Obama Calls For Nuke-Free World 705
jamie points out news that President Obama has put out a call for a world free of nuclear weapons at a speech in Prague today. He acknowledged that it was a long-term goal, perhaps not something that can be accomplished in his lifetime, but promised to encourage the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty. According to the BBC, he also stated his desire to "negotiate a new treaty to end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons," and to hold a global summit within the next year to work out agreements for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Obama said, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it." His speech came less than a day after North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket.
Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:5, Insightful)
Free of nukes only works until some other 4 foot 9 dictator decides to raise his status the only way he can to impress the world.
What then? Does he become emporer of the world or just harasser of the world as Hannibal did to Rome?
Ahem. (Score:2, Insightful)
And now, Ill come forth and call to an end of mean people. And a pony. I want a pony.
Really though, nuclear technology isnt that hard. Take 2 pieces of near-critical U235 and smack them together.. Hell, we could have Soulskill clap them together.
And dont forget yeah, the US, France, UK, Russia, and China all have nukes. Those countries like India, Pakistan, and Israel also have them, and we dont have a nuclear holocaust yet, either.
Just a bunch of North Korea fearmongering. After all, if they do get scared, China WILL step in and handle the situation.
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States has 5,914 strategic nuclear warheads, followed closely by Russia with 4,237 deployable warheads. (Source: Arms Control [armscontrol.org] ). The rest of the members of the nuclear club -- UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel -- have less than 1,000 combined nuclear weapons. Clearly, if Obama wants the world to take him seriously, he needs to restart the START-II treaty [wikipedia.org] and disassemble his own stockpile before he can expect others to do the same.
No,he is very clever :) (Score:3, Insightful)
By the end of the projected total nuclear ban, there will be much stronger weapons than nuclear. Why stick to some outdated weapons?
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:3, Insightful)
I actually like having 2 superpowers both with enough nukes to make the world glow like a nite-lite.
Knowing that certain actions, like a country using atomics, WILL lead to mutual assured destruction. And that prevents a lot of "bad stuff".. And also cutting off commerce and trade also scares these likes shitless.
Not going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is going to disarm if another country still has nukes, that would be suicide. Furthermore, countries that possess nukes would still have the knowhow to produce them after the destruction of all of the nuclear weapons. That alone would create an unbalance in the worldpower, some countries can still make nukes if the situation warrants it and they can be produced in a year or 4(probably less) so any war with these powers would mean a re-arming of the nation involved and as a reaction a re-arming of all other nuke-capable nations.
Furthermore, some countries still rely on nukes as a deterrent like Israel. I just don't see them disarming, and my believe is affirmed since Israel categorically refuses to say anything about its nuclear capabilities which leads to the last objection to these plans. You can hide your nukes and feign compliance with disarming programs.
In short, it won't work and Obama is not believing his own words if he has any intelligence.
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the USA will have any problem using conventional weapons to take out any tinpot dictators nuclear facilities - well before they have a nuke.
After all, the USA outspends the rest of the wolrd combined [globalsecurity.org] on their military.
Re:Ahem. (Score:4, Insightful)
The "gun" method will get you a low yield weapon. And everyone knows the hard part is enrichment of the uranium, and building the reactor etc... As long as existing stockpiles of weapons grade material are kept safe it takes a nation quite a while to go from zero to nuke and it's hard to hide. The whole world knows about N. Koreas secrect nuke program.
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think the USA will have any problem using conventional weapons to take out any tinpot dictators nuclear facilities - well before they have a nuke.
After all, the USA outspends the rest of the wolrd combined [globalsecurity.org] on their military.
I seriously doubt we have the will to do this under this administration. At least not until it is far to late to help.
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:2, Insightful)
Really ? Notice what North Korea was doing just as Obama announced this idiocy ?
Launching an intercontinental ballistic missile you say ? In the direction of either Japan or the US you say ... What mean, clearly untrue things you say.
Re:Ahem. (Score:3, Insightful)
And an ideal being one which almost assuredly cannot be realized means that it should not be attempted at all. Riiiiiiight.
A continuing reduction in the number of nuclear weapons is still a very realistic goal, and it is probably a desirable one too.
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another example of incompetence (Score:3, Insightful)
So we get rid of our nukes and so does other 'law abiding' countries. What about the 100's that really don't give a damn?
Then again, he thinks banning personal guns will work too.
Of course its fearmongering (Score:5, Insightful)
Its how you get the populace to give up their rights 'for their protection'.
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty much the only reason the world is "safe" is because we have the bomb. "The Bomb" is the final word in warfare because basically, everybody loses.
Now, the "trick" to "The Bomb" making us safe is nobody actually plans to use it. Anybody who uses it will get nuked to hell in return... everybody loses. Mutually Assured Destruction - MAD.
This theory breaks when the person who uses the bomb doesn't care about their own destruction. Once you stop caring about retaliation, all bets are off.
Warfare has now "evolved" to the point where I don't think all the players who could potentially have nukes care if their side gets nuked to hell in retaliation. In addition, warfare is no longer country-to-country. It is "one dude in a subway with with a bomb in a pizza box".
All the fighter jets in the world can't help you against a pizza-box-bomb. Nukes don't help either. The things that really help are surveillance devices hooked up to massive computers running statistics software. Unfortunately (er, fortunately) such things are really not tolerated by our culture here in the US.
Obama's failure to think half a step ahead (Score:3, Insightful)
End result of Reagan's plan: Collapse of the USSR, and reduction of the probability of nuclear armageddon.
Obama's solution to eliminate nuclear weapons: Curtail or eliminate defenses against nuclear weapons, sign on to a treaty that would have no effect upon those that would actually use nuclear weapons, and ensure that nuclear deterrence would eventually fail, as there would be increasing uncertainty whether the nuclear weapons of the nations that had signed the Test Ban Treaty had functioning nuclear weapons or not, especially if you're going to then go and end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons.
End result of Obama's plan: Defenseless US et al against those whose moral duty to act includes nuking us.
Re:How hypocritical? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see it that way at all. It sounds like that on the surface, but I don't think it's like that at all.
Take a society without guns (zero, none whatsoever) and put 1 gun into the hands of one side of an argument and 1 gun into the hands of the other side. Both sides are smart enough that they know using the gun would mean the other guy would.
So, what's the problem here, now there are lots of guys without guns and they want them. Sounds like you should give everyone who wants them because we're responsible, so they should be too. I mean, it's too powerful and everyone respects that fact.
So lets give them to everyone, hell if everyone has them, and noone uses them, well, nothing changes....
No.. If you just hand out weapons, or just allow everyone to make them at their own will, eventually one guy will end up with one and he will want to use it. Eventually it gets into the hands of a crazy. N. Korea might not be the crazy guy, but he sure as shit isn't the sane guy.
Yes, it sounds hypocritical, but if enough people have weapons, eventually someone will use them. That is what we want to avoid.
Re:Ahem. (Score:3, Insightful)
And I really think that China relies on North Korea to the fear-mongering it can't afford to.
Re:Yet another example of incompetence (Score:1, Insightful)
Then again, he thinks banning personal guns will work too.
I was wondering, how many people get shot in the States each year? Something tells me it's a bit high compared to the rest of the world.
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason nuclear weapons are outdated is because they still exist. They remove the incentive to go WWII on somebodies ass. Because of nuclear weapons, if you wanna cause trouble you now have to find other ways that don't lead to your country or people turning into a glass parking lot.
In other words, warfare has evolved to deal with nuclear weapons much like bacteria have evolved to deal with antibiotics. New kinds of bacteria have been created that are immune to bacteria--but that doesn't mean the old kinds of bacteria aren't still lying around in some latent form. If you stopped using antibiotics, those old "extinct" forms of bacteria would come back. Same with warfare--if we could somehow get rid of every single nuclear weapon on earth--all the old tactics of war would suddenly become relevant and useful again.
Basically, the existence of nuclear weapons make the old tactics obsolete. Remove the nuclear weapons and the old ways are no longer obsolete.
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:4, Insightful)
He isn't naive. Nobody is gonna get rid of their nukes, especially the USA, and he knows it. It puts international pressure on countries who really have no business with them. It is just good politics.
It would also be a hell of a lot less safe too. People know this too. We might say "down with nuclear weapons" in public, but if you put it to a vote, I promise you a large majority would vote to keep every nuke we own.
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obama's failure to think half a step ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah because obama is defiantly fighting a cold war! terrorists leaders don't care about thier people, so launching a nuke against them isn't a threat.
Did the 5000 nukes stop osama? NO
Did the 5000 nukes, get the taliban to hand over osama? NO
Did the 5000 nukes, keep you from having to invade iraq? NO
Did the 5000 nukes, stop jim's missile program? err NO
Can the US go round killing inocent civilians? NO
Can the US even retaliate to the actions of a rouge state using a nuke? NO
So what the fuck do you want them for? other than to lose a moral high ground and mean you have no right to tell others that they shouldn't have them!
This means war (Score:2, Insightful)
The USA have the most powerful conventional military in the world. So the only way to ensure the USA don't attack you is to have a nuclear bomb. And the USA have clearly shown that they want and will attack you, take Serbia or Iraq for example.
Read between the lines ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's political posturing, with more important objectives.
In short, the "nuke-free world" is window-dressing for more real, practical objectives.
"I say let the Wookie win." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:1, Insightful)
I actually like having 2 superpowers both with enough nukes to make the world glow like a nite-lite.
Knowing that certain actions, like a country using atomics, WILL lead to mutual assured destruction. And that prevents a lot of "bad stuff".. And also cutting off commerce and trade also scares these likes shitless.
Fortunately 6000 nuclear warheads is not, by a long shot, enough to destroy even a little country. It's enough to cause lots and lots of suffering, but it's not enough to keep them down.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki both got 1 10 megaton warhead, and recovered to full economic capacity in a matter of months. Had Japan wanted to, the US would not have been actually able to PREVENT them from waging war in the pacific using nuclear force, even given full use of the US's then one bomb/month capacity.
Add to that the knowledge that a 100 megaton nuclear warhead has only double the effectiveness of a 10 megaton warhead (due to the damage, in the "optimal" case occuring along a circle, whose length increases relative to the square of the distance. A nuclear bomb in a trunk (ie. on the ground) loses effectiveness with the third power of the distance due to "technical reasons" (imagine the difference of a blast in the sky and on the ground. In the sky a bit under 50% of the blast wave hits the target, on the ground, however, only a small circular section will hit the target. The rest will disappear into the sky and into the ground. A diagram explains this very well, but I don't really have one).
Add to that the knowledge that the currently most powerful nuclear weapon is about 150 megatons, and there are only a few dozen in existence.
The US would have needed several hundred 10 megaton bombs to destroy Hiroshima. It would have had to keep firing on Hiroshima for days, causing constant nuclear blasts.
So the "nuclear might" of the US is capable of
-> cause month-lasting economic setbacks in 6000 cities world-wide (not enough to hit every important city), and kill about 10 million people
-> destroy between 6 and 18 major cities (but not major metropolitans like Randstad (Amsterdam), or New York), killing about 2 million (due to having to hit the same spot twice or thrice, the casualty count would be much lower. Obviously nukes need to be set off in serial, not in parallel, and everyone outside of the blast radius of the two or three bombs would get ample and extremely convincing warnings of what's to come. Combine that with the large capacity transportation systems of these cities and many people get out in time)
-> destroy max 2 major metropolitan cities, causing about a million casualties.
Due to the fact that they're built up of much more resilient materials, destroying economic or military centers, like harbors or airstrips would be prohibitively difficult using nuclear weapons.
The power of nuclear weapons is massively exxagerated in popular culture. They are not, at all, the world destroyers people often claim they are. They are, almost exclusively, psychological weapons. They cause a relatively large pinpoint strike, and are almost impossible to defend against.
Atomic weapons' main "power" is that they are capable of killing nearly anyone. You don't need to know all that well where they are, you don't need to fight through the enemy's defenses to kill the leader. Out of the blue, with minimal information, you can kill anyone. Even a theocratic nut like the ones ruling saudi arabia or iran, or a dictator.
And that's, obviously, the real reason dictators and socialists all around want the weapons destroyed : it took the US 2 years (!) to find Saddam Hussein with massive conventional superiority, and only because Saddam stood alone (had he had allies, he would have been beyond the reach of the US). Dictators, islamic or socialist are easy to kill with nuclear weapons, and even a "superpower" needs years to do the same with conventional weapons.
Without nukes, dictators, islamic thugs and massacrers are basically safe from military intervention by the US, or any other party.
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Invasion guarantee (Score:3, Insightful)
We've never had reason to. But if Pakistan's civilian government falls to the Taliban, you can bet your ass we'll be going in.
The genie is out of the bottle (Score:2, Insightful)
Like any technology, once the ability to produce nukes is available it will not go away. Trying to make this happen will succeed about as well as prohibition did or banning firearms would. It is obviously a larger project than a still or a machine shop but not beyond the realm of possibility for any nation to try.
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:1, Insightful)
He isn't naive. Nobody is gonna get rid of their nukes, especially the USA, and he knows it. It puts international pressure on countries who really have no business with them. It is just good politics
But the thing is, you have to take the man at his word, and I think he really that naive. I really think he does believe that the world is like Star Trek, where you can have a meeting with someone that totally hates you, and suddenly love breaks out. There's nothing that tells me that he believes otherwise.
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is what happens when you get your news from a very narrow band of sources.
Re:Obama's failure to think half a step ahead (Score:1, Insightful)
Really? "He said the United States will maintain a safe, secure and reliable nuclear capability to deter adversaries and reassure its allies. He also indicated that the United States would "go forward" with a controversial missile defense system planned for the Czech Republic and Poland." [1] [dw-world.de]
Nuclear weapons' primary function is striking against civilian targets - no military target is large enough to warrant such massive destruction [citation needed]. If North Korea were to attack NATO using nuclear weapons, I postulate that the NATO member nations would care more about that North Korean civilian population than the North Korean government does [2] [freedomhouse.org]. Rather, your first goal would be to eliminate their launch capability, for which conventional weapons are sufficient. [citation needed]
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Show me where? Please... All I see is a President that put out a threat to shoot down a North Korean missile, backed down from it in the face of North Korean threats of war, and then, to cover up this whole sorry demonstration of his weakness, makes some ridiculous speech calling for the end of nuclear weapons. What a total joke! Just a failure of a President. He should start wearing a big kick me sign on his ass... in fact the French probably stuck one on him while he didn't know it... the whole G20 summit was a failure.
Obama is a joke.
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, Bush did a great job boosting our leadership status. Cough.
At least we tried. If they dont cave, fuck them.. at least we'll have our allies helping us. Bush didn't try and just said "fuck em... we'll go at it alone and if you dont help, you are an enemy to". Now we are broke footing the bill for a war we never should have got in.
- Theodore Roosevelt.
Re:Not going to happen (Score:4, Insightful)
I think he's just blowing smoke up the ass of environmentalists, and trying to rebuild America's image of being an agent of peace.... Nobody will buy it for a second, but thats what politicians do. Every President has vowed similar things, yet all have been heavily involved in wars and armed conflicts of some kind.
The reason I don't see any harm with this kind of bullshit is that it does the opposite that Bush's Axis of Evil rhetoric did. When Bush hyped up countries as being a real evil threat, then it already put the thought of war into people's mind. Any incident, no matter how small would escalate the chances of war rapidly. If Iran farted then a lot of people were clammering for war, or at least fighting talk.
When you put forward a peace process the escalation to war in people's minds is far slower. Small incidents don't anger people as much. There's more room for compromise, etc, and people are not as hyperreactive to disagreements. Cooperation is easier.
Its bullshit, and I don't for a second believe Obama has any intention of giving up nukes, ever. In my opinion, the best strategy now is to keep things like that going so you can twist the momentum from "Lets nuke 'em", to something else, more productive.
The US can't use them anyway! (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is large scale deliberate civilian killing is not acceptable by any democratic country, in the cold war era it was barely acceptable when the US could have been destroyed. MAD doesn't work when your fighting an enemy that are smaller than you and surrounded by innocent people.
The enemy know the US won't use a nuclear weapon on them so it doesn't act as a deterent:
*9/11
*Taliban handing over Osama
*Both Gulf wars
*etc
Nobody takes the threat of the US launching a nuclear attack seriously. The only things that the huge stockpile does:
*Cost a fair bit of money
*Remove any high ground the US may have, you can't expect other to give up their weapons if you keep yours
*Increase the risk of one going missing (minor in the US, but in Israel/Russia/china this is a risk)
*Increase the risk of semi-produced materials being stolen (Again lower in the US, but non-trivial elsewhere)
So by starting to reduce the pointless arsenal in America (see above), Obama can try and convince other to follow. Negotiations are just that, and you never get anything by just shouting louder. Even if Obama only convinces the 'good' guys (US/china/russia/uk/france) to disarm, that is still a significant reduction in the risk of one of them inadvertently helping the bad guys (hell in the uk we seam to be losing everything, I wouldn't trust us with a nuke), while simultaneously putting you in a better position to convince the 'bad' countries (Iran) that they should disarm.
The total loss for the US is NOTHING, you can't use the nuclear weapons anyway!
Uhhhh (Score:2, Insightful)
The Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 13 to 18 kilotons and the Nagasaki bomb 21 kilotons.
The 10 to 15 megaton weapons in the US arsenal are close to a thousand times greater yield, with all the trappings that go with it.
Re:Invasion guarantee (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you mod me down, note that I'm not saying I sympathise with Iran, just that it's a matter of public record that a major reason Israel/US hasn't invaded Iran in the last few years is due to their retaliatory capacity [ynet.co.il]. This, of course is only encouraging proliferation.
Hopefully Obama can make a break from the previous administration in this regard, but I doubt it [salon.com].
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:1, Insightful)
And that is what happens when you get your news from a source that makes shit up to support the candidate they favor.
What Obama said is incredibly naive. If that's not what he meant to say, then he shouldn't have said it. At the very least he could come back with a "What I meant to say was ..." or otherwise clarify his statement.
In the meantime, the only way to judge his statement is using the meaning of the words he used. Not the words you thought he meant.
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think that comparing incapacitants like pepper spray to nerve, blood, and blister agents is to be missing the point.
And we're not using it in bulk - that would be 500 pound bombs loaded with the stuff. Did you mean peaceful protectors or protesters? Because the protests where I've seen tear gas deployed were rapidly turning unpeaceful. Besides, tear gas is the more useful stuff in mas operations, pepper spray needs to be more directly applied.
As for tasers, well, consider the old options - beating the crap out of you or shooting you until you were no longer able to resist. I do agree about reigning in the use by some officers/departments, though.
Oh, and the 'banning' is only in wartime against other militaries. Doesn't apply to the police tasering your butt when you get out of line, or deploying tear gas when you're in a riot.
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki both got 1 10 megaton warhead
No, Fat man (detonated over nagasaki) was a 21 kiloton bomb. Little boy (detonated over hiroshima) was a 13 kiloton bomb.
Current nukes are in the 5-50 megaton range, and do really rather more damage. That's the difference between an atom bomb and a hydrogen bomb for you.
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair enough. Let me try on a better word.
"The old strategies of war". You can't just go invade half a continent anymore. The Commies aren't gonna fly 3,000 bombers across the arctic and bomb America. Hitler ain't gonna be able to just invade half of Europe. Those days are over. The Cold War marked the end of that kind of stuff.
These days, if you wanna go evil, you gotta take a couple guys and put them in a shipping container strapped with $WEAPON. Your strategy isn't to take over the country... just fuck with them and weaken them. Once you get their nation to fall, you aren't planning on moving in to their homes, you just wanted them gone from the planet.
So yeah, nuclear weapons might not render the tactics of war obsolete. But nuclear weapons have certainly rendered the strategies of war obsolete.
Does that work?
Re:Yet another example of incompetence (Score:3, Insightful)
Not paying attention, I guess. Unless they amount to hundreds of total lives, though, they're a momentary blip on the chart (so far). Hint: Cars and booze each kill way more people; Misprescription of prescription medication kills more than either.
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, the existence of nuclear weapons make the old tactics obsolete. Remove the nuclear weapons and the old ways are no longer obsolete.
Of course the tough part is 'remove the nuclear weapons'.
...but the Libyans still have one. Well--guess who calls the shots.
Let's say the US and Russia totally ditch every nuke.
It would be the same if everyone in the world suddenly didn't have a gun--but I did. I'd be king. At least until someone invents phasers.
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is *why* the rest of the world doesn't have to spend much in their military.
Brett
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as how the US essentially IS NATO, no matter what, we'd be stuck supplying most of the troops and most of the money.
And before people start foaming at the mouth about how I'm want war, I think the current war is idiotic and that the only justified war that the US has fought in a century is fighting against Japan during WWII. Outside of that, the US has never fought anyone who harmed them / posed a threat. That's why I laugh when I hear people talk of soldiers in Iraq / Afghanistan "defending our freedom" -- our freedom was never threatened by them.
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:4, Insightful)
Please keep your "help" to yourself.
Sincerly,
Signed: The Rest of the World
Re:Obama's failure to think half a step ahead (Score:4, Insightful)
There are so many things wrong with that post I hardly know where to begin, but here goes.
1. You are implying that correlation implies causation in the most ludicrous way imaginable. Are you seriously suggesting that "Star Wars" was responsible for the Soviet Union's collapse? The USSR did not break up because it felt it had lost the ability to emerge victorious in a war with the United States (if it ever had it), but because of the enormous dissent within its member states. While there may, may, be some argument that the Reagan presidency caused or accelerated the USSR's collapse, it certainly wasn't because of his plans vis-a-vis nuclear weapons, and more than likely it would've happened no matter who was president of the USA. Gorbachav, not Reagan, was responsible for the breakup of the USSR. This point is all moot though, because:
2. Reagan's plan was never finished in the first place. This one's pretty simple. Do we have a functioning missile defense system, capable of protecting us from ICBMs? Answer: no. Since Reagan didn't actually accomplish anything in this regard, how can you attribute any lasting effects, political or otherwise, to it?
3. You are badly misinterpreting Obama's plans for missile defense. Obama is on record as saying that he is not opposed to missile defense systems if they can be shown to work. And if they can't, we shouldn't be spending on them anyway.
4. You are making up attributes to his disarmament plan out of whole cloth. His statements were the typical grandiose words that politicians have been making at summits since time immaterial. If you look through his words carefully, this plan is very open-ended and could be implemented any one of several ways (if it is at all).
5. You are implying that "lacking nuclear weapons = defenseless". Even if we got rid of all our nuclear weapons, we would still have the most technologically advanced, well-financed military on Earth, easily strong enough to act as a sufficient deterrent to so-called "rogue states".
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:3, Insightful)
wikipedia [wikipedia.org] suggests you are about 3 orders of magnitude wrong:
It created a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT. (The U-235 weapon was considered very inefficient, with only 1.38% of its material fissioning.) The radius of total destruction was about one mile (1.6 km), with resulting fires across 4.4 square miles (11.4 kmÂ)
Radius of total destruction for a 100 Megaton bomb would thus be about 31 kilometers (20 miles) using your 3-rd power law, enough to totally destruct most large cities. Assuming 1 million inhabitants per city, 6000 nukes is enough nukes to kill everyone on earth in such big cities.
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:4, Insightful)
She was the only person "skilled" enough to bring out the base of die-hard republicans. Without her, McCain wouldn't have been able to count on the vote of the republican base. To the die-hard republican, she *was* the person they were voting for! The problem was, by bringing in Palin, McCain wasn't able to get the vote of so-called left-leaning republicans and "Regan democrats" (aka "The Undecideds").
Basically, McCain was trying to win the vote of two completely different bases that didn't like eachother's policies. By wining one base, he'd lose the other. But that is to be expected when you've got such a polarizing figure leading your party for eight years.
But now we've drifted so I'm done with this!
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:3, Insightful)
MAD was the destruction of industrialized continents, not despotic third-world countries.
Using nukes to take out a Libyan dictator would do the USA more harm than good in the long term.
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you just really prefer allowing every two-bit dictatorship in the world to have as many nukes as they can build.
There's a reason violence is still so commonly used after so many thousands of years of human existence; it works every single time if used in sufficient quantity.
Very difficult to prove disarmament (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:4, Insightful)
Outdated indeed. The new tactics of war are about guerrilla battles, and small nimble forces that can wear down the enemy overtime. Using a nuke on them is like trying to swat a fly with a grenade.
No. Destroy an entire people and there is no-one to draw these "small nimble forces" from.
The reason nukes aren't being used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is a moral, and not a military one. They would be very, very effective militarily.
Pandora only comes out of the box... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Obama's failure to think half a step ahead (Score:3, Insightful)
Your distortion of history is ... unbelievable.
Star Wars never worked, would never have worked, was never built, will never be built.
What Reagan may have done was probably hasten the end of the Soviet Union by forcing it to spend like crazy on weapons programs. Then again, I think he was lucky. The Soviet Union was ripe for collapse anyway, and it just happened on his watch. I think that's the most likely explanation.
What Reagan DID do was almost cause WWIII: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83 [wikipedia.org] After 83, he entered into a period of rapprochement with the Soviet Union.
Not as preposterous as it seems to us (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider if someone in 1910 had suggest than in less than a century europe would probably never have another war. Moreover all of the countries would acquiesce to a single common currency without losing in a war.
People would think you were nuts. in was unforseable. Yet the League of nation set the stage for cooperative behaviour, and the generation after WW2 made it happen.
in his speech in strassbourge he challenged the youth of europe not to take peace for granted but imagine a world that extended it even further.
if you can conceive of the paradigm shift from a continent at war since recorded history to one that is peacefully unified and no one feels oppressed by a conqueror then you can conceive of a world without nuclear weapons.
Re:Rhetorical Question ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I really think he does believe that the world is like Star Trek, where you can have a meeting with someone that totally hates you, and suddenly love breaks out
It worked for Jimmy Carter. Sort of.
Yeah, it worked until Iran decided to take over the U.S. Embassy and he discovered that the military was in such horrible shape that it couldn't do what he wanted them to do. The fiasco of the hostage rescue mission was so bad that the U.S. military spent years afterward trying to fix the problems.
Oh, I guess you were talking about the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks. Yeah, that seemed to work out real well.... just look at how well Gaza turned out.
"No nukes?" "No nukes." (Score:3, Insightful)
A "nuke free" world would be one in which we use no fission/fusion of atoms for the energy. Weaponizing it is one aspect of the technology.
The problem is, a power plant program can (and likely will) be used to make weapons. The horse is out of the barn. Obama is advocating that we can have the knowledge to make steel, but no one will make swords.
It's somewhat naive. We'll see how he executes his plans, or us.
--
Toro
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot the bit about American military leadership preventing the Nazis then the Soviets from dominating Europe - a watch that lasted half a century, or preventing the tinpot dictators in Pyongyang from controlling all of Korea, the same in Vietnam... oh wait, never mind that last one.
The fuzzy headed always get it backward. The US, for all its flaws, is still the best thing going compared to the dictatorships controlling Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran or all the unelected governments in the middle east, or the thugs and strongmen controlling most African nations, or the South and Central American Narcocracies. Even do-nothing popgun armies of Europe (with the exception of Great Britain) can't hold a candle to the US in terms of actually DOING something. Remember what finally ended the war in Bosnia? Not Euro-diplomacy but good old American FA-18's bombing the shit out of the Serbs until they cried "uncle". Witness the failure of any NATO nation other than the US and Great Britain to actually *fight* the Taliban - those vermin aren't going away by themselves.
The list goes on but the Rest of the World doesn't give us much to work with.
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people would consider Mr Bush to qualify as such. Also Israel and Pakistan have both nuclear weapons and a recent capacity to wind up with extremists in power.
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason nukes aren't being used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan is a moral, and not a military one. They would be very, very effective militarily.
Maybe in the very short term, and assuming you don't want those assets that you are blowing into smithereens, or you don't mind not being able to get to the oil resources because they are in or near a "hot" zone.
I think you're also forgetting that the fallout would blow over US allies, and those US allies aren't going to like that. It's hard to maintain a hegemony if your hedge bolts.
Also, those people that you nuke, most often have relatives outside of the nuked zone, and they're going to be upset. The problem with the war on terror is that the1 "collateral damage" euphemism is covering up the fact that some of the families that are accidentally killed are going to be pushed to extremism. So for every bad guy you kill with an innocent bystander killed, you add another family that gets pushed into extremism, creating at least one more "bad guy". This is the danger of the "long war", it becomes never ending because you create your own endless cycle of enemies.
Re:Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:3, Insightful)
The current main weapon in the United States nuclear arsenal is the W88 on a Trident II
The Trident II is capable of having 8 W88s
A W88 is a 475kt warhead which gives it an effective area roughly the size of a medium sized city.
Now remember that there are 8 of those on each missile.
Now remember that on actively deployed submarines there are roughly 400 Trident II missiles.
The destruction that a small subset of the US nuclear arsenal is capable of would be more than enough to level almost any country.
You might find this interesting btw http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nuclear_weapon_effects/nuclearwpneffctcalc.html [fas.org]
theory aside, let talk reality (Score:3, Insightful)
b. In that region, nuclear weapons are still a hot topic political issue.
c. Obama gives the crowds what they want to hear. He's prven that already. In essence, a good (but typical) politician.
d. Slashdot took the bait, and now we're discussing what was discussed 10yrs ago. Only difference is we think we have someone that can do something about it... Just like 10yrs ago.
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear weapons push things to standoffs and force armies backing down. The consequences are just too great if nukes come out. The Cuban missile crisis is an example of that. And obviously, had things gone differently, the whole world could have become a radioactive smoking cinder.
But nuclear weapons have prevented WWII style wars. Wars now are at least confined to one country's borders instead of spreading.
Why do people think that China hasn't invaded and taken Taiwan back? They have weapons lined up ready to strike but haven't. They are trying to push the USA financially, but ultimately, until they can be assured that we won't defend Taiwan militarily, they won't attack.
But if the USA disarms and China holds onto its nukes, does anyone really think China will continue to hold off enforcing its claim that Taiwan is really a part of China?
Not a chance. They will do as they please and if the USA interferes, all they need to do is threaten our forces with being nuked. End of story. Taiwan becomes part of China and the USA backs down with its tail between its legs.
The reality is that nukes are here and other countries have them. They are all different explosive sizes and they can and will be used by other countries if the USA disarms ours.
I guarantee to you that very few other countries feel the same "moral obligation" to disarm or to not use nuclear weapons in battle.
Bush looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes, saw his soul and saw a friend. Bush was a fool. Russia and China are rebuilding their militaries, with China building faster than anyone knew until recently. Throwing away our only deterrent against these countries is simply giving them the green light to do as they please and use the Cheney salute ("Go F Yourself") to tell us what they think about any intervention.
As they say, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
Yay, violence! (Score:5, Insightful)
For a certain version of "works". You cannot murder people into loving you, for example. You can bomb people into true submission, but that requires blazing a path of epic destruction through their homes like Hitler through Poland, only more thorough. To consider yourself one of "the good guys" when you're openly advocating that sort of thing requires the sort of masturbatory self-delusion endemic to cokeheads and Americans.
Like Hilzoy said [blogs.com], "Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination. If you use it, you had better be prepared to find yourself in the kind of place it takes you to."
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:5, Insightful)
However, what would the world have looked like if the US hadn't taken the western half of Europe? Stalin certainly wouldn't have agreed to let everything west of berlin remain democratic, would he? Can you honestly think that things would have been better with Russia as the sole superpower? The US hurts people out of ignorance and letting the wrong people have more power than they otherwise would have, but even then it doesn't compare to the types of power and brutality you saw out of the Soviet Union or other dictatorships. The US's shit doesn't smell like roses, but it sure does a better job of keeping that shit off of their friends.
Bullying. How trite. (Score:3, Insightful)
Where "doing anthing to protect ourselves" means lighting a whole bunch of civilians on fire by "mistake", right? (Hey, it's not like those terrorists place the same value on life as we do!)
Of course, you might mean things like boring investigative work to monitor potential threats and bring them through the justice system in the full light of day, or not blowing up civilians as "collateral damage" and then being so darned surprised when survivors and their relatives are unhappy with us. But somehow, I doubt it.
Because the only way to relate to a world full of strange and alien people is to terrify them into submission, and crush any hint of dissent within your own ranks, lest it betray weakness to the enemy.
I think you're confusing Warhammer 40K with reality.
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:3, Insightful)
german armed forces in the west and in africa were a fraction of the forces on the eastern front, so there.
also, the thought that stalin wouldn't let the rest of germany remain democratic is wrong. stalin was fine with a democratic germany as long as it stays neutral but then truman started the cold war with his doctrine and the rest is history.
when you say that usa hurts people out of ignorance you are very wrong. usa hurts others everytime it is in their interest. also, it depends what you compare. for example you would be much safer from police brutality in the ussr of 1987 then in the usa of 2007.
He didn't want to destroy them tomorrow (Score:1, Insightful)
Some people here think Obama is stupid, but I think he is not the dumb person illustrated in this forum. First, he didn't say that he want to destroy all of them right now. He said that he want to talk with all weapon owners and reduce the number of nukes. Second, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) does not only state that nuclear weapon technology should not be distributed. It also includes the plan to dismantle all nuclear weapons. So Obama is only pointing out that we already agreed to do so.
Third, the presence of nuclear weapons frightens other states so far, that they a) try to build their own and b) do not trust us. And why should they if we do not hold our word what can they do? Nothing. So it is reasonable to reduce the military dominance of the West a little bit.
To understand my point, look at these numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federations_by_military_expenditures [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:2, Insightful)
I *hope* it takes a nuclear 9/11 to wake us up. Because if there hasn't been a nuclear 9/11, that means the USA struck first. And that's not something we should do.
Re:No,he is very clever :) (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it's not even that. Let's say Libya has the only nuclear weapon left in the world and there is nothing we can do to stop them from using. They use it to blow up a city. Now, no one has nuke. Next, we carpet bomb the shit out of every city in Libya.
Before the U.S. developed the nuke, cities were still being routinely destroyed in WWII. The difference is that we were able to destroy a city with *one bomb* instead of having to use an entire raid, like at Dresden.
Re:Nuke Free Only Until When (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems to me that the threat of the US and Britain to the west helped the Russians on the eastern front considerably and vice versa. The Russians didn't even get Leningrad back until the US was fighting in North Africa, so I don't think you can say that it sat out until Russia had the war won, and I don't think several years of war count as "[going] in to steal the laurels". So, while you are absolutely in the wrong with respect to WWII, I will say that Russia did much more of the legwork than you'd think from American culture. There's no way to tell what would have happened if one or the other were to have stayed out of the war, but I'd say it's fairly safe to say that they both played their roles.
Let's not forget the battle of Kursk [wikipedia.org] (lso known as the greatest tank battle of all times)which was probably the most definitive battle of the World War II. It was the battle that destroyed the Germans' offensive force. Russians lost a lot, but looking at the big picture it's what pretty much won the war.
Also, the battle was the first time a predecessor of one of these [youtube.com] got used. The morale in war plays a big part of it, so imagine witnessing the result of hundred of them for the first time in history - from the other side.