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A Case For Unilateral US Nuclear Warhead Reductions
Lasrick writes "Interesting read of the geopolitics between the U.S. and Russia when it comes to reducing nuclear warheads. Pavel Podvig is a physicist trained at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology who works on the Russian nuclear arsenal, US-Russian relations, and nonproliferation. His take here is essential to understanding what is happening between Washington and Moscow on nuclear weapons cuts."
Reader auric_dude also sent in a link to a few other views on the issue.
Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things. They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.
Some say the nuclear arms race was as much as way to drain money out of the USSR until it collapsed as much as anything else. We're done with that, and I'm sure both sides are sick of throwing money in to a pit. You really only need to blow the world up once, if you're going to do it at all.
I also hear that most nuclear material for peacetime power reactors comes from decommissioned nuclear warheads.
TFA consistently refers to a reduction in "deployed" warheads. For those who don't understand the nuance, there are still many more warheads not currently deployed. We call those "stockpiled" arms. A reduction in deployed warheads is pointless unless we talk about a global (no pun intended) reduction in arms. Why, you ask? Because we have stealth bombers and fighters with global reach. Those stockpiled weapons could be locked and loaded on our jets in short order if we wanted. Suddenly, they are now "deployed" warheads.
The truth remains, until nuclear weapons stockpiles are reduced below MAD levels, reduction in arms is just for show. We'll always have enough in storage to kill each other a few times over, but that's not really what matters. What matters is that we are constantly trying to establish a dialog with people who don't like us rather than take a beligerant stance. That, more than anything else will result in reduced nuclear tensions.
I think like 16 or something would destroy the entire world's weather for decades so yeah, completely pointless.
No way. Just how big do you think these warheads are? In total megatons, America's nuclear arsenal peaked in the 1960s, and has been declining for half a century as accuracy as dramatically improved. You don't need a lot of yield if you can put it through a particular window in the Kremlin. Most ICBMs and SLBMs have warheads of only a few hundred kilotons. Cruise missile warheads are around 10-20KT. That is a Nagasaki, not a Castle Bravo.
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce."
-- Winston S. Churchill
Well, lets see... this talked about 1500 "strategic" nukes. Say Russia dropped 1,000 on the USA, or on average 20 per state. I'm guessing that's most major cities, most industrial complexes, most centralized food processing, rail and air transportation, highway hubs, etc. Yeah, a lot of people would survive the initial attack, but unless you can live off of what's right around you, you won't survive the aftermath, even if you don't have radiation sickness.
The other way to think of it is that recovering from catastrophes like hurricanes, earthquakes, etc is really tough, even when the rest of the country pitches in to help. What happens when there is no "rest of the country"?
and you put down your rock and we try to kill each other like civilized people?
It's not my fault being the biggest and strongest. I don't even exercise.
Russians will never give up nukes. It's their only defense against China.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
It's cliche to say the article is not very good, but in this case it truly is missing a serious point:
No plan to get rid of nuclear weapons can be complete without taking China (and others) into consideration. We are at the point that it's not just a standoff between Russia and the US, who both have been reducing their nuclear weapons. Other countries have been actively increasing them, and unless they join in the movement, Russia and the US leave themselves completely vulnerable if they don't maintain at least some nuclear weapons.
I'm in favor of getting rid of nukes, but you can't assume it's just a game between Russia and the US, as this article does.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Ayatollah Khomeini: "We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let Iran burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world"
There is a difference between rational countries having the bomb and countries run by Islamic fanatics having the bomb.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
And to make things worse the planet would be about one order of magnitude above its carrying capacity if it were not for a steady supply of artificial fertilizer, made from natural gas or other fossil fuels. Even if you can live off the land around you now you may be unable to do so after a major nuclear exchange when fertilizer becomes unavailable and agricultural yields drop.
What about hunting then? Well, we are about two orders of magnitude above the Earth's carrying capacity for us as hunter-gatherers. The what little edible wildlife is left today would run out quickly if there were no conservation laws.
That said, even if the population would drop by 99% there would still be 70 million humans on the planet and humans would still be the most numerous mammal species except for the ones that live off of our economy such as rats and other rodents. Even if the population would drop by 99.99% we would still not qualify as a threatened species, not even nearly. In short: there are a lot of humans and killing us all won't be easy by any means.