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Hi TLers,
I have a little notebook which I jot down stuff that comes to my mind. Most of it is random but I think that there are some things in there that is worth discussing. So here's my first blog post.
I know this is going to be a little controversial in the sense that I'm advocating more means for the world to blow itself up over many times over but having thought this through a little it seems like states having more nuclear weapons might actually bring about a more stable, peaceful world.
In the Cold War, the nuclear tensions between the USA and USSR was governed by the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) theory. The rationale behind this theory was that should one bloc attempt to attack the other bloc with nuclear weapons, their destruction would be 'assured' because of the retaliatory attack. In this case, the US and USSR had enough weapons to ensure that not only their states would be destroyed but their allies too would inevitably fall in the process should a nuclear holocaust occur. Because the threat of destruction was high, the incentive to work towards preventing conflicts in the form of direct conventional warfare was high and as such there was no direct confrontation between the US and the USSR. I do recgonize that proxy wars were being fought between the allies of each country (eg. Korean War, Vietnam War) but because there was no direct threat to the mainland...or motherland, the threat of nuclear retaliation was thus low.
Fast forward a few decades where we see the Obama administration advocating 'Project Zero' the movement towards the complete disarming of all nuclear weapons worldwide. I want to argue that this is actually a move towards a greater threat for state to state conflicts than having more nuclear weapons. We have to assume that with the MAD theory in mind, a state with nuclear weapons would not attack another state that possesses nuclear weapons directly for fear of nuclear destruction. From this standpoint, I think that the removal of nuclear weapons would give a lot more reason for expansionist states to engage in direct conflict against another state for land/resources because the threat of destruction has been mitigated. This would in turn give certain states more leeway to negotiate with other states because their military might would inherently be greater than others.
So here's the crazy part, in my opinion, every state should have the capacity to own nuclear weapons. This is based on the assumption that 1) a state would not attack another state for fear of destruction and 2) a state does not wish to be wiped out from the face of this Earth. Having nuclear weapons, despite raising the tension levels in the world exponentially, would deter every other state from attacking you.
So that's my first post. I know there are some limitations in there so please feel free to comment and discuss below.
Thanks!
 
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Wow, are you really serious?
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MAD was an awful idea. All it takes is one mad man to end the world. Some of the more outlandish tea partiers would quite happily nuke Iran for example. The only thing crazier than MAD was Reagans Star Wars.
I think the world feels much safer without MAD. I know Europe does, Britons no longer live in fear of Russia destroying us, or the US prompting Russia to blow us up.
Having nuclear weapons, despite raising the tension levels in the world exponentially, would deter every other state from attacking you.
Given Argentina attacked Falklands despite Trident, I think that's a bunch of crap as well.
EDIT: You sir, are a nutter.
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I think the big hole in your idea is the word "assume". With the consequences of any assumptions being wrong completely unbearable, there is no room at all for any potential error. This is why I believe that the default solution should be to work towards a nuclear weapon free future. It doesn't mean that we will never be able to make them if required, but that they primed ready to go at the push of a button cannot be a good thing.
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I believe that nukes still have some sort of purpose, but given that crazy people exist everywhere, what we should do is pool them and use them for emergencies (I dunno, asteroids? Aliens?) Put them somewhere trustworthy, like Switzerland or the bottom of the ocean, and make it so a bunch of nations have to agree to use them for good before opening the lock.
The "bunch of nations" can be the UN Security Council or something.
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Yeah, so as others have said it does make the world unstable. Not just because of state actors but also terrorists (borders are porous). In the latter case it allows states to deny responsibility (by acting through proxies, secretively), which would lead to chaos. Also assuming some worldwide calamity, like if global warming made resources scarce (or just overpopulation), countries may just work towards designing strong underground bunkers or missile defense systems and take their chances. The difference being nuclear warfare is much worse than conventional - at least conventional takes money, resources, man power. Its easier to stop then setting off a bomb.
With nuclear weapons we know you need an enrichment facility and some very special raw materials (as well as very advanced technical knowledge). So relatively speaking its easier to control the propagation of these weapons. Aggression can be stopped more easily through sanctions and international condemnation - I think the world is too integrated now for one state to act violently. Everyone needs trade for something, especially with dwindling non-renewable resources (oil, perhaps minerals, uranium).
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You're asuming that politicians and people of power actually give a shit about the millions of people they govern. Except they don't. Like the other guy said, all it takes is one person to end the world.
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So everyone should have them and not use them. Wouldn't it just be simper that no one has them and the probability of someone going off the deep end and using one is 0?
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MAD worked because USSR and US weren't lunatics. Nowadays you have all kinds of crazy people (I'm looking at religious extremists) that wouldn't mind killing everyone in the world who doesn't agree with their views.
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So this is basically like saying that if everyone carried a loaded gun no one would dare to fire the first shot. It doesn't quite work that way. Removing the possibility of sudden total destruction seems like a more reasonable option than actually increasing its potential radius.
Utilizing fear as a tool in this way will only create acts of desperation, not safety.
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No sane nation is going to use nuclear weapons. Real life isn't some game of Civilization where you can just nuke everybody and take all their cities and win the game.
Maybe some batshit radical country would try to nuke somebody they really hate, but that's an argument AGAINST weapons, not FOR them.
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I'll just say it that nuclear disarmament is probably the best choice for all parties, because the wars will happen sooner or later and in all honesty they should happen, as wars are actually a way for economical recuperation since it generates a lot more jobs and creates a lot of demand for goods
but with nuclear weapons there is no war, there is just destruction, better to kill just each other than to destroy the land itself
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United States22883 Posts
Symmetric warfare doesn't really happen anymore, so what happened during the Cold War (and quite frankly, we were incredibly lucky to avoid it) isn't really relevant.
Even if it did, MAD worked between the USSR and US because of second strike capability. If the US had decided to attack South Africa when they had nuclear weapons, they would've been done. MAD essentially relies on either submarines or allies (which is how to get into world wars), so it really only applies between the US, Russia and China. Without that, you're reliant on an overwhelming first strike which is a gambit no one wants to be involved in.
The more modern nuclear crisis will be in a developing country (namely Pakistan) which has a healthy history of insurrection and is currently unstable. Pakistani leadership are smart enough not to do anything, but were there to be a coup, access to their weapons would be in jeopardy and you'd see the US or India act on it (or perhaps you wouldn't see it happen, but it'd happen.) And the reason for the panic? Because the collateral of nuclear conflict is enormous. Radiation aside, a nuclear winter would stunt agriculture around the world, most especially in East/Southeast Asia.
I hope humanity has gotten past the Romans sowing salt into Carthage's earth because the long term effects of nuclear war are much greater than that, and nuclear weapons don't serve the same deterrence as they did before.
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I'm sorry but I am going to have to completely disagree with you.
This is an idea that you hear relatively frequently within realist foreign policy circles and it suffers from a few fundamental flaws that completely undermine the argument.
First, this entire theory is based on the idea that all states will act rationally in all situations. This is, frankly, bullshit. States act irrationally, they do things that are not in their own best interests and they make decisions that don't make "sense" from a standpoint of a rational point of view.
For example, look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many of the people directly involved in the incident (Most notably then, Secretary of State Robert MacNamara) maintained that, rather than some rationalist desire to stay alive and reliance on the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction to cause cooler heads to prevail, luck played the deciding role. At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy received two notes from Russian premiere Nikita Khrushchev within hours of each other. The first note was aggressive and antagonistic in nature, while the second was much more conciliatory. For about 24 hours, the Kennedy Administration agonized over trying to figure out which note actually expressed the position of the Russian government. In the end the US government decided to respond to the more conciliatory note and eventually a deal was reached. Despite the well known power of nuclear weapons, the situation could very easily have escalated into all-out nuclear war.
States do not always act rationally. The often act instead on preconceived biases and prejudices, have historical animosities and conflicts or are ruled by people who's agendas are simply incompatible with the intentions of neighbor states or powerful international actors (North Korea anyone?).
Another problem is the rise of trans-national actors in the last 50, or so years. If Al Qaeda were to obtain a nuclear weapon and used it, according to MAD, who the hell do we nuke in retaliation? Terrorist groups play havoc with traditional conceptions of foreign policy and security in ways that classical models simply cannot at this point account for. In traditional foreign policy, if you have a state that insists on abrogating the traditional order there are means to ostracize or contain that state. Terrorist organizations and their ilk frequently do not have such a readily identifiable 'home base' from which they operate.
In many ways, various terrorist organizations obtaining nuclear weapons is the single greatest threat the world faces. With that said, one of the huge concerns that the US has is the safety of the world's existing nuclear arsenal. Post-Soviet Russia has been notoriously bad at protecting their existing nuclear stockpile, this is further compounded by the fact that a large number of their nuclear weapons were located in former soviet bloc countries, rather than Russia proper, further complicating cleanup. Additionally, states like India, Pakistan and North Korea certainly do not have proper command and control of their nuclear arsenals, increasing the likelihood of those states "misplacing" one of their weapons (especially in the case of Pakistan). Imagine how much worse that worry would be if any two-bit dictatorship could maintain a nuclear stockpile at will.
Finally, as we have seen during the nuclear age, tension between nations with nuclear weapons tends to lead less to the two nations finding common ground due to their fear of mutual annihilation and more to brinkmanship. petty rivalry and proxy wars which are generally pretty horrific in nature.
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there is no reason to keep or even produce new nuclear arms. Fear is no legit argument, because the potential to fuck up outweights everything. What if only one technical slip-up happens, what if terrorist get hold of it, what if a militant party wins an election, what if war happens and these weapons attain into the hands of the "wrong" people, what if it`s war and the weapons get actually used. Nuclear weapons are abominations of our technical world and they needed to disapear yesterday.
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MAD only worked because neither the US or the USSR wanted a world ending conflict. Giving nuclear weapons to all countries is one of the most horrible ideas i've seen pop up on here (kudos however for posting and not just being a lurker). Your assumptions of no one wanting to fire the first shot is a pretty big assumption when the ramifications look like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Giving nuclear weapons to everyone also exponitniallly increases the risk for one "disapprearing" and ending up in a terrorist organisation and being used againist the US or some other country with major population centers.
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Every dictator should have nukes so that if they lose they can blow up their county and perhaps the neighboring countries as well.
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On April 02 2012 23:59 anomalopidae wrote:
I'll just say it that nuclear disarmament is probably the best choice for all parties, because the wars will happen sooner or later and in all honesty they should happen, as wars are actually a way for economical recuperation since it generates a lot more jobs and creates a lot of demand for goods
but with nuclear weapons there is no war, there is just destruction, better to kill just each other than to destroy the land itself
There will never be a nuclear disarmament. Nuclear proliferation is already too wide spread and the thought of all parties meeting up and just giving up their development and nuclear arms is wishful thinking.
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The problem with this is that it assumes that every state acts rationally, i.e. that mutually assured destruction is enough to deter a state.
A state run by religious fanatics is not one that acts rationally, and therefore this scenario instead puts everyone at risk of total annihilation, which is the worst possible outcome.
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Are you saying this because you feel singapore will never survive a direct confrontation?
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EPT
