Nuclear Arms Cuts, Supported By 56% of Americans, Would Make the World Safer 615
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?
Safer? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Let's follow this here. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear warheads are pretty much only good to make other people not want to attack you because they fear getting nuked. You basically only need enough nukes to kill some of the big cities in a country and that should stop any non crazy person from launching against you.
One of the better quotes in this regard is that a nuclear arms race is like 2 generals standing waist deep in gasoline, the first with 3 matches, the second with 5.
Re:Safer? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does having 2000 versus 1000 nuclear weapons in any way improve our safety vis-a-vis NK or Iran? It's not like they're proposing getting rid of the nuclear deterrent entirely, or even cutting it down to a small arsenal. That's still 1000 operational warheads!
The only reason to have so many in the first place was an arms race with the USSR envisioning a counterforce scenario, where they try to nuke our nukes, and vice versa, before the other side can launch theirs. In that case it's helpful to have more than the other side. But it's not like NK is in any position to take out 1000 launch sites, such that we would need 2000 to be safe.
Re:Of course we need them. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:SDI's? (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
You can always launch a lot of cheap(-ish) decoys mixed in between the real warheads.
Re:SDI's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's follow this here. (Score:3, Insightful)
If 1000 to 1100 warheads is sufficient for the most paranoid people on the planet who are fully informed about the situation,
I assume you are referring to the Obama administration officials who came up with the 1000-1100 number here. What makes you think they are the most paranoid people on the planet? I'd say they were probably leaning mostly towards the world being all unicorns and glitter except for small pockets of Nickelodeon slime that haven't gotten the message yet.
Re:Safer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Our reduction in nuclear weapons does not put us in more danger regardless of what NK and Iran do. We can still destroy human civilization if we needed to. Sure we'd be safer if Iran and NK reversed course on nuclear weapons, but we can't directly control that. All we can directly control is our own stockpiles.
The less nuclear weapons out there, the easier it is to control them (e.g. less chance of accidents, theft, etc). The stockpiles in the USSR are a huge danger, because they are more likely to fall into the wrong hands. If we can get Russia to dismantle a bunch of nuclear weapons if we disable a bunch of ours, that's a good thing.
We can still try to obstruct NK and Iran, but keeping our huge stockpiles doesn't provide any added benefit.
Re:SDI's? (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't need 1000's of nuclear warheads to punch through one.. 1000's of conventional warheads and a dozen nuclear warheads would work just fine.
Actually, you don't even need that. As each ICBM reaches space, it could pop out a few dozen mylar balloon decoys. The balloons will cool rapidly in space, so you put a small IR LED with a button-cell battery in each one to give it the same heat signature as a real warhead. Of course the balloons will disintegrate as soon as they hit the atmosphere, but by then it is too late.
No replacement policy. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:SDI's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you don't even need that. As each ICBM reaches space, it could pop out a few dozen mylar balloon decoys. The balloons will cool rapidly in space,
And because of their tiny mass will almost immediately slow to zero velocity. If your DEW radars cannot differentiate between something moving at a considerable percent of the speed of sound and a balloon floating around with the wind, you need a better DEW line. "Hey, look, Bob, those incoming missles that were targeting Memphis are now going at only 120 knots and are aimed at the North Pole!"
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, for example, Japan sits underneath the American nuclear umbrella. They easily have the capability to build their own, but do not, because they trust that America will protect them. Other countries are in a similar situation. Once the American stockpile shrinks too much, the Japanese will start to get worried and want to build their own.
If it were only between Russia and the US, then our stockpiles would have shrunk already, because neither side is afraid of the other, neither side wants to attack and both know it. It's not worth the expense of having a large arsenal. But it's not; there are many actors in the world, and imagining it's just between the US and Russia is dream thinking.
Re:SDI's? (Score:4, Insightful)
China has no more ambition or motive to attack the US than Russia does. Sure they are a superpower, and therefore dangerous, but if that is enough to keep MAD, then there is no "just yet" about the situation, they will always (for the foreseeable future) be a superpower, so by your logical we must always have MAD.
Re:SDI's? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, at their current rate of expenditure their military should catch up with our current levels in only what, about 50-100 years. And I'm sure that has nothing to do with their being surrounded by a number of hostile and/or unstable countries within easy striking distance. Or as a deterrent against the one currently unopposed superpower that's apparently feeling it's oats and picking fights anywhere there's money to be made.
Frankly, I suspect the day China presents a credible military threat to the US will be the day our government has already crumbled from within.
Re:Safer? (Score:4, Insightful)
make the number too small and the odds of "winning" (elite survive) become attractive despite downsides.
Re:Get rid of some (Score:1, Insightful)
Hah! Genocide! Fucking classic! I wish I had more mod points!.
Relevance? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Safer? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, we also can detect that before it enters the port.
A cruise missile launched from a nuclear sub 20 miles of the coast on the other hand is going to be considerably harder to stop, especially if the country isn't already on alert.
ICBMs take too long to reach their destination. They havent' been the preferred delivery method for 30 years.
Re:Get rid of some (Score:5, Insightful)
no it's not (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SDI's? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which means you get wiped out while your missles are in space waiting for the re-entry time ...
At an altitude of 100km, you reach the Karman Line [wikipedia.org], which is generally considered the threshold of space. The air density at that altitude is 1/(2.2 million) the surface density. At ICBM trajectory has an apogee of 1,200 km [wikipedia.org]. Since the density decreases exponentially [wikipedia.org], it will be far, far less at that altitude. So I don't think either the balloons or the warhead would slow down enough to matter.
Re:Get rid of some (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Spare us the bullshit. NK and Iran are totalitarian pits. The US, for all its faults, is a representative democracy with the strongest free-speech protections on the planet (the one area, IMHO, in which the USA is far, far ahead of every other country on earth).
Re:SDI's? (Score:3, Insightful)
>The one where the democratically elected Afghani government
Since when are coup d'etats "democratically-elected"? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saur_Revolution)
You are an idiot. The coup took place after the former prime minister of Afghanistan (Daoud Khan) moved to increase ties with the West, and to distance itself from the USSR. It was the commie stooges that overthrew the government that called for help from Moscow, not some democratically-elected nonsense. And did so after their disastrous policies alienated the entire country. The US poured aid money into the opponents after the communist coup.
>Yeah, US funding/training for those great up-and-coming Anti-Communist Freedom Fighters like Osama Bin Laden
Osama wasn't funded or trained by the US. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_%E2%80%93_al-Qaeda_controversy)
You, sir, are a dancing fucking moron.