Obama Orders Stratcom Study of How to Neutralize China's Nuclear Weapons

January 7, 2013 • 9:24AM

Defensenews.com reported yesterday that the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed by U.S. President Barack Obama on Jan. 2, orders the Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to submit a report by Aug. 15 "on the underground tunnel network used by the People's Republic of China with respect to the capability of the United States to use conventional and nuclear forces to neutralize such tunnels and what is stored within such tunnels."

The directive was in part prompted by a controversial study prepared in 2011 by a Georgetown University team led by Phillip Karber, which contended that China's extensive tunnel system, which is believed to stretch 3,000 miles, contains up to 10 times as many nuclear weapons as previously thought. Defensenews.com reported that U.S. intelligence estimates are that China has, at most, 300 nuclear warheads, whereas the Karber study said that up to 3,000 warheads could be hidden in the extensive tunnel system.

Leaving aside the accuracy of Karber's numbers, which we are unable to corroborate one way or the other, his description of what a nuclear exchange with China would look like, is both chilling and consistent with other reliable studies (see LPAC-TV's "Unsurvivable," http://larouchepac.com/unsurvivable).

Karber's paper argues that if China launched its entire nuclear arsenal against the United States, it would inflict 50 million direct casualties. Defensenews.com notes that some "50% would suffer radiation sickness ranging from debilitating to life-shortening; two-thirds of the 7,569 hospitals would be destroyed or inoperable and half the physicians would themselves be casualties. One-third of the electrical generation capacity and 40 percent of the national food-producing agricultural land would be destroyed or exposed to significant residual radiation. 100 million Americans would face starvation within the first 10 years of the initial attack. 'Bottom line,' Karber's report said, '200 million lost, and surviving Americans will be living in the dark, on a subsistence diet, with a life style and life expectancy equivalent to the Dark Ages.'"