Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton » Missile Defense

Yousaf Butt

Scott Horton — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:05:08 +0000

Yousaf Butt, scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists, discusses his article “Debunking the Missile-Defense Myth;” how missile defense systems – as currently implemented – can be easily and cheaply overwhelmed with decoy warheads; more promising alternatives like boost-phase interceptors; carrying on the status quo to benefit defense contractors and to give NATO a reason to exist; Russia’s concern about US and NATO “defensive” missiles in Eastern Europe; and establishing a free market for nuclear energy, without government subsidies.

MP3 here. (20:36)

Dr. Yousaf Butt is a scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists and a physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He was on the instrument operations team responsible for the main focal plane instrument aboard NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory from 1999-2004. Previously, he has been a fellow in the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences and a research fellow in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has authored numerous papers on technical aspects of national and global security issues as well as on astrophysics and nuclear physics. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Yale University and a dual B.S. in mechanical engineering and physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ray McGovern

Scott Horton — Tue, 08 May 2012 04:23:29 +0000

Ray McGovern, member of Veterans For Peace and former senior analyst at the CIA, discusses Russian Gen. Nikolai Makarov’s suggestion that a NATO missile-defense shield in Eastern Europe could be the target of a Russian pre-emptive strike; the laughable justification of the missile shield as protection (for Poland and Romania?) against Iranian nuclear missiles; how President Bush funneled more government money to defense contractors by withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and how the US is replacing the MAD (mutually assured destruction) nuclear doctrine with a disarming first-strike capability, forcing Russia to institute launch-on-warning and greatly increasing the chance of nuclear war.

MP3 here. (19:31)

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the John F. Kennedy administration to that of George H. W. Bush. His articles appear on Consortium News and Antiwar.com.

Daniel Ellsberg

Scott Horton — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:04:23 +0000

Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, discusses his article “For nuclear security beyond Seoul, eradicate land-based ‘doomsday’ missiles;” the slow pace of nuclear weapons reductions, despite much lip service from every US president since Carter; the surprising low number of hydrogen bombs required to cause nuclear winter and effectively end life on earth; redefining nuclear deterrence in terms of dozens of missiles instead of thousands; why everyone loses in nuclear war, even the nation to get a “first strike;” and the complete list of references for the scientific studies, data, and historical incidences mentioned in the article.

Update: Your host was apparently wrong. The footnote I was thinking of was this report [.pdf] which does not refer to 14 nukes anywhere. Sorry.

MP3 here. (47:19)

Daniel Ellsberg is the author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. His upcoming book is titled The American Doomsday Machine.

In 1959 Daniel Ellsberg worked as a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. He joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification on the front lines.

On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, he worked on the Top Secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.

Lawrence Wittner

Scott Horton — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 04:58:42 +0000

Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany, discusses his article “Try a Little Nuclear Sanity;” the “SANE” legislation introduced by Congressman Edward Markey that would cut the budget and scope of the US nuclear weapons program; how Russia is threatened by “missile defense,” that supposedly exists to protect Europe from Iran but actually gives the US an unanswerable first-strike capability; why the Cold War military budget and mindset persist even though the USSR was dissolved over 20 years ago; and the unspoken Ronald Reagan/liberal agreement on nuclear disarmament.

MP3 here. (20:03)

Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany and author of Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual.

Scott Ritter

Scott Horton — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:43:44 +0000

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter discusses the newly assertive U.S. role in relations with Israel, how ending nationalism-inspiring threats against Iran will allow a moderate government to take hold, Israel’s inability to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities without U.S. help, how missile defense provokes nuclear proliferation and why nuclear weapons can and should be abandoned in our lifetimes.

MP3 here. (42:45)

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. He is the author of numerous books, including Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement and Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change.

Frida Berrigan

Scott Horton — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 06:30:26 +0000

Frida Berrigan, columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, discusses the frantic U.S. defense contractors lobbying for stimulus money while promising job creation, the prospect of a militarized outer space, Lockheed Martin’s overpriced and unnecessary F-22 Raptor and why the commonly held assumption that World War II ended the Great Depression must be challenged.

MP3 here. (23:33)

Frida Berrigan is Senior Program Associate for the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. She is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus and a contributing editor of In These Times magazine.

Doug Bandow

Scott Horton — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:30:03 +0000

Doug Bandow, author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire, discusses the Bush administration’s foreign policy legacy, why maintaining a U.S. military presence in S. Korea makes less sense than ever, the difficulty of negotiating alternative U.S. supply routes to Afghanistan while taking a hard line on Russia and Iran, the high cost in Iraqi lives for their “liberation” from one authoritarian government to another and the demise of Bush’s two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

MP3 here. (21:45)

Doug Bandow is a recent addition to the Cato Institute. His new and archived articles can be found at Antiwar.com/bandow.

Mark Ames

Scott Horton — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:24:49 +0000

Mark Ames, author of “The Cold War that Wasn’t” in The Nation, discusses the dominant narrative and ideological underpinnings in the U.S. press regarding the recent Georgian attack on South Ossetia and subsequent Russian counterattack on Georgia, the attempt to portray Russia as the aggressor by floating the idea of a first-strike cyber war despite the lack of any evidence, the alleged poisoning of Ukraine’s Victor Yushchenko and the current dispute between Yushchenko and Yulia Timoshenko over her reaction to the Georgia war, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, the precedent set by U.S. intervention in Kosovo, the danger of putting “defensive” missiles in Eastern Europe while the U.S. foreign policy establishment contemplates first strike capability, U.S. NED support for the Russian National Bolsheviks, the “shock therapy” robbery of Russian resources under Yeltsin’s autocracy in the 1990s and the consequences.

MP3 here. (64:25)

Mark Ames is a journalist who has written for several publications including the New York Press, The Nation and GQ Russia and is the founding editor and regular contributor of the Moscow-based newspaper The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond and The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia.

Eric Margolis

Scott Horton — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:26:28 +0000

Eric Margolis, foreign correspondent for Canada’s Sun National Media and author of the brand new American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World, discusses the importance of maintaining level-headed relations with Russia, the consequences of U.S. support for Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia, Pakistan’s decreasing stability and our increased interference, the beginning of the “pipeline security wars,” the war party’s bogus explanations of the causes of terrorism and the Arab world’s former admiration for America.

MP3 here. (53:24)

Award winning author, columnist, and broadcaster Eric S. Margolis has covered 14 wars and is a leading authority on military affairs, the Middle East, South Asia, and Islamic movements. He is foreign correspondent for Canada’s Sun National Media and author of War at the Top of the World and the brand new American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World.

Gordon Prather

Scott Horton — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 03:27:44 +0000

Dr. Gordon Prather discusses the different uses for varying yield nuclear weapons for missile defense, the tactical and strategic handicaps of our missile defense systems, what it takes to build a nuclear weapon and the difference between a nuclear weapons program and what the Iranians are doing.

MP3 here. (31:09)

Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. — ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.