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Nuclear Arms Cuts, Supported By 56% of Americans, Would Make the World Safer
Lasrick writes "Kingston Reif of the Nukes of Hazard blog writes about nuclear arms reductions are back in the news, thanks to President Obama's State of the Union address and now also a Gallup poll that shows 56% of Americans support U.S.-Russian reductions. From the Article: 'A recent report by the Center for Public Integrity revealed that senior Obama administration officials believe the United States can reduce its arsenal of deployed strategic warheads to between 1,000 and 1,100 without harming national security. Those numbers would put the total below levels called for by New START...' Congressional Republicans of course are against those cuts; Reif lays out why the cuts would make the U.S. and the world safer."
Do we even need a thousand nuclear warheads?
Need to mind the mineshaft gap!
I'm just wondering if we (and they) have so many because they'd want to be sure to punch through any kind of SDI/Star Wars missile defense system?
I had a sucky sig.
Says who? And will countries like NK or Iran follow suit or not? And does that result play into the discussions at all?
Opinions do not equate to facts, yet some people like reporting as if they do.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Do we even need a thousand nuclear warheads?
Look, pal, what happens when Stalin's got enough nuclear warheads to destroy the planet nine hundred ninety-nine times? Yeah. That's what I thought. You've got nothin' to that.
Why are talks between us and Russia while China is rapidly increasing their nuclear stockpile?
If 1000 to 1100 warheads is sufficient for the most paranoid people on the planet who are fully informed about the situation, then doesn't that mean the proposed cuts are still leaving way too many?
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Nuclear deterrent is great, otherwise, there's little stopping major countries from invading each other. Keep in mind, you don't only need enough warheads to take out the country you're fighting, you need enough to take out all their allies as well. Plus, what if half of your warheads are taken out because your enemy struck first?
The only drawback is it's easier to lose one through theft or whatever; also the whole waste management thing....
But nuclear deterrent is probably the #1 thing that has enabled the world's major powers to get along.
We're already slowly but surely working on anti-matter weaponry and high-energy weaponized lasers. We'll be able to obliterate and/or lase the surface of the planet likely before anyone else.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
By the time you launch the first 100 nuclear bombs the world will go down the toilet, so why does it matter? really?
We'll just kill it three times. Safer!
link the world's electrical grids so that excess capacity in one country could be sold to another country on the other side of the planet. Once everyone is solidly connected to a world wide electric grid and each country depends on the excess capacity of another country on the other side of the planet, what are you gonna do, attack the other countries and eliminate part of your won power supply.
Of course, this depends on the idea that we're going to move along to what's been called a Type 1 civilization but the current trend is well away from that pinning us as a Type 0 by reducing our resource consumption, energy consumption and population.
Disarmament is a joke. How do we certify that our opposition have unloaded theirs? It's impossible.
If the U.S.A. were to honestly and truly disarm, then we'd just be the only country without them. No thanks.
M.A.D. is the only way.
Or rather you can deter violence by not pissing everyone off and becoming friends with them.
The US is its own worst enemy in that respect.
And i feel safe.
The easiest ones to cut are in the silos, but the ones that really break the bank are cruising through the oceans on our absurdly expensive nuclear submarines. For obvious reasons they don't want to cut the sub-launched missiles.
... to buy as many nukes as they like at any gun show without even having to prove their identity?
Because the US and Russia possess two orders of magnitude more nuclear weapons than China possesses. Even after reduction each will individually hold more than four times what China currently holds.
Yes, we need 1,000 warheads so that when the first 900 get wiped out in a surprise first strike, we can still hit back.
However this should be US/Russia/China reduction of nukes, possibly expanding to ask other nations with smaller arsenals to start limiting wasteful spending, on what is essentially a pointless standoff weapon with very ugly costs to the human race on the whole for any accidental discharge.
...because that's work great for the previous 10,000 years of recorded history.
I'm sure all your friends in Equestria agree with you.
Why of course?
Why at all?
Do we even need a thousand nuclear warheads?
If we ever want to travel to Alpha Centauri we do. How about putting those nukes toward the construction of an interstellar pulsed nuclear space drive?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Because China is very friendly and would never hurt anybody.
I think we should send some of what we have now on a one-way trip to North Korea. That would make everyone happy. For the liberals we would have actually reduced the number left. For the conservatives we would have used them as intended and made the U.S. much safer by demonstrating that they can be used and are not just an empty threat.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Because even if you launch 50 nukes the world is probably fucked as it is so why have thousands?
If China is making nukes, then that means they want more (i.e. they are less likely to participate in something like this). Russia on the other hand seems to have a bunch of nukes it doesn't necessarily want (like us), so we can get rid of nukes together. We aren't getting rid of all our nukes so we still have a deterrent. We can still destroy China Iran and NK in a couple hours if we wanted. China wants a similar capability. At some point having more nuclear weapons gives you no added benefit, but it still comes with more risk and expense to keep your arsenal from getting into the wrong hands.
The difficult part about getting defense people to commit to decreasing the stockpile is that we have no idea when, if ever, we will be able to start producing new warheads. That turns it from being a discussion about how many we strategically need, towards a discussion about how certain were are that the stockpile we have will still be functional when we need it, and "can't we keep them all just in case". It would suck to destroy an entire line of warheads because they seem least valuable today, only to find out later that the ones we kept had an aging problem we couldn't detect before which didn't effect the destroyed line.
So long as they are only pointed at extraterrestrial threats (i.e.: planet killer asteroids).
As for the human race, if we're stupid enough to let a handful of people decide if everyone on the planet lives or dies ... then we get what deserve.
On the other hand, if you downgrade to only a 100 warheads, then it's quite possible a small group of conventional strikes could remove your entire arsenal, and there goes MAD...
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Or rather you can deter violence by not pissing everyone off and becoming friends with them.
The US is its own worst enemy in that respect.
Did you wake up this stupid or did you hit your head today?
That's not really an overwhelming majority, is it? So what, take action anyway and to hell with the concerns of the other 38-44 percent who don't agree that it's a great idea? That could arguably be cited as an example of a tyrannical majority.
(I personally think 1,000 warheads is plenty enough to deter rogue states or factions that happen to get a few nukes and an urge to blackmail with 'em, but there's principle here.)
I missed the distinction that these are deployed weapons were are talking about. My comment doesn't apply to those, but to the other ~4000 stockpiled ones.
There are lots of reasons to have a shelter besides a nuclear attack. If you make yourself less vulnerable while reducing your offense you make yourself a less likely target.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Hydrogen bombs don’t kill people — people kill people. The bomb is for self-protection and it also has a deterrent effect. If somebody knows you have a nuclear weapon in your house, they’re going to think twice about breaking in.
Because China owns the US government and economy.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
We did hit the reset button with Russia. That's gone well, hasn't it? We're just two peas in a pod now...
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
Its called the nuclear deterrence. If everyone has nukes pointed at everyone no one will actually pull the trigger because it would in turn cause their enemies to launch back at them and everyone fires their nukes and everyone dies. Yes it sounds horrible but its the only deterrence to all out war. If no one had the ability to wipe out an entire nation we would have more large scale war because if a country can invade another and statistically destory them with no recourse then it becomes more appealing. Or say you meet a robber on the street and he pulls a gun on you, youre only choice is to give what he wants or he kills you but if you have a gun pointed at him he wont shoot because you would shoot him and you both are guarnteed to lose but atleast his chances of defending himself increase without being robbed or getting shot.
Nuclear weapons are needed as a form of defense against nuclear war. Just getting rid of them all solves nothing. Its as stupid as saying getting rid of guns will solve crime and violence in the world magically overnight.
Ah yes, because Switzerland is such an /unsafe/ country....
Switzerland is a model of how to build a sane foreign policy and a sane military (although they should abolish the draft and have a 100% volunteer army) .
As odd as it may sound, no one wakes up one morning and says "Hey, I feel like being a terrorist!" things like invasions and occupations create terrorists. Supporting right-wing dictators (like the US did throughout the cold war and even beyond) creates terrorists. Drone strikes on civilians create terrorists.
The US has a completely flawed foreign policy, especially as it relates to nuclear arms. They have this idea that apparently in 2013 no one should be able to replicate basic nuclear science that the US did way back in the 1940s! Rather than a sane foreign policy of friendship, understanding and unrestricted trade.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Or rather you can deter violence by not pissing everyone off and becoming friends with them.
Yes, this is the "all unicorns and glitter except a few spots of Nickelodeon slime that haven't gotten the message yet" philosophy. Except it's ignoring the slime spots altogether and hoping for the best.
What would make the world safer is a little less fear and paranoia. Holding people without trials, ordering assassinations of citizens...this does nothing for the citizen's ideal of safety within the homeland, to speak nothing of without.
A weapon is a weapon is a weapon...it's the mind behind it that you need to be wary of, not the weapon itself. Even if we eliminated every WMD in existence, a new one could be cooked up over a long weekend by a skilled chemist or physicist. Feel me? Understand me? No, you may not. That's not important. The point is, douse the flames of nationalism and global paranoia before the US & friends end up like NK, who is, by various accounts, going full schizo this week.
The average human being can die in an innumerable number of ways every day: the way they get through their day, get on with their lives, is by being largely blind to the sheer number of possibilities in which they can bite the big one. When you make them too aware of these ways, then they stop working, start OCDing / ruminating on the various ways, and get trapped in a 'fear maze' with no exit. These national security jokers, who, in their short term greed / self interest of securing more resources for themselves by cranking up the fear factor, have seriously unhinged some parts of this society that are not meant to be unhinged, unless we want a civil war...which is where we are headed. Now, sometimes a civil war is a good thing, or so I am told, but the fact remains that my personal confidence in anyone's reasons for starting one, let alone their game plan for day two, are currently at an all time low.
I am John Hurt.
The fact that we 'cut' our nuclear stockpile does nothing for the safety of us or the world. It only takes one dirty bomb to do harm. Having a large number of nuclear weapons and more importantly, making that public knowledge is the only thing that has stopped another country from using nuclear weapons. Its like the gun debate on a worldwide scale. If everyone in the room has a gun and this is public knowledge to everyone in said room, you are going to have one massive killing field or a tense, but peaceful situation. I'm not posting in support of large stockpiles of nuclear arms, but this is reality people.. not a perfect world where everyone will just lay their weapons down. As long as you have one country with nuclear weapons, everyone is going to want nuclear weapons.
I fear the man who wants 1.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
Not if they are submarine based.
Nuclear Arms Cut.. Would Make the World Safer?
Such a deal between US and Russia to destroy their arsenal in part would make China cream their jogging pants.
You've been doing too much work with binary I think - two orders of magnitude would be about 100 times more, not four times.
I see an unpopular opinion modded -1, despite the logic given in support of that opinion.
Humans are just incapable of objectivity, it seems.
I wonder if there will be enough moderators who agree to counter-act the effects of those who disagree, to return this post to visibility.
It's rather difficult to do that when many of your warheads are in submarines hiding at the bottom of the ocean.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Let's face it, the Soviets would have won World War III and the Russians, today, would win any sort of nuclear conflagaration. Assume that both sides destroy each other's major cities, military installations, and key strategic utilities. What is left.
In Russia, they would be left with a vast territory populated by hundreds of thousands of people living slightly better than their ancestors did 500 years earlier, There would be great hardship and half of them would die in the first winter. The rest would learn the lesson and spread out into better hunting grounds in the VAST territory of Russia and neighboring countries.
In the USA, almost everyone would starve to death in the first year except for a few hundred survivalists and a few hundred back-to-the-landers who have not yet been seduced by modern lifestyles and are actually able to produce all the food that they need for a year. Everyone else would die. A few farm families might hang on depending on how soon after harvest the bombs hit, but let's face it, how long can you survive on a diet of only rapeseed, or cow corn, or even wheat. Great hardships and there are few places in the small territory of the USA where a hunting-gathering lifestyle is still viable,
So let's stop kidding ourselves, get rid of the bombs, and get ready for the next adventure which is likely to be civil war in China. And if that actually does not happen, then climate change will kick in by the end of the century. Either of those two events will impact global food supply, and supply of other goods, enough that it will have a domino effect like Arab Spring where one country after another devolves into the kind of chaos that the USA lived through in the 1960's. But the big difference is that now there will be no economic boom coming to rescue us. Once the magic of China is broken, it is gone forever, and they will likely depopulate their country one way or another. And after things settle down in China, they are largely a disciplined culture that will likely never make the same population growth mistake again.
One way that it could play out is a Chinese military diaspora that will be far more successful than Japan in the 1940's. My family, right down to the first grader, are all learning Mandarin. And if you think about it, a nuclear deterrent targeting the territory of China is not going to do much AFTER the horse has bolted and the Chinese invading force is one YOUR SOIL.
Nope, we do not need nukes no more.
Sink the submarines?
56 percent supports both the US and Russia reducing their stockpiles.
This is being framed in a vague, fuzzy and general "I-want-reduction-our-stockpile"-sense.
In reality, since the margin is that small, it's highly unlikely that a majority would support unilateral reductions.
Who gives a shit what 56% of the general populace think? They aren't qualified to have a meaningful opinion.
Did I miss the high school class on thermonuclear tactics? Pretty sure I would have gone to that.
How about hundreds of drones and a few more aircraft carriers? I think our Navy is way more of a deterrent than our nuclear arsenal. And the ability to use drone strikes on rogue leaders seems to be effective for those despots that don't seem to care if their civilians are starving and would probably use collateral damages a nuclear strike would do as propaganda for their martyrdom.
To shift way to the left, how about one new aircraft carrier and 100,000 more science, engineering and math degrees? Nothing provides long term security quite as much as a well educated civilian workforce. That was the real economic engine that drove us out of WWII and through the cold war. Running on fumes is not a reasonable long term strategy
I mostly agree, except for the draft part. I think a draft is actually a good deterrent against aggressiveness - an all-volunteer army means if soldiers are fighting and dieing it's by their choice and the general populace can accept it more easily. On the other hand if random people's children are being drafted there will be far more public outcry against the war.
There's another nice feature of making military service mandatory for all: Your entire population is combat trained so you have a massive competent militia available for defense, whether against invaders or an oppressive government. You've got to be pretty driven to try to take military control of a country where everyone is competent to fight in the streets.
That said though, the Swiss still have an added advantage in that they live in Switzerland - a geographically unappealing target for conquest. Doubly so since they are pretty strongly dedicated to neutrality so that expansionists don't feel the need to conquer them to protect their flank.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Switzerland is a model of how to build a sane foreign policy and a sane military (although they should abolish the draft and have a 100% volunteer army) .
So your policy for national security of your country is to act like the country recognized for laundering the money for corrupt politicians and criminals around the world? If you think switzerland is safe because its friendly, you really are out of touch with the world. Switzerland is only safe because A) it offers nothing of value B) They know ALLL the dirty little secrets of the politicians. Attacking them would be the end of hidden money supply, the rest of the world would immediately respond to you in kind ... oh... AND THERES NOTHING THERE TO WANT.
You have no idea why that only works for piss ant little countries that no one cares about otherwise ANYWAY?
No one fights to invade Siberia either. Well okay, not anymore, but the last guys who did learned why it was a dumb move there too.
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Because even France has more nukes than China currently does? The US and Russia both have well over an order of magnitude more weapons than China. We could probably watch them launch most of their nukes if not all of them, then shoot down the ones that get close and not break a sweat. As far as we can tell, they only have a few hundred bombs. We could (the US) easily survive direct hits from almost their entire stockpile and survive well enough that they wouldn't want to invade us anymore than we wanted to fight a land war in Japan. Remember, America is not like the rest of the world, we have A LOT of people living in rural areas. Take out EVERY city and you STILL have significant populations of people to deal with.
On the contrary, we can drop roughly 7,000 on them in less than an hour if we wanted to turn the Gobi into a big glass parking lot.
China probably would like more evenly related numbers.
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You've obviously been doing too much of something that's not helpful for reading comprehension. I suggest checking in to a rehab center before you kill your remaining brain cell.
It works until the stronger side gets greedy. In other words about 10 years.
You might want to recheck that. The average nuclear warhead in the US arsenal is approximated to be 33,500 kilotons (slightly larger than the well known B41). For comparison, the nukes used in/on Japan were 15 and 21 kilotons. 33,500 kilotons is large enough to destroy/kill everything in a 55-60 mile diameter. It would take about 1000 of these to DIRECTLY kill everything in the United States. Factor in the indirect damage (nuclear poisoning, fallout, etc etc), and you could kill everyone in the United States with far far fewer. India (for example only), has 1/3rd the area of the United States. It would take probably 100 33.5 megaton nuclear bombs to kill everyone in an area equal to the size of India, and it would likely kill a couple hundred million of people not in that area.
That's completely false, most modern missile-based nukes are in the hundreds of kilotons, like 100-500 kt. 33.5 megatons is larger than the largest bomb we've ever had in service, the B53 at 9 megatons.
Castle Bravo and they weren't even trying to do that. It was supposed to be 4-6 megatons but somebody forgot to carry the two, metaphorically speaking. There was some reaction they didn't anticipate. Remember--no supercomputer simulations back in those days. This also has to make you think when some nuclear scientist says, "we don't expect $technology to do $damage".
As a result of the US test, some poor fisherman that thought they were in the safe zone were not.
The USSR has us beat with Tsar Bomba of course; but that was a very impractical weapon. They intentionally decreased it form 100 megaton to 50 megaton because they figured the plane wouldn't be able to fly away in time. Now imagine that the Soviets had gone for the full 100 megaton shot, and miscalculated like the Americans...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of everypony who was part of the Manehattan Project, making the world 20% cooler one sonic rainnuke at a time.
Nuclear powered space craft will probable never become a viable method of travel, especially if launched from earth. Too high a probability of spacecraft failure and crashing back to Earth (radioactive fallout from a craft designed to use said radioactive materials). Now if the methods to refine fissionable materials can be handled off Earth. Then yes, nuclear powered spacecraft will have a chance, just not for landings on potentially inhabitable planets and surfaces. Drop ships will become the new norm, that and thermal exhaust/convertion engines too. Nuclear weapons will not go away since they are a very expensive investment. The majority of the US' radioactive materials can be either directly or indirectly linked to the development of said stockpiles. And they were the main reason for us using our current nuclear reactor designs instead of more cost/safe/efficient models available for over 40yrs; main reason the designs were never Officially completed til recently. Converting some into radioactive isotopes and such for the medical and manufactoring sectors of America cost efficiently would go a long way to starting the break down of our stockpiles; especially for the medical industries special interest groups. Including further refinement and improvements to our current stock; resistance increases to failure, emp, weather, freak accidents, larger yields, reduced radioactive materials that last longer than 50yrs, etc...
China has restarted nuke warhead production (or possibly, they never shut it down like they claimed). They claim 240, but others have it much higher. In particular, during their last major earthquake, they had a number of tunnels with cave-ins. It turns out that CHina has some 3000 miles of tunnels running around china that they had not spoke about, untill these were caught. Then China said that it is used for a number of land based missiles, they they had claimed did not exists PRIOR to this.
BUT, the real problem is that over by their new reservoir, a number of ppl came out from underground and all were wearing sealed bunny suits for working with nukes. This was an area unknown to the world. BUT, it was treated as though it had a nuclear accident. China admits that they have some military nuclear operations there, but will not discuss it.
IF we do not drop our count, it does not change the current situation. HOWEVER, if we drop it down, and China feels that they have the ability to launch a first strike and block our retaliation, while hitting us with a second, that would likely lead to a nuke war.
It is actually in the worlds best interest for America and Russia to keep theirs until China is forthcoming about their true stockpile.
And if you believe that it is 240 warheads, well, their MIRVs on their current boomers (1 type 92 and a minimum of 6 type 94; some intel indicates that they have closer to 10 subs; ) is more than 240 warheads. In fact, with their absolute KNOWN subs, they can carry a max of ~500 warheads. That does not include their air based, truck based, and now, underground mobile launchers. So, for China to claim 240 warheads and others to buy into that bunk, is just plain foolish.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We can safely remove a shitload of nuclear weapons. They cost way too much to keep active.
That would also be a good thing to have some other powers remove their stockpiles. No country needs as many as the major powers have. MAD does work, but at the same time, there are insane capabilities and that is just a waste of money.
Romney and his dancing horse thank you for your vote.
Fear !
The Fear of Total Obliteration by nuclear holocaust should a country's 'Leader' make a stupid decision makes the 'world' safe.
Learn to love Fear.
Or Fear will eat you.
Not genocide. I'm not suggesting we get rid of all Orientals, just the ones in and around the capital of a county that has been threatening us with a preemptive strike. Besides, ACs don't get mod points.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Obama can do whatever he wants, practically. The man recognizes no limits. So we will get substantial disarmament or even no nukes at all.
And that means Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and likely places in Europe that depend on a reliable and robust US nuclear umbrella will nuke up very quickly.
Japan and South Korea face North Korea, which by the way has threatened to nuke us the other day. Weakness only generates attacks, strength begets respect.
Saudi Arabia faces a nuclear Iran, they likely already have nukes which is the dirty little secret Hagel let out during his confirmation. Without a US hegemon they'll turn to Pakistan (and basically already have, Pakistan is getting nukes ready for their paymasters).
You can't eliminate nukes. Too many rogue nations, people like the Kims, Castros, Assads, see them as a guarantee of safety, survival, and domination and conquest of their neighbors. When the police withdraw people don't turn in their guns, it is the law of the jungle and pure anarchy.
A) it offers nothing of value
Ok, I have to know, what on Earth do you think anyone wants from the US?
I think a draft is actually a good deterrent against aggressiveness - an all-volunteer army means if soldiers are fighting and dieing it's by their choice and the general populace can accept it more easily. On the other hand if random people's children are being drafted there will be far more public outcry against the war.
I often prefer freedom over safety. This is one of those cases. I consider it a great threat to freedom when your government can force you to go die in a war that is perhaps unjust, and that is why I would support a constitutional amendment banning all forms of drafting.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The second amendment is generally considered to only include small arms. Even the NRA agrees. Too bad because I really would love a 155mm self propelled gun. Next time my neighbors started up that damn late night party I'd crash hell out of it in a way they'd remember.
Flavius Vegetius Renatus, "De re militari" (390 C.E.): "Qui desiderat pacem, bellum praeparat; nemo provocare ne offendere audet quem intelliget superiorem esse pugnaturem"
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Sink the submarines?
I7, no? Ok what about E6? No, darn. How about A8?
before decide to throw some away, let's make sure we have a safe way of disposing of them. i'd hate for the nuclear trash to end up in the environment or the hands of terrorists. at this point in the changed game, i feel safer if the nuclear bits remain in the missiles and the missiles remain under military guard and control.
The USA and USSR didn't build tens of thousands of nuclear warhead because we needed to be able to "destroy the world ten times over" or whatever the pro-disarmament phrase was; we built that many weapons so that even if 99% of them were destroyed in a massive surprise first strike, the remainder would be able to destroy the first striker just once. The threat of retaliation then outweighs any incentives for anyone to commit a first strike.
But none of that applies to threats from NK or Iran. They have neither the technology nor the economies to hit a thousand hardened silos in a massive surprise first strike, and they're not going to be able to change that without decades of obvious development, so even a couple hundred warheads is still more than enough to pave over either country with glowing green glass. The problem with proliferation is a different one: when a nuke in a random incoming shipping container destroys some major harbor city, how do we even know whom to retaliate against?
Um, no. Neither weapons grade plutonium nor weapons grade uranium emits dangerous levels of radiation except when critical, and the un-fissioned material loses criticality almost immediately (certainly within a millisecond of detonation.) You are almost correct in that fallout is often the worst source of radiation, but this radioactive fallout is created by the neutron flux of the nuclear blast, not the post-critical fission material. And the largest nukes we have (so-called fission-fusion-fission, which utilize a Uranium-238 stage) easily emit enough deadly radiation to kill you even if you are safe in an airtight concrete bunker.
Winning matters, son. Even in the most dire of situations.
RELEVANCE: Energy Policy.
The USA had the most uranium. It is nearly all gone. Our nuke plants need the stuff. Now we IMPORT it! Waste a ton of money on extra nukes or save money and use the fuel.
Nuclear tactics is not physics. The word Nuclear does not make simple things difficult. This is a big pork welfare program disguised as defense - and just like before, those who stand to lose money will be screaming to save it. Like like the F-22, it has economic ties around the whole nation.
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We currently live in an era of peace unprecedented in human history (despite the wars that seem to be going on constantly). Much of that can be attributed to nukes. The danger of shrinking the stockpile too much is it makes a nuclear exchange "winable" for the elites who will be sitting in bomb-proof bunkers (and those do exist). Nukes are not as powerful as Sarah Conner would have you believe. They do not melt your face from 10 miles away, they only really devestate an area of about 2 miles radius. It is not inconceivable that a crazy Russian, Chinese or US leader could decide that losing 20-30% of their population is something they could deal with.
There is no way we can morally demand countries like North Korea and Iran not develop nuclear weapons unless we do all in our power to eliminate all nuclear weapons.
Huh? You fail at international relations. Heck, you fail at survival of the fittest.
Each group tries to exert power over every other group. This is done in proportion to the differences between the groups. Similar groups form alliances so that they may oppose the others. This is normal and natural, wherever life exists. Ultimately it all boils down to the survival traits that have been bred into us ever since the very first life.
North Korea wants power. Iran wants power. We want power. Everybody wants power. Power means you control resources. Resources mean you survive.
The USA buys equipment from Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc. The markup is insane. It's like buying aspirin via the emergency room.
China buys stuff that is made in China. It's like going to Walmart, except they don't even need to ship stuff across the Pacific.
Why do people keep saying this??? OK, a typical modern ICBM thermonuclear warhead is about 300-350KT. That will hard-kill a radius of about 1.5-2 miles and cause fires out to 4-5 miles. Now take a map of USA, Russia, and/or China and draw 50 4 mile circles.
Not all that impressive is it? It's going to kill a bunch of people but it isn't even going to nuke you back to the 19th century let alone the stone age.
only a few countries that have any serious hope of defending against even a single ICBM
I can think of two countries that can't withstand a single ICBM. One is Nauru, an island that is about 2 by 3 miles if I remember right. The other is the Vatican, though maybe that one has divine protection.
The USA can withstand hundreds of hits, minimum. It depends on accuracy and size (very few warheads are 10 MT or more) but my ballpark estimate is 60 thousand hits. No, it wouldn't be nice weather.
The United States conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests The Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear tests The United Kingdom has conducted 45 tests France conducted 210 nuclear tests The People's Republic of China conducted 45 tests The official number of Indian nuclear tests is 6 Pakistan conducted 6 official tests, and around 24 nuclear cold tests There may have been several other alleged tests. The increase in background radiation due to these tests peaked in 1963 at about 0.15 mSv per year worldwide, or about 7% of average background dose from all sources.
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
Allow me to clarify: the English language has tenses, and you clearly have issues with them. Present: the U.S. and Russia have orders of magnitude more than China. Future (post reduction): the U.S. and Russia each have more than four times as much as China. Simple, no?
I'll admit it's a difficult discussion. On the one hand I wouldn't want to be dragged off to die in an unjust war (of course I could always choose incarceration as a draft dodger instead). On the other hand how many unjust wars would we never get in to in the first place if our military weren't essentially a band of nationalistic mercenaries?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
For me, it's simple. The draft is about as anti-freedom as you can get, so I oppose it. If you can't get enough volunteers for a war, maybe it's not a war you should be having; whatever the case, the people clearly don't want to die for you.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
We've surrounded Iran with dozens of military bases, crashed their economy and currency with sanctions, illegally threatened them with military force, and committed multiple acts of war on a country over the....nuclear weapons program both the CIA and Israelis admit they don't have.
So when does Iran get to threaten the United States for being in "material breach" of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires disarmament for countries already in possession of nuclear weapons?
I don't think GP meant that, I believe he meant US should stop actively killing people in third world countries to not create so much orphaned children and childless parents that will turn into terrorists to retaliate.
I'd like to know how you found out how many nukes China has.
The point of most nukes is to destroy other nukes in their silos. That's what nuclear war was all about - who has the capability to strike first and who can take a strike and have enough warheads left to have a credible retaliatory strike. This is called the "counterforce" mission and is very important in nuclear strategy. The strategy of hitting cities is very secondary and is called "countervalue". Hitting population centres is not primary goal of nuclear war - usually you go for their nukes, their military installations, their oil production and refining and their manufacturing. Where this is close to cities then the cities get roasted. It turns out to do these things it actually takes quite a few nukes, especially if your opponent has anti-ballistic missile (ABM) capabilities as the US and Russia do (and to a limited extent, Israel), and presumably China is also working on this.
The principal effect of 50 nuclear warheads aimed at remote silos (notice how in the US, Russia and China the silos are in the middle-of-nowhere?) is probably insignificant on a national scale and certainly on a global scale with regards to blast and fallout. They can have an effect on the climate but this is peanuts compared to something like Krakatoa and probably even smaller events like the Iceland volcanic eruptions or Mount St Helens.
One doesn't have to agree, or disagree, with nuclear war to understand that it is not entirely madness to wage it. The thousands of nukes weren't built for no reason - a careful calculus was made to ensure first strike survivability. As each side in the Cold War did new calculations the numbers climbed - but the numbers weren't arbitrary - they were the result of careful study.
Oh, and here's a total babe, Rebeccah Heinreichs, talking about Obama's unilateral cuts to the US nuclear triad - who *analysis* believes that around 2700 warheads are needed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JY0r2rxZPk
Note that Obama's cuts are not really about saving money money. After all, he'd save vastly more by limiting entitlements and social programmes (the unfunded liabilities being promised completely dwarf even the current US deficit). The cuts also are not because the nukes aren't needed, they are needed for decades to come and for unseen threats in the next 50 years. The cuts are all purely ideologically based on Obama's (flawed) world view. Sadly, his supporters don't want to face the truth about his intentions to remake America by first breaking it by overspending and weakening its traditional strengths. Obama wants to unilaterally disarm and surrender the US to the world. He's already abandoned many allies. The world is about to get very chaotic as a result of a lack of strong leadership from secular democracies lead by the US.
It's certainly a perfectly reasonable position, on another day I might argue it myself. But it's YOUR government, ultimately answerable to YOU that's getting into wars in the first place. It's not unreasonable to expect YOU to pay for it in blood and tears as well as money. Or more to the point: if you are unwilling, then mobilize to rein in the government and stop the war before your number is called. Instead we all sit on our hands and let our government send its cybernetic mercenaries out to murder hundreds of thousands of people because it costs us nothing personally - only tax dollars that would have left our pocket anyway.
Or here's a thought - rather than a draft lets get back to the original military funding mechanism - every war needs to be funded by an independently levied tax. We go to war, everyone immediately feels the pinch on payday.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
As long as the bad guys have nukes (or is in the process of getting them), we need to have them as well, and enough to make sure that nobody gets any bright ideas in their megalomaniacal madness of penile erectile superiority.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
The only counter to nuclear weapons is the threat of other nuclear weapons. Carriers are insignificant compared to the capability of even a few ballistic missiles. Carriers are handy because they can be used at lower levels of conflict, so they have their uses. However, the top of the defence food chain are nuclear weapons (with several different types of delivery options). There is no substitute for nuclear weapons for global powers. Unilaterally pursuing nuclear disarmament is utter insanity - there are countries in the World who would nuke a disarmed US without blinking. For example, Iran and North Korea say they would on nearly a daily basis - which doesn't make their threats hollow as some people believe - but show that the enemies of the US have the will but are in fact deterred for now by the large US nuclear arsenal.
Most people in the US don't know that the Iranians have installed around sixteen Shahab 3 missiles in a mountain redoubt in Venezuela: http://www.topix.com/forum/ve/caracas/TFOGPR88FQV6RHJGC This missile can't quite reach the US but with extended ranges of successors (from shared missile tehcnology between Iran and North Korea) and the Iranian nuclear weapons program the citizenry of the US ought to be very very concerned - and certainly not allowing Obama to progressively disarm the ultimate deterrent that the US has (that is, its nuclear triad). I'm glad I don't live in the US - its enemies are working on its destruction while its leaders are busy squabbling over how to bribe voters by spending money it doesn't have (note that the massive spending is nearly all on social programmes; despite what you are told, defence is a pittance in comparison).
The world would also have been safer if the USSR had won the cold war and we'd all be living under a communist dictatorship. Safety isn't all that matters.
Yeah people can tell themselves that all they want. Keep in mind these are people who claim no fault on agent orange or gulf war syndrome. Nor are they really any good with "surgical" strikes using smaller munitions. So I'm not buying the claim they'll only hit out in the middle of no where and it'll have no effect. Sorry but the US gov has a poor record on the truth.
That way they're available for the common defense of Mankind, in the event of alien attack or some other event that threatens all of humanity equally.
Go look at his other post, inexplicably still modded up to +4, where he claims that the radiation danger from nukes comes from the left over fissile material (U or P), not the blast itself. One insanely stupid comment can be written off to a misunderstanding, but a second comment in the same topic clearly indicates a troll: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3537197&cid=43144999 Cruise missiles have been obsolete for many decades. The issue is, from my understanding, is twofold: they do not move fast enough and they fly at a low altitude over miles of land that could be covered with defenses. Ballistic missiles approach their targets insanely fast (some do over Mach 20) due to their parabolic flight path giving more time to accelerate downwards. Also due to their parabolic flight path, they bypass an enemy's border defenses through sheer altitude. Now there *is* a reasonable argument that SLBMs are better than ICBMs, but as I said this is clearly a troll. Mod down.
This is sheer nonsense, as I've noted above. But I've just noticed he's posted another priceless bit of nonsense here: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3537197&cid=43145013 . He is clearly trolling this article, for whatever reason. Either that or he is laughably misinformed and being very cocky about it.
But it's YOUR government, ultimately answerable to YOU that's getting into wars in the first place.
But I might not have voted for them. Furthermore, even if I had voted for them or supported them at one point, that doesn't mean I'd support this war. I mean, if I did want to go to war, I'd sign up for the army to begin with. Plenty of people protested the draft before, but it doesn't always work, and not everyone is willing to pay the price of disobeying (usually jail), so they just run. I think the very principle of it is morally wrong.
Instead we all sit on our hands and let our government send its cybernetic mercenaries out to murder hundreds of thousands of people because it costs us nothing personally - only tax dollars that would have left our pocket anyway.
Unfortunately, a number of people may even support the wars.
Or here's a thought - rather than a draft lets get back to the original military funding mechanism - every war needs to be funded by an independently levied tax.
I don't think that's such a terrible idea.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
How does cutting the number of warheads make us safer? The less warheads, the less destruction, which means at some point, nuclear war will become "winnable"
The next attack would be done in secret, not in public.
You think some screwball is going to launch a nuke? Seriously?
A dirty bomb is the most likely attack in this day and age.
Enough to launch most of the civil world in to permanent lockdown unless they pay X amount of money.
MAD doesn't even apply today. Russia are mostly stable in government and are going the way of peaceful takeovers through goods and services, as are China.
If ANYTHING, I am more worried about the damn USA, they are the least stable of the bunch. All they bloody do is cause wars everywhere.
And to be honest, the only use for nukes would be if those damned pesky aliens attack. So in that case, keep them. Having them around won't do much unless that dude from NK somehow becomes supreme overlord of Earth, which would render it a moot point anyway.
Reduction costs money, stop wasting money and stop listening to the generic retards of society as well.
To be honest, I hope they are just flat out lying about reducing them. Screw the general populous, all they want is things to be done without even having a clue about how they are done and more importantly how bloody much it costs to be done.
Their silly war in the ME already wrecked the poor country as it is!
Says who?
Whomever said it.
And will countries like NK or Iran follow suit or not?
Iran doesn't have any nukes so that's a pretty easy one to solve. I don't know how many North Korea have but I assume one single Ohio-class submarine alone can do quite enough damage to NK.
And does that result play into the discussions at all?
Likely. But I think it rather goes like:
"Ok, we and Russia have the most nukes and more than enough. How many are enough?"
If you got enough to bomb the shit out of the other player having 9,000 or two million or whatever possibly doesn't do much difference.
Ask yourself:
"Would the US even be willing to risk having three nuclear strikes one over the white house, one in New York and one over Pentagon?"
Or even one in any of the places?
As far as Iran goes I don't know of much evil they have done or are doing so far but I guess someone can tell me. US seem rather willing to be on any side, switch sides and do whatever as long as they see the most strategic value on that partner/situation regardless of what prick or people they have to do with so I don't really buy "they aren't a democracy!" or dictator or terrorism or whatever. All those are cool and ok in some cases and in some cases not. I guess the problem with Iran is that they are big and they aren't allies/part of NATO like Turkey and Israel.
I think it's more likely about holding others back so no-one get big enough to pose much of a threat rather than "omg you're so evil!", evil is just fine as long as they mostly bark or the US can handle it.
Opinions do not equate to facts, yet some people like reporting as if they do.
Opinions do not equate to facts, yet some people like reporting as if they do.
I don't know what the facts are but chances are their opinion is better researched than whatever yours happen to be.
Let's not kid ourselfs, this is probably all about cheap nuclear power production:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/energy-environment/10nukes.html?_r=0
New things are always on the horizon
So while Obama chatters on about reducing or eliminating all American atomic weapons he appears to willfully ignore that Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan never will. And of course neither with North Korea nor Iran. The UK might, in fact there's a pretty good chance they will de-nuclearize because they simply can't afford it nor do they want the political fallout of maintaining it any longer. It's hard to see how this makes anyone safer. It probably doesn't make them less safe either. It's simply a political move for domestic consumption.
Nuclear arms held by the US and Russia aren't a threat to "the world" as both are rational actors. MAD works with rational actors.
The idea that "examples" work with nations that have other agendas is absurd. The way to deter nation-state war by superpowers is for each to be able to wipe the other out so they never recover.
The reason to maintain such capability even though the world situation changes is because it can change in any direction.
There is no downside to keeping the nuclear triad. (Aircraft/SLBM/land-based ballistic missiles. They have prevented nuclear war since the end of WWII.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Where? In cartoon land? Does everyone like a friendly straight-A student? Is no resentful of him in any way? Losers hate winners. Jealousy is present even during in the best of us. Pretending the world is something it's not will always lead to disasters.
The National Post has an excellent graphic of the worlds nuclear stockpile that helps to put things into perspective.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
The Arms Control idea so prevailing today is that fewer nukes the better. This is historically ignorant. The goal isn't to make things safer. Safer makes war thinkable. Dr. Gatling invented a gun to make war unthinkable and it wasn't bad enough. The A bomb finally made it unthinkable and as such it sort of hasn't happened. Unfortunately people are trying to remove the "danger". This is a death wish.
On the flip side, if you are completely unwilling even after just provocation such as 9/11/2001 to use the damn things there isn't much point in having them at all. There are already 2 or 3 technologies out there including EM Guns that make Atom Bombs look like pop-guns. They give no warning and are total in effect. Worse yet they do not value in deterrence as nobody imagines they are there. Atomic/Hydrogen Bombs are also unreliable. To date in test, 50% were duds. In a war, probably 50% or more of the units would come down on the party firing them. You know, rockets can and do fail.
It is an awful mess we have ourselves in.
Many wars take place because of a mistaken consideration of relative military strength. There is a level of deterrence that even a megalomaniac cannot ignore. And while a rational man can be deterred by even one nuclear weapon, we cannot know at any particular time what level of deterrence will be necessary for a particular irrational man or govenment. I believe we are getting uncomfortably close to a level that will not deter a mad regime like North Korea. Well meaning people can kill you too.
E Proelio Veritas.
I don't think that there is a fundamental disagreement on reducing nuclear warhead counts not just in the United States and Russia, only the process. The nations need to reduce their warhead counts together to ensure that the overall count goes down. Otherwise, the fear is that if one nation does it unilaterally, the other won't giving them an advantage and less incentive to reduce their warhead count. The Russians in particular are very sensitive to this: they really want to reduce their warhead count due to financial costs, but politically it would be impossible unless the United States does it in lockstep as well. Similar sentiments are in the United States, particularly amongst defense hawks.
That being said, the other concern is China: once the warhead count gets down to about 1,000 - 1,500, there's fear that the Chinese might actually accelerate their warhead production to put them on a level playing field with the United States and Russia. When the warhead differential was massive, the Chinese never bothered trying to compete because they were too far behind. However, once each nation's warhead count gets lower, down to a level the Chinese could reach reasonably, there is a good chance that they'll build more. If that unnerves either the US or Russia, and they start reactivating warheads out of fear the Chinese are trying to overtake them, the other would have to respond. Therefore, once you start getting to a lower level, you need to get the Chinese involved to prevent that sort of escalation.
We have a certain mind set in our nation. Other nations have an entirely different tradition and mode of thought. It seems that in many places in the world a perceived gentleness is taken as an invitation to be slaughtered. If a nation lets its guard down even slightly it will be seen only as a signal that they nation is inferior and ripe for the taking. Because of this efforts to make a nation safer by having a sane limit on military ability may actually cause war. North Korea is a great example. If they thought for an instant that invading South Korea was possible they would do it in an instant. For North Korea to clearly see that an absurd amount of horror would instantly be applied if they violate the border is all that restrains them.
We must be very careful in our assumptions about what good is created by certain well intentioned actions.
or simple. For the better part of 50 years, there have been two real nuclear powers - the US and USSR/Russia. Not only the number of warheads, but the variety and quantity of systems to deliver those warheads served as a deterrent, not against each other, but against others in the world trying to compete. The most notable, China, has maintained a good sized force but did not see it in their interests in trying to catch up, let alone surpass, the US/USSR totals (and they could only rely upon ground based missiles for delivery). As the US/Russia totals plummet, it becomes strategically more advantageous for a country like China, and perhaps others down the road, to catch up.
Second, and equally important, is that with cuts in warheads come decisions about how to deploy the remaining warheads. Will there be enough left to justify bombers? Ground based ICBMs? Or will all (or most) of the force be at sea? This has signifcant ramifications on stability. The less visible the force, the more likely the adversary (Russia, China, whomever) are to see the warheads as offensive, first strike weapons. Bomber bases and even silo sites provide a degree of early warning that is now lost. The use 'em or lose 'em scenario will now gain far more attention in a time of increasing tensions.
Nuclear weapons are here to stay - the genie is out of the bottle for good and it is fantasy to consider a world without them. Rather than spending an inordinate amount of time and effort on debates (in and out of governemnt) on the number and composition of nuclear forces, efforts should instead be focused on securing the supply chains and warheads from theft, abuse, or misuse. In particular, countries like Pakistan and India need to have the best PAL's (the "lock" on the weapon) possible and I fear it is those countries that present the biggest risks of a nuclear event, not the US, Russia or even China.
Nukes are old news. Old tech. Not the most powerful weapons on earth, and all the technological super powers know it. You've got puny nations just now catching up and the US guaranteeing that no ballistic missile will ever leave North Korean airspace. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a Tesla Howitzer shield go up if they launch anything at this point. The nuclear arms race is over, and they only still talk about them because no nation has yet had to use the more powerful technology. No point in disclosing it all to the public until it's actually used in public.
Citation: Wait for it to be declassified in 50 to 100 years.
...was because they were fed up with the huge volume of opium being funneled from Afghanistan thru the USSR without their ability to be the ones in control of that drug trade. Their solution, as typical of the Soviet mentality at the time, was to try and wrest control at the source, and we all saw how well that worked out for them.
Note that Obama's cuts are not really about saving money money. After all, he'd save vastly more by limiting entitlements and social programmes (the unfunded liabilities being promised completely dwarf even the current US deficit). The cuts also are not because the nukes aren't needed, they are needed for decades to come and for unseen threats in the next 50 years. The cuts are all purely ideologically based on Obama's (flawed) world view. Sadly, his supporters don't want to face the truth about his intentions to remake America by first breaking it by overspending and weakening its traditional strengths. Obama wants to unilaterally disarm and surrender the US to the world. He's already abandoned many allies. The world is about to get very chaotic as a result of a lack of strong leadership from secular democracies lead by the US.
Lol, you sir are clearly on crack. He is not actually that different to Bush was when you look at his actions.
In four years time he will be out of office and the US will be no different. You will still be spending more on your military than any other country in the world. You will still be allied with Europe. Israel will still be around, and the US will still be giving them just as much aid (http://journalistsresource.org/studies/international/conflicts/u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel-2012-congressional-report). The US will still have troops all over the world acting as policemen.
The only difference seems to be that he wants rich people to contribute slightly more in taxes to pay for this instead of taking the shortfall from schemes like Medicare designed to help poor people. As to whether this is a good idea or not is a different matter, but either way it will make precious little difference to anyone not in either extreme.
The biggest threat to the US is actually if the US economy tanks due to tax rises hitting the middle class and taking a huge dent out of consumer spending. The problem is that some people seem to think this would be a good idea to scare the country into voting republican. They think things like this as the very rich do not suffer as much in recessions as the middle class and the poor do.
China will take at least 10 years, maybe longer to build up a large enough military to be a serious challenge to the US. They are just too far behind at present with their one piddly aircraft carrier they bought from Russia anyway.
I dont read
China a threat? They hold 1/4 of the external treasury bonds.!! (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt)....USA is flowing billions of $ to China to buy their products and the chinese cheap labor keeps the phones and tablets prices low in USA....there is no economic reason to act. It's just big money....no ideologies involved. Iran? No way...it's much better for the big money laundry scheme to keep an enemy alive than destroying him....where do you think all the money for the cold war had gone if the USSR had been destroyed?? trillions of taxpayers $ now are in hands of family and friends of private defense corporations....and they must keep the faucet flowing!!...a new spa in the alps, condos in big cities, a 300 acre vineyard in Italy (Ferrari included).... "see your taxes at work!"
Says who? And will countries like NK or Iran follow suit or not? And does that result play into the discussions at all?
Disarming yourself in hopes it will appease your adversaries and make them desire to become more peaceful and disarm themselves as well is exactly the same kind of retarded mentality as castrating yourself because you think your neighbor is having too many children.
So is it flawed because you have a beter workable idea, or because you don't understand all of the complex issued involved in maintaining world peace?
It is too complicated for a mulit-player scenario when martyrdom is considered a viable end state.
"A recent report by the Center for Public Integrity revealed that senior Obama administration officials believe the United States can reduce its arsenal of deployed strategic warheads to between 1,000 and 1,100 without harming national security."
With the competance shown thus far in war fighting and foreign affairs, the Obama administration must believe in fairy dust too!
Global thermonuclear ad hominem, anyone?
China sits on the sidelines saying "Yes, both of you, please dispose of all your nuclear weapons."
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
They are only talking about reducing 'deployed warheads' in the quotes though the article and commentary seems to confuse that with total warheads. We are talking about launch ready nukes deployed in launch vehicles either in an underground launch platform or on vehicles like combat fighters, bombers and submarines. Keeping an overly large arsenal (as well as an overly large military as a whole) is not only serving as a deterrence, but as a way to force an enemy to invest huge sums of money as well as time, science investment, and political will to matching pace. The MAD idea, good or not, is basically defunct as there isnt anyone to 'mutually assure' at this point.
What threat of nuclear weapons? We've been hacking Iran and blockading numerous other nations to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons.
More carriers, more drones, better bunker busters, and more spy satellites accomplish our goals of eradicating the threat of nuclear warfare far better than holding a tit-for-tat deterrent. As mutually assured destruction assumes neither party is willing to be annihilated, which seems unlikely when there are irrational despots and religious fanatics involved.
You suffer from a rather profound ignorance on this issue.
ps - "We have no evidence to support this claim and therefore no reason to believe the assertions made in the article are credible" says the U.S. State Department on the issue of Iran installing Venezuela-based missiles.
Tension is heating up between American and China and Russia, so reducing our Nukes only makes us weaker, but of course, that's what Obama wants.
China owns paper printed by US government.
There, fixed that for ya.
US doesn't own China copper, oil or coal or anything tangible. China basically traded some IOU notes for some additional IOU notes in the future. Money is worth anything if you actually use it to purchase real assets, be that
* commodities
* companies (eg. shares)
* labour (via wages)
but bonds are like shares in US economy and US can print as many as they want. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.
As for nukes, they are scaling down nuke numbers for 3 reasons
1. they don't need that many
2. today's warheads are much smaller and mobile - 1 or 2 people can carry nukes around for cruise missiles. Those nukes have dial-in yield too. They are almost pure Pu-239 requiring very little shielding. ICBMs and stuff like that are obsolete. All you "need" is cruise missiles and submersible launchers to maintain MAD.
3. it costs a lot of money to look after obsolete tech just so you can have numbers.
US will have the few hundred extremely pure Pu-239 warheads forever. They don't need new ones. They have enough to put the world back into the stone age.
"The only counter to nuclear weapons is the threat of other nuclear weapons"
Diplomacy, treaties, embargoes, regime change, UN pressure, NATO assaults and black ops are off the table then? Any particular reason, or are you as another posted said "profoundly ignorant" ?
Just because I don't speak to you directly doesn't mean you're blind, deaf or dumb.
Russia & the U.S. initiated an incredibly expensive arms race based on fear, uncertainty and doubt. Both now stand to benefit significantly from a reduction of nuclear force. We still devote too many resources; time & money to maintenance of these weapons, supporting infrastructure, manpower, training and security. The discussion has been fairly open in this country, and the security concerns about Russia's nuclear arsenal have been openly addressed in the Western press.
China's leaders aren't stupid, and they don't need us to tell them there's a trade-off between pea-shooters and commerce. If we're scaling back, they may not feel the need to scale up as much.
The biggest threat to the US is actually if the US economy tanks due to tax rises hitting the middle class and taking a huge dent out of consumer spending. The problem is that some people seem to think this would be a good idea to scare the country into voting republican. They think things like this as the very rich do not suffer as much in recessions as the middle class and the poor do.
Please note I'm not from the US. While taxing the "middle class" for little appreciable gain indeed problematic the real problem is as I stated - approximately 66 trillion in unfunded liabilities if the entitlements programmes are kept as they are. I agree with you that the Republicans are pretty much indistinguishable from the Democrats in terms of leadership failure. The Libertarians seem to make more sense, but there is a danger that they go past small government and lower taxes into total lassez faire deregulation (which is bad for common people and smaller businesses). The solutions are not easy but it is clear that the Big Government (and associated huge and growing spending) of the Democrats is the worst position of the lot.
In four years time he will be out of office and the US will be no different.
In four years he will be out of office but the US will be different. Already the Obama Administration has changed the World greatly - for the worse. Most Americans aren't really aware of the complete disaster of Benghazi and what its apparent causes were - and the compliant media doesn't hold Hiliary's feet to the fire for her utter incompetence (and that of the State Department). It also doesn't call Hilliary up of her total selling out of the Constitutional First Amendment by co-sponsoring UN HRC 16/18. It is clear for the current Administration that the US Constitution is a nuisance that should be neutered through new laws (Obama destroyed the Fifth Amendment with the NDAA - which his Administration forced the drafters to remove protections for US citizens [according to Senator Levine], and then he lied about "his reservations"; as I mentioned they neutered the First Amendment; and now they are after the Second). This may be news to you, as I said the media is complicit in covering up the sins of this Administration because they believe in its agenda (a Republican president doing the same stuff would have been impeached already). Am I a Republican? no, but I believe that they are far more sensible on economics and foreign policy than the Democrats. The damage being done by the Obama Administration (*accelerating* overspending, withdrawal from leading global alliances, and refusal to take a moral stance and promote Enlightenment Freedoms around the World [Obama's shameful actions in 2009 at the time of the Green Revolution and his ouster of Mubarak to promote the anti-liberty Muslim Brotherhood will mark him in history as an even worse president than Jimmy Carter - even if his supporters are so smitten they can't see it yet; you have to judge the action by the consequences, not by the ideals that made you do it]).
China will take at least 10 years, maybe longer to build up a large enough military to be a serious challenge to the US.
But that challenge will happen. The US is now cutting back existing units (costly, but a tiny fraction of those unfunded entitlement liabilities I mentioned) and will take a decade to rebuild them even if it started now (which it won't). Meanwhile, China appears to be working on building several more carriers based on an indigenous design (using the bought carrier to shake out bug in carrier operation). While China may always have fewer carriers, it almost certainly will have *local* numerical parity (or even superiority) in any conflict. That will make any future war with China uncertain, and very bloody even if the US came out on top [note: such a war will be almost entirely naval and air, ground forces don't factor much in the likely Pacific combat scenarios]. So, the fact that Obam
Sorry but the US gov has a poor record on the truth.
And the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, North Koreans...they all have sterling reputations when it comes to the truth, eh? Nobody is claiming the US is perfect, but exactly who do you want as the top superpower if not the US? And no, you don't get the utopian fantasy where there is no superpower because that never happens. Someone *always* fills that power vacuum.
I realize it's popular and cool to blame the US for everything that's wrong in the world today, but have you ever stopped to consider what things might be like with one of the more unsavory superpowers (or budding superpowers) running the show? It sure doesn't seem like you have.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sorry but the US gov has a poor record on the truth.
That true. But your position seems to be to do nothing and let the enemies of liberty do as they will? it's hard to know whether that position is greater in terms of cowardice or stupidity. The enemies of freedom are getting increasingly active, if you care to look (most funded by Saudi or Iranian petrodollars). Doing nothing will not make the world a better place - despite the lies you are being told. The US is morally right to use force of arms to destroy tyrants (Saddam) and jihadis (Taliban and Al Qaeda). You might like to lie down and become a dhimmi, but the rest of us don't.
By paying my taxes, I'm threatening to kill millions of children and other innocent persons if their government does something really bad. This is wrong on the face of it. I'm living with deterrence (mutual assured destruction) even though it clearly is wrong because to me right now it seems the least among evils. But we must minimize the threat. How many nuclear warheads does the United States need to deter any attacker? Probably a few hundred. Enough to kill any attacking leadership and neutralize their military. Beyond that is crazy. Kudos to President Obama for staying on course with this, even though he's being too cautious at least he's moving.
China is likely rapidly increasing their stockpile to bring it inline with the US and Russia. According to this diagram they are still quite far behind. Even if the US removes 1000 warheads, they will still be far behind. If that matters or not in the end is another argument entirely.
If you never go to war, then the draft doesn't force you to die in some unjust war.
Learn to love Alaska
(US + Russia) = China *100.
US - reductions = 4 * China
Russia - reductions = China * 4
What was the complaint?
Learn to love Alaska
You're right but if you don't trust them why should you trust the US government? They're all self serving and blowing money on unncessary things that make them look bad ass than helping their citizens.
That's great if the public is on your side and opposes the war, but not so much otherwise; especially if it gets to the point where a draft is necessary. Whatever the case, I'm quite against the idea of the government treating you like a slave in that manner.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
So you are against "slavery" not "war". If you said what you meant in the first place, rather than lying for the "easier" argument then others wouldn't misunderstand your position. The question was about Switzerland's draft, and you mentioned not dying for a "bad" cause in a foreign war, which the Swiss don't generally do, your response was a non sequitur. And now you say you don't even object to that specifically, but it was a manifestation of your "real" complaint, against slavery.
Learn to love Alaska
If you said what you meant in the first place
I said I'm against the draft from the very beginning. I consider it as the government taking ownership over your body and treating you essentially as a slave. At any rate, regardless of what I may have mistakenly said or what you may have misinterpreted, why is your first reaction to assume I was lying?
your response was a non sequitur.
What? I just wanted to make my opposition to the draft clear. I did exactly that, but I wasn't talking about the Swiss specifically.
And now you say you don't even object to that specifically
What, you mean people dying it bad wars? I object to that and the draft.
I meant that one reason I consider drafts to be morally wrong is because the government can force people to fight in 'unjust' wars. Maybe that's what you were referring to? I'm against drafts in every country, so that was just a general comment against drafts.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If you never go to war, then the draft doesn't force you to die in some unjust war.
Were you just referring to Switzerland? That was probably it. Well, my comment was about drafts in general, as I said.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I think you missed the point. He didn't say they were only going to hit in the middle of nowhere. He wasn't saying that nuking North Dakota was a good thing that would make people happy, he was just (correctly) stating that nuking North Dakota isn't really going to cause you too many problems in LA or Florida (NY might get some fallout). Nukes are expensive, and always have been. Despite many peoples beliefs, the military actually wants to get the best deal and would not want to spend a bunch of money for nukes it didn't think it needed. In the early days the lack of accuracy had to be overcome with volume of fire. Contrary to some ridiculous claims, nukes don't turn 40 mile radius circles to glass, more like 1-2 miles. If you are trying to hit a hardened site like a silo, you need to HIT it. A couple thousand feet off is not good enough (which is a pretty good shot from 6,000 miles). Even today, with improved accuracy, you can't assume all your nukes are going to hit the target. GPS is assumed to be out, multiple nuke-EMP may disrupt guidance, and a lot of nukes are mobile.
If you want to really keep the AD part of MAD, you need a lot of nukes.
How about actually responding to his points?
The damage being done by the Obama Administration (*accelerating* overspending, withdrawal from leading global alliances, and refusal to take a moral stance and promote Enlightenment Freedoms around the World [Obama's shameful actions in 2009 at the time of the Green Revolution and his ouster of Mubarak to promote the anti-liberty Muslim Brotherhood will mark him in history as an even worse president than Jimmy Carter - even if his supporters are so smitten they can't see it yet; you have to judge the action by the consequences, not by the ideals that made you do it]).
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Mubarak was ousted by the people of Egypt taking to the streets and protesting against him en-mass. He had precious little public support and was going to lose the next election anyway (actually, he said himself he was not even going to bother standing for election).
While it is inconvenient for the US to lose Egypt as a loyal ally there was precious little Obama could do about it without trying to subvert the will of the Egyptian people and install a dictatorship. If a country chooses leaders we in the west do not support, we have to respect that decision.
What the US needs is strong leadership.
Personally I do not think I need defending from China or anyone else by the US. I have never met anyone outside america who does. We in the rest of the world do not get any say in the US leadership, so they should stay the hell out of our business.
The world doesn't need weak "beta-male" Obama apologizing to tyrants for the liberties the US has (as he shamefully did in Cairo), it doesn't need a thoroughly incompetent Secretary of State (Hilliary, whose chief assistant is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood - the same organization whose ultimate goal is to overthrow the US and the West) followed by another weak beta-male one. It is clear the US doesn't believe in itself anymore, so why should anyone else? The US should be standing up in the World saying it believes in the liberties in its Constitution, and not apologizing for its citizens when they exercise those rights (the "Innocence of Muslims" was mostly factually correct, may have been offensive to Muslims, but the author should have been protected under the Constitution - instead he was hounded by his own Government for exercising his Constitutional right). Yes, this sounds like a rant. Actually it is not, it just happens to be the facts as seen from outside the Matrix. If one can disprove these apparent facts with counter-evidence then I'm all ears.
I don't really know very much about Hilary Clinton being tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, but it sounds like the ravings of a paranoid lunatic and you did not actually post anything backing this up. If you want counter-evidence then try posing some evidence of your own first.
As to the innocence of muslims guy, I think you may have a point. To be honest though I do not really care since I am not a US citizen and consider it an internal issue. I don't really have any great desire to watch it, any more than I want to learn to sing the Koran in Arabic. I was far more disturbed by the death threats against Salmon Rushdie many years ago since that obviously had artistic merit rather than just some crap film designed to promote hatred.
Please note I'm not from the US.
Are you Israeli? It's just a random guess but I notice from another post you made you are worried about Sharia Law in Europe. I always find the idea of that preposterous since we have far to long and established traditions of drinking alcohol as part of our culture. There is about a 0% chance of us all becoming teetotal, especially here in the UK where I come from.
The only people in Europe who carp on about things like Sharia Law are morons like Geert Wilders who are just making it all up in order to try and get elected.
I dont read
After a few dozen simultaneous detonations, you'll be lofting enough debris into the upper atmosphere to significantly affect crop cycles, and starvation will kill orders of magnitude more people than the actual explosion and fallout.
I mean, come on, Chicxulub didn't wipe out the dinosaurs by landing on their heads.
Thanks for your post. I don't know if you know the content of Obama's speech in Cairo, or his actions in reserving place in the front row for the then-banned Muslim Brotherhood, but his actions were a clear sell-out of ally Mubarak. It was disgusting. The US had many other options than simply installing Islamists in power. They could have assisted in a transition and promoted secular democratic forces (which instigated the revolution and the Brotherhood now suppress). So I disagree with your conclusion. The US could have done a much better job.
Here's a link to an Egyptian source crowing about how they have Muslim Brotherhood members inside the White House: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3869/egyptian-magazine-muslim-brotherhood-infiltrates
This should have been front page news around the World, but wasn't. Senator Bachmann called for an investigation of Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the White House but was pooh-poohed, yet her points were real. You can find more information by googling Frank Gaffney's site http://www.muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com/
I also highly recommend any of Stephen Coughlin's excellent videos on YouTube outlining the Islamist doctrine. Note that the Obama Administration have done a complete purge of anyone giving analysis of the Islamist/OIC strategy (and Sharia legal basis for jihad) because it runs counter to their (leftist) narrative. eg. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6lmUlT38_U
This is why the World is losing against the form of Islamism that matters, 'cultural jihad' (not the terrorism, but the progressive long-term islamicization of culture).
That should be enough references to get you started. Come back to me if you'd like more.
Are you Israeli? It's just a random guess but I notice from another post you made you are worried about Sharia Law in Europe. I always find the idea of that preposterous since we have far to long and established traditions of drinking alcohol as part of our culture. There is about a 0% chance of us all becoming teetotal, especially here in the UK where I come from.
That's a bit racist, don't you think? I'm a native New Zealander actually. I just happen to be paying attention to what is going on. Unfortunately formerly great news outfits in the UK like the BBC have now dropped neutral journalism and show a huge leftist bias in the articles they choose to publish (and more importantly, the news events they choose not to publish). I understand how people in the UK would miss the information that matters given the selection bias of your mainstream media. Were you aware that 87 Sharia courts now operate in Britian. One law for Muslims (in certain matters) and one for other Britons. Were you aware that most school canteens now only serve halal meat? It is funny you talk about the drinking culture, especially when videos like this "Muslim Patrol" are emerging with increasing regularity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw2w7ACogaY
Yes, it is just some idiots. The interesting thing is the police do nothing and the politicians do not comment that it is an unacceptable affront to Enlish liberties. The trend will continue downwill I'm afraid.
The only people in Europe who carp on about things like Sharia Law are morons like Geert Wilders who are just making it all up in order to try and get elected.
Wilders is an opportunist for sure. Doesn't mean he's necessarily wrong. I suggest you take a megaphone and repeat the phrase "Europe will never have Sharia Law" and so so in Birmingham, Malmo or Marsailles. Take out life insurance and please make me the beneficiary. Even if you survive, how many politicians (except for Geert Wilders) do you think would stand up for your righ
Missiles? Considering the amount of drugs and people smuggled in over the southern border, including the Southern California coast, who need need missiles? What we need are really sensitive Geiger counters. Maybe we have them?
Anonymous? Heck yeah! I don't want Joyce Kim coming after me!
Were you aware that 87 Sharia courts now operate in Britian (sp).
Those have absolutely zero legal power in any of the 3 UK legal systems and only work because all parties agree to it due to their faith. It's no different than settling out of court. A sharia court could not order someone to be stoned to death here without all involved being arrested for murder.
A sharia court could not order someone to be stoned to death here without all involved being arrested for murder.
Take a step back and listen to how wrong that is. No matter what the faith of anyone is, no one should be stoned for murder in the 21st Century. The Sharia courts are promoting discrimination, one set of laws for Muslims, another for dhimmi Britons. The goal should be that *all* British citizens are subject to the same laws and have the same rights and responsibilities. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should apply to everyone and not the (OIC) Cairo Declaration of Human Rights (which basically says you have fsck all). The goal should be to have different cultures converge on Enlightenment values for everyone - yet this is the exact opposite of what is happening in Britain - and in your apparently well meaning but incredibly misguided way you agree with the institutionalisation of divisive and discriminatory systems based on belief. In the long term it doesn't help the Muslims and doesn't help non-Muslims either. It is cultural relativism that allows such muddle thinking, but this relativism is wrong on a fundamental level. Enlightenment culture is superior to Islamic ideology (which is, at its core, both politicaly totalitarian and fundamentally evil). People talk about "reforming Islam" but they refused to see the truth of the matter - rather than reform Islam simply enforce the superior laws and liberties of Enlightenment culture on all people in Britain - without discrimination as to race, gender, orientation or creed. If you want Sharia you can go live in Saudi, Iran or Afghanistan. Stop being a pussy and stand up for Enlightenment liberties and freedoms. It is morally right to do so.
I heard on TV, I think it was on the discovery channel, and it said it only takes 20 nuclear blasts near the ground to throw up enough debree in the atmosphere to cause a nuclear winter; therefore, 1,000-1,100 of them is at least "enough," probably way too much still. I'm glad the administration is contemplating lowering the number, but would be happy with the number being far lower.