Specifically, do you think it is only a matter of time before a fission weapon is detonated on a civilian or military target, whether by a nation or a terrorist group? If so, what sort of time frame?
It seems to me that slowly but surely additional nations come to the nuclear club. India, Pakistan, North Korea all in the relatively recent past. If Iran gets one, Saudi Arabia has indicated that they too will seek one (Saudi Arabia May Seek Nuclear Weapons, Prince Says - The New York Times).
I don’t see why this will really ever end. I think it naive to assume that we will eliminate, once and for all, the efforts by ALL nations to obtain such weapons. Furthermore, I have to assume that technology just makes these things ever easier to obtain. Computing power, automated manufacturing, etc.
What do you think? I figure that it almost seems inevitable that in my lifetime one of these things will get loose…
Well, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is designed specifically to prevent regional nuclear arms races like what you lay out. If Iran has it then Saudi Arabia has to have one.
If Mexico fires it up Venezuela and then Brazil and Argentina.
Ad infinitum, you might say.
And yes, I’d say with more and more nukes out there it becomes increasingly likely that some entity, nation-state or otherwise, uses one. At that point the only deterrent is ‘Use one and we will intervene. Destroy one enemy city and watch 10 of yours go up.’
Inevitable that it will occur sometime in the future? Yes. but then it’s also inevitable that the continents will reform one super continent sometime in future.
Inevitable in the current political set up? No. Possible? Yes.
Can a nation’s leaders be competent enough to create a successful nuclear weapons program, while being crazy, stupid or evil enough to use them? Hitler would have been crazy and evil enough to use them but stupidly decided not to pursue “Jewish physics”. Stalin’s Soviet Union was evil but not stupid. China during the Cultural Revolution was crazy but apparently not that stupid. Frankly I was originally expecting an India/Pakistan nuclear war eighteen months after Pakistan exploded their first test device; apparently the existential dread of nuclear annihilation can temper even the most radical belligerents. North Korea is crazy, stupid AND evil, but hasn’t been able to explode more than a kiloton or sub-kiloton fizzle; my guess is that their program is plagued with quality-control issues that leave them with poorly fissionable material. So for the time being anyway, strike the “competent” qualification from North Korea. Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, but its efforts are hampered by the extreme disapproval of the rest of the world, and the real possibility that they might be attacked if they continue to try. My w.a.g. is that if and when Iran succeeds, it will be after their leaders have accepted that using them, even supposedly clandestinely, would be suicidal.
The big question is, will somebody too stupid, evil and crazy to develop their own nuclear weapons ever acquire them from someone else? I’m crossing my fingers that Pakistan’s professional military class has enough self-interest not to be subjugated to a radical Islamic revolution. For a while after the breakup of the Soviet Union there was fear that Soviet nukes might make it onto the black market, but that would have happened by now if it was going to. And I very much doubt that anyone will ever sell or give away nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons may be the one thing in the whole world that are actually more valuable than money itself; no one who has the capacity to build their own nukes could ever need or want to sell them to someone else. So that leaves whether nuclear technology could ever become openly known enough for someone to build a weapon according to a leaked design, with diverted fissile material. I can’t say that will never happen but I don’t see it happening too soon. The nuke possessors’ club is exclusive enough that they have a strong interest in not letting designs or nuclear material proliferate.
No, I think it’s more likely that a place like North Korea, seeing that the major powers seem very disinclined to invade someone with nukes, really do see owning even just one or two bombs as a defense against invasion. They’re probably even right about the notion that membership in the nuclear club, no matter how tentative, does reduce the chances of a major power invading your territory. They’re still assholes and bastards, but in fact they are unlikely to actually use their one or two nukes because once the supply of them are used up those major powers will really want to roll over them. The current regime in North Korea might have a couple nukes, but they’re too much in love with themselves and their current power to actually use them in current circumstances and risk their Very Important Selves being hunted down and killed in retaliation.
What I fear is some splinter group that isn’t firmly based in one particular location getting one and using it - because if it’s a rootless organization what nation do you drop the retaliation on? Nukes aren’t used to target individuals (no, we have drones for that now…) Either that, or someone genuinely crazy gets control of the nuke supply for a nation and decides to use them, not caring for their own continued existence or having a means to flee before the retaliation starts. Or someone with access to nukes gets backed into a corner and decides if they’re going down they’re taking a couple cities with them.
If you want a discussion at the level of 8 year olds as is evident from your post then yes they are. :rolleyes:
Straight answer? Nation states are by their very nature conservative and risk averse. Nation states carry out actions in their actual or perceived self interest and which the believe would on balance be beneficial. Irans mullahs and N Koreas Kims know perfectly that use of nuclear weapons as a first strike would in all likelihood not be on balance beneficial. Who are the mullahs going to use it against? Israel? Very bad retaliation very fast. Pakistan? Every city flattened in 10 minutes. S Arabia? The US would be mighty displeased. N Korea, S Korea? Japan? See the S Arabia answer.
Why is this absurd fallacy so popular in debates here? Is there no room in your intellectual understanding of the world for national leaderships which are ugly, nasty, tyrannical, and exploitive, but which don’t happen to launch nuclear wars?
There really is a very vast middle ground here, which you, in an almost cartoonish example of simplism, have excluded.
Your process of debate, so far, is to ask people if they stand by statements they never actually made.
No one here thinks that the government of North Korea are “fluffy pussycats.” That was an absurd straw-man of your creation.
And no one here thinks that governments which threaten total annihilation are not serious nor does anyone here think that such governments should be discounted. This, too, is an absurd made-up straw man that you have put forward, as if, in some preposterous way, someone here has proposed it.
I think the government of North Korea is extremely dangerous, tyrannical, ideologically insane, and morally degraded. I think that governments which threaten total annihilation are dangerous, extremist, and should be watched very closely. Such countries should be held at a distance, cut off from most of the ordinary trade and diplomacy that more rational countries engage in.
Isn’t that enough?
By the way, you also altered what I said of your post and your reasoning; I said that what you wrote was cartoonishly simplistic. I did not say that of you. The implicit distortion seems to be symptomatic of your posting style.
I think countries that threaten total annihilation should of course be taken seriously, but at the same time we must examine whether total annihilation is within their capability. Neither Iran nor North Korea appear to have such a capability. One or two low-yield fission weapons, with limited options for delivery, ain’t going to cut it.
In answer to the OP - yes, the odds are similar perhaps higher than during the Cold War.
However there are a couple of things to consider:
Firstly delivery. Its all very well to froth enthusiastically about wiping out the dreaded enemy but unless they are geographically next door, sending a nuclear bomb to them is not easy. Consider Iraqs SCUD missiles as an example - highly inaccurate.
Secondly, devastation. No bomb is pleasant or acceptable but a nuclear weapon is not the nation destroyer many imagine. The vast majority of people would be unscathed and able to wage war.
While some might consider an atomic bomb just a really big explosion, others, including most of the world’s political community, would consider it as having crossed a line. Once it is crossed (and I’ll exclude the Hiroshima/Nagasaki events as being too far in the past), there is no longer a line to worry about or pause at the next time you feel the urge to destroy something. Now that’s scary.
Hmm.. Are you discounting it because yours is the only country in the history of the world to have used a nuclear weapon?
When does the destruction of the WTC become “too far in the past” to worry about it? By my calculations, taking into account death tolls and years since, should be, oh 2002-2003ish.
So far, the USA is the only country that has used a nuclear weapon in anger, it’s leaders are continuously reminding the world that they are prepared to use them in retaliation for non-nuclear aggression, and there is a sizeable community in the US that would welcome their use.
My answer to the OP is: Yes, and it’ll be the US to do it.