Now that things are more complicated than West v. East, is there any point in strategic or tactical terms to continue to maintain our nuclear stockpile? I am not interested in moral or emotional arguments for the sake of this discussion.
Thanks,
Rob
It serves as a deterrent to all the other states with nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons are the most effective weapon there is. If things ever went badly awry, they’d be an ace in the hole. A state with nuclear weapons is vastly more powerful than one without, and if the state can deliver them with ICBMs, going to (full scale) war with that state is a doomed enterprise.
To use an obvious example, the United States is vastyly larger, richer, and has a much bigger armed forces than, say, France. So could the USA invade France? No, because France would nuke the USA. Having nuclear weapons evens France up with the USA.
Yes. For one thing (and the reason Obama’s move is being hotly debated and not neccessarily supported) is that we opted to eliminate our bio and chem weapons. Without them, we rely on our nuclear stockpile for the ultimte “big stick”. Further, without those, someone could easily opt for a massive first-strike nuclear assault which we could enither stop nor retaliate against.
It doesn’t do much for those on the receiving end of the first strike, or is getting our own back sufficient enough?
The threat of retaliation is what is supposed to prevent a first strike. MAD and all that. If even a few missiles survive the first strike, the ensuing penis…I mean retaliatory strike…still inflicts horrific casualties.
Think about Japan and South Korea. They are our allies within spitting range of China and North Korea, two non-friendly nuclear powers.
If we gave up all our nuclear weapons, do you think Japan and South Korea wouldn’t build nukes to deter China and North Korea? Odds are, yes. Then we would probably have more countries going around building nukes because they can’t count on the US deterring their adversaries.
Now, despite the OPs request, an emotional answer: IWANT. IWANT. Waaaaaaa! Waaaaaaa! I’m scared without nukes! I’m going to stamp my feet until I get what I waaaaant!
But seriously, how could one answer that question emotionally?
PGSlot > Situs Slot Gacor PG Soft Resmi & Daftar Judi Slot88 #1 We are wasting a fortune on nuclear weapons. We spend 17 billion a year on maintaining them and their delivery systems. We could cut them in half and not even notice it.
It’s worked for 65 years, hasn’t it?
The only way that the U.S. would completely disarm would be if every other state with nuclear weapons also agreed to do so, and actually did so in a completely verifiable manner. Since it is impossible to verify without a doubt that every other nation had also disarmed, it is exceedingly unlikely that the U.S. would ever completely get rid of its nuclear weapons. This procedure of agreement and mutual verification has been used successfully in recent decades to dramatically decrease the number of nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russians possess, however.
Even if every other nuclear state agreed to disarm, however, it is probably not in the best interests of the U.S. to completely disarm. The strength of the U.S. armed forces lies in its technology, not just on sheer numbers of men and materiel. Nuclear weapons are part of that technology.
Nuclear weapons do have some tactical uses, such as potential retaliation for an adversary (in a war) resorting to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons (the so-called “weapons of mass destruction”). The use of a nuclear-tipped cruise missile might be contemplated in such a situation before resorting to ICBMs.
The most compelling rationale for nuclear weapons, however, is their effect on large-scale wars between first-rate powers. The last 65 years have probably been the most peaceful ever experienced in recorded history. There have been no wars between great powers, only small-scale “brush fire” conflicts. Prior to 1945, the great powers had rarely gone a generation without a major conflict. There’s a reason why the “Cold War” was cold instead of hot, and that was the presence of nuclear weapons.
I wasn’t implying otherwise.
But it is better to use them as a bargaining chip for the reduction of nuclear stockpiles by all nuclear powers. That does better at making the world safer than us doing it ourselves. The biggest danger is not that the Russians are going to hurl bombs at us, but that someone will steal a bomb from the Russians.
We could, but that’s more because $17 billion is far from a fortune, at least as far as our government spending goes. That’s, what? A 10th of a percent of our over all budget? It’s sort of in the range of the NASA budget, and only slightly more than we spend on flatworm research per year…
(just kidding on that last part, btw).
The thing is, cutting the number of nukes we currently have in half wouldn’t cut the budget in half. Part of the problem is that our current stockpile is staring to seriously age. That’s why the Pentagon has been asking for (and being turned down) the ability to develop new designs. Keeping the old stuff up and certified is costly. And there is really no point at all to having the things if you aren’t really sure they are going to actually work, if, gods forbid, you really need them. Right now I’d say that the Russian’s haven’t got much confidence in, if they really needed to use what they do have, the things would work as designed (for that matter, they are probably unsure if the rockets they are strapped too will work as designed). That’s a real problem for them…a potentially deadly one, actually, for either them or for some nation that makes a calculation that their nuclear weapons aren’t a credible threat, and so can be disregarded.
The US needs to maintain nuclear weapons for as long as anyone else has the things…and we need to have both a big enough stick so that no one (in their right mind) even THINKS about using them and that the stick is still considered to be credible (i.e. it’s not a rotten branch that is going to break when we try and use it). That has been what has kept the world from both a 3rd (and final IMHO) world war, and kept anyone from using the things since we did against Japan.
-XT
Political decisions, including decisions about going to war, are based on analyses of the costs and benefits. Nuclear weapons raise the cost of going to war and by doing so have helped prevent wars. The Soviet Union and the United States, for example, most likely would have fought a major war in the last half of the twentieth century if it hadn’t been for nuclear weapons. One side would have been willing to pay the cost of a conventional war. But neither side was willing to pay the cost of a nuclear war so the war didn’t happen.
Because then France could dictate terms to you using the threat of nuclear weapons. Your conventional army would be almost irrelevant.
Indeed. When was the last comparable period when the major powers of the era didn’t go to war? Pax Britannica, 1815-1853?
I think this is a major failing of the left wing in this country. I know many liberals (and I consider myself a liberal) want to eliminate all nukes and all war, etc., and “developing new nuclear weapons” sounds like nasty 1960s warmongering… but there’s little pragmatism to their arguments. I would rather see us reduce our conventional military and overseas commitments, and reengineer our nukes to be modern, fully reliable, and stockpiled in exactly the right (minimum) quantity.
There will ALWAYS be a threat of nuclear warfare in the world, just as there is always a threat of conventional warfare (or interpersonal violence). That’s why nobody (except the total crazies) argues for dismantling ALL of our armed forces, and just hope no one invades, and that’s why you have municipal police forces, etc. It’s a dangerous world, and someone out there is always going to have a nuke.
I seriously doubt that this is what the OP had in mind, but don’t forget about them bunker busters. If Ahmadinajad is really developing a nuclear capacity yards and yards underground, then that might be the only answer.
Not that it’s a good answer; when it comes to containing proliferation by guys who figure the world’s going to end soon anyway, there really aren’t any. It wouldn’t surprise me if Tel Aviv already has developed something like this, in fact.
Barely. The Cuban missile crisis brought us close.
There was also the incident in 1983 when soviet computers falsely claimed the US was initiating a first strike nuclear attack. Luckily the soldier on duty refused to retaliate and figured it was a computer error.
Also there are theories that Stalin was considering a first strike nuclear attack on the US, and he was poised by Beria (his head of secret police and an all around asshole) to stop him.
So it has worked, but at the expense of several situations where the risk of 100s of millions dead and an uninhabitable planet were barely avoided.
Amoral leaders, broken computers, sabre rattling, etc. have all brought us to the brink of nuclear war.
I’m not saying nuclear deterance was a perfect plan. But which is worse? A 95% chance of a Soviet-American conventional world war which would kill about fifty million people with only a 5% chance of peace or a 95% chance of peace with only a 5% chance of a Soviet-American nuclear war which would kill about a billion people.
How did we get President Obama involved in Chem/Bio weapon destruction? The destruction was by treaty from the early 90s. The C/B weapons never were a big stick. The record was really spotty in WW I once both sides became aware of use and eliminated surprises. Many deployments actually backfired on the users due to shifting winds and weather conditions. They are hard to make work. Your own troops will be disabled in the area where the weapons were used. Having to wear a suit and mask for long periods is a killer. Accidents will happen and your own people will go down. Happens currently in the storage/destruction of the current stockpile. Complacency is big problem.
From mr smashy "…but don’t forget about them bunker busters. If Ahmadinajad is really developing a nuclear capacity yards and yards underground, then that might be the only answer.’
We don’t have an effective bunker buster for anything deep. Even nukes are/were not effective. The bombs we dropped on Iraq in GW I were laser guided down ventilation shafts. The bad guys learn and put in doors and jogs in the passageways leading underground. A nuke will cause massive fallout over a huge area.