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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?
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.
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.
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).
The "gun" method will get you a low yield weapon. And everyone knows the hard part is enrichment of the uranium, and building the reactor etc... As long as existing stockpiles of weapons grade material are kept safe it takes a nation quite a while to go from zero to nuke and it's hard to hide. The whole world knows about N. Koreas secrect nuke program.
Anarchists never rule
Outdated indeed. The new tactics of war are about guerrilla battles, and small nimble forces that can wear down the enemy overtime. Using a nuke on them is like trying to swat a fly with a grenade.
It won't.
There are many reactor designs (CANDU in particular) that don't require any enrichment at all. What he's talking about is no longer producing highly enriched U235 and/or PU239.
Of course, that's great and all, but there are already fairly sizable stockpiles of both within the established nuclear powers.
He's either posturing or pipe-dreaming.
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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Has America invaded any nuclear power?
Deleted
The only reason nuclear weapons are outdated is because they still exist. They remove the incentive to go WWII on somebodies ass. Because of nuclear weapons, if you wanna cause trouble you now have to find other ways that don't lead to your country or people turning into a glass parking lot.
In other words, warfare has evolved to deal with nuclear weapons much like bacteria have evolved to deal with antibiotics. New kinds of bacteria have been created that are immune to bacteria--but that doesn't mean the old kinds of bacteria aren't still lying around in some latent form. If you stopped using antibiotics, those old "extinct" forms of bacteria would come back. Same with warfare--if we could somehow get rid of every single nuclear weapon on earth--all the old tactics of war would suddenly become relevant and useful again.
Basically, the existence of nuclear weapons make the old tactics obsolete. Remove the nuclear weapons and the old ways are no longer obsolete.
It's a touch harder than that. First you need that highly enriched uranium, which means you'll need a reactor, reprocessing facilities and some way to refine your U238-rich Uranium into weapons grade U235. You'll also need a few other metals while you're there, such as Beryllium. Then once you have all of that, and assuming someone hasn't bombed your facilities in the mean time, you have to "smash them together" in just the right way: too fast and they'll fly apart before they reach criticality, too slow and the mass will not be compressed enough: either will lead to a fizzle.
Which is exactly what happened to North Korea by the way. Apparently even after decades of research and development, smacking to bits of metal together is pretty hard to do right.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
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 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.
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
the "old tactics of war" are still quite useful and are actually quite old. Go read Sun Tsu or Clausewitz sometime and you'll find the ideas of "insurgency" which you call "modern" is quite ancient. These "old tactics" are still taught in the Military Academies around the world so they must be still pertinent and useful. The tactics (for the most part) have NOT changed at the level that is GI Joe's concern it's just the weapons used in execution of such tactics are much more powerful and deadly and don't always require close contact with the enemy. Even as late as the Iraq War "old tactics" such as masssive bombing raids, uses of infantry and armor for house-to-house combat, snipers, etc. were still used to great effect just as in WWII FYI ,In military terms nukes are a strategic weapon not a tactical weapon. And even so, strategy involving nukes is now close to 60 yrs old (young by military standards) and is NOT going away.
Thinking nations will give up nukes just because Obama says so and promises the USA will is a very foolish notion. The only way to accomplish that is for every nuclear nation to verify in person on site that every weapon is destroyed worldwide. Even the US and Russians had a hard time with this in the SALT talks. Just relying on someone's word or satellite/spy plane photos is not enough.
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!
Fair enough. Let me try on a better word.
"The old strategies of war". You can't just go invade half a continent anymore. The Commies aren't gonna fly 3,000 bombers across the arctic and bomb America. Hitler ain't gonna be able to just invade half of Europe. Those days are over. The Cold War marked the end of that kind of stuff.
These days, if you wanna go evil, you gotta take a couple guys and put them in a shipping container strapped with $WEAPON. Your strategy isn't to take over the country... just fuck with them and weaken them. Once you get their nation to fall, you aren't planning on moving in to their homes, you just wanted them gone from the planet.
So yeah, nuclear weapons might not render the tactics of war obsolete. But nuclear weapons have certainly rendered the strategies of war obsolete.
Does that work?
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!
Outdated indeed. The new tactics of war are about guerrilla battles, and small nimble forces that can wear down the enemy overtime. Using a nuke on them is like trying to swat a fly with a grenade.
No. Destroy an entire people and there is no-one to draw these "small nimble forces" from.
The reason nukes aren't being used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is a moral, and not a military one. They would be very, very effective militarily.
Azural - instrumentals
The reason nukes aren't being used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is a moral, and not a military one. They would be very, very effective militarily.
Maybe in the very short term, and assuming you don't want those assets that you are blowing into smithereens, or you don't mind not being able to get to the oil resources because they are in or near a "hot" zone.
I think you're also forgetting that the fallout would blow over US allies, and those US allies aren't going to like that. It's hard to maintain a hegemony if your hedge bolts.
Also, those people that you nuke, most often have relatives outside of the nuked zone, and they're going to be upset. The problem with the war on terror is that the1 "collateral damage" euphemism is covering up the fact that some of the families that are accidentally killed are going to be pushed to extremism. So for every bad guy you kill with an innocent bystander killed, you add another family that gets pushed into extremism, creating at least one more "bad guy". This is the danger of the "long war", it becomes never ending because you create your own endless cycle of enemies.
I don't understand why cory's comment was modded troll. He's right.
Nuclear weapons push things to standoffs and force armies backing down. The consequences are just too great if nukes come out. The Cuban missile crisis is an example of that. And obviously, had things gone differently, the whole world could have become a radioactive smoking cinder.
But nuclear weapons have prevented WWII style wars. Wars now are at least confined to one country's borders instead of spreading.
Why do people think that China hasn't invaded and taken Taiwan back? They have weapons lined up ready to strike but haven't. They are trying to push the USA financially, but ultimately, until they can be assured that we won't defend Taiwan militarily, they won't attack.
But if the USA disarms and China holds onto its nukes, does anyone really think China will continue to hold off enforcing its claim that Taiwan is really a part of China?
Not a chance. They will do as they please and if the USA interferes, all they need to do is threaten our forces with being nuked. End of story. Taiwan becomes part of China and the USA backs down with its tail between its legs.
The reality is that nukes are here and other countries have them. They are all different explosive sizes and they can and will be used by other countries if the USA disarms ours.
I guarantee to you that very few other countries feel the same "moral obligation" to disarm or to not use nuclear weapons in battle.
Bush looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes, saw his soul and saw a friend. Bush was a fool. Russia and China are rebuilding their militaries, with China building faster than anyone knew until recently. Throwing away our only deterrent against these countries is simply giving them the green light to do as they please and use the Cheney salute ("Go F Yourself") to tell us what they think about any intervention.
As they say, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
You are mistaken. If your opponent's intention is to conquer you, the VERY last thing he wants is for you to nuke his invading army, and his homeland. In that situation, possession of nuclear weapons DOES prevent an attack by conventional troops, by allowing you to maintain a far lower conventional troop strength.
By the same token, if he wants to conquer and rule you, the last thing he wants to do is attempt to nuke you into submission, since that wrecks all the nice farmland and factories and French farm girls he wants to conquer.
Read up on the troop strength of the old Soviet Union, and on the number of tanks they could field. If the Soviets had wanted to, they could have lined up, North-South, along the old Iron Curtain, across ALL of Europe, and headed West. There was never any doubt in anyone's mind, on either side of the Iron Curtain, that they wanted to do it. The West did not (and does not, even today) have anything even remotely resembling the conventional troop strength necessary to stop such an assault.
If you believe they didn't want to do it, review the history of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, during the period between World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. For that matter, review the history of the Berlin Wall.
There was just this one little problem. The Soviets knew that such an attack would trigger BOTH strategic nuclear counterattack against Moscow and Russia, *AND* tactical nuclear response against their skirmish line. The tactical nuclear response would have broken the attack, and the strategic response would have hurt them even worse than they got hurt in World War II. (While you're doing your troop strength homework, look up how many casualties the Soviets took during World War II, expressed as a fraction of their population. The number is, by Western standards, astonishingly high. Russia KNEW, during the 1960s, what kind of casualties they could take, survive, and recover from.)
This is why the West refused to sign up for the "No First Use" policy that the Soviets pushed. Without the option to escalate to nuclear weapons, the West had NO chance of stopping a conventional Soviet attack.
The Soviets also understood this. It is why they attempted to install ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons on Cuba, in the early days of the Kennedy Administration. It is what brought the world within a gnat's eyelash of World War III.
None of the above is fiction, none of it is speculation. I had the privilege several years ago of talking, over lunch at The Men's Club of Dallas, with a guy who turned out to be the only B-52 aircraft commander in the United States Air Force who didn't fly his airplane out to his Fail/Safe point that day. He and his crew had just landed from a training flight when the orders were given. As he and his crew were walking in, he met everyone else going out to their airplanes. He reported that every single one of them was white as a sheet: they all believed that This Was It.
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
None of the above is fiction, none of it is speculation. I had the privilege several years ago of talking, over lunch at The Men's Club of Dallas, with a guy who turned out to be the only B-52 aircraft commander in the United States Air Force who didn't fly his airplane out to his Fail/Safe point that day. He and his crew had just landed from a training flight when the orders were given. As he and his crew were walking in, he met everyone else going out to their airplanes. He reported that every single one of them was white as a sheet: they all believed that This Was It.
The Cuban Missile Crises is something that I believe is significantly downplayed by most high school and even university professors when covering modern American history. It is everything you claim and more.
Those who participated in the military at the time were of my father's generation, and to a man every single one of them knew the proverbial shit was hitting the fan at the time. Weapons lockers that were never, ever touched were opened and a massive mobilization of forces happened that was simply incredible. One guy I know was sitting in a Marine landing craft fully armed and provisioned for a month's operations about 20 miles from Havana when Khrushchev finally backed down. I don't know how much of that was saber rattling, but a full-out aggressive war was at least a very real possibility.
The world would have been very different if those plans had been put into motion, and it wasn't due to a lack of nukes or a President without balls. Similar incidents happened during the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations BTW, both of which get even less coverage than the Cuban Missile Crises. How World War III was avoided in 1973 is one of those facts of history that you have got to read about and investigate to believe, and just as remarkable.