How About a Nice Game of Global Thermonuclear War?

Loconut1389 writes "According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has a revised doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks would give the president the authority for a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction."

Comments

Pre-emptive strikes...

[Manchot]

Yes, because pre-emptive strikes have worked so well in this country before. Oh, wait a minute...

Re:Yippee kayay!

[jd]

Yes.

Furthermore, if North Korea had any legitimate reason to be concerned about America's intentions before (well, Iraq probably didn't help), they're certainly going to be paranoid out of their tiny little minds now. The further we go down this path, the less North Korea is going to believe it has to lose by launching a pre-emptive strike of their own, to pre-empt the American pre-emptive strike.

If you assume Iran actually meant what it said about their own nuclear technology being for peaceful purposes, you can be absolutely rest-assured they'll have no intention of sticking to that now. The only hope Iran has of NOT being nuked is to be in a position of nuking the USA.

All in all, this is a bad day for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but one hell of a siesta for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Re:And in other news...

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

Actually...

Have you read anything by Michio Kaku?

He's a genius.. one of his theories is that all planets with intelligent beings on them can be categorized into a few distinct categories..

Category 0 = primitive, burn fossil fuels

Category 1 = Planetary, get energy from planet, can control the weather, usually formed a world government by then

Category 2 = Move on to using our local star as our source of energy.

Category 3 = Galactic civilization. Huge, impossible to kill off with 'natural' causes, highly advanced most likely.

He states that he believes most category 0 civilizations (Which we are) never make it to category 1 because of the rise of U235 and the inevitable invention of the nuclear weapon.

Doomsday

[daigu]

I'd move the doomsday clock to two minutes to midnight. Perhaps someone should read that interesting article by McNamara - who has good insight on the topic. His conclusion:

We are at a critical moment in human history--perhaps not as dramatic as that of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but a moment no less crucial. Neither the Bush administration, the congress, the American people, nor the people of other nations have debated the merits of alternative, long-range nuclear weapons policies for their countries or the world. They have not examined the military utility of the weapons; the risk of inadvertent or accidental use; the moral and legal considerations relating to the use or threat of use of the weapons; or the impact of current policies on proliferation. Such debates are long overdue. If they are held, I believe they will conclude, as have I and an increasing number of senior military leaders, politicians, and civilian security experts: We must move promptly toward the elimination--or near elimination--of all nuclear weapons. For many, there is a strong temptation to cling to the strategies of the past 40 years. But to do so would be a serious mistake leading to unacceptable risks for all nations.

Re:And in other news...

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

Oh, and if that interests you at all, I'd HIGHLY RECOMMEND reading some of Dr. Kaku.

His is a genius, as I said. And he puts things in a very eloquent... non-physicist sort of way.

His Homepage

And here's an article about the things I just talked about.
I'd also recommend his book Hyperspace.

Put your money where your mouth is.

[interactive_civilian]

so says DigiShaman:

Nuclear proliferation will never be tolerated.

Unless it is done by the US government, right?

Be careful with that word "never". It may not mean what you think it means.

Re:Mutual?

[Keebler71]

So does this mean that US nuclear doctrine is moving closer to the French nuclear doctrine?

France has consistently rejected the adoption of a "no first-use" posture. Paris sees nuclear retaliation as consistent with the right to self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. It also asserts that countries that do not respect their own non-proliferation commitments should not expect negative security assurances (granted in 1995 by nuclear weapons states to non-nuclear members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty) to apply to them, thus implicitly subscribing to the norms of "belligerent reprisals" that also underpin U.S. and British nuclear doctrines.

Re:Non-existent WMDs Baaaad! Real WMDs Gooood!

[CrowScape]

I don't know if you've ever studied the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it came about because we elected John F. Kennedy. Now, I'm not saying that Kennedy was incompetent. Hardly, just the opposite. The problem was that Kennedy was percieved as being a spoiled rich boy by Nikita Khrushchev, someone the Soviet Premiere thought he could easily push around. Well, thankfully, Khrushchev was wrong, Kennedy was willing to go to war, and the Soviet sphere didn't gain a permanent nuclear strike base just off our coast. The key to international security is to show that you are willing to fight those who threaten you, otherwise your weakness is going to be exploited for all it's worth until it's too late for you to do anything but go to war.

Re:Mutual?

[Shakrai]

No, the only nation other than the United States with anything close to a MAD deterence capability is Russia. China, UK, France and DPRK have limited capabilities compared to the US/Russia.

Umm. I'm not usually one to rise to the defense of Europe but I would point out that France and the UK have modern SSBNs. The Brits even have our D-5 missile. That's a pretty good deterrence force right there.

I'll grant you that China's nuclear force is a joke as far as the US or Russia are concerned. Of course that will probably change because some champ got the bright idea of walking away from the ABM treaty and giving them an excuse to start an arms race.

Re:Method of living for the socially challenged: W

[Loconut1389]

Since when does Nuclear Weapon == Tonka Truck? We're not talking about a little kid (presumably the US) taking toys from anyone. We're talking about the toddler's leverage against the bully with the brass nuckles. I agree that we're not handling things the way we should be, but I think that no matter who is president, there are always things that no one will like and things that half of the people will hate. What I'm deathly afraid of, and what seems to be becoming a reality day by day, is another civil war. It seems that the democrats and the republicans are getting further and further apart and at the same time increasing the hatred and the generalizations. I live in a very democrat heavy town (and in Iowa no less) and the bumper stickers, posters, newspaper articles, everything all seem to have degenerated into an us versus them thing where everyones backed into thinking the President is a schmuck with no regard for humanity nor a single shred of intelligence, or thinking that he's doing everything 100% right. The dissent is growing, the economy is going down the tubes, gas prices are going through the roof, a fair chunk of the country is now a 3rd world disaster area, and I don't see things getting better anytime soon. We're spending Billions on disaster recovery every year, if it isn't Katrina, it's Ivan or Andrew, or tornados in the midwest, earthquakes in the west, blizzards in the east. I am starting to believe that if OPEC squeezes their fist just a little tighter, the overall stress level in the country will go up just enough to bring us to the brink of some kind of internal war- perhaps not with guns however. I think that if you add up the stress of gas, race relations, democrats versus republicans, terrorism, and the job market, we're being torn apart at the seams and the terrorists are winning. I keep getting visions of $6-8+ gallons of gas, inflation, and chaos. Maybe this is all a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly seems like things are heading for certain disaster. Anyway, for the good of all of us, please stop, research and let go of your pre-conceptions before you join into the us versus them choir.

STOP THE INSANITY!

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Does it make any sense at all?

Lets use a WMD in a pre-emptive strike against groups that MAY have WMD's!

How proud would you as an American be if you had nuked Iraq ... given that we now know that there was absolutely no trace of WMD's whatsoever? ... Or would you have even known how big a mistake your country had made, given that some dumbass like Bush would just tell you that the WMD's were destroyed in the blast.

Bush and his cohorts are the problem, not the answer. They are the terrorists bent on destabilizing the world's security. He is a firm believer in the book of Revelations and Armeggedon .... and may just force that myth to become a reality at your expense.

IRAN is the new target.

Within 5 years Iran plans to have the bomb.

Iran is too big for Dubyafucker to invade in a conventional manner, without massive conscription.

Iran will be pre-emptively nuked by the time they are ready to test their first bomb. Hopefully it won't result in the immediate retaliatory destruction of the USA by the nations of the world whom this attack will anger.

The preparations are happening, this is not a troll, this is not flamebait.

Go ahead and ask your local representative why your airforce just ordered new flight simulators programmed specificaly for the topography of Iran.

Re:You think this is some sort of game?!

[syousef]

Well you laugh or you cry. Bottom line is I'm not a U.S. citizen and don't live in the U.S. I have next to no power to do anything against that cowboy you elected. To make matters worse our prime minister wants to be his best buddy.

Re:Mutual?

[Vicsun]

Watch the movie 'threads' for a good run-down of a post-nuclear war world.

It's not that nuclear blasts will kill everyone. It's that 'developed' countries, especially large metropolian areas, are extremely dependant on others for their survival. Once the infrastructure is gone and panic ensues, there will be no electricity water or food. The economy will be reduced to a barter economy since faith in the monetary system is gone.
Hell, even a miniature-by-comparison disaster like New Orleans / Katrina showed signs of anarchy for a while, imagine the hell-on-earth that will erupt if not one, but several major cities are flattened.

P.S. I'm serious, get ahold of and watch Threads, it's a great movie.