[EmperorMagus]

Andorion, on 07 April 2015 - 03:15 AM, said:

My problem with this entire nuke question is potential for destruction. The more countries that have nukes, the more people( as in individual human beings) will have access to nukes. Now not all countries will screen their personnel or maintain top level security. What if that countrys army stages a coup? What if the officer in charge is not as stable as he seems?

Take for instance Pakistan. The country is practically half under control of extremists. Laden was found in a military compound and their intelligence people probably knew he was there. There was a time before the present regime, when the insurgents controlled the entire Swat Valley and their was talk of their taking Islamabad. What happens in a situation like that? Take Russia, corrupt and jingoistic. Is anybody really ok with their having nuclear bombs?

The fewer people that have nukes, the better, with the best number being zero.

In an ideal world that's true. incidentally, the same argument can be used for anything that can be used as a weapon too. Wouldn't it be better if no one in the world had ballistic missiles? Cruise missiles? Fighter jets? Automatic rifles?
I mentioned that my main problem was U.S and Israel and Pakistan having nukes and then stopping other people from getting them because of some hypocrisy. " An unstable person may use it!"
An unstable person already used it. It's called Hiroshima. Take it away from the only people that have already used that massive weapon of destruction and then accuse other people.

[Terez]

EmperorMagus, on 07 April 2015 - 03:54 AM, said:

Andorion, on 07 April 2015 - 03:15 AM, said:

My problem with this entire nuke question is potential for destruction. The more countries that have nukes, the more people( as in individual human beings) will have access to nukes. Now not all countries will screen their personnel or maintain top level security. What if that countrys army stages a coup? What if the officer in charge is not as stable as he seems?

Take for instance Pakistan. The country is practically half under control of extremists. Laden was found in a military compound and their intelligence people probably knew he was there. There was a time before the present regime, when the insurgents controlled the entire Swat Valley and their was talk of their taking Islamabad. What happens in a situation like that? Take Russia, corrupt and jingoistic. Is anybody really ok with their having nuclear bombs?

The fewer people that have nukes, the better, with the best number being zero.

In an ideal world that's true. incidentally, the same argument can be used for anything that can be used as a weapon too. Wouldn't it be better if no one in the world had ballistic missiles? Cruise missiles? Fighter jets? Automatic rifles?
I mentioned that my main problem was U.S and Israel and Pakistan having nukes and then stopping other people from getting them because of some hypocrisy. " An unstable person may use it!"
An unstable person already used it. It's called Hiroshima. Take it away from the only people that have already used that massive weapon of destruction and then accuse other people.

To be fair, the US deployment of nukes was not an act of instability; it was, at the time, just an advanced act of war. It took a little time for it to sink in how horrible the consequences were, and ever since then we have been just as reluctant as anyone else to use them, perhaps more reluctant. And the only reason we were the first to use them is because we were the first to create and develop them, and we only did that because we had reason to believe Hitler was already working on it.

[Maark Abbott]

Terez, on 06 April 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

Maark, on 06 April 2015 - 12:26 PM, said:

Netenyahu scares the living shit out of me. Mainly because he has a finger on a Big Red Button in the Middle East and seems to display the sort of belligerence that I'd associate with actually pushing said button.

I know what you mean but he hasn't done it yet despite going on about it for years. There would be a whole lot of consequences aside from possible nuclear retaliation; he does not appear to be crazy enough to ignore those consequences. I also suspect that a lot of his talk is just him being a politician, but I don't know enough about Israeli politics to have any real assurance of that. They keep electing him, so they must like it.

I think it's worse for that he saber rattles in exactly the manner of the 'deranged despotic dictators' that the US has occasionally dropped bombs on, but has the backing of the US. And that his government regularly attacks civilians with no real international repercussions beyond 'oh you naughty Israel, you'.

[Terez]

Maark, on 07 April 2015 - 02:12 PM, said:

Terez, on 06 April 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

Maark, on 06 April 2015 - 12:26 PM, said:

Netenyahu scares the living shit out of me. Mainly because he has a finger on a Big Red Button in the Middle East and seems to display the sort of belligerence that I'd associate with actually pushing said button.

I know what you mean but he hasn't done it yet despite going on about it for years. There would be a whole lot of consequences aside from possible nuclear retaliation; he does not appear to be crazy enough to ignore those consequences. I also suspect that a lot of his talk is just him being a politician, but I don't know enough about Israeli politics to have any real assurance of that. They keep electing him, so they must like it.

I think it's worse for that he saber rattles in exactly the manner of the 'deranged despotic dictators' that the US has occasionally dropped bombs on, but has the backing of the US. And that his government regularly attacks civilians with no real international repercussions beyond 'oh you naughty Israel, you'.

I'm not sure what's going on with Israel's other allies, but here it's all about eschatology. Evangelical Christians are convinced that the Bible says we must protect Israel unconditionally from her unfriendly neighbors; there is no nuance in that belief whatsoever, and it's one of the most intractable positions held by the American Right. Even many on the left are affected by it, some Jewish, some not.

I wish Russ Feingold would run against Hillary; he's the only senator to have voted against the Patriot Act (statement), and one of few to have voted against the Iraq War (statement). He's Jewish and not a hardliner on Israel at all. He can get away with it, without being called antisemitic. Hillary is a hawk; I am not looking forward to her presidency at all (but I will vote for her to avoid a Republican).

[Maark Abbott]

I have the perfect counter to Israel, as per Judges: Iron Chariots. They have no counter to those.

[Cause]

Frankly I don't know enough about the particulars of the deal to comment on it directly.

I do know that Americans foreign policy is the poster child for walking the most politically expedient path in the short term. It seems to almost always backfire on them in the long run. They never stuck it out in Iraq twice (Hello dysfunctional Iraq and ISIS), their meddling in Afghanistan haunts them. They prop up friendly dictators today only to topple unfriendly dictators tomorrow (its normally the same guy). Time will have to tell in this case I just hope this is not another case of putting in no effort now but having to put twice as much in later.

Edit- I agree that the fewer nukes in the world the better. I think that nukes have actually past their day. Mutually assured destruction these days no longer requires nukes except as a direct deterrent to other nukes. As an example, If America went to war with Russia I feel confident America could win but the cost would be astronomical. Without nukes it only takes one GPS guided missile (1 million $) which practically can't be stopped to blow up power stations, bridges, skyscrapers etc etc that will cost billions to fix. Total war even without nukes would be an absolute disaster for every side in the game this days. With rarer and rarer exceptions I would say the risk of countries changing hands or borders changing is non existent. The battle space instead seems to be changing in fact to deal with the threats not of countries but of radical groups who again thanks to modern weapons are able to pose a threat far in excess that their numbers warranted.

In the Roman empire a thousand men picking up swords and promising to overthrow the emperor would mean little. These days a thousand people armed with explosives, rpgs and machine guns are shooting down commercial airliners or massacring schools. As has been pointed out what happens when a country like Pakistan maybe loses control of the nukes?

No Nukes is a safer world, short of that and end to nuclear proliferation is something I support. Even if it means the few countries with nukes have an edge. Though for gods sake a thousand nukes? I am looking at you USA and Russia! Some countries are more stable than others as well. I don't want a theocracy to have the bomb, I don't want north Korea to have the bomb.

This post has been edited by Cause: 08 April 2015 - 09:23 AM

[Terez]

Cause, on 08 April 2015 - 08:39 AM, said:

Frankly I don't know enough about the particulars of the deal to comment on it directly.

I do know that Americans foreign policy is the poster child for walking the most politically expedient path in the short term. It seems to almost always backfire on them in the long run. They never stuck it out in Iraq twice (Hello disfunctional Iraq and ISIS), their meddling in Afghanistan haunts them. They prop up friendly dictators today only to topple unfriendly dictators tomorrow (its normally the same guy). Time will have to tell in this case I just hope this is not another case of putting in no effort now but having to put twice as much in later.

I doubt this is one of those scenarios, partly because we're dealing with a different administration with different goals. Partly also because the talks were multilateral and involved our most important allies in Europe. Much of the actual negotiation was undertaken by Iran's top nuclear physicist AND our Energy secretary (that department Rick Perry wanted to get rid of but he couldn't remember the name—vote GOP!), who is also a nuclear physicist. They attended MIT together. The details of the deal are therefore very technical and thorough. If Iran breaks the agreement, we will be back to where we were before with sanctions and hoping, but without the cost (in financial and human terms) of a long drawn-out war with Iran, on top of the others we have going.

The problem with Iraq was not exactly a matter of not sticking it out, but rather bungling the operation so badly that sticking it out was just making it worse.

On a point made earlier by Magus, the argument generally goes that the danger of Iran getting a bomb is not so much unbalanced leadership being willing to use it as the possibility that the tech will get into the hands of non-state actors. The main thing keeping nuclear tech in check is the fear of retaliation; if any country uses it, they can be bombed in return. Non-state actors don't have those concerns, so what we call "state-sponsored terrorism" from Iran is the main concern, i.e. the worry that their tech will bomb western targets and we won't be able to definitively blame them for it. Even recognizing that the US sometimes itself misguidedly sponsors terrorism, we can rest assured that our government will at least not be stupid enough to give tomorrow's Al Qaeda nuclear tech, but we aren't so sure about Mr. Supreme Leader.

[Gorefest]

Terez, on 08 April 2015 - 10:38 AM, said:

Even recognizing that the US sometimes itself misguidedly sponsors terrorism, we can rest assured that our government will at least not be stupid enough to give tomorrow's Al Qaeda nuclear tech, but we aren't so sure about Mr. Supreme Leader.

They might give it to the Tea Party, though.

[Terez]

lol, I know what you mean, but 1) we are still a nation with an address and that would apply to them, and 2) the Tea Party and the hawkish wing of the GOP are not the same thing. Technically the Tea Party started out as a libertarian wing of the party, inspired by Ron Paul's presidential run and fueled by Obamacare. In other words, they started out fairly anti-war (because war costs a lot of money) but they have since morphed into something more vaguely anti-establishment.

[Mentalist]

Cause, on 08 April 2015 - 08:39 AM, said:

Frankly I don't know enough about the particulars of the deal to comment on it directly.

I do know that Americans foreign policy is the poster child for walking the most politically expedient path in the short term. It seems to almost always backfire on them in the long run. They never stuck it out in Iraq twice (Hello dysfunctional Iraq and ISIS), their meddling in Afghanistan haunts them. They prop up friendly dictators today only to topple unfriendly dictators tomorrow (its normally the same guy). Time will have to tell in this case I just hope this is not another case of putting in no effort now but having to put twice as much in later.

Edit- I agree that the fewer nukes in the world the better. I think that nukes have actually past their day. Mutually assured destruction these days no longer requires nukes except as a direct deterrent to other nukes. As an example, If America went to war with Russia I feel confident America could win but the cost would be astronomical. Without nukes it only takes one GPS guided missile (1 million $) which practically can't be stopped to blow up power stations, bridges, skyscrapers etc etc that will cost billions to fix. Total war even without nukes would be an absolute disaster for every side in the game this days. With rarer and rarer exceptions I would say the risk of countries changing hands or borders changing is non existent. The battle space instead seems to be changing in fact to deal with the threats not of countries but of radical groups who again thanks to modern weapons are able to pose a threat far in excess that their numbers warranted.

In the Roman empire a thousand men picking up swords and promising to overthrow the emperor would mean little. These days a thousand people armed with explosives, rpgs and machine guns are shooting down commercial airliners or massacring schools. As has been pointed out what happens when a country like Pakistan maybe loses control of the nukes?

No Nukes is a safer world, short of that and end to nuclear proliferation is something I support. Even if it means the few countries with nukes have an edge. Though for gods sake a thousand nukes? I am looking at you USA and Russia! Some countries are more stable than others as well. I don't want a theocracy to have the bomb, I don't want north Korea to have the bomb.

As much as I would love to agree with you, and with BK, and with Andorion, and with all the other "no nukes" peace-loving fellows, i'm going to side firmly with EM on this one. Because my homeland WAS one of those "few exceptions" that were mentioned. When territory is grabbed.
And it happened because we gave up our nukes. Believing the word of other nuclear powers. We gave up our deterrent.

There's a ton of things I like about the West. I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise, as I live in the West. I believe that in many ways it is the most progressive system of social organization.

But in the ideal world you propose, where only "stable" powers and people have access to such WMDs, this would mean a complete hegemony of the West. And in many senses I instinctively rebel against that.

West is great. Consumerism is great for the people living in it. But let's face the incredibly unpleasant truth: it only works for us, because the system is set up so that the privileged parts of the world exploit the lion's share of the finite global resources while the much larger minority exists in relative poverty. If evryone in China was to enjoy the North American standard of living, we'd strip the Earth bare.

As such, I can't in good conscience, begrudge other parts of the world an attempt to better their lot. Inevitably, this will lead to conflict. Inevitably, this means opposition, arms race, etc. If I was to subscribe to the "no nukes for anyone we don't like", we'd be instituting a global inequality of have and have nots. This way, though fraught with risks and a myriad of issues, is still the more "fair" way, as far as I'm concerned.

[Andorion]

I take your point but are nuclear weapons the way to go? I understand the concept of a deterrent. I live in India. Pakistan has nukes and the Pakistani military and intelligence are absolutely full of people who would like to see India go up in flames. We were dealing with Islamic extremist terrorism a full decade before 9/11. But lets say the worst happens and the fighting kicks off for real. We nuke Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. They take out Mumbai and Delhi. The fallout poisons the great northern plains and the Arabian Sea. Most of the bigger rivers flow through the Punjab and the northern plains of the Ganga basin. Agriculture withers. South Asia becomes a wasteland. Where are the winners here?

Say Iran gets nukes. So? It cant touch the West without ICBM capability. And for every missile Iran fires ten are fired back at it. Billions die. The environmental and economic impact puts us in a dystopia. Where are the winners?

Thats the problem with nuclear weapons. They kill everybody. Thats the problem of a nuclear war. its like a spoilt brat who throws over the gameboard. If I can't win, dammit, nobody gets to play!

Thats why I support nuclear disarmament. Total disarmament. For all countries. Everywhere. I know it sounds utopian, a fools dream. But ever since Hiroshima many people have said the same. Guess I am going to go and stand over with them

[Mentalist]

Andorion, on 08 April 2015 - 05:40 PM, said:

I take your point but are nuclear weapons the way to go? I understand the concept of a deterrent. I live in India. Pakistan has nukes and the Pakistani military and intelligence are absolutely full of people who would like to see India go up in flames. We were dealing with Islamic extremist terrorism a full decade before 9/11. But lets say the worst happens and the fighting kicks off for real. We nuke Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. They take out Mumbai and Delhi. The fallout poisons the great northern plains and the Arabian Sea. Most of the bigger rivers flow through the Punjab and the northern plains of the Ganga basin. Agriculture withers. South Asia becomes a wasteland. Where are the winners here?

Say Iran gets nukes. So? It cant touch the West without ICBM capability. And for every missile Iran fires ten are fired back at it. Billions die. The environmental and economic impact puts us in a dystopia. Where are the winners?

Thats the problem with nuclear weapons. They kill everybody. Thats the problem of a nuclear war. its like a spoilt brat who throws over the gameboard. If I can't win, dammit, nobody gets to play!

Thats why I support nuclear disarmament. Total disarmament. For all countries. Everywhere. I know it sounds utopian, a fools dream. But ever since Hiroshima many people have said the same. Guess I am going to go and stand over with them

I will gladly support global disarmament. As long as it's simultaneous, by all parties involved, and total. on that we agree.

But if that's not on the cards, I can't blame Iran or anyone else on trying to get in on the action. Because history has a stibborn habit of showing us: countries that have nukes don't get. Invaded no matter what they do. Countries that dont... well, you know.

[Gorefest]

Andorion, on 08 April 2015 - 05:40 PM, said:

Thats the problem with nuclear weapons. They kill everybody. Thats the problem of a nuclear war. its like a spoilt brat who throws over the gameboard. If I can't win, dammit, nobody gets to play!

Thats why I support nuclear disarmament. Total disarmament. For all countries. Everywhere. I know it sounds utopian, a fools dream. But ever since Hiroshima many people have said the same. Guess I am going to go and stand over with them

I said it before and i'll say it again: the Crippled God is nuclear power. Metaphores, you cannot beat them. This entire discussion is dissected, reviewed, witnessed, and judged in MBotF.

[Terez]

Spoilers?

I am not entirely sure that nukes would have prevented Putin from invading Crimea. Ukraine would have also had to fear retaliation if they nuked anything in Russia, something that Russia understands well. Nukes did not prevent 9/11, nor do they prevent drone strikes in Pakistan. Nukes don't prevent Israel from getting bombed every day. There are nuances in each of those situations, but the truth is that nukes are pretty much useless in modern-day conventional warfare. Any country that uses them for any reason will have to face major consequences aside from retaliation. Nukes in the hands of non-state actors, different story.

[Mentalist]

Terez, on 08 April 2015 - 06:13 PM, said:

Spoilers?

I am not entirely sure that nukes would have prevented Putin from invading Crimea. Ukraine would have also had to fear retaliation if they nuked anything in Russia, something that Russia understands well. Nukes did not prevent 9/11, nor do they prevent drone strikes in Pakistan. Nukes don't prevent Israel from getting bombed every day. There are nuances in each of those situations, but the truth is that nukes are pretty much useless in modern-day conventional warfare. Any country that uses them for any reason will have to face major consequences aside from retaliation. Nukes in the hands of non-state actors, different story.

We are talking about a what if scenario regarding Crimea. Speculation at best, but I for one don't think even the temp and hardly the most competent Kyyiv provisional government would have been that reluctant to issue the order to fight back, if ithad the theoretical means of hitting Russia back. Ultimately, Crimea would've probably been lost,but if there were casualties it would have discouraged what happened in Donbas, and made it much clearer that Russia was the aggressor, thus leading to an immediate international reaction and condemnation.

...

But I think we're getting sidetracked here.

[Grief]

I think Ukraine having nuclear weapons might not have prevented Crimea, but as Ment says, it still might have had important implications and ramifications. For one, I would think that the rest of the international community would have a greater investment in stability in Ukraine.

[Cause]

Israel has supposedly had nuclear weapons for decades. As Terez points out they don't stop non state actors in the least and more importantly despite the worlds belief that Israel had nukes they did not stop the 6-day war or the yom-kippur war from happening either. Several countries gladly took the gamble and I am not sure it was really much of a gamble to start. Nukes are a last resort and we all know it. I am absolutely confident they would not have significantly altered the Ukraine conflict, especially given how artfully Russia has been able to frame the conflict not as russia vs Ukraine but as Russia backing Ukrainian separatists. It might have upped the ante but I doubt it would have stopped it. So while I did think of you when I wrote my last post Mentalist I still think more nukes are a bad thing. I even think Israel having nukes is a bad thing, If Israel loses its lost, taking the middle east with it helps no one. Nuclear weapons are this fantastic bluff that I think should have less and less of a place in world conflicts.

An Aside:
Can someone more knowledgabke advise me. How bad are nuclear weapons long term. The radiation and poisoning in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were essentially negligible (Speaking long term of course). I can visit either city today and go stand on ground zero itself. The nuclear winter scenario I have read is somewhat of an out of control 'what if' white paper as opposed to fact. How bad is the long term impact truly?

[Gorefest]

Well, I'm no expert, but the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were around 14 and 21 kilotons, respectively. These days, the average US nuclear wear heads are around 100-350 kilotons. The Russians like even bigger ones. And they have a lot more of them. So I imagine the long term impact might be closer to a Chernobyl scenario (400 times more radiation waste than Hiroshima), where it is expected that the area 30 miles around the site in all directions will be unsuited for habitation for another 20,000 years.

[Cause]

We have performed over 500 nuclear bomb tests throughout history. Things seem to be okay

[Gorefest]

Don't think anybody lives in the test zone.