The Philip DeFranco Show - MS 3.5 This is Why Trump and Putin May Have Just Started the Next Nuclear Arms Race...

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

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Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to your Extra Morning News Show. My name is Philip DeFranco, and today we're going to be talking about the very fun topic of nuclear war. You know, it's good to start your day with a panic attack. It gets your metabolism boosted. But when it comes to this issue, of course, two countries have hogged the spotlight in recent years. Kim Jong-un announcing a new goal today, mass-producing nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. Tonight, new intelligence from the United Nations appears to show Kim Jong-un is taking evasive action to protect his weapons.

Iran has another secret facility in Tehran. Well, tonight I'm here to tell you one thing. Iran lied. Big time. I would advise Iran not to start their nuclear program. I would advise them very strongly. But this consistent focus on North Korea and Iran has diverted attention away from what some fear is the beginning of a new nuclear arms race. And this is largely due to the recent suspension of a landmark international nuclear treaty between two of the world's biggest superpowers, which is something that we're going to get into in a minute.

But first let's look at the state of the world's nuclear powers. Along with North Korea, eight other countries currently possess nuclear weapons. You have Russia, the United States, France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, and Israel, which has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons but is widely believed to possess them. But of all of those nations, two countries have by far the most. You have Russia and the United States. Russia has an estimated 6,850 nukes, both deployed and stockpiled, and the United States has about 6,850 nukes, both deployed and stockpiled in the United States is about 6,550. Just so you understand the super majority that these two countries have, that represents roughly 92% of the global total.

And while these are still huge numbers, they are a far cry from the mid-80s when the worldwide nuclear arsenal sat at over 60,000. Now as to the reason for this decline, that has to do with landmark treaties that have been signed over the years by russia slash the soviet union and the united states in 1991 george h.w bush and mikhail gorbachev signed the strategic arms reduction treaty or start one which led to the removal of about 80 of the nuclear weapons in existence in a historic first for arms control we will actually reduce u.s and soviet strategic nuclear arsenals but the central idea at the heart of this treaty can be put simply, stabilizing reductions in our strategic nuclear forces reduce the risk of war.

Then over a decade later, the United States and Russia signed the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, or SORT, which then further reduced the number of deployed warheads by the two countries. And that was followed by the signing of the New START agreement back in 2010, which capped the number of nuclear warheads and bombs each country could have deployed at just over 1,500. President Donald Trump said, We completed an agreement earlier this year that cuts by a third the number of long-range

nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles that the United States and Russia can deploy, while ensuring that America retains a strong nuclear deterrent and can put inspectors back on the ground in Russia. Now, all of that said, it is likely that none of these treaties would have happened without a landmark agreement between Reagan and Gorbachev called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF. And here's how Reagan described the INF during a signing ceremony on December 8, 1987. Unlike treaties in the past, it didn't simply codify the status quo or a news arms buildup. It didn't simply talk of controlling an arms race. For the first time in history, the language of arms control was replaced by arms reduction.

In this case, the complete elimination of an entire class of US and Soviet nuclear missiles. What he's talking about here is the destruction of all nuclear and conventional land-based cruise or ballistic missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5500 kilometers. Or, for my non-metric folks, that is 310 miles to about 3400 miles. Now in order to understand why that range is significant, we spoke with Shervin Tahiran, who was a researcher with the Arms Control Association. These missiles, when they were deployed, reduced warning times of a nuclear attack to mere minutes. And so that created a really destabilizing environment. Now to grasp just how destabilizing an environment,

we have to look at what the nuclear relationship was like between the US and Russia before the INF was signed. During the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the US were constantly trying to one up each other by developing more and more technologically advanced missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads. And in 1976, the Soviets released

the SS-20 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. And all you really need to know about this missile is that it could be moved with little effort, it could carry up to three nuclear warheads, and could hit any target in Europe from Soviet territory. Now in response to the development of this weapon, the US and its NATO allies had a crucial decision to make, whether or not to deploy its own intermediate range missiles called Pershing IIs to Europe that were capable of hitting the USSR. And to give you

a feel of the times, this is the dramatic way the New York Times described that decision in 1979. Depending on who is doing the speaking, these new missiles will provide essential stability to the military balance or shatter the foundation of detente. They will force the Soviets to enter into serious arms control negotiations or unleash a new arms race, strengthen the unity of the NATO alliance, or become the chief agents of its disintegration.

And in the end, deployment won out, with the United States aiming for the missiles to be operational at American military bases in West Germany by 1983. But this decision was massively unpopular with many Europeans. And in fact, in October of 1983, just before the first of the missiles arrived,

more than a million people took to the streets of West Germany in protest, and they continued protesting their deployment until the bitter end. The missiles were unloaded amidst strict security, but some anti-nuclear campaigners staged a demonstration outside in an attempt to stop trucks driving out of the airfield.

But the decision had been made and the world braced for what was to come. West Germans said today that the first battery of U.S. nuclear missiles deployed there is ready to be fired. Thus, the first of the 572 intermediate-range missiles the U.S. has begun deploying to counter a Soviet buildup will be ready by the deadline NATO set in 1979. Now here's the thing, it's not like the United States and Soviet Union didn't have the capability of hitting one another before the deployment of these missiles. But, because some of these missiles were capable of striking their targets within 10 minutes, the risk of nuclear war between the world's two superpowers drastically increased. And it's the short amount of time

to react to a missile launch that was a major factor that led to the Soviets developing what is known as a dead hand trigger. And Stephen Young, a nuclear weapons policy expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, explained this concept to us. It's actually incredibly terrifying. The idea was that even if Russia's leadership was destroyed in a US or NATO first strike, their system would set up to automatically launch a counterattack with any remaining forces they had, regardless of what was happening on the ground.

And so if that system ever went off in air, Russia could, the Union could have launched an attack on the United States and our allies out of the blue for no reason at all if there was a mistake. And it's called a dead-hand system because it doesn't require any human intervention. Now thankfully, over the following few years cooler heads prevailed and with the signing of the inf the deployment and testing of intermediate range missiles was banned and more than 2600 missiles were destroyed by 1991. and so for the next 27 years it appeared the treaty was working like it was supposed to but then on july 29 2014 this happened charges this morning are putting more

strain on the relationship between Russia and the United States. The Obama administration accuses the Russian government of breaking an important nuclear treaty. According to US government officials, Russia had tested a land-based cruise missile with a range right in that intermediate 300 to 3000 mile range. But also very interestingly in the year since then,

Russia has not only consistently denied the accusation, but they've turned the tables by claiming that in fact, it's the United States that is violating the treaty, specifically accusing the US of developing missile defense systems called MK-41 launchers in Romania and Poland, which Russia says could be used for offensive purposes as well. And all of this back and forth led us to last December,

where the Trump administration formally announced that Russia was in violation of this treaty and had 60 days to come back into compliance. And then last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made this announcement. We provided Russia an ample window of time to mend its ways and for Russia to honor its commitment. Tomorrow that time runs out. Russia has refused to take any steps to return real and verifiable compliance over these 60 days. The United States will therefore suspend its

obligations under the INF treaty, effective February 2nd. And what we saw was that Russia quickly followed suit and said that it too would be suspending the treaty with a full pullout within six months. So now we're essentially in a state of limbo with each side refusing to budge, a situation which Shervin from the Arms Control Association says could have potentially been avoided. Withdrawing from the agreement occurred before all diplomatic options were actually exhausted. So there were plenty of other avenues of diplomatic engagement we could have pursued that we didn't. So one option on the table that could have been explored is the idea of mutual transparency

verification visits. Have inspectors on each side go and inspect the systems to determine whether or not they actually violate the systems. The Arms Control Association believes that by withdrawing from the agreement without pursuing any of those options, we really just kind of laid the ground for Russia to continue violating the agreement without legal restraint. And Young agrees that pulling out of this treaty is the wrong move. This is actually what Russia wanted.

Russia wanted out of the treaty and wanted the U.S. to be blamed for it. And that's what's happening. The U.S. is now tearing the treaty up. Previously, we had leverage and we could have kept pressing Russia to come back to the treaty. Now the treaty actually is destroyed. We have the leverage at all. And all we have is the chance of an arms race. It is a very terrifying prospect. But others such as Boris Zilberman, a deputy director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told us that the U.S. had no choice but to pull out of the INF.

It's become basically a one-way disarmament agreement for the United States where we can't field these weapons, but the Russians are actively developing and fielding these weapons. And so that's kind of a big problem if you have an agreement between two parties and one side is not fulfilling their part of the agreement. And that's a sentiment that President Trump himself has echoed when explaining his reasons for pulling out of the treaty.

I hope that we're able to get everybody in a very big and beautiful room and do a new treaty that would be much better. But you have to have everybody adhere to it. And you have a certain side that almost pretends it doesn't exist. Pretty much pretends it doesn't exist. So unless we're going to have something that we all agree to, we can't be put at the disadvantage of going by a treaty, limiting what we do when somebody else doesn't go by that treaty.

Zilberman also said that pulling out of the agreement was the right decision because China has not signed on as well, which has allowed the Chinese to produce their own intermediate range missiles unchallenged. Yeah, this agreement was initiated in the 80s. Things have changed. The Chinese are a much more serious global military power. They've been free to do what they want. So this again, kind of unties our hands when it comes to dealing with a kind of wide spectrum

of military threats we face and the growing threat we face from the Chinese. But many congressional leaders are not buying this justification for pulling out of this landmark agreement. And this includes Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. And in fact, she has introduced legislation to prevent the funding of any weapons

that would violate the treaty. We face a greater risk of nuclear catastrophe today now more than ever before in history. This threat of nuclear war is real. President Trump's reckless decision to pull out of the INF Treaty heightens this threat by exacerbating the new Cold War Sparking a new arms race between the United States and Russia and bringing us ever closer to a nuclear holocaust And while some may say that those claims are hyperbolic We have seen concerning escalating rhetoric between the US and Russia since this decision was announced with Putin even giving this warning to the US Last month if it deploys these missiles into Europe once again. I mean, it's frightening stuff that Shervin argues doesn't bode well for future agreements between the world's two biggest nuclear powers. When the INF Treaty goes away, there will be one other arms control agreement limiting

the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenal, and that will be the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which will be available for a five, up to five year extension in 2021. And again, the Trump administration hasn't shown that much of an appetite for even wanting to discuss that treaty, but especially if that treaty fails as well, we will have had no limits on the US or Russian nuclear arsenals, nuclear weapons arsenals, for the first time since the 70s.

But with that said, now that you've heard about the potential end of this landmark treaty, I do wanna pass the question off to you. Do you personally think it was the right decision to pull out of this agreement, given that the US believes Russia has not been playing by the rules? Or was this a move that was done too hastily that greatly increases the threat of nuclear war between two countries

with massive arsenal? And or really just any thoughts you have regarding this topic. I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below. Also on that note, if you like this extra morning news deep dive, you want more of them, let us know. Hit that like button. Also, if you're new here, you want more of this and the Philip DeFranco Show, be sure to subscribe. Definitely ring that bell to turn on notifications. Also, while you're at it, if you missed the last Philip DeFranco Show, Morning News, Deep Dive, you can click or tap right there to watch those.

But with that said, thank you for watching. I love your face and I'll see you later today back on this channel with a brand new Philip DeFranco Show.