March 1, 2016—A New Cold War—Not!

Seven-and-a-half years of the Obama administration’s “Leading from Behind,” “Strategic Patience” and whatever is the label for its current failing policies have created a leadership vacuum in international affairs that are regressing into more dangerous postures than those that characterized the “Cold War” that dominated the second half of the 20th century. And we have no countervailing strategy, worth the name, for dealing with today’s existential threats to Western Civilization.

The nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union following World War II initially dominated a bi-polar U.S.-Soviet world conflict, shortly followed by a cacophony of nuclear proliferation described by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman in their The Nuclear Express, which reviewed their “up close and personal” knowledge of the technological and political history of “The Bomb” and its proliferation.

Click here for a 2009 Wall Street Journal review, shortly after publication of this provocative book by two individuals who were intimately involved in the development and planned use of nuclear weapons and our intelligence about what our adversaries were doing throughout the Cold War. Pakistan and North Korea were then the leading edge of nuclear proliferation — now they have likely been joined by Iran (Click here.) — and there are plausible scenarios by which the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or other terrorists, possibly could obtain a nuclear weapon.

Such scenarios are fueled by the two themes of The Nuclear Express highlighted in this review:

The technological know-how to build nuclear weapons has become impossible to contain. The nuclear express is a train that long ago left the station and is now hurtling down the tracks without an engineer at the throttle. On one of his visits to his counterparts in China, Mr. Stillman tells us, he observed American-educated Chinese engineers and physicists laboring away on every aspect of weapons design. As “The Nuclear Express” makes clear, the Chinese — assiduous students of American achievements — have been improving on our best techniques and then, in turn, disseminating this technological know-how to clients abroad.
The U.S. has invested extraordinary efforts in making nuclear weapons safe, but it was not always thus, and elsewhere it is still not a universal practice. In the first years of the nuclear era, military discipline alone kept American weapons from misuse. In some locations, in other words, the only thing preventing the unintended explosion of a nuclear weapon was a 19-year-old soldier with a rifle. The generals in charge of weapons discouraged the implementation of technological barriers — mechanical or electrical locks — that might slow an American response to a surprise attack.

As the reviewer (Gabriel Schoenfeld) reported:

“Messrs. Reed and Stillman conclude that a fierce storm is gathering. They see the Islamic bomb — whether wielded by Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia or some unforeseen possessor of the murderous weaponry [emphasis added] — bringing about a world in which ‘millions will die’ and ‘more than one democratic society will be consigned to the dust-heap of history.’”

Were this 7-year-old projection to take into account the fact that even a single nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude over the United States could produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), the number of American fatalities might rise to “tens-of-millions or more” from the resulting starvation, disease and societal collapse.

Reed and Stillman might be forgiven for not including this fact — which they no doubt understood — in their already sobering assessment, because most of the information on the EMP threat was highly classified throughout the Cold War and until the publication of the EMP Commission’s 2008 authoritative report made public the key facts on the threat and how to protect our key civil infrastructure against that threat.

The “powers that be” since that time should not be cut such slack.

Moreover, today’s threat is growing as the global instabilities grow, largely because of a profound lack of U.S. leadership — and naivety in presuming that others should or could lead while we abandoned our long-time allies to a smoldering cauldron and adopted policies of appeasement not entirely unlike those of the West that set the stage for despots to take initiatives that led World War II.

In the 1990s, CIA Director R. James Woolsey referred to then emerging “New World Disorder” by observing that after slaying the Soviet “dragon” we are now living “in a jungle populated by a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes, and in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of.”

That was 20 years ago, and this apt description has gotten even more pertinent. Policies that guided our strategy in dealing with the bipolar “Cold War” world for half-a-century simply do not apply today.

Still, many continue to adhere to stale ideas like the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) ideology that many argue (incorrectly, I believe) kept us safe during the Cold War and its meanderings through Korea, Viet Nam, the standoff with the Red Army across the Fulda Gap, etc. (This adherence still constrains our efforts to build the most cost-effective ballistic missile defenses against nuclear attack — rather, we focus our development activities and investments on the most expensive least-effective defenses.)

Meanwhile, such threats of “mutual suicide” cannot keep us safe from the jihadi threat growing in and beyond the Middle East to threaten all we hold dear by those willing to die to kill millions of us in America — the Great Satan. See last week’s message on this looming threat.

Regrettably, The Obama administration has no national strategy to deal with this reality — indeed many of its actions are exacerbating the threat. And so far, none of the candidates for President have articulated a meaningful approach to get one. Promises, promises . . .

During the Cold War, we had bipartisan support for dealing with an acknowledged threat.

Our political parties might have differed on specific counter-strategies, but they at least began with an understanding of the communist threat to Western Civilization — at least after Winston Churchill’s famous March 5, 1946 speech that included the famous lines heralding beginning the Cold War: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Click here for the full speech.

70-years ago this coming Saturday at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill set the stage for the Western Alliance that defeated the Soviet Union of that era — by clearly identifying the threat.

Today, our leaders have not even agreed on the identity of another enemy that poses a potential existential threat to Western Civilization, this time from terrorists intent on jihad against the Great Satan America, the Little Satan Israel and our allies.

Oh, for another Winston Churchill!

Wake up America.

Near-Term High Frontier Plans.

We will continue to inform our readers of the looming threats we confront — and where appropriate urge them to engage in countering that threat. We will press for building the most cost-effective ballistic missile defenses possible and working with South Carolina folks to build a coalition to engage constructively with private citizens and their local and state representatives and other authorities to work with the SC National Guard in understanding and responding to the existential threats to the electric power grid.

We are especially focused on the nuclear power reactors that produce 60-percent of SC electricity—and more generally 20-percent of the nation’s electricity. If it can be assured that they “operate through” a major blackout of the electric power grid — and I believe it can, then these reactors can play a very important role for resurrecting the grid over an extended time and supporting the general public’s survival in the meantime.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

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