The US Congress’s request to American intelligence agencies to evaluate the “survivability” of Russian and Chinese leaders after a nuclear attack is absurd, global peace activist Helen Caldicott told Sputnik.
The comprehensive study recently mandated by Congress will be carried out by the US intelligence agencies and by STRATCOM, US Strategic Command which is in charge of nuclear forces, according to a little-reported section of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
This congressional investigation into the survivability of Russian and Chinese leadership in the event of nuclear war is ridiculous,” Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the organization that was the co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, said.
Caldicott insisted that the study was unnecessary and irrelevant since the leaderships of both Russia and China clearly understood the dangers to themselves and their peoples of a full-scale nuclear war breaking out.
Caldicott added that those dangers were not sufficiently recognized by the current generation of US leaders.
The leaders of these two countries are highly intelligent and well-informed and know for certain that a nuclear war involving the United States would condemn them to certain death, as opposed may I say to the current leaders in the United States,” she remarked.
Caldicott said the thinking processes of the US congressional figures who ordered the study defied her comprehension.
“What on earth do these legislators think that they ordered such an investigation one wonders?” she asked.
On January 26, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to midnight, putting it two minutes and 30 seconds closer to the outbreak of nuclear war.
The Doomsday Clock has not been on such a setting for more than half a century since the 1950’s and the most tense period of the Cold War.
Caldicott is the author of many books, including “The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military Industrial Complex” and “War in Heaven:” The Arms Race in Outer Space.”
The Smithsonian Institution has named her one of the most influential women of the 20th century.
Originally published: https://sputniknews.com/us/201702031050300057-us-study-survivability-putin-ridiculous/