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Obama Calls For Nuke-Free World
jamie points out news that President Obama has put out a call for a world free of nuclear weapons at a speech in Prague today. He acknowledged that it was a long-term goal, perhaps not something that can be accomplished in his lifetime, but promised to encourage the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty. According to the BBC, he also stated his desire to "negotiate a new treaty to end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons," and to hold a global summit within the next year to work out agreements for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Obama said, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it." His speech came less than a day after North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket.
Free of nukes only works until some other 4 foot 9 dictator decides to raise his status the only way he can to impress the world.
What then? Does he become emporer of the world or just harasser of the world as Hannibal did to Rome?
And now, Ill come forth and call to an end of mean people. And a pony. I want a pony.
Really though, nuclear technology isnt that hard. Take 2 pieces of near-critical U235 and smack them together.. Hell, we could have Soulskill clap them together.
And dont forget yeah, the US, France, UK, Russia, and China all have nukes. Those countries like India, Pakistan, and Israel also have them, and we dont have a nuclear holocaust yet, either.
Just a bunch of North Korea fearmongering. After all, if they do get scared, China WILL step in and handle the situation.
The United States has 5,914 strategic nuclear warheads, followed closely by Russia with 4,237 deployable warheads. (Source: Arms Control ). The rest of the members of the nuclear club -- UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel -- have less than 1,000 combined nuclear weapons. Clearly, if Obama wants the world to take him seriously, he needs to restart the START-II treaty and disassemble his own stockpile before he can expect others to do the same.
By the end of the projected total nuclear ban, there will be much stronger weapons than nuclear. Why stick to some outdated weapons?
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Nobody is going to disarm if another country still has nukes, that would be suicide. Furthermore, countries that possess nukes would still have the knowhow to produce them after the destruction of all of the nuclear weapons. That alone would create an unbalance in the worldpower, some countries can still make nukes if the situation warrants it and they can be produced in a year or 4(probably less) so any war with these powers would mean a re-arming of the nation involved and as a reaction a re-arming of all other nuke-capable nations.
Furthermore, some countries still rely on nukes as a deterrent like Israel. I just don't see them disarming, and my believe is affirmed since Israel categorically refuses to say anything about its nuclear capabilities which leads to the last objection to these plans. You can hide your nukes and feign compliance with disarming programs.
In short, it won't work and Obama is not believing his own words if he has any intelligence.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
He is just naive. No one will give up their trump card. And even if they did, it may not be for the best. I submit that a world without nukes would be one with much larger standing armies. Look at europe during the "old" cold war. NATO relied on the nuke card to justify much smaller forces.
Conservative, mod down for violating
So we get rid of our nukes and so does other 'law abiding' countries. What about the 100's that really don't give a damn?
Then again, he thinks banning personal guns will work too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Its how you get the populace to give up their rights 'for their protection'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
End result of Reagan's plan: Collapse of the USSR, and reduction of the probability of nuclear armageddon.
Obama's solution to eliminate nuclear weapons: Curtail or eliminate defenses against nuclear weapons, sign on to a treaty that would have no effect upon those that would actually use nuclear weapons, and ensure that nuclear deterrence would eventually fail, as there would be increasing uncertainty whether the nuclear weapons of the nations that had signed the Test Ban Treaty had functioning nuclear weapons or not, especially if you're going to then go and end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.
End result of Obama's plan: Defenseless US et al against those whose moral duty to act includes nuking us.
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I don't see it that way at all. It sounds like that on the surface, but I don't think it's like that at all.
Take a society without guns (zero, none whatsoever) and put 1 gun into the hands of one side of an argument and 1 gun into the hands of the other side. Both sides are smart enough that they know using the gun would mean the other guy would.
So, what's the problem here, now there are lots of guys without guns and they want them. Sounds like you should give everyone who wants them because we're responsible, so they should be too. I mean, it's too powerful and everyone respects that fact.
So lets give them to everyone, hell if everyone has them, and noone uses them, well, nothing changes....
No.. If you just hand out weapons, or just allow everyone to make them at their own will, eventually one guy will end up with one and he will want to use it. Eventually it gets into the hands of a crazy. N. Korea might not be the crazy guy, but he sure as shit isn't the sane guy.
Yes, it sounds hypocritical, but if enough people have weapons, eventually someone will use them. That is what we want to avoid.
He isn't naive. Nobody is gonna get rid of their nukes, especially the USA, and he knows it. It puts international pressure on countries who really have no business with them. It is just good politics.
It would also be a hell of a lot less safe too. People know this too. We might say "down with nuclear weapons" in public, but if you put it to a vote, I promise you a large majority would vote to keep every nuke we own.
The USA have the most powerful conventional military in the world. So the only way to ensure the USA don't attack you is to have a nuclear bomb. And the USA have clearly shown that they want and will attack you, take Serbia or Iraq for example.
It's political posturing, with more important objectives.
In short, the "nuke-free world" is window-dressing for more real, practical objectives.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
What Obama is seeking is similar to the consolidation of material advantage when you trade pieces away on a chess board when you are already up in material. If major nuclear powers were to unite in disarming small nuclear powers first and controlling proliferation it would consolidate their strategic control of the world through these weapons. This could be done under the guise of world nuclear disarmament but of course it would take a "little" longer to disarm the major powers that would drive the effort. I think that this is less about dreaming of a day without nuclear weapons than it is about dreaming of a day when it is possible to control the rest of the world through possession of these weapons again. Admittedly the chess material analogy is a little strained: a nuke isn't a pawn advantage, hell it's not even like being a queen and 2 rooks up. It is more like being a Wookie opponent at the chess table.
We've never had reason to. But if Pakistan's civilian government falls to the Taliban, you can bet your ass we'll be going in.
Like any technology, once the ability to produce nukes is available it will not go away. Trying to make this happen will succeed about as well as prohibition did or banning firearms would. It is obviously a larger project than a still or a machine shop but not beyond the realm of possibility for any nation to try.
He isn't naive. Nobody is gonna get rid of their nukes, especially the USA, and he knows it. It puts international pressure on countries who really have no business with them. It is just good politics
But the thing is, you have to take the man at his word, and I think he really that naive. I really think he does believe that the world is like Star Trek, where you can have a meeting with someone that totally hates you, and suddenly love breaks out. There's nothing that tells me that he believes otherwise.
This is my sig.
That is what happens when you get your news from a very narrow band of sources.
Show me where? Please... All I see is a President that put out a threat to shoot down a North Korean missile, backed down from it in the face of North Korean threats of war, and then, to cover up this whole sorry demonstration of his weakness, makes some ridiculous speech calling for the end of nuclear weapons. What a total joke! Just a failure of a President. He should start wearing a big kick me sign on his ass... in fact the French probably stuck one on him while he didn't know it... the whole G20 summit was a failure.
Obama is a joke.
This is my sig.
Yeah, Bush did a great job boosting our leadership status. Cough.
At least we tried. If they dont cave, fuck them.. at least we'll have our allies helping us. Bush didn't try and just said "fuck em... we'll go at it alone and if you dont help, you are an enemy to". Now we are broke footing the bill for a war we never should have got in.
- Theodore Roosevelt.
The fact is large scale deliberate civilian killing is not acceptable by any democratic country, in the cold war era it was barely acceptable when the US could have been destroyed. MAD doesn't work when your fighting an enemy that are smaller than you and surrounded by innocent people.
The enemy know the US won't use a nuclear weapon on them so it doesn't act as a deterent:
*9/11
*Taliban handing over Osama
*Both Gulf wars
*etc
Nobody takes the threat of the US launching a nuclear attack seriously. The only things that the huge stockpile does:
*Cost a fair bit of money
*Remove any high ground the US may have, you can't expect other to give up their weapons if you keep yours
*Increase the risk of one going missing (minor in the US, but in Israel/Russia/china this is a risk)
*Increase the risk of semi-produced materials being stolen (Again lower in the US, but non-trivial elsewhere)
So by starting to reduce the pointless arsenal in America (see above), Obama can try and convince other to follow. Negotiations are just that, and you never get anything by just shouting louder. Even if Obama only convinces the 'good' guys (US/china/russia/uk/france) to disarm, that is still a significant reduction in the risk of one of them inadvertently helping the bad guys (hell in the uk we seam to be losing everything, I wouldn't trust us with a nuke), while simultaneously putting you in a better position to convince the 'bad' countries (Iran) that they should disarm.
The total loss for the US is NOTHING, you can't use the nuclear weapons anyway!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
The Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 13 to 18 kilotons and the Nagasaki bomb 21 kilotons.
The 10 to 15 megaton weapons in the US arsenal are close to a thousand times greater yield, with all the trappings that go with it.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Exactly. Iran is a prime example of a country which is constantly threatened by regional powers (and the US) and has built up it's defence in response.
Before you mod me down, note that I'm not saying I sympathise with Iran, just that it's a matter of public record that a major reason Israel/US hasn't invaded Iran in the last few years is due to their retaliatory capacity. This, of course is only encouraging proliferation.
Hopefully Obama can make a break from the previous administration in this regard, but I doubt it.
And that is what happens when you get your news from a source that makes shit up to support the candidate they favor.
What Obama said is incredibly naive. If that's not what he meant to say, then he shouldn't have said it. At the very least he could come back with a "What I meant to say was ..." or otherwise clarify his statement.
In the meantime, the only way to judge his statement is using the meaning of the words he used. Not the words you thought he meant.
Seeing as how the US essentially IS NATO, no matter what, we'd be stuck supplying most of the troops and most of the money.
And before people start foaming at the mouth about how I'm want war, I think the current war is idiotic and that the only justified war that the US has fought in a century is fighting against Japan during WWII. Outside of that, the US has never fought anyone who harmed them / posed a threat. That's why I laugh when I hear people talk of soldiers in Iraq / Afghanistan "defending our freedom" -- our freedom was never threatened by them.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
She was the only person "skilled" enough to bring out the base of die-hard republicans. Without her, McCain wouldn't have been able to count on the vote of the republican base. To the die-hard republican, she *was* the person they were voting for! The problem was, by bringing in Palin, McCain wasn't able to get the vote of so-called left-leaning republicans and "Regan democrats" (aka "The Undecideds").
Basically, McCain was trying to win the vote of two completely different bases that didn't like eachother's policies. By wining one base, he'd lose the other. But that is to be expected when you've got such a polarizing figure leading your party for eight years.
But now we've drifted so I'm done with this!
The problem with disarmament asks for something impossible - positive evidence of non-activity. A state can merrily destroy its weapons in front of the whole world, but how do you prove that they aren't secretly building some weapons in another place? You can do all the inspections you want and find nothing but that does not prove that they don't have a small stockpile stashed away somewhere. A dozen ICBMs or so should not be that hard to hide, and with megaton payloads have all the destructive power one needs for retaliation.
she doesn't go back in.
Consider if someone in 1910 had suggest than in less than a century europe would probably never have another war. Moreover all of the countries would acquiesce to a single common currency without losing in a war.
People would think you were nuts. in was unforseable. Yet the League of nation set the stage for cooperative behaviour, and the generation after WW2 made it happen.
in his speech in strassbourge he challenged the youth of europe not to take peace for granted but imagine a world that extended it even further.
if you can conceive of the paradigm shift from a continent at war since recorded history to one that is peacefully unified and no one feels oppressed by a conqueror then you can conceive of a world without nuclear weapons.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I really think he does believe that the world is like Star Trek, where you can have a meeting with someone that totally hates you, and suddenly love breaks out
It worked for Jimmy Carter. Sort of.
Yeah, it worked until Iran decided to take over the U.S. Embassy and he discovered that the military was in such horrible shape that it couldn't do what he wanted them to do. The fiasco of the hostage rescue mission was so bad that the U.S. military spent years afterward trying to fix the problems.
Oh, I guess you were talking about the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks. Yeah, that seemed to work out real well.... just look at how well Gaza turned out.
A "nuke free" world would be one in which we use no fission/fusion of atoms for the energy. Weaponizing it is one aspect of the technology.
The problem is, a power plant program can (and likely will) be used to make weapons. The horse is out of the barn. Obama is advocating that we can have the knowledge to make steel, but no one will make swords.
It's somewhat naive. We'll see how he executes his plans, or us.
--
Toro
b. In that region, nuclear weapons are still a hot topic political issue.
c. Obama gives the crowds what they want to hear. He's prven that already. In essence, a good (but typical) politician.
d. Slashdot took the bait, and now we're discussing what was discussed 10yrs ago. Only difference is we think we have someone that can do something about it... Just like 10yrs ago.
For a certain version of "works". You cannot murder people into loving you, for example. You can bomb people into true submission, but that requires blazing a path of epic destruction through their homes like Hitler through Poland, only more thorough. To consider yourself one of "the good guys" when you're openly advocating that sort of thing requires the sort of masturbatory self-delusion endemic to cokeheads and Americans.
Like Hilzoy said, "Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination. If you use it, you had better be prepared to find yourself in the kind of place it takes you to."
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Where "doing anthing to protect ourselves" means lighting a whole bunch of civilians on fire by "mistake", right? (Hey, it's not like those terrorists place the same value on life as we do!)
Of course, you might mean things like boring investigative work to monitor potential threats and bring them through the justice system in the full light of day, or not blowing up civilians as "collateral damage" and then being so darned surprised when survivors and their relatives are unhappy with us. But somehow, I doubt it.
Because the only way to relate to a world full of strange and alien people is to terrify them into submission, and crush any hint of dissent within your own ranks, lest it betray weakness to the enemy.
I think you're confusing Warhammer 40K with reality.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Some people here think Obama is stupid, but I think he is not the dumb person illustrated in this forum. First, he didn't say that he want to destroy all of them right now. He said that he want to talk with all weapon owners and reduce the number of nukes. Second, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) does not only state that nuclear weapon technology should not be distributed. It also includes the plan to dismantle all nuclear weapons. So Obama is only pointing out that we already agreed to do so.
Third, the presence of nuclear weapons frightens other states so far, that they a) try to build their own and b) do not trust us. And why should they if we do not hold our word what can they do? Nothing. So it is reasonable to reduce the military dominance of the West a little bit.
To understand my point, look at these numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federations_by_military_expenditures