An explosive cocktail of political instability mixed with 90 U.S.
H-bombs raises the specter of accidental or suicidal nuclear detonation in or
near Turkey. This risk was brought into sharp relief by the attempted military
coup there in mid-July.
In June, I warned that the Pentagon’s
180 thermonuclear B61 gravity bombs deployed across Europe – 50 to 90 are at
Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey – are too dangerous deploy in the age of
terrorism. Turkey’s B61s are 100 miles from Islamic State territory, a war zone. Now the Los Angeles Times,
the Japan Times, Foreign Policy, the San Antonio
Express News and other major papers see the Pentagon’s outsourced B61s in
Turkey as a hot topic.
As Tobin
Harshaw reported July 25, “Until recently, the question of whether
the United States should continue to station nuclear missiles [sic] in Turkey
was of interest only to a passel of national-security geeks and nonproliferation
advocates. One failed coup later, the discussion has spread to CNN, The New
Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere.”
Jeffrey
Lewis argued July 18, that in the wake of the botched coup, “Turkey is not
a sensible base for nuclear deterrence.” But in the irrational realm of nuclear
war planning, U.S. B61s are being stored at Incirlik, where the coup was planned,
because US hawks insist, Harshaw wrote, on “maintaining the capability to attack
Iran” with H-bombs. Never mind the ensuing cataclysm as Russia and Pakistan
could retaliate with nuclear weapons if the US used its own against Iran.
The bloody, hapless coup inside Turkey amplifies the reasons why US proliferation
of nuclear weapons to other countries amounts to nuclear madness. The B61s’
uselessness and vulnerability have been reported by major news outlets from
New York to Tokyo. Antiwar protesters have often snuck past
security into NATO bases where they are stored. After 20 terrorist attacks
inside Turkey, reasons for its denuclearization have gone mainstream:
1) The Los
Angeles Times said July 23 that Incirlik AFB “was an operational center
of the attempted coup,” which, US military experts said, demonstrated “a worrying
level of instability in Turkey’s military command close to the B61s.” The base’s
top commanders were all arrested.
2) US B61s stored at Incirlik are designed for the McDonnell Douglas Corp’s
F-15E jet fighter and for Lockheed Martin’s F-16, according
to the Washington Post. Yet, “The US does not have aircraft at Incirlik
qualified to deliver the weapons,” the LA Times noted. “In order for the weapons
to actually be used, the US would have to fly a squadron of aircraft into Incirlik
to load the bombs, all of which would be observed by Russia and possibly make
the base a target for a first strike.” These bombs only…