its Nuclear Doctrine

Interesting look at US and Russian military policy.

Accordingly, Alexandrov suggested that US lawmakers' proposal is based on the understanding that a nuclear war is unwinnable, and to try to trick Russia into abandoning its established doctrine.

"In essence, the US is repeating the technique of Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union, which unilaterally renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. This was done because at the time, the USSR had a significant superiority in conventional forces over NATO. As a result, the use of nuclear weapons was judged to be disadvantageous, since all of Western Europe could be captured without their use. In that situation, it's worth noting, NATO banked on the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which became a deterrent against possible Soviet attack."

Today, Alexandrov noted, the situation has been flipped on its head. Russia can no longer resist the combined might of NATO in a long war using only conventional weaponry. 

"Therefore, since the 1990s, our doctrine provides for the possibility of using nuclear weapons first in case of a serious threat to Russia's national security." "Thus, the Democrats' initiative is aimed at achieving strategic superiority over Russia, and possibly China," the analyst suggested. "Of course, Moscow should not give in to this kind of demagogy. Russia must continue to retain the right to use tactical nuclear weapons first," he emphasized.

Ultimately, Alexandrov noted, Russia has already taken the necessary measures to move to a new generation of nuclear weaponry, from the Iskander tactical missile complex and the Kh-101 strategic cruise missile, which has a range of 5,000 km, to new ballistic missiles capable of overcoming US missile defenses. "All of this has forced the US to maneuver in this way, and to try to outplay Russia in the nuclear field," the analyst concluded.

Sputnik International
Nuclear Poker: Why the US Can't Trick Russia Into Changing Its Nuclear Doctrine

RT — ‘Deterrence not arms race’: Russia hints it may develop rival to US Prompt Global Strike

A highly-placed Defense Ministry official says that Russia may be forced to match the US Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) doctrine, which prescribes that a non-nuclear US missile must be able to hit any target on Earth within one hour. 

“Russia is capable of and will have to develop a similar system,” Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said during a public discussion of the Russian rearmament program for the decade of 2016 through 2025.…

The arms race that is not an arms race, the cold war that is not a cold war.

Prompt Global Strike
RT
‘Deterrence not arms race’: Russia hints it may develop rival to US