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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.
Always playing at the wrong end of the bell curve
Task Mangler
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.
If he's trying to stop the production of fissile materials, how will this affect nuclear power?
I understand that fuel for nuclear power requires much less enrichment than for nuclear weapons, but would they require the same sort of facilities?
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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But then how will we fight off the aliens?
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.
With states like North Korea and Iran actively pursuing nuclear technology, can the US, Russia and the other nuclear states afford to lose their deterrence? It seems that states like Pakistan that are potentially fragile are also on the list of potential threats.
I'm all for getting rid of nukes; they're the most terrible weapon we have and really serve as a weapon of last resort. However, in the current political climate, is it possible to eliminate the stockpiles and deterrence that goes with them?
Signing on to the Test Ban Treaty is a great first step that shows that the US is willing to practice what it preaches as far as disarmament and peace. The actual removal of nuclear weapons from the arsenal seems unlikely, however.
Along those same lines, it would be great if the US could get on board with the Global Landmine Ban Treaty. Landmines are perhaps even more terrible in their effect on people and the environment. Landmines kill and maim thousands of people every year and rarely serve the purpose they were intended for. The only even semi-valid argument for the continued use of landmines is the 38th Parallel between North and South Korea. Though given the current world political climate is pretty flimsy. North Korea wouldn't stand much of a chance invading South Korea these days.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
I'm not one that believes in using nuclear weapons, but not having them seems worse than having them.
Ya, I know, pretty easy to say when I'm in one of the countries with a crapton of them (US).
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
but without nukes there is no apocalypse wtf? or doom's day. Isn't our role to go destroy ourselves so that JC can put a stop to it? or does our world have real choices?
only outlaws will have nukes!
You can pry my nukes from my hot, glowing hands? :)
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.
Has America invaded any nuclear power?
Deleted
One of the main problems with getting rid of nukes has been mentioned here: no one wants to give their own up. A few countries have already given up nuclear weapons, including South Africa. All countries cannot be expected to do the same with their weapons, which leaves us with one solution...
We have to nuke the nukes from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
To respond to a bunch of folks here:
First of all, it would be economic suicide for any country to be a nuclear aggressor. The World's economy is so integrated that it can't happen among countries that trade internationally or want to.
Now the countries that don't want to: N. Korea. International trade would undermine his regime. Yes, Jong Ill will use nukes for blackmail purposes. Launching missiles, threatening the World, mostly the US, with nuclear aggression. From what I'm seeing, he's so fucked up, he doesn't care about retaliation. He's starving his own people to keep his pathetic little country. I don't know enough about international affairs to know exactly what to do, but Nukes aren't the way to deal with that fuckwit.
Islamic fundamentalist. The Muslim community will have to deal with those themselves. For one, they're the only ones that those wakos will listen to - maybe. And two, if they don't, the entire Muslim World will be caught up in the backlash against the fundamentalist nuts. I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying what will happen.
The international money folks and traders are driving all this. Sovereign nations are also becoming a thing of the past. Yes, I am saying that the one World government is on it's way. Not in our lifetimes, but not too far either.
Too much so far for a post. Here's more from some great books: "The World is Flat" by Friedman and "The World is Curved" by Smick.
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.
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The nuke has very effectively prevented WWIII from happening as the deterrent of MAD has proven to be histories most effective peace policy. The concept of non-proliferation, to keep nukes from spreading is one that that world has turned it's back on. You want to make the world a safer place, get real about nuclear programs run by countries like Iran and North Korea.
In the event that nukes were somehow magically put back in the nuclear genie bottle, countries would simply go back to larger standing armies. Conventional armies with conventional weapons have proven their ability to kill in large quantity time and time again.
After all, if they do get scared, China WILL step in and handle the situation.
Not if North Korea gets nukes first, they won't.
- Alaska Jack
How short-sighted of you.
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.
Nuclear weapons continue to exist not just to deter nuclear war, but major wars in general. Too many conventional war scenarios lead to nuclear war with disastrous consequences; the very idea has taken war between the major powers off the table. They are the reason for why there have been no major European wars since WWII and why China was restrained during the mad years of Mao. Conventional weapons can provide the same deterrence, assuming everyone, every where destroys their nukes, but only a massive increase in conventional forces. No one believes Obama or the public in the US or Europe would be willing to make the sacrifice. Barring unicorns springing forth and the seas turning to lemonade, the threat of war will be with us always. If you want peace, or at least avoid another world war, nukes are the cost effective deterrent.
Oh, I don't think it's fair, or accurate, to call him stupid. After all, he did manage to get himself elected president. It may be satisfying to dismiss Obama as stupid but the evidence suggests otherwise.
Still, any assumptions that don't include "stupid" still have to explain why an otherwise intelligent man would find reason to believe that if we all just wish hard enough the bad people will see the error of their ways and repent.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Yes, I know I'm paraphrasing pro-gun rhetoric here, but I believe it applies. The only way that International Law works, is if all the countries involved agree to abide by said laws -- which we all know doesn't work often enough. One day, assuming the human race actually lives long enough to see it, we MAY evolve enough, physioligically and mentally, that our needs for things like solving problems with aggression will become obsolete; THEN things like nuclear weapons will have a chance to go the way of the dinosaurs. Until that day comes this technology will (unfortunately) have to exist. You can't put the genie back in the bottle once you've let it out, after all; knowing something is possible is half the battle towards MAKING it possible, even if we effectively buried the knowledge of how to create nuclear fission, physicists would work backwards and rediscover how to make it happen anyway. I applaud Obama's sentiments on the subject, as I applaud the realism of his thoughts when he says "not in my lifetime".
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
After Gulf War 1 an India offical said "The lesson of this war is do not fight the United States unless you have nuclear weapons." I can see the path down to under 1000 nuclear weapons world wide. But i can't see the path to 0. As long as US conventional strength is strong enough to topple regimes China, Pakistan, North Korea etc are going to want to hold on to their nuclear weapons. These countries know they could never defeat the united states in a fight with or without nuclear weapons their only option is to raise the costs to the point a fight becomes unacceptable for either side.
The problem is there's a monopoly on nuclear weapons. Thats why nukes are such a security risks with terrorists about, and a lot of attempts to acquire missiles by al queda. They will succeed as long as nukes are in the hands of a small few. The solution is to make nuclear weapons open source, so we can better secure them. Open source = better security.
If nukes are available to the common man for free, then anybody from part-time nuclear engineers, to hobbyist reactor specialists in their spare time, at home, can better analyze the security around them, test them in their backyard, etc. Put the specs on the internet for everybody to download and install in their home uranium enrichment centres. Most security holes are found by accident, so home-made nukes will help reveal more holes than any other method available.
Open Source Nukes, FTW!
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.
The one thing to realize is that crazy guy isn't gonna have a mass stockpile of them either. He might get one or two of them and then use them to blow up $RANDOM_COUNTRY. It would suck a *lot* and justifiably piss people off *a lot*, but as long as everybody sane keeps their cool, the world wouldn't end. The world would end if the sane folk got into nuclear war... but but if they actually nuked each other, they wouldn't be sane would they.
What you *dont* want is to sit around and twiddle your thumbs while Crazy Guy builds a stockpile. If he gets a stockpile, all bets are off.
The real question is, if your military intelligence indicates that the nuclear weapon Crazy Guy just used was the only one he had, do you retaliate with a nuclear weapon? My answer would be no and I'd be curious to hear pro-nuke-them-to-hell arguments...
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.
No capability for critical thought, or nuance.
Well let's think about the nuances of this. Obama goes to Europe, embarrasses the country by continually apologizing for everything, gets stiffed by the Europeans on the war and on economics, backs down from North Korean threats and lets them launch their rocket at Japan, and then, expects that the Security Council will accomplish something more than issue a letter saying they will "remain seized of the moment."
How much failure do you need in a week?
This is my sig.
He (and you) *are* naive. Those "countries who really have no business with them" don't give a hoot about what the international community thinks and have demonstrated - consistently - that they are immune from this "pressure" you speak of.
Obama continues to undermine the leadership position of the United States in the world through statements like this and also continues to show how much he just does not "get it".
Mind the gap...
You'd have a point if the UK has a massive gun-crime problem. It doesn't. Far from it. Every single unlicensed handgun that is found is destroyed, whether it be in someone's house, or being imported. So please, try not to use the UK as an example of how firearm bans don't work, as it does. How shootings have there been in the US recently? And the UK? Oh, right. You muppet.
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!
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.
The Internet is generally stupid
Except the US. He is president of the US, he can probably get whatever legislation he wants, and he may be able to force the US to give up its trump card (dismantle its nuclear arsenal) by law and executive order.
Sure, Ill will continue to blackmail the World, but let's face it, he doesn't give a shit about retaliation. He is starving his own people, after all. Do you really think that he'd give a shit if we nuked them? He's tucked away in his palatial bunker with his whores.
And there's the Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists. Nuking a country won't do anything. If anything, that's exactly what they would want: great recruiting tool! The Muslim community will take care of those folks eventually. Their development requires that Islamic terrorism be stopped.
For more, please read: "The World is Flat" by Friedman and "The World is Curved" by Smick.
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.
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This will work just like the UK banning hand guns, now the only people with hand guns are bad guys AND they all know the law abiding citizens aren't armed. Also once we get rid of all our nukes, then the bad guys get to turn the tables on us and say okay if we see you guys trying to build any nuke we're gonna nuke you.
Yeah, and we all now how big the UK's gun problems are:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/britain-records-18-fall-in-gun-deaths-1232069.html
And although I am in favour of banning guns and a reduction of nuclear weapons I don't think it's a comparable analogy.
Yeah man, what a failure, unable to fix a global economic crises in just a few months! Not thinking it was worth it to start a war with N.Korea!
Do you really take everything everybody says in politics at face value? You must be very confused as you try to follow it then. Politics is all about saying one thing and doing another. Empty threats, grandstanding, etc, are a large part of politics. Try following it sometime.
This was a pretty obvious grandstand to get support from people, not governments. Does he have any intention of following through? Probably not. It wouldn't surprise me if a token amount of arms were dismantled though, as a good show for the world stage. No one is dismantling all of their weapons any time soon. He wants to boost his popularity on a world stage.
Possibly, but no examples have been spotted by reliable witnesses.
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20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Nuke free... or else.
but action is where things get done. As a lot of people have said, no one is going to give up nuclear weapons. Especially those smaller countries that cannot support a standing army/navy/air force of any size to defeat invaders. Prez. Obama is trying to make nice with other countries and get people liking America again. While that is a nice and worthy goal the last time anyone liked us was when we sent thousands to their deaths helping defeat their enemies. Other countries, Europe included, will continue to do what is in their best interest and allow Obama to weaken America's power around the globe. Whether that is a good thing or not is yet to be seen. But while the invasion of Iraq is roundly seen as a mistake at least there are signs of previous enemies working together for the whole country. All the U.N. talk and sanctions did nothing in post-Invasion Iraq, nor in Rawanda and it isn't doing anything about the massacres going on in Sudan and other areas of Africa. Talk is cheap and accomplishes little. Taking action along with responsibility is what drives "real change". Thanks for reading.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
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.
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!
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
Pretty much. But if shit ever escalated, they'd have our back with money and troops. The only reason they dont have our back right now is because we are busy fighting our war with Oceana.
The cold war?
It's rather funny to watch people oppose Democrats and Republicans. Where it actually matters, they're exactly the same. Tell me, which one of these two camps has followed the Constitution (you know, that thing they swear to uphold) lately?
Obama isn't pulling out any troops, he's made a great big deal of a plan to maybe consider pulling out any troops. But his main focus is on shuffling them around the middle east.
So anyway, bicker all you want about who's good and who's bad, they're both shoving trillions out the windows and promoting fascism - the real Mussolini type where government provides muscle for corporate interests. And I don't think the US is going to be a great leader when it's entirely broke.
Republicans justified Bush pumping money into Haliburton to save their freedom. Democrats justify Obama shoving trillions into Wall Street to save their jobs/mortgages... Guess what guys, unless you work for the government, your jobs are going away, just as your freedom did.
Mind the frickin' laser...
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Things like West Point are a direct result of such ideas being proven wrong. Without a standing army (and skilled generals and engineers to lead them) at all times, we were too weak to defend ourselves. Freedom isn't very useful if somebody takes over your nation.
I'm saying he is a politician. This is now international politics have always been done and always will be. To think otherwise is being naive.
Duh, the guy with the most nukes!
If by "sort of" you mean that we weren't invaded or destroyed during his administration, you're absolutely correct.
If you meant that Carter advanced US foreign policy in any positive way or kept us from getting fucked with by piss-ants like Iran, not so much.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Change his last name to Peacecraft! Then we'd just wait for our real Mariemaia Khushrenada to come start taking over the world.
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But seriously, what the heck are we doing with over 10,000 nuclear warheads on our planet and over half of them in the north american continent.
I mean 100 wouldn't do it? We need 6000?
"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five." - Carl Sagan
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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!
Got to give him credit.
He has moved from "within a year" to "not in one term" to "not in his lifetime."
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!
I agree--but even with Palin being the reason most republicans were voting for McCain, she still had no real power being 1st in line for the presidency. It doesn't explain why everyone compares Obama to Palin as if she were the president.
There's no place like
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.
Right, cause we all know Cheney just sat around all day waiting for Bush to croak.
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BTW, Japan had a little help rebuilding. Also destroying a city or country doesn't require killing ever single person. Just checkout New Orleans, very few were killed and it hasn't recovered from partial infrastructure destruction in how many years?
she doesn't go back in.
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.
In terms of countries that don't need nukes, I'd submit that any country with less than 10 million citizens (more or less) should never really consider having nuclear weapons. The main reason is one of cost and maintenance.
Nuclear weapons are costly... from the viewpoint of monitoring the weapons and using them. Not only does it require technically brilliant people to create them in the first place, but you have to have extremely skilled folks to even deploy them once you have an objective. Also, no sane (or even slightly insane) national leader would want nukes to be used except if and only if that leader really wants them used and has given explicit order for their use. That implies a security detail guarding these bombs from accidental use and from being stolen, concerns about the health of those who are handling the bombs, medical staff to monitor those health concerns, communications devices and procedures to relay the wishes of the national leaders, and bureaucratic oversight of the whole process.
Nuclear bombs can also be traced very well in terms of finding the origin of the fissile material that was used to make the bomb. Again this goes back to the security issues, where a nuke that is used can be traced back to a country of origin... that will also be a target of attack if found.
IMHO North Korea, to give an example, is too small to effectively operate nuclear weapons. They are making it a priority for various reasons and destroying what little of an economy they have to do it... but it is an unsustainable proposition for them. Given the issues involved, I don't see North Korea maintaining its weapons for too long, and I certainly don't see smaller countries trying either.
However, you have no idea how often such "countries who really have no business with them" have decline following certain policies based on said "pressure".
You only hear of the cases where they ignore the pressue, not of the case where they cave.
Hey, I'm not saying anything either way, but if he is going to claim it he should at least stick with it.
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.
Obama is a great mirror.... people see precisely what they want to see and seemingly nothing more. I don't know how the man does it, and it is the reason why he got elected, but folks of diametrically opposed viewpoints can see that Mr. Obama supports their cause... or worry that he is opposed to their viewpoints.
It will be interesting to see where this goes, and if he is as naive as it seems right now. Reality seems to have a way of catching up to a U.S. President in one way or another very quickly.
If there are no nukes, then what are we supposed to blow up the life ending meteors with???
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.
For the Stark Fist!
http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=13050
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
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.
>No one will give up their trump card.
South Africa and Ukraine did so in the past.
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
As a veteran of the first gulf war, I suspect the US nuclear arsenal had a measurable effect on that conflict even though they were not used.
During the build up to the invasion of Kuwait, we did daily CBR drills. Ships tv system played lectures on how to don, decontaminate and remove MOPP suits and MCU-2P gas masks. We were required to carry our masks with us constantly ( yes, even sleep with them ). Daily GQ drills with an emphasis on CBR defense.
We knew Saddam has a history of using nerve gas on his own people. The nightmare scenario was anti-ship missiles first followed up with chemical weapons.
Question: In the first gulf war, why didn't Saddam use chemical weapons against coalition forces?
Answer: I suspect that the threat of nuclear retaliation prevented the consideration of chemical / biological weapons against coalition forces.
A Human Right
http://www.newsweek.com/id/183673
by Henry Kissinger
The real story is about the fact that nuclear prolifiration and nuclear disarmament should have gotten a lot more attention from previous presidents (both Clinton and Bush completely failed on this one) and Obama's pledge came much too late. Now trying to go as far as possible (nuke free world) is the least he can do.
That's just the radiation sickness from the fallout. Don't worry, it'll be over soon.
I feel a lot safer now that the current President of the USA is trying to reason with potential enemies, instead of vilifying them.
Not everyone agrees with his plan, but it has shown his ideas for Foreighn Policy.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
You are right they don't give a hoot. Which is why we need a president with the balls to admit it. International diplomacy is by and large a very expensive, slow, and ultimately ineffective if not detrimental process. The only that that has ever worked is Pax Romana/Americana. One nation having such an overwhelming military advantage over ALL others even its allies that nobody dare step out of line.
Its still expensive, but it works as long as the leader nation remains vigilant about maintaining their lead!
All diplomacy accomplishes is keeping existing conflicts going on forever at a smolder. The absolute hegemony of the one usually over time eliminates these conflicts because the cultures that are in conflict with one another are gradually erased, and replaced by that of their hegemonic overlords.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The messiah has spoken, everybody check your nukes at the door. Let's get rid of ours so we can be held hostage by the likes of North Korea. We should switch over to neutron nukes which makes the threat of use more realistic.
As technology moves further forward and people slowly slip away into intellectual oblivion, there will be no need for human destruction. Your physical enslavement is all the "powers that be" ever wanted, as to provide this convenience only to these privileged, all the comforts of this numerically guaranteed leisurely existence. But alas, many will dismiss this point, which in the end, only provides the truth of what I am saying. So sit idly back and ride that wave, eventually they brake for everyone. Unless you obtain the skills of the "great ones" who only catch rides on the backs of anothers wave, only to stab its back as the shoreline comes into view. See, who needs nukes. We have our lab rats right where we want them. Only reality is, those lab rats are each one of us. Personally I don't give a fuck. Most people are morons anyhow. Good luck with the vote...heh
Anyone else reminded of the old novel Seven Days in May?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Right, cause we all know Cheney just sat around all day waiting for Bush to croak.
Nice snark. What did he do exactly?
There's no place like
There are countries that have Nukes, but don't admin to having them. Israel is probably on the top of that list.
How do you get a country like that to sign a treaty saying they'll stop producing fissible material and stop testing when "officially" they don't have any nuclear weapons.
I'm sure there are others out there, but most despots WANT the world to know they have a bomb. Helps them overcompensate for small genitalia.
Plenty of people argued this, that GWB was just playing dumb. That's the thing with slashdot, you aren't arguing against a person but rather against a thousand different points of view.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Will be dead by the time something like this happens, if ever! http://asrokhel.mybrute.com/ http://rollandrock.myminicity.com/
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
The foreign aid budget is relatively small compared to the budget. The military budget is large, but a lot of that money goes to US Companies and taxpayers. The foreign aid budget was much larger during the cold war when we used it to counter communist influence. Something like 26 Billion out of 2.9 trillion dollars in 2008, I think, compared to 626.6 billion on Defense not counting the two wars.
I believe the US gives a great deal of foreign aid through the IMF and such--aid programs where we lend money to developing nations so that they can buy our DRM'd agricultural seeds or patented anti-retroviral drugs, in part.
We also give a tremendous amount on a non-governmental basis. The good work done by private donors in this country is amazing, but is done out of personal generosity rather than legislative intent. As such, it's not being footed by the American taxpayer so much as the generous American. Obviously, giving is down in the recession.
--- Thousands are enslaved every day.
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
Also, much of this "aid" comes in the form of loans with strings attached saying "get rid of any governmental function that helps poor people" and "sell your natural resources to corporations based in our country for a pittance".
Mmm, freedom. Can you taste it?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Israel is the 100th largest country in the world and has the 5th largest nuclear arsenal. We freak out whenever Iran or N. Korea flexes their muscle, but we don't even ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that Israel has so many nukes it's pressuring everyone else in the region to nuke up as well. Look up Mordecai Venunu; hope I spelled his name right.
At least make the Middle East nuke-free and we'd have some credibility whenever we whine about how evil Iran is.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
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.
You're drinking too much right-wing cool-aid.
No, you can't sit down with someone who hates you and your way of life and suddenly change their mind. But you can sit down with someone who APPERARS to hate you and change their mind -- quite easily, actually.
The key is to find out WHAT exactly they hate, and then see where you can find a compromise. Many times, it's as easy as convincing them that we're not what they hate, and are in fact what they admire.
OTOH, sometimes that's just not feasible for mere mortals. But if Barack Obama and Adolf Hilter could sit down with God as a judge and witness, they could come to an accord.
We have the most powerful conventional army. In a nuke-free world, we'd be able to apply that power in far more places (not saying we SHOULD). The nuclear deterrent works both ways.
Plus, maintaining and securing our nuclear stockpiles is insanely expensive.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
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
You're kidding right? Chaney was the one who engineered most of what Bush is so hated for.
In a well-ordered society, maybe such a mandate would work. But, the moment someone ignores it, everyone is in trouble. Well-placed nukes keep global politics polite.
It's just about as likely to happen...
Change will occur 1/20/2013... A change is going to come....... and I can't wait.
1311393600 - Back to Black
Yeah, Bush did a great job boosting our leadership status. Cough.
Yeah, if Bush had used Obama's approach maybe he could have gotten Libya to give up its Nuclear Weapons program. Oh that's right, they did!!
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Cheney is the only reason no one took GW Bush out. Because nobody on the left or the right or the fringe wanted that evil SOB in charge.
President Obama is quite sincere in this goal to eliminate nuclear weapons. During much of his time as Senator, it was one of his many interest to encorage peace between nations and to reduce the risk of mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) by reducing the number of warheads and the access to them by hostile states.
So far, the UK, Russia and Iran have been willing to work with American negociations to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, while the North Koreans clearly have not.
The North Koreans are probably scrambling their efforts to try a second attempt at a rocket launch as we speak. With their "communications satilite" now a convienent buoy in the North Pacific, there is no question that the North Koreans are working to deploy a second on probably with in days of the first launch.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
However, it would be nice if there weren't enough to destroy the world a couple of times over.
I guess this is all based on the idea that total destruction isn't necessary to drive home any political goal a war might have. The sides involved need to understand though that total anihilation means that, and that there is no afterlife or something like another planet you can evacuate to.
Je me souviens.
Smaller forces during cold war? Germany had more the 500 000 soldiers and thousands of tanks available. Today the armed forces are down to 200 000 soldiers. The doctrine was that we should be able to win the war without nuclear weapons.
We should have Iran and North Korea handle the disposal of the worlds nuclear weapons.
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
It's not Americans' fault that power makes you stupid. I mean, how would these mouth-breathing jingoists live with themselves if they didn't maintain a profoundly unjust, parochial worldview?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Mod +1 informative: this gentlemen knows history. :-)
This comes from the only nation that "used" them?
This comes from the country that burns 1/4 of the oil the world "produces".
People who read on slashdot should consider making a trip to SE Asia and while in the Hotel they should turn on the TV and watch say CNN. Its like being in a whole new world.
The USA should start dealing with reality. There is NO global warming. There is NO nuclear waste problem. There is NO USA universal health care.
Give me a break.
Nukes are already outdated, as of about six years ago.
Why deal with fallout when you can just drop eight and a half tonnes of H6 on your enemy instead?
Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal. -- Zaphod Beeblebrox
It would be welcome to get rid of nuclear weapons around the world, however if he continues to go after the 2nd Amendment right, he'll have to take my gun out of my cold dead hand!
Obama is a tool of the people running the show behind the scenes, see the movie, The Obama Deception, by Alex Jones
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
This has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, Obama just finished watching Robocop 2.
You're kidding right? Chaney was the one who engineered most of what Bush is so hated for.
From the liberal point of view, that must mean Cheney is responsible for engineering the removal of the evil dictator Saddam Hussein from Iraq and installing democracy.
From the conservative point of view, that must mean he's responsible for leaving our border with Mexico wide open...
There's no place like
Cheney is the only reason no one took GW Bush out. Because nobody on the left or the right or the fringe wanted that evil SOB in charge.
Right. That's the evil SOB that gave more to charities in one year than I would earn if I lived to be 200. That bastard.
There's no place like
You're right. I'm sorry. I'm sure if guns were legal in this country then deaths would decrease.
And you're also right that "according to a worst-case estimate" "Up to 60,000 young people, mostly male, may be stabbed and injured each year", but "On the other hand, the figure may be around 22,000 each year" and that well publicised cases "do little to dispel the perception that knife violence is a major problem, though it remains the case that knife murders - for which there are reliable figures - are rare." Maybe you should read the whole article and not just do a Google search for "Knife Crime UK" and just copy and paste the first number you find.
I'm well aware of the failings of this tin-pot island but what you have there is a non-argument. Have another go when you have some actual evidence.
Oh and deaths (of which I was talking) there were 258 knife murders in 06/07 according to this trash piece:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/2419444/Knife-deaths-up-by-a-third-since-Labour-came-to-power.html
Is that because knives are more deadly or more... I don't know... legal?
Oh, he gave a small portion of the money he reaped from war profiteering to charity. That makes everything ok I guess.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
The only reason nuclear weapons are outdated is because they still exist....Basically, the existence of nuclear weapons make the old tactics obsolete. Remove the nuclear weapons and the old ways are no longer obsolete.
Ah, I strongly doubt it. If anything nuclear weapons have created alternative ways to wage war, because after they became the doomsday device they still are today, NO ONE in their right mind would ever use them. We simply tiptoed quietly back from that dark road the superpowers went down, but kept our finger on the infamous button.
It's a last-resort device, capable of damn near wiping out the planet if ever used in any large scale, which there is NO other scale, really.
That being said, taking away the nukes if anything would likely target those countries who still have a "button" to push, because there would no longer be that dark cloud threat to worry about.
The nuke has very effectively prevented WWIII from happening as the deterrent of MAD has proven to be histories most effective peace policy.
MAD is a doctrine; that is, a dogma of belief; it is, more accurately, a statement of condition about the geopolitical theatre. In any case, it is neither a policy nor a hypothesis. By definition, it is untestable, because the first time it is tested is the last time it is testable. MAD is often held up as a policy that is "effective," but it is not, because its efficacy will never, and can never, be established. MAD simply means, "the condition within which major nuclear powers have not yet engaged in a large-scale offensive nuclear exchange" (emphasis mine). The "not yet" is a vitally important point. The MAD doctrine categorically does not and will not prevent a nuclear exchange. In other words, it is not a policy of safeguard. MAD means that the possibility -- indeed, the likelihood -- of nuclear conflict is still very real.
This is the whole point of non-proliferation, and is the fundamental and scientifically demonstrable reason why non-proliferation is the only safeguard against nuclear exchange.
More to the point, the phrase "Mutually Assured Destruction" is a euphamism which has the look-alike appearance of a military policy; however, the more accurate rendition of the doctrine is "Global Nuclear Annihilation."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I really like my microwave!
8==8 Bones 8==8
Oh, he gave a small portion of the money he reaped from war profiteering to charity. That makes everything ok I guess.
Someone has to own a company that builds military equipment, weapons and vehicles.
When Iraq has 50,000 Starbucks coffee joints, are you going to call the CEO of Starbucks a war profiteer?
There's no place like
P.S. US has started more than 50 wars in recent few decades. It does not save asses, rather puts asses of the rest of the world into fire for its own benefits.
...)
You forget who created Taliban and alqaeda? Or who strengthened Sadam Hussein (to fight Iran)? Or supported coups around the world (including Chile, Iran,
Do I need to count more? Signed, Rest of the world
Iran is a country with 7000 year of culture and history. Have you recently seen yourself in the mirror?
Previous time it was in a shape that it could create a coup and bring down the people's elected prime minister and put back the dictator shah in his place.
Next time Iranian thought they should stop the history from repeating by closing the possible source of another coup.
Then Carter designed invasion of the country by navies and that embarrassing defeat happened in deserts when US helicopters and airplanes were destroyed in Iran (two helicopters collided and destroyed everything).
Sure they do. At this particular point in history though, they are all but irrelevant aside from what they offer the world in the way of either oil or violence.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
1) Ban nukes making old style wars valid
2) Start old style war
3) Make loads of stuff
4) Corporate America rejoices
5) Profit
That embarrassing defeat happened because the Army, Air Force, and Navy had to coordinate the entire operation via the joint-chiefs office and not something a bit lower down the food chain (as was clearly needed), that the three services needed to be on the same page the whole time, and that joint operations experience were something clearly needed.
From what I understand, the Air Force showed up two hours early, the Army on time, and the Navy two hours late.... just to point out but one of many problems with the operation at "Desert One". The collision of the helicopters shouldn't have been fatal (to kill the whole plan, not just a few airmen) except for the fact there was no "plan B" in place to deal with the laws of thermodynamics and/or Murphy's Law. Competent military planners would have at least anticipated some problems, of which this operation simply had to go "by the book" for it to be successful.
Had these guys pulled it off, they would have been treated as heroes and sent down Broadway on a ticker-tape parade, with Jimmy Carter likely to have achieved a second term. Those were the stakes here. Unfortunately, it didn't work out, in part due to the abysmal morale and various other problems in the military at the time. Indeed this was one of the things looked at very carefully when Reagan finally came into office, even though it is likely Carter already made many of the changes necessary to get missions like this to succeed in the future. Too late for him, however.
The U.S. military can pull something like this off now, and even keep it from the press that it even happened. Still, that is closing the barn doors after the cows escape, and gave encouragement for groups like Al-Queida to pull off their stuff against Americans.
Actually, gun types are considered such simple devices that little boy (the hiroshima bomb, gun type) was untested by the time they dropped it. The big problem with its production is refining the weapons grade U235. They are also inefficient and unsafe, too. In fact, a big problem of gun types is that something (like an accidental detonation) might accidentally smash those two pieces of fissile material together, so it can't be that hard to do it right. In fact, I don't think "too fast" is a problem ("too slow" is, though). And you can't do it with plutonium from a reactor, it will blow itself too early and you'll get a fizzle.
Apparently, North Korea is/was building an implosion device, and they did not do it right. In an implosion bomb, you need to have almost perfect timing, or it won't go off (of it will fizzle if your timing is not off by much). Instead of getting 20 kilotons, they got only 1 before it blew itself apart. On the other hand, PU239 can be made with a breeder reactor with relative ease.
So, basically, smacking two bits of metal is easy, provided you have them. Imploding a ball of metal is harder, but the metal is easier to obtain.
GPG 0x1B479C78
Why don't we just outlaw war and be done with it? Sort of like the Kellogg-Briand Pact back in the 1920s.
Oh, wait. That didn't work. Some really nasty people just decided to ignore it since it was inconvenient for them. Well, who knows, maybe this time it will work. What have we got to loose except civilization as we know it?
Cheers,
Dave
BTW, I'm currently reading "Return of the Enola Gay" by Paul Tibbetts (autographed by the author).
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I totally agree, and I realise that this is done with good intentions, to make sure the nutcases or just the guys who already have too much power in the region to our taste don't get it, but talking about a "nuke-free world" is just so hypocritical because anyone knows that it's bullshit, the guy who says it is the last guy who'd throw his gun away, and everyone knows he never will.
You just got troll'd!
You're right, the world would not end, long dead is the configuration we were in until the late 1980s when two blocks were a twitch away from letting the ICBMs rain, but still you don't want a blitzkrieg between North Korea and Japan where Japan would end up losing 100,000-200,000 civilians and where we'd all have to go kick the ass of a North Korea in state of total war. Because it's very doubtful we'd even send one nuke back to North Korea, for multiple reasons, one being how frowned upon it would be and another being how China and South Korea would disapprove of suffering the poisonous consequences.
You just got troll'd!
I know a lot of WOMEN Republicans who liked McCain but were absolutely furious at the pick of Palin. Palin was a two edged sword. She got a lot of people fired up but she also lost a lot of people. Had Palin not flubbed Katie Couric, it might have been different, but, a lot of women looked at her, and said, "jeez, I though we were the party of working and being successful and you guys went and picked a bimbo."...
This is my sig.
Finally they'll be safe from all that nuking.
Isn't China still a localized power?
Do they have the capability to deploy troops in any significant number overseas?
1. That takes more work
2. Any nation that uses nukes as first-strike weapons will be a pariah
And what flavor of wingnut kool-aid are you drinking this morning? Whatever happened to the militia types when Bush was spying on Americans and arguing he had the right to lock them up without a warrant or trial, and torture them?
Sure, countries may try and stash to a few nukes. But if the vast majority are destroyed, then we don't have to worry about nuclear winter for most of the planet. And even those last few will be used as last resort, as any nation that uses nukes as first-strike weapons will be a pariah.
Lend Lease
It was Detroit and Pittsburgh that allowed the Russians to fight Hitler.
Being a graduate (top 3) of the Nuclear-Biological-Chemical Weapons school, I can honestly say that tear gas is not torture. It is actually really good for the sinuses and will clear up a head cold in a matter of minutes.
Having 2-pam-chloride and atropine injectors demonstrated before requiring you to inject yourself is pretty close to torture, but even then, the scary effects only last a little while.
My brother is a graduate of the Search, Evasion and Rescue school. He was tortured, but laughs about it now.
First off, when the activists at Seabrook said "no nukes," it most certainly did not stand for "nuclear weapons." Look it up. Given the historical meaning of the word "nuke," the headline was a bit shoddy, not Obama. Obama was clear. He's an excellent and deliberate speaker.
1. That takes more work
Our enemies are, if nothing else, patient.
2. Any nation that uses nukes as first-strike weapons will be a pariah
What makes you think we're going to be able to track the "nation" that used the first strike nuke, if it even is a nation, and not some decentralized covertly funded group with an agenda? And what makes you think a retaliatory or tactical use isn't possible?
And what flavor of wingnut kool-aid are you drinking this morning? Whatever happened to the militia types when Bush was spying on Americans and arguing he had the right to lock them up without a warrant or trial, and torture them?
I was decrying the Patriot Act, advocating for Geneva P.O.W. status, opposing the Iraq invasion, and weeping into some very strong coffee, IIRC.
No wingnut Kool-Aid here, sir. Geopolitical games are dangerous, and no one really has the right to play them, especially the incompetant. Barack Obama seems totally naive on that point, judging by the content of his speeches.
The nuclear horse is out of the barn, forever, and I can only pray that Obama knows what he's doing, but is making foolish speeches to mollify the fools. If that's true, this is not a change from Bush. It's the same old "continual campaign." It's the same old, "Say one thing, do another." :^(
Clearly, "no weaponized nukes" is not a possibility in a world where there is any discord. If the technology exists, it will be weaponized, regardless of any attempt to ban the process.
War, contrary to Geneva, doesn't actually have rules. The only road to peace isn't "ban all the weapons," it's "Don't give anyone a reason to kill your people, remain reasonable and as passive as possible, give reason and blessings a chance to work, and after that, annihilate anyone who wants you gone and fails to see reason."
If we do the first steps right, there should be no reason to get to the last step.
--
Toro
"Among other things that being unarmed causes, it causes you to be despised." - Machiavelli, The Prince
... and from your point of view, you're justified in murdering anyone who lives within a certain proximity of people who remind you of them, and they're under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to either care what your point of view is or to sympathize with it. So, from your perspective, you're morally equivalent to anyone who was cheering on the 9/11 hijackers.
I already knew that you inhabited a moral void of your own design, but I didn't expect you to come out and embrace the idea.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
First off, when the activists at Seabrook said "no nukes," it most certainly did not stand for "nuclear weapons." Look it up.
This story is about what Obama said, so that's a red herring. Google that one, too.
Our enemies are, if nothing else, patient.
Also irrelevant. Even if North Korea develops a nuke AND an ICBM in secret AND manages to strike the U.S., we have more than enough conventional weapons to blast the country into bedrock multiple times over.
What makes you think we're going to be able to track the "nation" that used the first strike nuke, if it even is a nation, and not some decentralized covertly funded group with an agenda?
Because producing a nuke (that context thing again) isn't like making homemade dynamite in your basement. It takes considerable time, considerable resources and significant facilities to construct.
Barack Obama seems totally naive on that point, judging by the content of his speeches.
[Citation needed]
I don't know if that particular number of citizens is right, but that otherwise sounds good. There are also the issues of delivery systems and security. A nuke isn't worth much if you can't get it to where your enemy is, so you'll need to build and maintain a proven rocket system that can actually carry your warhead to wherever you think your enemy might be, or an air force capable of operating and delivering a highly valuable bomb in contested airspace.
As for security, there are dozens if not more terrorist groups out there who would love to get their hands on a nuke. And if one of them does steal one of yours and attack a nuclear power with it, you will be held responsible, quite possibly to the tune of a saturation strike against your country. So you'd better be able to deploy and maintain enough security to keep it away from them. Especially in less stable countries, these would have to be some of the most loyal and reliable troops you have available, and you're essentially tying them down guarding a weapon that will probably never actually be used.
And of course, it probably isn't worth doing unless you can build at least a dozen or so. One or two seems too vulnerable to sabotage, accidents, failure when used, etc, and if you've already put in the effort to make one, it doesn't cost that much more to make enough to be reasonably well protected against those problems.
So it isn't too hard to see why a lot of countries would think that they aren't worth the trouble. If you don't have an enemy to deter (and you aren't a lunatic dictator in need of constant attention and foreign aid to prop up your economy, which is a total disaster thanks to your own incompetence), then why bother?
I don't reply to ACs
I'd answer yes. Putting conditions like that on our response makes us too vulnerable to manipulation. I can see it now:
Bad Guys: Yeah, we just nuked you and killed 50,000 of your civilians. But don't nuke us back because we only had the one!
Good Guys: Okay fine, we'll attack conventionally instead, just give us 6 months or so to build up our conventional forces.
3 months later - kaboom again, another 10,000 or so dead
Bad Guys: Whoops, forgot about that one. But we really don't have any left now! You can trust us!
Good Guys: Grumble, grumble, okay fine.
repeat again 3 months later, etc.
There's a reason why a saturation nuclear strike is the official response for a nuclear attack of any size, or even a threat to use a nuke unless we do/don't do some specific thing - deterrence. They best way to make sure that none are ever used, even by crazy megalomaniacal dictators, is to make it clear that any use or threatened use of nuclear weapons will be intolerably horrible for the country that used them, and there will be no chance whatsoever of delaying it or talking your way out of it.
If some tiny country with a couple of nukes gets the idea that they can use a nuke against us and talk their way out of our reply, then there's a much greater chance that they will, and if they do, then we may well have 5 or 6 figures or more of casualties, and then have to contemplate whether we really will vaporize their whole country, killing in numbers to make Hitler, Stalin, and Mao blush. We'd have to, or else the next country will try the same thing with us, but I'd still hate to be the guy who had to give the order.
I don't reply to ACs
I know a nuke-free world *sounds* like a good idea, but it's not.
Why do you think it is that for the first time in over a thousand years we have just gone, since the conclusion of WWII, more than sixty years without a major serious all-out war between any of the major world powers? Do you think human nature has suddenly improved, and everyone now feels so strongly that war is bad, so nobody would ever start one? Haha. No.
It is because the threat of nuclear war has constrained us. Why didn't we go to war with the Soviet Union in the sixties, seventies, or eighties? We *wanted* to. We believed we were right, and they were wrong, and they deserved to be chastened militarily. And they believed all those things about us. In any other era we would have gone to war with one another, but in the nuclear era, we did not. We did not go to war, because we knew that we could all be annihilated in a matter of hours if we did. We boycotted the Olympics. We spent millions of dollars a year developing and stockpiling weapons. We encouraged our young people to go into math and science. We launched rockets into space and put satellites in orbit and landed on the moon. But we DID NOT GO TO WAR, because that would be suicide.
Nuclear weapons are dangerous, and you have to be very careful with them. You want triple secret launch codes and double keys and blah, blah, blah, and you do NOT want anyone with "nothing to lose" to have them (like, for instance, a third-world dictator with his back against the wall). And it's not necessary for every major world power to have them; five or six countries is probably enough, and a dozen is more than plenty. But *somebody* should have them. Have them and never use them.
Nukes are a deterrent against major wars.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Oh there's no void in my morals. They're quite clear and sharply defined, thanks much. You just don't happen to agree with me.
They're self-supporting, self-contained and immune to argument or disagreement. They float, as it were, in a void.
I am more important to myself than you are to me. Therefore, my morals are always superior to yours. QED.
Spoken like a true psychopath. Aren't you the least bit familiar with the concept of moral codes that work well if everyone accepts them, both because they benefit the user personally ("I'm not constantly fighting for survival!") and they make for a more pleasant society in general ("We're not riven by brutal and unending conflict!").
"Every man for himself!" isn't a stable solution for anything other than a world in flames. It is a profound lack of morality. By claiming that no one has a better standing than anyone else to define right and wrong--that arguments about utilitarianism and such are irrelevant to your monstrously solipsistic ego--you're defining everyone as morally equivalent.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
And you prefer your morals to be ones you're uncertain of? Please, arguing that you shouldn't believe something because you've thought it out to as near the point of certainty as you can some is hardly a brilliant strategy.
I didn't say that it was unlikely that your ideas, as you define them, could be wrong. Because you've defined your morality to be, in essence, that might makes right--and claimed that everyone else holds this same belief--there's no arguing with it. It's self-contained, hermetically sealed. That's what I'm trying to say.
As for the rest? You're obviously confusing morals with mores. Morals are always personal and mores are always a societal consensus.
I dislike definitional arguments. By "morality", I'm referring to your sense of what right and wrong actions are. For instance, I think it's immoral to kill people because they make me nervous, or to expect to have different rules apply to me than apply to other people.
Above all you seem to be misconstruing what I've repeatedly tried to explain. There is no equivalency in morals. It is not possible for there to be without a complete lack of a sense of self.
I'm having difficulty understanding what you mean here. By "moral equivalence", I'm referring to your claim that you hold the same moral values as anyone who was cheerleading the 9/11 attacks. You felt threatened, and according to you, that justified violence carried out on your behalf. By your lights, that's the whole story.
For the purposes of this argument, that means that I don't need to feel Al-Qaeda are amoral bastards to want to see them rounded up and executed. All I need to do is give the proper response to their actions.
I suppose they probably feel the same--there's that equivalence I keep pointing out.
Hell, there were probably plenty of Nazis that were certain they were doing what was good and right; doesn't mean they were any less deserving of a good killing.
And yet feeling that same certainty, that same feeling that darn it, you're doing the right thing, doesn't make you wonder if perhaps you're the bad guy... because you don't think it matters.
You're obviously an educated person; please attempt to be an intelligent one as well. Think about what your brain's been fed before you just go believing it on faith and regurgitating it in public.
What exactly do you think I've been fed? Am I reminding you of someone in particular, or unwittingly quoting something?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I don't know if that particular number of citizens is right, but that otherwise sounds good.
This is also, BTW, one of the reasons I don't think "terrorist groups" like Al Queida will ever independently develop nukes.... and if they steal them, they will not threaten with nukes.... they'll use them immediately. Likely right at the place where they are at in the first place. Hanging on to a nuke is far too much effort compared to obtaining them in the first place.