Posts
Nuclear
explosionCitation Needed: ‘Expert’ Says Russia Has Policy to
‘Nuke Their Own People’
16
January, 20148
Self-proclaimed
“information warfare” and US-Russia relations expert Molly McKew
has accused Moscow of maintaining a policy under which Russia may
nuke its own citizens- except she failed to provide a shred of
evidence to this outrageous allegation.
The
story began when reports surfaced detailing the contents of the
Trump administration's planned Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The
document, released by the White House every four years, is meant
to assess the nuclear capabilities of the US and any
changes that need to be made in their doctrine.
The
NPR has yet to be approved by Trump, but it sparked
controversy for its hawkishness and its enthusiasm to expand
the American nuclear arsenal. The document specifically names China
and Russia as "nuclear policy problems" and advises the US
to bolster its atomic power projection in Eastern Europe
with technology such as sea-launched cruise missiles.
Naturally,
Russian news outlets turned their attentions to a US promise
to bolster nuclear strength along Russian borders. The NPR
claims that the US' nuclear weapons may be used if the US feels that
its interests and those of its allies are threatened — a
pretty low standard for starting a thermonuclear war, as nuclear
weapons are usually seen as options only to protect
against existential threats.
At
this point, Miss Molly McKew threw her hat into the ring.
"Russian nuclear doctrine includes a description of when
they can nuke their own people," McKew tweeted on Friday
in a furious response to a comment from Russian
journalist Igor Korochenko that the new NPR was "insanity."
Russian nuclear doctrine includes a description of when they can nuke their own people. They want to talk about madness? Russian madness is the spark of madness driving the world mad because we've decided not to confront it.
McKew
is making quite the claim. Of course, as an expert, she must
know that the stronger a statement, the stronger the evidence
to support it must be — yet she did not provide an iota
of proof of her allegation.
Sputnik
will give her the benefit of the doubt, though, and investigate
the claim ourselves. Our first stop will be a 2016 analysis
of Russian nuclear doctrine from the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS). The report argues that Russia's bar
for using nuclear weapons is actually higher than many
other nuclear states, including the US.
While
the American doctrine posits that atomic bombs could be used
to defend US interests, Russia would only launch a nuclear
strike in response to existential threats to the
Russian state: that being other weapons of mass destruction or
mass use of conventional weapons.
The
report, from a Western think tank that generally takes a dim
view of Moscow, makes zero mention of a Russian doctrine
to nuke Russian citizens. On the contrary, it criticizes the
Russian nuclear doctrine as overly vague — and therefore
not specific enough to include the circumstances under which
Moscow would do the unthinkable and turn its nuclear arsenal on its
own people. Even critics can find no truth to McKew's charge.
Hard
as Sputnik looked, we could find no sources suggesting that
Russian nuclear doctrine includes a tenet explaining when Moscow can
nuke its own people. The closest we could find is the 1954 Totskoye
nuclear exercise, in which the Soviet Union tested a nuclear
weapon, then sent Red Army soldiers to the site to see how
the aftermath of the blast would affect them.
Horrifying,
to be sure — but in those days, the effects
of nuclear fallout on the human body were still poorly
understood. The US conducted extremely similar tests themselves —
eight of them, to be exact: the Desert Rock tests from 1951
to 1957. When the adverse health impacts of such tests were
better understood, they stopped.
A
harsh critic of the Russian government, journalist Aric Toler,
was so shocked by the "expert's" claims that he
slammed McKew on Twitter. "'The Russian information warfare
expert' is waging really crappy info war on Russia by completing
inventing sections in the Russian nuclear doctrine," Toler
wrote, linking to the Russian nuclear doctrine to prove it.
The Russian "information warfare expert" is waging really crappy info war on Russia by completing inventing sections in the Russian nuclear doctrine. Here's the Russian military doctrine -- find anything that you could even creatively interpret like this. http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/41d527556bec8deb3530.pdf …
When
even your ideological allies are calling your allegations unfounded
and hare-brained, that's probably a good sign that you should slow
down, take a deep breath, and cite your sources.
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