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"On October 27, 1962, the world almost descended into a full blown nuclear war, a war that could have wiped out major chunks of mankind. That day, the world came closest to the initiation of a third world war. This happened at the height of the US-Soviet cold war in the final stages of the Cuban missile crisis. Soviet Union had deployed nuclear warhead missiles in Cuba just a few hundred miles away from the US coast. It was proving to be a matter of grave concern as negotiations went underway with a looming threat of US invasion of Cuba and an eventual US-Soviet war. On October 27, a Soviet submarine had been docked in the Cuban waters for some days. The US navy had already formed a blockade to stop any armed Soviet ships. Even though, the crisis was getting close to be resolved through diplomatic dialogue, the Soviet submarine was not in contact with their government and were thus still under the impression that a war was looming large. The US navy soon registered the presence of the submarine and fired, without warning, depth grenades to force it to surface. But the US navy was unaware that the Soviet submarine was equipped with nuclear torpedoes. The submarine captains were still operating under the old orders of their government, which were to launch the nuclear torpedoes if they are attacked by Americans. The submarine commanders were now in a position to launch nuclear strikes, which would have started a nuclear war between the two heavyweights. The fate of the world was hanging by a thread. There were three officers on the submarine and any strike required the approval of all of them. Two officers were quickly in favor of the nuclear strike, but commander Vasili Arkhipov was in opposition. In those precarious moments, he was able to hold his own and convince the other two to avert the strikes and surface. As a result, the submarine surfaced and eventually returned home. Those few minutes were probably the deadliest minutes in modern history, havin

Thus proving that we need many more aircraft carrier groups, I guess.

Oh, great. 30 nuclear warheads slowly leaking radiation off the U.S. East Coast. But not to worry, dilution is the pollution solution! Except that plutonium has no no-effect level, has a half-life in the billions of years, and this simply adds to the radioactive pollution contributed by nuclear weapons testing, various nuclear reactor "accidents," and direct river pollution by weapons manufacturing factories. Now add to that the incredible levels of halogenated hydrocarbon pollution we've pumped into our oceans that have additive and sometimes synergistic effects with radioactive pollution. What happens when you use the planet's oceans as toxic waste dumps? Hint: there's a reason that whales try to beach themselves.

On top of this, Israel has just launched its fifth submarine capable of firing nuclear missiles. 

Interesting. Can't say that I'd shed any tears over British disarmament, or global disarmament for that matter.   But note that the article says UK has 255 warheads, with 160 of them deployed on Trident missiles. That makes it 95 warheads unaccounted for by the article. In storage somewhere, or deployable by aircraft?  According to Wikipedia, the Panavia Tornado fighter-bombers in the UK air force are cable of delivering air-dropped nuclear weapons. . 

This typically pompous Wall Street Journal editorial gets part of it right but ignores several elephants in the room. -- No way this goes down without Russia having agreed to it. Russia's only foreign military base is a naval port in Syria. Russia has deployed anti-aircraft missile batteries in Syria. Russia has supplied the Syrian government with state-of-the-art antiaircraft shoulder-held missiles. Several months ago, the Russians moved a fleet of warships into the Mediterranean for the first time, to protect Syria from foreign attack, including at least one submarine equipped with anti-ship missiles.  The U.S. and Russia have been engaged in building up their forces positioned around for over a year, in an escalating fashion. Russia has a huge economic incentive to keep Assad in power because he is blocking the natural gas pipeline that western interests want to run through Syria Russia has also built up its forces within Syria, a pipeline that would break Russia's near-monopoly on supplying natural gas to the European Union. A direct military intervention in Syria doesn't go down without Russia's approval, notwithstanding what their later statements might be. Obama is an accomplished liar but he's politically timid. Touching off World War III is not on his agenda. 2. Iran also has to acquiesce in advance. Syria and Iran have a mutual defense treaty, the first announced in 2005, a later treaty announced in 2008. http://tinyurl.com/oez2dq7 (.) Thousands of crack Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops are already stationed in Syria. As the only other Shia-majority state in the region, Syria is critical to Iran's own defense. Iran has the ability to close the Straits of Hormuz, thereby toppling the western world economy as petroleum supplies suddenly dry up. The U.S. Navy lacks the ability to quickly clear the Straits of mines, as was proved in embarrassingly bad tests the U.S. Navy did last year. Iran is not a world power but its military might is nothing to sneez

More at these sites: http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-considers-closure-of-strait-of-hormuz-after-european-union-sanctions-2012-7 http://www.oil-price.net/en/articles/iran-oil-strait-or-hormuz.php http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/07/201272162622744173.html The U.S. Navy's claimed ability to reopen the straits within a few days is dubious, despite the announcement that another Navy minesweeper is on its way to the Persian Gulf. In tests about two years ago, a team of U.S. minesweepers found only 1 out of 20 practice mines over a period of several days. Niow add to the calculus Iran's thousands of below-radar cruise missiles, its ICBMs armed with conventiional warheads (the U.S. East Coast and the EU are both in range), torpedo boats, and its fleet of mini-submarines designed for stealth and operation in shallow waters. The U.S. has a single carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf. That's one carrier I would not want to be on if war erupts in the Straits of Hormuz. But at the same time, the Iranian Parliament has no power to declare war. That power resides with Ayatolla Khomeni and the Supreme Council of the Revolutionary Guards.  So the legislation is more symbolic than a similar bill in the U.S. would be. But still, it's a strong message that Parliament has Khomeni's back if he decides to retaliate against U.S. and E.U. economic warfare. 

U.S. global hegemony is rapidly disintegrating as former puppet states in Europe jump from the dwindling dollar economy to the rising remnimbi/ruble BRICS economies. And many of the "stans" south of Russia threatened by U.S. mercenaries provided by the Gulf Coast States are jumping in that direction too, along with Turkey, a NATO member. The Stans involved are oil and natural gas rich; combined with Russian oil and gas, they have enough oil and gas reserves to rival the Gulf Coast States.  The most interesting part to me is the debate now under way in the EU over dropping out of NATO and creating a replacement European mutual defense force that excludes the U.S. I'm beginning to hit some chatter about inviting Russia into that hypoethesized treaty. That makes sense for the EU because it would give Europe the benefit of Russian nuclear deterrence, both in land and submarine-based ICBMs. I'm not convinced that Russia would sign on. Russia is already running joint military exercises with China, which is playing the role of Russia's economic savior at this point. So China might have the final say on that scenario. A pan-Eurasian mutual defense treaty? What would be left of the U.S. Empire without NATO, particularly given that the dollar would surely collapse before such a treaty were signed? The War Party in Congress has only one tool to work with, war, and when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails. Current U.S. military power is built around the capacity to wage two major wars concurrently, but is very heavily dependent on NATO to do so. I'm not sure at all that the War Party has what it takes to cope with a peaceful group boycott by other NATO members. 

With the U.S. set to spend $1 trillion on increasing its nuclear arsenal over the next few years, one has to wonder why no protests here?