A weekly commentary on war, weapons, and waste in an increasingly dangerous world
Welcome to the Armed Madhouse coffee break. As the U.S. Congress considers adding another $100 billion to the U.S. defense budget, pushing the total past $1 trillion, I am launching a weekly Coffee Break feature on the weaponry, politics, economics, and consequences of armed conflict. I owe the title to a book by Greg Palast. True to the spirit of NC, the posts will be factual, rational, and non-ideological. Like the other new Coffee Break features, this one will be guided by reader interest and feedback, so comments are encouraged.
The Bundle of Death
Let’s start with a bang and contemplate what I consider to be one of the most evil artifacts in the world, the U.S. “nuclear football.”
It is a small package, but it is loaded with mega-death. This bag travels with the President always, and it contains a nuclear launch authorization code and a set of nuclear attack plans. The plans provide the president with a set of options, ranging from selective strikes to a massive attack causing unprecedented destruction and a possible nuclear winter. The plans are classified and periodically updated in a manner that is also classified.
If the President opens the bag, selects an attack plan, and issues the authorization code, no one is legally empowered to stop the attack. The role of the Vice President is limited to confirming that the President has given the attack order. In theory, the Vice President could invoke the 25th Amendment, but this would require consultation with the cabinet and approval by Congress. It is doubtful that the military would wait for this process to be completed in a crisis. Only direct military disobedience, subject to extreme penalties, could immediately stop the presidential attack order.
How Did We Get Here?
How is it that the U.S. put the power to destroy much of mankind in the hands of one person, and more importantly, why do the citizens of this country not wish to know the contents of the attack plans? The answers are found in the dark events of the final years of WWII.
In 1939, at the start of WWII, President Roosevelt wrote to the leaders of Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Poland appealing to them to refrain from bombing civilian populations. In the letter, FDR said:
The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population during the course of the hostilities which have raged in various quarters of the earth during the past few years, which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousands of defenseless men, women and children, has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity.
The foreign leaders initially replied positively, but by 1945 much had changed. “Strategic bombing,” notionally directed at military and industrial targets, had evolved into area raids destroying large portions of cities.
Firestorms
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school– Randall Jarrell
The first man-made firestorm occurred in Hamburg in 1943. A multi-day bombing campaign against Hamburg culminated in an incendiary attack on July 27 that created a thousand-foot-high tornado of fire that consumed eight square miles of the city. Over 37,00 people died. This feat was repeated in Dresden in March 1945, where an estimated 25,000 died. However, despite multiple attempts, the allied air forces were unable to regularly create firestorms when attacking German cities.
The practice of city burning was perfected in Japan by U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay. With the assistance of Captain Robert McNamara, a former accounting professor at the Harvard Business School, LeMay and McNamara determined that high-altitude bombing of Japanese cities had been ineffective, and that low-altitude incendiary bombing would wreak far more destruction. This change of tactics and the use of napalm-based cluster munitions led to a devastating bombing campaign that burned 64 Japanese cities in 1945 before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks.
In one night alone, an incendiary bombing attack on Tokyo killed 90-100,000 civilians and destroyed 267,000 buildings, leaving over 1 million homeless. These casualty figures are roughly the same as those for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings combined. Indeed, the total number of Japanese casualties of LeMay’s incendiary bombing campaign is estimated to be substantially greater than the casualties of the atomic bombings.
Charred remains of civilians in Tokyo 1945
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were an extension of an existing campaign of indiscriminate killing of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, and far from “sickening the hearts” and “shocking the conscience” of Americans as once assumed by FDR, these attacks were celebrated as great wartime achievements. LeMay later became the head of the Strategic Air Command, and McNamara, after a stint in industry, became the Secretary of Defense in the JFK and Johnson administrations. McNamara stated in a documentary interview that he and LeMay would have been tried as war criminals had the U.S. been defeated by Japan.
Something very important had changed: the American public had become willing to burn enemy cities, and it welcomed the power and efficiency of nuclear weapons, which create a firestorm every time. What nuclear war planners in the Cold War did not foresee is that many burning cities could put so much ash into the stratosphere that global temperatures would drop for an extended period resulting in a nuclear winter that would cause crop failures, species die-offs, and worldwide famine.
The Chief Executioner
President Truman, having shrugged off the warnings of the Manhattan Project scientists regarding the epochal change to warfare that the atomic bomb would cause, soon came to realize that decisions to use this weapon could not be left in the hands of the military and established absolute presidential control over the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The problem of this narrowing of responsibility for initiating nuclear war to a single person remains with us today.
See No Evil
During the cold war, and up to the present day, U.S. attack plans have included “counter-value” strikes, the purpose of which is to destroy the entire economic potential of an enemy nation. This would entail inflicting enormous civilian casualties. I believe that the reason why the American public and their Congressional representatives have no desire to see the nuclear attack plans is that they do not wish to acknowledge consenting to committing mass murder on an historically unprecedented scale. Plausible deniability is no longer an exclusive perquisite of the political elite; it has become democratized so that every American can be sheltered by ignorance of what is in the nuclear football.
Where Are We Now?
Close brushes with nuclear calamity in past decades have not deterred ambitious and costly U.S. efforts in recent years to improve strategic weapons systems. The U.S. has been striving to maintain “full spectrum” dominance in military capability, i.e., the ability to defeat any adversary or combination of adversaries in an armed conflict. Along the way, it has discarded most of the existing arms control treaties established after the trauma of the Cuban Missile crisis.The U.S. built anti-ballistic missiles, increased the accuracy of its ICBMs, and established a Space Force to put military systems in orbit.
Russia and china have responded to the U.S. weapons initiatives with their own new programs in a revival of the arms racing that characterized the Cold War era. Politicians, military leaders, and arms makers have perverse incentives to continue this race, heedless of the increasing risk of regional or global nuclear war. The Doomsday Clock is now set at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight it has been since its creation.
The reasons why we are getting closer to doomsday are:
- There are active war zones in Ukraine and the Mideast, and a potential war zone in the South China sea, any one of which could trigger escalation into a nuclear war.
- The collapse of nuclear arms control treaties has led to the deployment of destabilizing weaponry with unpredictable strategic consequences (e.g., hypersonic missiles, anti-satellite weapons, and long-range nuclear torpedoes)
- The irresponsible behavior of political leaders who demonize their adversaries, believe that military confrontation is preferable to diplomacy, and dismiss the risk of nuclear war
Russian Poseidon nuclear torpedo
The bundle of death remains with us, and so does the plausible deniability explaining the reluctance to examine its contents. The attack plans remain out of public view, and if they are executed, with horrific consequences, survivors will not take comfort in saying, “we did not know.”
In future Armed Madhouse Coffee Breaks, I will explore the devilish details and unfortunate consequences of the unrelenting quest for superior weaponry, a counter-productive endeavor that is squandering the world’s wealth and increasing the risk of the greatest calamity ever to befall mankind.
“The soul is innocent and immortal, it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse.” — Quote by Allen Ginsberg.
To say that USA “changed” near the end of WWII is a bit of confusing. Didn’t Gen Sherman burnt Atlanta and in subsequent days gave a sound justification? And what about the actions against the Amerindians, like, in President Jackson’s days? Other than the techniques being more and more industrialized and with ever more advanced technologies, ain’t these things much the same since days immemorial? Hearts are softened in prolonged peace, and hardened as the next war pacing nearer and nearer. This particular pendulum is like, ever and ever swinging.
I think the US did change very substantially with the death of FDR. However FDR was the historical aberration, not Truman who was handpicked by the Democratic machine to displace Henry Wallace.
This wasn’t a natural pendulum swing but an engineered coup against the highly popular and democratically elected New Deal government.
Perhaps some happier news is that Trump does seem to be pursuing some sort of detente with Putin and perhaps a revival of nuclear disarmament treaties including the one that he abandoned. However being Trump nothing is certain.
And looking backwards instead of forwards one must point out that the World Wars and their nuclear climax were a direct result of the age of colonialism that preceded. Those Maxim guns were switched from killing natives to killing the cannon fodder of Europe itself as decadent aristocracies and their costume obsessed royals fought a kind of family feud over who would get to pillage the most. We must not overlook the vagaries of human folly in driving the death machines.
Thanks for the post. Look forward to the next installment with current war news coming fast and furious.
Non paywalled version of Alastair Crooke’s latest column talks about why the Germany AfD result may in fact put the brakes on their warmongers.
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The rub here – and it is a big one – is that the AfD and the Left Party, Der Linke (8.8%), which was the top vote getter in the 18-24 demographic, are both anti-war. Together these two have more than one third of the votes in parliament – a blocking minority for many important votes, especially for constitutional changes.
This will be a big headache for Merz, as Wolfgang Münchau explains:
“For one thing, the new Chancellor had wanted to travel to the NATO summit this June, with a strong commitment to higher defence spending. And even though the Left Party and the AfD hate each other in every other respect, they agree that they won’t give Merz the money to strengthen the Bundeswehr. More important, though, is the fact that they won’t support a reform to the constitutional fiscal rules (the debt brake) that Merz and the SPD are desperate for”.
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https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/03/04/reality-confronts-euro-ruling-strata-through-tear-fantasy-bubble-they-see-their-own-demise/
Crooke, who btw must read NC since he links one of Conor’s posts, thinks that ultimately the poodles will wag.
The still not established war-coalition between Merz` CDU and the former “socialdemocrats” (SPD) decided yesterday evening to throw out the “debt brake” for tanks, shells and other murderous stuff no one needs. In order to circumvent the blocking vote of AfD and “The Left” for the necessary change of the german constitution, Merz and his ilk plan to summon the “old” parliament (“Bundestag”) where AfD and the Left have not enough seats to veto the proposal. The new elected Bundestag is not yet constituted.
>Something very important had changed: the American public had become willing to burn enemy cities, and it welcomed the power and efficiency of nuclear weapons, which create a firestorm every time.
Well hell yea. When was the last time a US city suffered wholesale destruction? At least in Japan, Europe, and Russia there are still some people alive that survived unbelievable calamity. And pass the stories to the next generations. Maybe that gives them a little more respect for the consequences of massive bombing campaigns.
We are not protected by two Oceans anymore. Our ” leaders” must have missed the video of Mr. Oreshnik introducing himself to Ukraine. How is that stopped pray tell DoD?
I don’t think we can have any “Oh Shit, maybe that was a mistake to launch a few ICBMs. Maybe the elite politicians and generals have a bunker to hide in but what are they going to rule over when they finally emerge? The disconnect from anything near reality in all the war talk and belligerence towards Russia and China is something to behold.
Great post, as much as it p***es me off I look forward to your weekly writings.
US death toll in WW2 was roughly 300k so sacrifices were being made if not the loss of whole cities. As his excuse for dropping the bomb Truman said he couldn’t justify withholding it if it would mean more Americans would die. In books like Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb it’s suggested that there was never any real possibility that the thing, once made, would not be used even if the bomb scientists tried to soothe their consciences by urging otherwise. In Oppenheimer the film we are urged to feel sorry for the protagonist but then as part maker of this terrible thing why should we? Hubris precedes nemesis.
You didn’t make clear in your first sentence if the death toll from the bombings were the US homeland cities or those in colonial/territorial locations. Or were these 300k the US military casualties?
Thought that was clear from the context. 300k US combat deaths. This may seem low compared to other countries but then much of the US public was reluctant to become involved at all and might not have if not for Pearl Harbor which was seen as “they started it” and fueled by not a little yellow peril style prejudice.
And if Hitler had not then declared war on the US the US might have confined its war to Japan and not entered the war against Germany at all.
The U.S. deaths and casualties in WWII were less than 1% of the nations population. Russia lost 30% of its population.
If I am not mistaken, a motivating factor in the Manhattan Project was the belief that Germany was also developing an atomic bomb. I don’t think anyone thought that Japan was capable of developing such a weapon.
I think Haig makes a compelling argument — often made less well — that Japan was already on the brink of surrender because of the air war of LeMay and MacNamara. (I hadn’t previously known the depths of this man’s depravity; it is one thing to stoop to evil in the heat of war; it is quite another to repeat the crime under less urgent circumstances.)
In my reading of history, Truman dropped the bomb more to threaten Stalin than to end the war. How did the American public, like MacNamara, come to justify wielding the bomb against its staunchest ally against Hitler? I can name names from the chronology of history, but for me, this points back, past Truman, to the original sin of Anglo-American social Darwinism.
Thank you, Haig.
In addition, the Soviets were ready to invade if necessary, so like the liberation of China no American ground troops needed to be sent into harm’s way.
The nuclear bombs were a demonstration to the Soviets to stay away from Japan and to watch themselves in Eastern Europe. Then the Anglo-Americans deep state worked with European organized crime to liquidate Communist resistance fighters who could have taken control of France and Italy like the partisans took over Yugoslavia.
The Americans spent the next decade and a half basically threatening to nuke every conflict that wasn’t going their way, until the Soviet’s increasing nuclear arsenal made Kennedy realize the insanity of nuclear war.
Only 300k?
That’s why the hell broke loose the other day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pxbGjvcdyY&t=2591s
43:11
you have nice ocean and don’t feel now but you will feel it in the future God bless
43:17
you don’t know that God bless God bless you will not have War don’t tell us what we’re going to feel we’re trying to
43:23
solve a problem don’t tell us what we’re going to feel I’m not telling you position to dictate that you’re in no
43:30
position to dictate what we’re going to feel we’re going to feel very good will
43:35
feel influenc we’re going to feel very good and very strong …
I would like to complete this good overview by mentioning the often forgotten member of the trio of large, firestorm inducing WWII raids against German cities: Pforzheim, in February 1945. 17’600 people died and the city (a significant industrial centre) was largely razed to the ground.
And let us not forget Dresden immortalized by “Slaughterhouse-Five.”
When I was a young, increasingly anti-war soldier, stationed in Darmstadt, Germany (2005) I visited a local art museum – along the way I stumbled upon a commemoration to the destruction of the city on September 11, 1944 by a bombing raid which created a firestorm and killed 11-12k people.
It struck me that this small city had their own 9/11, with 3-4 times the number of deaths of the then-recent US version which provided justification for two illegal wars and an overhaul of the national security state. It was such a “through the looking glass” moment where historical context became completely rearranged in my mind. And, definitely not unrelated, unearthed an additional layer madness I had just recently discovered by reading “Slaughterhouse 5” (Schlacthof fünf)… Furthering my dizzying trip, one of my favorite music venues in the area was named Schlacthof in nearby Wiesbaden.
And then, years later, I learned of September 11, 1973 in Chile… Coincidentally, I later worked at a hotel with a Chilean teacher with brutal scars on her legs from when her father, a union organizer, brought her to a mass demonstration that was ruthlessly attacked by Pinochet’s thugs
Granted, I am put together enough not to think 9/11 is a cursed date or holds any more power than any other date… But, it is true that my life at that point was dictated by events that transpired on that date in 2001 – I was in basic training that day – and I feel a connection with others who also suffered a terrible fate on that date… And anger that we only #neverforget the version that launched us into a monstrous new era of war, rather than the ones that can teach us more humanizing lessons
Thank you for this post – looking forward to the subsequent offerings
IIRC, the decision to bomb civilians came after the realization that both Germany and Japan turned out to be good at rebuilding/repairing factory buildings and that a lot of machinery survived the bombing intact or repairable.
The workers on the other hand were much harder to replace and so they became the target.
The fire-bombing of Tokyo on March 9th 1945 was the deadliest air raid of the war, killing an estimated 100,000 people.
My principle source is James Carrol’s House of War
James’ father was the first officer to be head of security for the Air Force. He proved to Curtis LeMay that his promise/guarantee to the president, to have planes in the air within 15 minutes of being given the order, was a lot of hot air. He accomplished this by infiltrating the airbase in Hawaii with a small band of men in rubber boats, who painted “DISABLED” in large black letters on the sides of LeMay’s beloved, and supposedly guaranteed B52s.
BTW, that fire-bombing of Tokyo was planned by Robert McNamara of Viet Nam fame.
Do you have a source for the “fire-bombing of Tokyo was planned by Robert McNamara”? I am not surprised but I had not previously heard about that. It places a damning footnote to the revelations of the documentary about McNamara: “The Fog of War”.
The link I provided above goes to a 73 page preview of the book.
That preview includes the story.
Here’s another link that explains it.
Jonathan Glover in Humanity, which relied heavily on archival work, disagrees. He has an entire chapter on the drift toward firebombing. I don’t have access to the book (in storage) so forgive me for relying on memory. His focus was how attacks on civilians were rationalized and normalized.
It started with what has been a RAF attack into Germany that was claimed to have killed civilians by accident (misidentified target due to clouds?) and led Hitler to launch the Blitz. Glover argues that the Blitz made it less unacceptable to kill enemy civilians. I don’t recall that the issue about factories being repairable was anywhere mentioned in his work. It was that the Allies became much less concerned after the Blitz about trying to spare civilians when targeting munitions factories, and that eventually led to a justification to attack cities so as to break the German will faster.
I’ve read extensively on the subject, and have a close personal friend whose father was base commander for a B17 wing in England.
The “drift” that you describe contained many stages, and one of the issues, not the only one for sure, that influenced the choice to join the British in fire-bombing was the smaller than expected affect of Americans focus on factories.
The Americans notion of ‘precision ‘ strategic bombing, envisioned at least partially on the expectations surrounding the ‘Nordon’ bomb-sight turned out not to be as effective as expected.
Not only did bombs still miss the targets, but as I explained, and is covered in the book I linked to, the enemy, to a surprising extent was able to work around the limited damage.
The famous Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission resulted in only a 34% dent in production.
It’s harder to kill machines than it is people, and people are harder to replace.
And then there is the expected effect of terror.
And yes, the move to fire-bombing civilians required rationalization, and normalization.
The Americans fell in line with their British partners thinking and decided to go along with the fire-bombing of civilians, many of whom were workers for the war effort.
I fell I must add this bit of history.
My first ‘real’ job after graduating HS, and my first year of college was with a manufacturing firm that employed my father. Yes, a bit of nepotism.
I was 19 years old and and given the task of planning the move of a whole factory’s worth of machines from Canada to our town in the US.
I was mentored in this task by an eighty year-old man from the parent corporation who had done this sort of stuff before, and he saved me from my ignorance and lack of experience.
I was given an inventory of the machines involved, and a stack of catalogs from the companies that made the machines. The catalogs included detailed drawings of the foundations necessary for each particular machine. These were very large machines, press brakes, shears, drop presses, all the stuff needed to manufacture sheet metal products like cabinets for IBM computers and cabs for tractors.
I drew a large rectangular room next to and abutting our current factory and I laid out cardboard scale models of the Canadian machines, until the various managers agreed it looked good.
A crew built the building I had drawn and one morning when I came to work there was a line of Mack trucks about a half a mile long sitting outside the plant loaded with the factory from Canada.
The professional riggers that came with the trucks made amazingly fast work of filling the new building, and suddenly our factory had doubled its capacity.
I joined the team of people who connected all the electrical power, water and compressed air systems to these giant machines, and when we were done, I went back to college.
I explaining this so you understand that I’ve seen factories working around the chaos of growth, which somehow always involves digging holes in the middle of places that where busy workspaces just yesterday.
I’ve read descriptions of German managers finding their buildings ceilings full of holes and the floor pitted with bomb craters, but vital machinery many times, standing untouched in between.
My experience leads me to believe it when I read they were back up and working, impacted, but working, in relatively short order.
Then there are the bombardiers who could drop a bomb within 100 ft of their target using the Norden Bomb-site in training, but between weather and anti-aircraft, and German fighter planes were routinely dropping bombs a mile from their targets in the war.
Bracing. Not sure I’d say thank you but welcome – looking forward to more of this.
I’m glad/not glad with you addressing this topic. I’m old enough to have done duck & cover, and had neighbors who built a fallout shelter in their back yard.
“So there’s been a nuclear attack. Don’t ask me how or why. Just know that the big one has hit.…
1. Go inside
2. Stay inside
3. Stay tuned
…You got this.”
-New York City Emergency Management Agency, July 2022
“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.”
– Gen. ‘Buck’ Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove
Bet you never thought reality would end up reaching a point crazier than that portrayed in that movie?
The late Daniel Ellsberg asserted that “Dr. Strangelove” was more of a documentary than a satirical film. He also pointed out that, unlike what is shown in the film, there was no recall provision for the B52s after the go code was received.
In his book, “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner”, Daniel “Ellsberg writes of the afternoon when he and a colleague played hooky from work to go see Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy about a lunatic general who launches a nuclear attack against the USSR on his own, using the pre-delegated authority that he’d been given in case of an attack on Washington (though, in this case, there hadn’t been such an attack). Walking out of the theater, Ellsberg turned to his friend, another nuclear denizen, and said, “That was a documentary.”
Sam Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb, said the same thing. He had seen the Big Board, knew Edward Teller intimately, and treated Dr Strangelove as a documentary.
(Sam received a medal from the pope for his ‘humanitarian’ invention.)
I can’t find a source, and it might be apocryphal anyway, but I recall reading an interview with an American negotiator who was in talks with Chinese officials regarding nuclear war. He said that one of his counterparts said to him, “If we ever had a nuclear exchange with you, we figure we can lose 100 or 200 million civilians and be just fine. What’s your figure?” Then he smiled….
I have several times reported of General Thomas Sarsfield Power, commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command from 1957-1964, and his concept of winning a nuclear war: “At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!”
“duck and cover”, I guess nuclear attack rhymes with school shooting, was supposed to be dark humor, but after a think I’m starting to see it.
Don’t forget. In case of a nuclear attack, Americans must stay in their cities and not attempt to flee to the countryside as that is treason! Fleeing to the hills is desertion so people will not be allowed to flee but must stay at their jobs and fight those atomic bombs in any attack in their city. Americans must prove that they can take it. Or so said a US Civil Defense film from the 50s-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RNcTnvTJa0 (8:56 mins)
About 10 years ago my spouse and I took a tour of Tokyo led by people who were interested in meeting foreigners (they were very cool) and one of them was an older lady who viscerally described how landscapes looked before and after the firebombings, and came with us to a museum where there were photos and documentation about the war. Mind you, the Japanese Empire was not an innocent entity by any means, but this was horrible.
In the museum was a scroll by Basho:
Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
fwiw: the new STRATDELA newsletter is out
https://1dkv.substack.com/p/stratdela-33
Most interesting may be the list of hyperlinks in the end
p.s. as Coffee Break on nukes is concerned – keeping an eye on European developments might be worthwhile – depending on how US-EU relations turn out.
By which I mean European “homegrown” WMDs.
I still do not believe it will come to that. As Aurelien pointed out re: France them nukes are darn costly.
However in this new age of post-sanity nothing would be surprising and we have to consider every possible madness. German-French-Italian plans of the 1950s were mothballed not least due to easing tensions between USA/USSR. But if the superpowers today decide to divide the world the lower powers might engage in some economic suicide which eventually would be to the formers´ benefit.
“NUKE – Just Bomb it” – ?
Tells you everything about these experts:
https://nitter.poast.org/top_force/status/1896890399651979410#m
p.s. unsurprisingly the same folks like to quote their Dr. Strangelove and are totally oblivious to the apparent contradiction
…for a moment I misread “Armed Medusa” instead of “Madhouse”…
Alex Wellerstein #2
re: Hiroshima & Nagasaki
He had this longer entry in 2013 on the issue of warning the population (or NOT warning it):
A Day Too Late
by Alex Wellerstein, published April 26th, 2013
Ever since I set up an e-mail alert for the phrase, “Manhattan Project,” I’ve been getting an interesting cross-section of discussions on the Internet about the history of the atomic bomb.
One of the interesting ones to pop up again and again is the question of whether the United States warned Hiroshima and Nagasaki about their impending destruction. It’s a discussion in this case that has actually been confused by the abundance of context-less primary sources on the Internet.
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/04/26/a-day-too-late/
I’m not sure what your point is. In every nuclear weapon state I know of, final authority to use nuclear weapons lies with the elected Head of State or Government. In France and Russia it’s the President, in Britain it’s the Prime Minister. In China it’s no doubt Mr Xi. What other arrangements would you propose? Why should anyone be empowered to overrule a Head of State or Government on such an issue? Who would it be? How? A vote in Parliament? A telephone opinion poll? A Judge? Most people see the reduction of the military influence on nuclear weapon use and the establishment of political primacy as a good thing.Do you want to go back to the days of military control? In any democratic political system, one person, at the top, is responsible for taking the most difficult decisions in every area. (Nuclear capabilities and nuclear targeting plans are of course among the most closely guarded secrets of any of the nuclear powers.)
Incidentally, the development and use of aerial bombing is one of the most studied episodes of the war years. I’d recommend Richard Overy’s The Bombing War as a good introduction. As is well known, the origins of strategic bombing were in the belief that in a few days it would cause social and economic collapse and the war would be over without a repetition of the terrible slaughter of the First World War.
My point is that it is irresponsibly dangerous to put authorization of nuclear war exclusively in the hands of one person without any provision for countermanding such an order. A further point is that the public should be aware of the scope of the nuclear attack plans so that they may assume the associated responsibility through informed consent.
The arrangements I would propose include:
1. Requirement for consensus of multiple senior officials to use nuclear weapons
2. No counter-value attack options
3. An absolute prohibition on first use
4. No launch on warning policy
“I’m not sure what your point is. In every nuclear weapon state I know of, final authority to use nuclear weapons lies with the elected Head of State or Government”
Given the context of thinking about our present crop of mad-hatter heads of state, I’d say his point is pretty clear.
In which case why not just write “Donald Trump is a horrible person, and the decision to authorise nuclear use should be made by the Editorial Board of the New York Times”? In any event, nuclear release procedures don’t function as the writer seems to think.
The decision to authorise nuclear use isn’t made by the Editorial Board of the New York Times?
😂
I think we should vote over it. Every 4 years:
“full-scale nuclear attack – Yes/No”
This is bad faith argumentation. He did not say Trump. The same criticism applied to rabidly anti-Putin/Russia Biden and one could contend Kim Jong Un. You are putting words in his mouth.
You also appear to have overstated the authority of the President with respect to Russia. It is not unfettered, as it is in the US:
https://www.sab.gov.lv/en/news/russias-nuclear-weapons-policy-between-rhetoric-and-threats/
Also I see you chose to reply to this as if it represented HH’s views, and tellingly refused to acknowledge HH’s considered response. This looks as if you are overly invested in defending what HH has correctly presented as an undue and highly dangerous concentration of power.
“In a few days it would cause social and economic collapse…” I think that has been the hope of every big new weapons system, which allows the proponents to tout the weapons system as a guarantee of peace. H. Bruce Franklin wrote in War Stars how science fiction from the 19th century on always envisioned the new wonder weapon as just the thing that would End All War (employed by the “good guys” against “them”, of course).
first fire bombing in W.W.II. i have posted this before.
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Firebombing
“Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs. Although simple incendiary bombs have been used to destroy buildings since the start of gunpowder warfare, World War II saw the first use of strategic bombing from the air to destroy the ability of the enemy to wage war. The Chinese wartime capital of Chongqing was firebombed by the Japanese starting in early 1939. London, Coventry, and many other British cities were firebombed during the Blitz. Most large German cities were extensively firebombed starting in 1942 and almost all large Japanese cities were firebombed during the last six months of World War II. ”
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and japan fire bombed a major chinese city and terror bombed for years.
https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/camp/pac/china/air/cjia-jrc.html“
The Japanese used their air superiority not only to attack the military targets in Manchurian but to indiscriminately attack cities there as well. This was the beginning of Japanese terror bombing of China.
This was nothing like the precision attacks at Pearl Harbor. Rather the Japanese basically just conducting area bombing attacks, simply dumping bombs on cities. The Japanese like to consider themselves victims of World war II and point to their devastated cities.
Unmentioned in the fact that before Japanese cities were attacked in any significant way, the Japanese had been attacking virtually undefended Chinese cities for nearly 15 years. The Chinese had no anti-aircraft defenses or organized civil defense systems. The result was extensive civilian casualties.
The air attacks were limited to Manchuria and adjacent areas of Northern China. The major exception was Shanghai. While Chang did not resist the Japanese seizure of Manchuria, students and other Chinese were incensed with the Japanese. Demonstrations and boycotts ensued. And Japanese nationals including officials and police were attacked. The Japannese began bombing Shanghai to punish the Chinese.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War1929 Sino-Soviet war
Main article: Sino-Soviet conflict (1929)“The July–November 1929 conflict over the Chinese Eastern Railroad (CER) further increased the tensions in the Northeast that led to the Mukden Incident and eventually the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The Soviet Red Army victory over Xueliang’s forces not only reasserted Soviet control over the CER in Manchuria but revealed Chinese military weaknesses that Japanese Kwantung Army officers were quick to note.[58]
The Soviet Red Army performance also stunned the Japanese. Manchuria was central to Japan’s East Asia policy. Both the 1921 and 1927 Imperial Eastern Region Conferences reconfirmed Japan’s commitment to be the dominant power in the Northeast.
The 1929 Red Army victory shook that policy to the core and reopened the Manchurian problem. By 1930, the Kwantung Army realized they faced a Red Army that was only growing stronger.
The time to act was drawing near and Japanese plans to conquer the Northeast were accelerated.[59] ”“To overcome Chinese resistance, Japanese forces frequently deployed poison gas and committed atrocities against civilians, such as a “mini-Nanjing Massacre” in the city of Jiujiang upon its capture.[82]: 39 [83]
After four months of intense combat, the Nationalists were forced to abandon Wuhan by October, and its government and armies retreated to Chongqing.[61]: 72 Both sides had suffered tremendous casualties in the battle, with the Chinese losing up to 500,000 soldiers killed or wounded,[82]: 42 and the Japanese up to 200,000.[84]”“With Japanese casualties and costs mounting, the Imperial General Headquarters attempted to break Chinese resistance by ordering the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and Imperial Japanese Army Air Service to launch the war’s first massive air raids on civilian targets.
Japanese raiders hit the Kuomintang’s newly established provisional capital of Chongqing and most other major cities in unoccupied China, leaving many people either dead, injured, or homeless.
”“By 1943, Guangdong had experienced famine. As the situation worsened, New York Chinese compatriots received a letter stating that 600,000 people were killed in Siyi by starvation.[95]
”“The United States strongly supported China starting in 1937 and warned Japan to get out.[97] However, the United States continued to sell Japan petroleum and scrap metal exports until the Japanese invasion of French Indochina when the U.S. imposed a scrap metal and oil embargo against Japan (and froze all Japanese assets) in the summer of 1941.[98]
As the Soviets prepared for war against Nazi Germany in June 1941, and all new Soviet combat aircraft was needed in the west, Chiang Kai-shek sought American support through the Lend-Lease Act that was promised in March 1941.
”“According to Walter E. Grunden, history professor at Bowling Green State University, Japan permitted the use of chemical weapons in China because the Japanese concluded that Chinese forces did not possess the capacity to retaliate in kind.[220]
The Japanese incorporated gas warfare into many aspects of their army, which includes special gas troops, infantry, artillery, engineers and air force; the Japanese were aware of basic gas tactics of other armies, and deployed multifarious gas warfare tactics in China.[221]
The Japanese were very dependent on gas weapons when they were engaged in chemical warfare.[222]
Japan used poison gas at Hankow during the Battle of Wuhan to break fierce Chinese resistance after conventional Japanese assaults were repelled by Chinese defenders. Rana Mitter writes, Under General Xue Yue, some 100,000 Chinese troops pushed back Japanese forces at Huangmei. At the fortress of Tianjiazhen, thousands of men fought until the end of September, with Japanese victory assured only with the use of poison gas.[223]”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Chongqing
“The bombing of Chongqing (simplified Chinese: 重庆大轰炸; traditional Chinese: 重慶大轟炸, Japanese: 重慶爆撃), from 18 February 1938 to 19 December 1944, was a series of massive terror bombing operations authorized by the Empire of Japan’s Imperial General Headquarters and conducted by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service (IJAAF) and Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (IJNAF).”“30,000+ civilian casualties including 10,000+ deaths, over 30,000 buildings and much of the city center destroyed; property losses amounting to 10 billion francs”
“”The Japanese bombers appeared over Chungking on moon-lit nights when they could easily see the major landmarks… from time to time, on command of their formation leader, all the bombers would open up a defensive barrage of fire in direction most likely of attack by fighters. The performance was effective. It was like a gigantic broom of fire sweeping the starry sky.”
— K. Kokkinaki, Soviet pilot, witnessing the spectacle of night-time air-raids over Chongqing in 1939″“On 5 June 1941, in midst of the increased brutality of the new Operation 102 bombing campaign to force the Chinese to capitulate in their war of resistance, the Japanese flew more than 20 sorties, bombing the city for three hours. About 4,000 residents who hid in a tunnel were asphyxiated.[28] ”“Three thousand tons of bombs were dropped on the city from 1939 to 1942.[28] According to photographer Carl Mydans, the spring 1941 bombings were at the time “the most destructive shelling ever made on a city”,[32] although terror bombing grew rapidly during the Second World War: by comparison 2,300 tons of bombs were dropped by Allied bombers on Berlin in a single night during the Battle of Berlin.[33] A total of 268 air raids were conducted against Chongqing.[citation needed]”
Another atrocity from that period was the poisonous mustard gas bombings by the Italians in their conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935-36.
So much for the, “never again” refrain from WW1. Again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Ethiopian_War
Haile Selassie in his report to the League of Nations described it:
….Special sprayers were installed on board aircraft so they could vaporize over vast areas of territory a fine, death-dealing rain. Groups of 9, 15, or 18 aircraft followed one another so that the fog issuing from them formed a continuous sheet. It was thus that, as from the end of January 1936, soldiers, women, children, cattle, rivers, lakes, and pastures were drenched continually with this deadly rain. In order more surely to poison the waters and pastures, the Italian command made its aircraft pass over and over again. All those who drank poisoned water or ate infected food also succumbed in dreadful suffering. In tens of thousands the victims of Italian mustard gas fell.
thank you. its hard to feel sorry for the Japanese, German and Italian cities, when they did it first.
Good history, but I disagree strongly with the statements that American don’t want to know or take responsibility for the plans in the briefcase. Many anti-war activists have worked hard to reduce the odds of nuclear war, including by seeking publication of nuclear war plans. The government treats them brutally.
This is a problem in every nuclear state. Every government I’ve investigated has tested their nukes on their own soldiers, including the US, USSR, Britain, and France. Every government has poisoned their own citizens with its testing too, and taken no accountability. Every government takes care not to let electoral politics play any meaningful role in nuclear areas. This is simply what it means to have rulers – unaccountable decision-makers who punish anyone who tries to interrupt their most sensitive plans. Pretending that Americans don’t want to take responsibility for the briefcase ignores the fact that we’re actually not allowed to take responsibility – anyone who tries to find out those plans, or interrupt them somehow, is severely punished, just like in any nuclear state.
This is just normal in unhealthy cultures where a few people rule over everyone else – the cultural disease that leads to so many other problems. We can’t really meaningfully address nuclear concerns, or any other political concerns, until we address the problem that we have unaccountable leaders who punish those who stand up for what’s right and threaten their plans – the cultural cure that would let us solve so many problems.
Great point! The movement against nuclear weapons was very strong and arguably brought some results in terms of international treaties… however, much has changed since the 70s.
I don’t think it’s the reluctance to take on the responsibility that results in political apathy; perhaps apathy (also in Susan Sontag’s sense “Regarding the Pain of Others”) comes from the perception of powerlessness and disempowerment. Power is tricky though; disempowerment is on one hand very real, though on the other it’s also a perception, a construct constantly reaffirmed by the social apparatus.
But as any activist might say: there are many ways to “address” even nuclear concerns in a political system with unaccountable leaders and retarded political participation…
Armed Madhouse, indeed. A great post, and Hickory, I am grateful for your succinct and informed response to it. Many thanks all around.
Please tell me how many people know what the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock is, let alone where it is set now. Or how many people participate in or support anti-nuclear war activism. Most Americans are apathetic or to the extent they are activists, put other causes first.
A welcome opening salvo, Haig! Albeit a sobering one.
Looking forward to more of your work.
In his book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner”, Daniel Ellsberg reported that the President of the United States is NOT the only person who might initiate an attack by the u.s. using nuclear weapons.
I am eagerly awaiting Paul Jay’s documentary on Daniel Ellsberg which I believe is expected to be completed later this year.
Decisions in case of nuclear war need to be effected within minutes.
For example US ICBM’s in silos are vulnerable to a mass “first strike”. One option is to launch on warning, the football needs to be in hand.
Another example very similar is the bomber leg is more vulnerable unless warned to disperse which is a plan in the football.
Submarine launched missiles need orders before the football is incinerated.
All this plays with Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) which is meant to be deterrence!
MAD theory goes back to the 1950’s when Tom Schelling worked for RAND the USAF’s chief excuser for strategy, tactics and weapons. They came up wit game theory and prisoner games.
The opposing view is putting humanity in the hands of games and politicians is illogical and immoral..
I am opposed to any nuclear weapons!
Trump seems to think Ukraine could go MAD and he says it is not worth the perils!
Thanks.
And even more so considering that B&B in the WH considered sending nukes to Ukraine. If they in fact attempted to and it was thwarted or did not at least even try I don´t know.
Trump will appear in half an hour.
I believe we should take comfort from President Trump’s background in real estate development. The real estate left after a nuclear war is not of much value for future development, although I have heard that neutron bombs might overcome that drawback. I am not sure where matters stand at present. I do not have the impression that current plans for amplifying the u.s. nuclear weapons force included neutron bombs. The use of nuclear weapons to create a powerful EMP pulse over a region also seem little considered as part of our arsenal.
I suppose that you can say that the present “Imperial Presidency” of the US has it’s origins in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Consider. The last time that the US formally declared war on a country was in December of 1941 and not since then. That was nearly 85 years ago. So what happened? Atomic weapons, that’s what. The military must have said that look in case of an atomic attack, there will be no time to bring Congress together and have a formal vote on declaring war. That there may be only minutes to decide. And as the President is also the Commander in Chief, only they can make that decision which will have to be done on the spot. On the face of it, it was a reasonable decision to make as the US faced an atomic Russia followed by an atomic China. But then this idea was extended right across the board to even small countries that had no atomic weapons such as Vietnam or Panama. US Presidents could go to war without even bothering to ask Congress. Congress did have a tiny bit of push-back when they said that after so many days that the President had to go to Congress for more funding but when Obama broke even that minor law, all parties ignored it. So imagine a present day US where if the President wants to send the military to steal some country’s oil and gold or whatever, that first he had to go to Congress first and make them actual vote on it and make their faces known. Kinda unimaginable now.
b on MoA:
March 04, 2025
Musing About Europe Without NATO
Tonight Trump will address Congress. There are unconfirmed rumors that he will announce a U.S. exit from NATO.
Now that would be a bummer for the Europeans.
During the last 80 years European leaders never had to think strategically about their own nations’ security. The U.S. and USSR did that for them.
How would or should Europe look without NATO?
Over the last eight decades NATO and the U.S. (and until 1990 the Warsaw Pact and Russia) have largely prevented wars between European countries. The continent – where nations have been at war with each other for centuries – could easily fall back into that bad habit.
Just look up what Polish revisionists think of Germany and how that country is re-building its army …
As a German I understand that my country is, financially and size wise, the biggest dog in the European pack (ex Russia). It would be wise for it to declare absolute neutrality and to refrain, like Austria, from joining any alliance. Its army, based on a short conscription of every men, should be stationed and act only within its own borders.
That done it would be time to launch a new Concert of Europe (incl. Russia):
… a general agreement among the great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. Never a perfect unity and subject to disputes and jockeying for position and influence, the Concert was an extended period of relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which had consumed the continent since the 1790s.
The last concert did not keep the continent at total peace but it prevented crises from escalating beyond narrowly defined borders. In that respect it lasted from 1820 up to the start of the first World War.
To conduct such a concert would probably require another Prince Metternich or Otto von Bismark. There is however no such person in sight. (Lavrov would be good at that job but he is Russian, too old and otherwise committed.)
The EU bureaucracy in Brussels has neither legitimacy nor competence in inner-European or international security issues.
Don’t count on it when NATO is out.
What are other alternatives?
“Declaring war” is a de jure thing, “state of war” is de facto. When your strategic goal is “no more 9-11s” and your strategy is “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” you aren’t really in an environment where declaring war serves a purpose. WRT nuclear war, the UCS “doomsday clock” has been at like 11:55 my whole life. It has kind of lost whatever relevance it might have once had.
Over the years NC2 has had its criticisms, but seems to have been effective. Of course one could claim it to be luck and no real way to test that theory.
From a capability standpoint, the re-constituted TLAM-N that Trump authorized and Biden killed is something worth watching.
Thanks to the author for this very timely, and necessary, article. As a soon-to-be octogenarian, I well remember the duck under the desk nonsense of the 50s, which would, of course, shield us from the nasty radiation emanating from the mushroom cloud. That, coupled with the threat of the Yellow Peril, soon to storm the beaches on the West Coast, had the country on full alert to the dangers from the Commies. Now, all these many years later, we have, it seems, become rather blase’ about the nuclear threat. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the dual threat of nuclear war, as well as the threat of climate disaster, should be at the forefront of our consciousness; not to sit trembling in the night, but rather to try to do something to reduce the possibility that either should occur. The fact that our “stable genius” holds the nuclear codes is beyond unsettling. And of course, he had already let us know that climate change is a hoax.
Our capitalist handlers have decided that by keeping us enslaved to debt, and addicted to buying evermore crap, we can be kept in the dark. What remains is the mystery how these captains of industry, and the new tech oligarchy, can remain oblivious to these pending catastrophes. Don’t they have kids, and grandchildren? Perhaps a latter-day Freud can explain this monumental collective denial.
@NevilShute, 7:23 pm
Well Nevil (love the handle!) you might want to reread “your” book “On the Beach”. When you’re doomed you might as well party until the end.
High class escort Salome Balthus revealed a month ago what the Western economic elite believes. Convinced that a climate change apocalypse is upon us they shamelessly spend their vast wealth on expensive escorts in Switzerland… which they fly to in their environmentally-unfriendly private jets. In her words The one half is in despair and the other, dumber, half is celebrating future mass deaths. It’s not just like that in Davos of course, but it’s concentrated there [during the WEF].'”The one group thinks it only affects the poor, the “not-white race”, while the others fear that it could get worse but there’s no sense in trying to do anything about it so they just enjoy themselves”.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14314191/global-elite-Davos-high-class-escort-spills-beans.html
Alas, a novel is but a bit of fiction. Our ‘elite,’ in the real world unfortunately, are driving the whole planet with them to an untimely demise. And the fact they know this, and don’t seem to want to take the urgent steps needed to avoid catastrophe, says a lot about how they feel about the futures of their own offspring (or anyone else). But we sort of knew that, didn’t we?
In 1975 I visited Nagasaki – courtesy of the U.S. Navy – and after viewing the shadows of folks burned into various structures just could not wrap my head around why the atomic bomb was dropped twice!
Eventually I discovered the book “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb” by Gar Alperovitz which documented wide opposition by high-ranking U.S. military leaders to any use of atomic weapons. It was also pointed out that such use was not necessary to end the war as Russia had just declared war on Japan and the Japanese leadership knew it was all over.
The decision to use atomic weapons was based on three considerations: we spent all that money developing the bomb so we’ve got to use it, we need to test and evaluate results against a “live” target, and we need to scare the Russians.
Such is how history is made.
Trump in da House
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6zaAzNXc50
Whenever I listen to this person it appears futile to try defend him or his people.
I just cannot take him seriously. Mediocrity wherever I look. And not an ounce of credibility.
(Same goes for that room full of more second-rate clowns.)
I really have learned a lot from Taibbi/Kirn and I still am learning. But their defending him is beyond me after such a letdown. I am not suggesting the other impersonators before him did a better job when in office. But the performance in itself just beggars all description.
p.s. I really agree with Martyanov when it comes to professionalism the only person who knows what to do is that wife of his. As a model she has been paid standing still for hours in excruciatingly uncomfortable positions and getting yelled at by some moron photographer and not make a peep while freezing. I guess for her keeping the exact same sphinx-like smile for 180 minutes must be a cakewalk. May be he should hire Alec Baldwin as a stand-in from time to time to make at least some speeches more tolerable. This dose was enough until the next New Year´s Address.
In the March 1981 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Roger Fisher described a more apt version of the nuclear football:
A thumbs-up / Likes for this type of posting!
I’m glad to see an expansion in the topics explored here (Wall Street has long abandoned “fundamentals” for a out-and-out swindle business approach). And the comments are pleasantly focused and on target: who knew the NYTimes editorial board had that much power!?
Looking forward to next week’s posting.
Age 9 in 1945, I was curious as to just what an atomic bomb was. My older sister was scornful. She said Buck Rogers had an atomic bomb years ago. She didn’t know what one was either. But the war ended and our uncle who in the navy and was slated to be bombarding Kyushu in November 1945 came home. Until 1949, when I bothered to think about it, I was smugly confident secure in the knowledge that WE had the bomb and no one else did. Then the USSR had the bomb. The smug sense of security evaporated and never really returned. Now all of the protections, slender and fragile as they were, against the sword of Damocles over all our heads have been shorn away and I am back where I was when it was first announced that the USSR had the bomb. Things changed but stayed the same. I have a son. I have grand children. So do most of the people who so blithely prattle on about the use of nuclear weapons. Do they not care about their progeny? Do they not consider the end of civilization, the end of higher life forms? And these discussions go on as the seas rise, the climate changes promising the likely destruction of civilization as we know it in the longer run. Some seem in a rush to get it over with. I doubt my grandchildren are. Anyway, they have the prospect of whatever rising seas and climate change will gift them as a consolation prize. Whatever happened to the hope that we might give our descendants the chance for a better life?
It was crushed by propaganda.
Welcome, Haig. I can’t say that your essay made my day rosier, but your writing definitely makes an impact. Looking forward to your becoming an NC regular.
Welcome, Haig, and thank you for this sobering post. I look forward to reading more about this subject that is not often discussed in the mainstream media, for obvious reasons.
For what an atomic bomb does to people, I recommend “Hiroshima” by John Hersey.
Good article. Thanks.
I worry about several scenarios going forward, and I’ve commented above where I think I can add value:
1) We are entering an age where nuclear tensions are on the rise while the treaties that provided slow downs and safe guards have been slashed. American Presidents dumping all the SALT and related nuke treaties has been exposed as an idiotic maneuver. Russia’s hypersonic missiles are clearly superior to anything the West can deploy, and transfers of this technology to China and NK could also happen (and throwing trillions at a “Golden Dome” is probably already a technological dead end, but it’s not about building things that work anymore by the MIC). This forces all the players into use-it-or-lose-it escalation scenarios with maybe minutes from detection to launch decisions.
2) The mideast mess around Israeli nukes is going to get messier. The fact that Iran does not yet have nukes is almost a miracle, but if that changes, all signs are that at least one Gulf state and Turkey could also join the nuke club. So you worry about the American football, how do you feel about Bibi’s football as all of his neighbors also “buy teams”?
3) American neocons grappling with the end of the unipolar world are rumbling complete stupidities like “nuclear war is winnable”, and tactical nukes are just “bigger bombs”. Let’s hope nobody seriously believes this madness.
I will be writing about missile defense in a few weeks. It is truly the ultimate boondoggle of the MIC blob. To paraphrase Dire Straits: billions for nothing and risks for free. Next week’s Armed Madhouse will be about drones.