Schiller Institute Conference, Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Remarks by Professor Theodore A. Postol
DENNIS SPEED: Thanks a lot, Stephan. Welcome everybody to today’s forum. We’re here for the purpose of initiating a public and international dialogue at the highest possible level, in matters of life and death, the ultimate nuclear war. But these matters have to be discussed from the standpoint of something called statecraft. We need policies and programs, sure! But they can only be truly understood from the standpoint of an agreement on the principles of the discourse. Helga Zepp-LaRouche has written Ten Principles for a New International Strategic and Development Architecture. We’ll make sure that that’s available in the chat for you, to link to that. And that was done two years ago, to initiate the discussion, to define a pathway of inquiry. And what we’re trying to do is to bring you, and I think that’s what’s happened today, people who have not only the experience, not only the expertise, but they have the passion and commitment to change policy.
Our next speaker, Dr. Ted Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology, and international security at MIT, is one of the best-known people in the world on the question of the issue of nuclear war, what it really does, what it really means, and why you have to be—shall we say?—a bit touched in the head to believe it can ever be “limited.”
He’s a recipient of all sorts of prizes, and so. I want to reference just two: The 1995 Hilliard Roderick Prize for Excellence in Science, Arms Control, and International Security, from the International Association for the Advancement of Science, which talked about his outstanding contributions that advance our understanding of issues related to arms control and international security. And then there’s another award, I believe it was in 1990, which was the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Award, which was for “Incisive technical analysis of national security issues that have been vital for informing the public policy debate.”
Well, that’s what he’s here to do. We’re happy to have him, and so, Professor Postol, you now have the floor.
PROF. THEODORE POSTOL: Thank you very much. Let me start by apologizing. I’ll be leaving at about 6:30 your time, because I have had another unexpected commitment, because of the war in the Middle East, and I’ve been asked to do something totally different on those issues, but they’re also pressing at the moment.
What I’d like to talk about at the moment, is a little bit about why an introduction of these missiles into Germany by United States would certainly create a trigger point for a potential Third World War. And the reasons for this are actually quite simple: The warning times available to both sides, both the Russians, and the Europeans and the United States, would be very short. And because of these short warning times, an enormous destructive capability of the weapons involved, the result would be a hair-trigger situation all the time. And both sides, I’ll focus on the Russian side, for this discussion, because it has important implications for German security—both sides will seek, because they feel they will have no other choice, to destroy the other’s nuclear forces, if they perceive something is about to happen, and this will almost certainly lead to a rapid, uncontrolled escalation that would involve the strategic forces of both the United States and Russia.
So, it’s simply a matter of proximity, the perceived danger that each side will have of the other, and the inability, in any kind of controlled way, to use nuclear weapons to protect themselves. But there will certainly be a situation that will be unstoppable, should it get going.
Now, I have a few slides—I will try to jump through them—oh, incidentally, I can make the slides available to any of the audience if Helga is willing to distribute them; that would be very nice. You should have the graphic up.
[Fig. 1: “The U.S.-German Typhon Deployment, A Guarantee To Make Europe an Ignition Point for Global Nuclear War,” a presentation on Oct. 2, 2024. Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.]
Basically, what I’m concerned about, what I’m describing in this talk is the U.S. deployment into Germany of these mobile nuclear-armed missiles. Now, what people are saying is they’re not nuclear-armed. That’s basically ridiculous: They will be nuclear-armed. They have to be nuclear-armed, because if they’re not nuclear-armed, they have no meaning of any kind: I want to be clear. The numbers of these missiles, and with conventional warheads cannot possibly make any kind of significant difference, with regard to the military balance: There are much too few of them, and they’re capabilities are much too small. So these weapons will be very quickly turned into nuclear weapons.
And unfortunately, my country, as Ambassador Matlock has also said, cannot be trusted to not suddenly change the rules of engagement, and there’s no way, in my judgment, that these missiles will not be nuclear, if they are deployed. So that’s something very important to keep in mind.
[Fig. 2: “Typhon”: What We Are Delivering]
[Fig. 3: 40-Foot Van Designed To Hold four Aegis Missile Launch Canisters]
If you look a little bit at what these particular missiles are, they’re going to be in trucks, that will carry canisters that can be turned vertical through the roof of the truck, and launched. Now, the important think about these trucks, is that when they are on the road, they will be extremely difficult to distinguish from commercial trucks, that are carrying civil, commercial goods. That’s not an accident. They’re intended to be very difficult to determine, whether or not they are civil units, because one of the ways to hide these trucks is to simply make them look like commercial trucks. This means that the Russians, if they began to become concerned that these trucks were sitting up different locations, the locations where they were kept secret as best they could, but the Russians would know some of them, for sure; but as long as the Russians see this happening, and they choose to try to deal with this, what they are likely to do, almost certainly will be to try to destroy these units, before they are used to attack Russia. So this means there could be a very wide use of nuclear weapons on German soil.
[Fig: 4: 100 kt Warheads from the Trident II Missile Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile system Are Ubiquitous in the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal and Are the Nature Choice for the New Typhan Ballistic Missiles]
Now, the thing about these particular missiles that they’re carrying is, if you look at this left-hand, yellow box; I’m putting my cursor over what is called the hypersonic vehicle. It’s basically very similar in many ways to a ballistic missile warhead, except it’s designed to have some aerodynamic lift on it, which ballistic missile warheads are not really designed for that, because most of the time, they spend outside the atmosphere.
[Fig. 5: The Planned Hypersonic Missile System Will Very Substantially Reduce Radar Early Warning Times for Russia—Which Will Have To Depend on Radars To Detect an Attack. Moscow Would Have Perhaps 3-4 Minutes Warning of a Nuclear Attack from Germany]
So, if you had a ballistic missile warhead, you would launch it on a lofted trajectory, and the lofted trajectory would, with the curvature of the Earth, it would quickly be seen, even though the curvature of the Earth is large enough to mask the launch from a radar [inaud 49:56] in Moscow. You would at least have 10 or 12 minutes of observation of this object coming at you. However, if you have a hypersonic vehicle, it is launched to a speed that is about the same as that of the ballistic missile, so it actually takes a somewhat shorter time to get to Moscow, because it’s travelling on a shorter path. It’s skimming off the top of the atmosphere, but its speed is extremely high. And because it’s low to the ground, it is only likely to be in the line of sight of the radars in Moscow, maybe 3 minutes or so, before it’s actually going to arrive. So the Russians would have almost no warning of a nuclear attack on their leadership.
So, this will cause the Russians to put in place mechanisms to rapidly react. I cannot tell you what those mechanisms would be, but they certainly are going to include various kinds of what we call “pre-delegated authority”: Authority to take action if, for example, communication from Moscow all of a sudden disappears. And if you had an accidental communication blackout, under certain crisis conditions, that could lead to the massive use of nuclear weapons against Germany.
[Fig. 6: Extremely Short Warning Times for NATO Nuclear Attacks on Moscow! Radars in Moscow Could Only Detect an Incoming NATO Nuclear Attack for Times as Short as 6 Minutes!]
I won’t go through this, because this was really the fear of the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962!
[Fig. 7: Timelines for Russian Nuclear Strikes against Washington, D.C. and Other U.S. Cities from Cuba in 1962]
In 1962, the United States produced the blockade of Cuba, and was planning to invade, if the Russians did not back down, to stop the nuclear weapons deployments in Cuba, because the warning times would be so small, and unacceptable for the United States, if nuclear ballistic missiles were launched from Cuba. Now, fortunately, Khrushchev had been through a war himself, and he understood—as had, incidentally, John Kennedy had been through a war. And both of these experienced presidents, both of whom had been soldiers, understood how quickly things could get out of control.
Now, just imagine what might have happened, if Khrushchev had told Kennedy, “Well Cuba’s none of your business. You have no right to tell us not to put nuclear weapons into Cuba!” World War III could have happened at that point. The United States would have certainly invaded, and we know now that there were already nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba. And we don’t know what would have happened, but there’s a significant chance that those weapons would have or could have been launched.
Now, in December 2021, Sergey Lavrov was talking to Antony Blinken, and Blinken told him that the United States reserved the right to put nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Ukraine. And Lavrov objected: Lavrov said, “We would object to that,” and Blinken’s statement to Lavrov was, “Well, you have no business telling the Ukrainians what they can and cannot do. It’s not your business.”
Well, imagine if Khrushchev had done that to the American President. And, of course, this was December 2021, and the invasion occurred on Feb. 24, 2022, only a couple of months later: Not a surprise, if you know a little bit about the situation that people would be contemplating from a military and political point of view.
[Fig. 8: Russian Tactical Nuclear Attacks on German/U.S. Tactical Nuclear Missile Deployments and Nuclear Command Centers]
So what could a Russian tactical nuclear attack on these missile deployments in Germany look like? Well, we don’t know, but we do know practices that a military institution will take. It’s not because they’re crazy, it’s because they’re trying every way they possibly know, to limit damage to their own country. And they know, when they’re doing this, that the probable outcome is the destruction of the world. Anybody who thinks these soldiers don’t know what they’re doing, and don’t understand the full consequences of what they’re involved in, just doesn’t know them. I worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Americans who did this—soldiers—and they knew exactly what they were facing. And they would have done their jobs, but they would not have done them with any sense at all, that the world was going to be, you know, the same place, or that they would even be alive, or their families would be alive. So, the idea that these soldiers somehow don’t understand the consequences, is wrong! My experience is, the civilians, civilian leadership at the Pentagon are the ones who don’t fully understand the consequences.
[Fig. 9: Potential Fallout Patterns from Very Limited Russian Tactical Nuclear Missile Counterstrikes]
So, here, for example, is a notional idea—I have little nuclear explosions I’ve shown, and these red oval areas show you areas where the fallout, radioactive materials from the nuclear explosions would fall to the ground and produce a radiation field that’s large enough that if people did not evacuate this area within 24 hours, they would receive a lethal dose. The blue area shows you the region where people would get enough radiation that they would be sick, but a number of them would actually die, because they wouldn’t have medical support. Now, this is only for a dozen or so nuclear detonations. I’m assuming, incidentally, a nuclear yield of the warheads exactly what Putin said the nuclear yields of Russian tactical nuclear warheads would be: 75 kilotons. That’s what I assumed. It could be larger, they could be smaller. My guess is, they’ll be a mix.
These attacks would be at sites where the Russians believe there might be a unit of U.S. tactical ballistic missiles set up. In fact, there would be many more uncertain sites, and probably, there would be hundreds of these weapons launched, because the intelligence is uncertain, and missing a site where multiple nuclear weapons could be launched against your country, including your capital, is not an outcome you want to face as a possibility. So given that weapons are already being used, you are not going to say, “Gee, one more weapon could be escalation.” You’re going to go after everything you think could possibly be a target, could be a threat to your country.
[Fig. 10: Area of Firestorm in Hamburg from Allied Bombing Raid on 27/28 July 1943]
Now, here is a threat area that could also be targetted: This is a map of Hamburg, in 1943. It marks areas that were bombed in the bombing attacks of July 27 and 28 in 1943, and this area here, shows the area of Hamburg, which incidentally is a big command center, so this is going to be hit, too. You’re not going to say, “We’re not going to hit a command center.” That’s where all the decisions are being made to release these weapons against you. You’re going to go after them all, and there will be many cities—probably most—that will be hit with a nuclear weapon.
[Fig. 11: Area of Firestorm on July 27, 1943 (~40,000 killed)] This area burned down in what’s called a firestorm.
[Fig. 12: Photograph, Burning Areas of Firestorm in July 1943 Hamburg]
[Fig. 13: How Firestorm Develops from Rising Buoyant Air] Now, here is just a photograph of a burning area, but a firestorm occurs when you have a very large area on fire, the size of the area matters, because as it gets bigger, the intensity of the heating over the area, the area over which air is heated gets larger by the area, whereas the perimeter only gets larger linearly. So the intensity of the air sweeping in from the outside is not enough cooling effect to prevent the air temperatures from getting enormously high in the fire area.
[Fig. 14: How Firestorm Intensifies from Rising Buoyant Air] And what you get, very quickly is a circulating firestorm.
[Fig. 15: Photograph, Beginning of Firestorm Circulation in Hamburg] And these firestorms, here’s an image from an air attack; this is the firestorm developing, but I won’t go through this for now.
[Fig. 16: Table Top Experiment with Candles That Demonstrates How Firestorm Circulation Develops] But what happens is, the circular flow, the circular area of fire naturally develops air motion that drives the fire inward, resulting in the whole area coming into flames, and very high winds on the ground.
[Fig. 17: Photograph: Victims Killed by Carbon Monoxide and Intense Ground-Heating from Firestorm] The temperatures are enormous, enough to melt glass, that intense in a firestorm. The air temperatures are above the boiling point of water. The windspeeds are hurricane force, and people even in shelters, they get trapped, because they can’t go out of the shelter, because the air is so hot and the winds are so high, and they literally get roasted in the shelters.
[Fig. 18: Photograph: Man Incinerated in streets from Hurricane Force Superheated Firestorm Winds] And this is what we saw in Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities that were firebombed during World War II.
[Fig. 11 repeat] So, if you want to get a sense of the area of Hamburg would suffer a firestorm, relative to what happened in 1943, I’ve now projected that area over Google satellite map [Fig. 19: Area of Firestorm in Hamburg from Allied Bombing Raid on 27/28 July 1943] so you can get a sense of the structure of the city below, rather than from a map.
[Fig. 20a: Effects of Russian 75 Kt Tactical Thermonuclear Detonation on Hamburg—Fire Ignitions] and this is the area that a 75 kiloton, small tactical nuclear weapon would set on fire. The fire area on the ground would be much more intense, than what occurred in the firestorm area which was much smaller during the 1943 power flying attack. [Fig. 20b: Effects of Russian 75 Kt Tactical Thermonuclear Detonation on Hamburg—Radioactive Fallout] Now, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s also radiation generated by this nuclear weapon, and the radiation gets mostly carried to a high altitude, then, and it falls out in the form of particles, within tens of minutes of the detonation cloud forming. And this area shows you, it’s close in. It shows you the area downwind, so there’s an assumption of wind direction here (you wouldn’t know it at the time of the attack), and it shows you the area where people would die from fallout exposure within an hour, because the radiation intensity would be so high, and it would be arriving so soon.
[Fig. 21: Attack on Commercial Airport] Now, again, Hamburg is a big metropolitan area, and it has a commercial airport. Now, why would you attack a commercial airport? It’s not a military installation. Well: If you’re in a war, and war is a possibility, you could very likely disperse many of your military aircraft to commercial airports to minimize the chances that they will be destroyed if the military airport is attacked. So this means, the commercial airports will also be attacked. I’m just trying to give you a sense of the reasoning behind this kind of attack.
[Fig. 22: Detail Attack on Commercial Airport] In this case, you would have a second, again I’m assuming arbitrarily, that it’s another tactical nuclear weapon of 75 kt; it could well, and I think it would be likely bigger. And this area in between these two fire areas, there would be winds set up from the two wind motions, drawing air in and competing with each other, that would cause this entire area to merge into a giant firestorm.
So this is the kind of levels of damage: It’s unimaginable. As you can probably tell, I went to a lot of trouble here to put together graphics that are real, as best we can do for a human being.
[Fig. 23: Photos of Firestorm Damage in Nagasaki Overlayed on Hamburg Firestorm Area July 1943] So, here, I’ve added to this graphic, which just shows the burning area of Hamburg, I’ve added Nagasaki before, on a scale that’s comparable. So the street scales are comparable to the area that burned out.
This is a smaller area that I’m showing you here, and if you want to get a feel for the levels of damage that occurred from the nuclear attack on Nagasaki, [Figure 24a: 22 Kiloton Bomb on August 9, 1945]—that’s one of the two photographs above [in Fig. 23]—before the attack; [Fig. 24b: Nagasaki, Japan After a Nuclear Attack and ‘Firestorm’ from the Detonation of a 22 Kiloton Bomb on August 9, 1945] and here it is after the attack. And in this case, there was a lot of blast, and the place was essentially cleared of all buildings and basically, essentially most of the life.
So, I’m going to end here. [Fig. 25: Spatial Distribution of Lofted Weapons Residues from Contact Surface Burst] I can talk more about fallout, but I think my point here: To be transparent and blunt, is to scare you with the truth. I’m open about this with people, when I talk about these kinds of issues. I don’t want to overstate the situation. In fact, I’m understating it. I want people to understand that we are dealing with—we are looking into the abyss of the end of human civilization as we know it, and possibly the end of human life on the planet as we know it. And I’m trying to be as candid as I can be with these graphics, not exaggerating them, but just to give you a sense of what could occur. And this is why I totally agree with every point that Ambassador Jack Matlock said earlier. And just, Ambassador, if you’re still there, I’m very good friends with a close friend of yours—it’s amazing! I’m blocking his name and I’m very good friends with him! And he’s also an ambassador: You’re 95 and he’s 95. My joke with him, you’ll know his name immediately; he negotiated the Confidence and Security Building Measures Agreement in Europe—and my joke with him is: my job would have been, if we knew each other when we knew each other when we were both in the government, would be to sit behind him during a negotiation and look threatening, so that he would have something like that going on behind him! Anyway, that’s a joke I share with him.
MATLOCK: Thank you.
SPEED: Thank you. I know you have to get going, so let me ask a question: Helga would you want to say anything at this point?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, both Ambassador Matlock and Professor Postol, I cannot say how grateful I am for what you are doing, because it is so, so super-urgent, especially that people in Germany wake up to the danger and what you are just outlining, we will promise that we will try to get it to every possible pore of the society in Germany. If Boris Pistorius, our defense minister, says he wants to make Germany “war-ready,” we are pledging that we will use your presentations to make Germany “peace-ready,” and we will try to get many teachers and professors to get it in every classroom, in every university classroom, because I think this is so essential for us to survive. And it’s not a coincidence that you are from the, let’s say, World War II generation,” because it is that generation that still has a sense of what the destruction of war actually means. And it seems that because of video games and the whole brainwashing of people, to think that things have no consequences, they need this dose of reality which you have just given us. So, let me express my strong thanks.
POSTOL: I often tell my students that the most unnatural state of the world that you can possibly imagine, is picking up a phone, and hearing a dial tone immediately. Because that would not be the world we live in.
And my senior moment is over, Ambassador Matlock: I’m talking about Jim Goodby, who’s an old friend of mine. I think you must know Jim very well, is my guess. He’s also 95.
SPEED: I understand that Ray McGovern is on, and he’s asking urgently to say something in response to Dr. Postol.
RAY MCGOVERN: Thanks Ted and Jack. It’s good to see old friends here: Even though I’m not as old as Jack, but I am older than Ted, so, whatever.
Two small points, very important points: Back at the end of December 2021, Putin convened his top military, his defense minister, and he said: Look, the U.S. is going to put hypersonic missiles in Ukraine, when it gets them. That will give me 4-5 minutes to decide how to react. That was Dec. 21st. On Dec. 30, Putin called Biden, very unexpectedly: I need to talk to you right away. Biden was in Delaware, but he took the call without his sturdy advisors. Putin said: Look, we’re about to start negotiations in Geneva, could you please just promise not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine? The readout of that conversation said: Mr. Biden said the U.S. had no intention of putting offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. Again, 30th of December, 2021. The 21st of January, 2022, Lavrov raises this with Blinken, and Blinken says, “Forget about it! We can do what we want. We might be able to talk about the number of offensive strike missiles in Ukraine, but forget about what Biden said!” That was Jan. 21, 2022. On Feb. 12, 2022, Biden and Putin had their last direct conversation, and the readout said that Biden would not discuss the business about putting offensive strike missiles in Ukraine, nor would he discuss anything about having Ukraine in NATO. And of course, as you know, 12 days later was the offensive into Ukraine by Russian forces.
This is really important, OK? This is the scenario: The Russians feel that they were duped, they were lied to, and the readout pretty much shows that. Nobody knows that, because nobody reads the readouts.
Now, the second point is equally important: This is a two-against-one situation, folks! There’s been a tectonic shift, what the old Soviets used to call, as Jack will remember well, the “world correlation of forces.”
What am I saying, here? We’re talking about Typhon missiles? What did the Chinese say about this? One day before Putin made that very important speech about revising Russian nuclear doctrine, I’ll tell you what they said. Not many people know this, but Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said: Russia’s partnership with China is not aimed at any third country, but, the two countries could combine to respond to threats from the United States. “I would like to remind you that Moscow and Beijing will respond to ‘double containment’ by the United States, by double counter-action.” End quote. Whoa! This is unprecedented, folks. Never have the Russians claimed to have the equivalent of a mutual defense treaty with China.
I will go on one more sentence, because, this is important. The Typhon—this is Zakharova—can fire nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles which have a range of over 1,000 miles. The U.S. recently deployed a Typhon system to the Philippines, and is planning on sending missile systems to Germany by 2026, which Russia views as a major threat and, sotto voce, so does China.
So, just to put a global perspective on it, this is really serious! Ted has shown you the graphics and the pictures, but this is what they’re publicly saying. It’s very little covered in the press. Thank you for indulging me, for letting me give you the benefit, or whatever, of media analysis, which is simply looking at what Russian leaders say and what American leaders promise.
POSTOL: Let me put a little icing on your cake, Ray. First of all, thanks a lot. It’s really important, the details that you added to my incorrect description. All this is going to do is make it absolutely clear to the Russian military, who will be fully informed on this, to strike as hard as they possibly can, in case something happens. It’s just going to be—you know, it’s going to be absolutely all, no restraints at all, if they feel that they either have to preempt or if they feel that they’re striking back at an emerging attack. Everything will go off, completely. There will be no control of any kind: The escalation will be complete. Zero to one.
Anyway, that’s just a comment, a side comment.
SPEED: Well, thank you very much. And we will go back to Stephan. I want to thank everybody for what has been an extraordinary exchange that’s already occurred. We haven’t even gotten to the process of the full discussion. We have several other speakers; so Stephan, I’m going to turn it back over to you.
