Given Russia’s approach to use of nuclear weapons one of those risks of unilateral disarmament is increasing the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used. I also worry about creating an incentive for nuclear proliferation that also comes with a risk of nuclear weapons being used.
The concept relevant here is their approach which includes what is frequently called escalating to deescalate. Both public statements and more recent weapons development support that notion being part of Russia’s nuclear doctrine. Briefly it’s the idea that they can use limited first-use nuclear strikes (escalating from merely conventional means) when conventional conflict has turned against them and they want to de-escalate in a way that is favorable to them. That’s a concept now when we still have strong strategic nuclear forces. Russia is effectively gambling that the US and our nuclear capable allies won’t choose to risk further escalation in response to those initial limited strikes.
Even now, when they face an existential threat if they guess wrong, they have crafted nuclear doctrine to conduct limited nuclear strikes when it is advantageous. That doesn’t strike me as an adversary that will respond to unilateral disarmament by disavowing first use of nuclear weapons. It looks a lot more like one that, seeing the risk of guessing wrong going down, is more likely to use nuclear weapons.
Then there is the effect on all of our allies and partners that don’t have nuclear capability. They know that’s there’s a US nuclear arsenal to fall back on to protect their most vital national interests. That ceases if we unilaterally disarm and creates an incentive for them to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop their own weapons. Sure there’s the normal tools to prevent that like sanctions and conventional military strikes. Those tools are problematic when we’re discussing nations that are already our strategic allies/partners. Increasing the number of nuclear armed nations is not on my Christmas list this, or any other, year. If the number of nuclear armed nations does go up that comes with the risk that relatively obscure (in US awareness) regional friction points now become potential triggers for nuclear release somewhere in the world.
The US disarming does not necessarily reduce the risk of nuclear war. It may increase those risks. I would call potentially increasing the risk of nuclear war worse than than the US merely having nuclear weapons.
I strongly disagree. I think a big factor that keeps any country from using nuclear weapons is the fear of retaliation. Remove the possibility of retaliation and the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used increases.
I’ll point out that there was a four year period when one country had nuclear weapons. And they used them against another country. There has been a seventy year period when more than one country has had nuclear weapons. And no nuclear weapons have been used during that period.
Tell that to Ukraine, who sent their nuclear weapons to Russia after the fall of the USSR. Do you think Russia would be occupying Crimea if Ukraine had kept a nuclear deterrent?
Removing the US’s nukes absolutely increases the chance of nuclear war. The two ways to prevent nuclear war is for neither side to have nukes or both sides. I read an article about the game theory of nuclear war that was pretty interesting. It mentioned how the ideal leader(who pushes the button) should be someone who appears(probably not actually is) a little insane and vengeful. The other side needs to be absolutely sure you will launch your nukes. The other part of this is that you need to appear to be able to launch your nukes. The best way to achieve this is to really be able to launch your nukes. I read about some ideas that maybe the button for the nukes shouldn’t actually work. But the risk is that the other side figures that out and then nukes you because they know you can’t retaliate.
The other thing that is interesting to me is if the proliferation of nukes among the world powers is what we can attribute ‘the long peace’ to. Starting a non-nuclear war seems like an easy way to get into a nuclear war and so maybe countries avoid starting one.
Let’s say Russia threatens the US with a nuke after we disarm. Let’s say they drop a nuke on us. The US would retaliate by shutting down their power grids, disabling hospitals, and isolating the country.
The moment someone says nuclear disarmament is a silly idea, is the moment you know “we’ve fucked up”.
How many years until we disarm our nukes? 50? 100? 200? Is there an estimated time of nuclear disarmament, would you support a treaty aimed to disarm all nukes across all countries by a certain time period?
How many years until an accident occurs, or until conflict rises and a nation launches another nuke? Do you think we’ll reach total disarmament before or after us humans nuke ourselves again?
Edit: So let’s say you support the idea of everyone disarming by a certain time period. How do you intend to make that happen? If no one leads the race to nuclear disarmament, there will never be disarmament. The US, will have to be the ones to first reduce their nuclear stockpile, then the rest of the world can follow suit, including Russia and North Korea.
I think you are vastly overestimating U.S. ability to “shut down” someone else’s power grids and hospitals at will via cybernetics. Granted, I have no access to NSA abilities or classified knowledge, but I think this is way too optimistic.
But the rest of the world has no incentive to follow suit. They would be perfectly happy to keep their nukes and let America disarm itself.
Plus, as already mentioned above, the moment the USA rids itself of its nukes, numerous small American ally nations would feel intense pressure to arm themselves up, because they are now considerably ***more ***vulnerable than before. Nations like South Korea, Poland, Taiwan, Japan, etc. They now have every incentive in the world to get themselves an independent nuclear deterrent. Bear in mind that even having America as an ally didn’t stop Israel from stocking itself up on some nukes.
Having all countries eliminate their nuclear weapons is far different than what you proposed in this thread, which is one country unilaterally eliminating its nuclear weapons.
And even a universal nuclear disarmament might not be a real blessing. The threat of nuclear war may have imposed a limit on conventional warfare.
We know the guardian held onto most of the information snowden leaked, and what little we did get we know we’ve been tapping dams, hospitals, and power grids in dozens of countries. Just this year there were reports of the US infecting russian power grids with malware.
I think you’re underestimating the power the US has. The fact you have to buy a chinese cell phone to avoid getting tapped by the NSA should be evidence enough that our government has went above and beyond to ensure our position in the world if push comes to shove. I would not be surprised if the US has actually hijacked nuclear facilities and in the case of the Russias shooting off nukes for example, they could detonate on themselves.
My point being, even without nukes the US could win virtually any war if we went all out. Nuclear isn’t the biggest deterrent, our intelligence is.
Yes they do, to avoid mutually insured self destruction.
If we’re playing monopoly, and you lay it out there that if I do something u dont like you’ll flip the board over, and I lay it out there that if you do something I don’t like I’ll flip the board over. There is mutual insured self destruction if either of us piss one another off. I think both of us, would agree that forming a treaty to NOT flip the board over would be better for both parties, since I’m sure both of us want to continue playing monopoly.
I totally disagree. I think first you should form a treaty thats goal is complete 100% disarmament of all nuclear bombs by a certain year, then the US should take the first step and lead the way.
What’s batshit crazy is that we have all these bombs just sitting there. Eventually, those bombs will explode. Whether intentional or unintentional, plus if those nuclear facilities are hijacked, our own nukes could be used against us.
Nuclear disarmament isn’t silly, in and of itself. I doubt many in this thread are all fired up about having nuclear weapons. I’m certainly not. I hate the evil things, and would be fine if we all got rid of them. But you have to have a rational plan. You don’t just wing a major decision and ‘see what happens’. That’s rarely a good idea even for an individual, let alone a nation state…let alone a superpower that is part of a web of connections and balances.
Let me give you a timely example of what folks have been trying to explain to you…obviously in vain. Take the situation in Syria. Until recently, the US, despite having a very small force, was the balance point maintaining the status quo in the region. No one could or would go outside of certain parameters because they didn’t want to risk the US’s wrath. Then, a freaking orange haired monkey decided, hell, let’s change the equation and ‘see what happens’. Who knew it would cause such chaos and shift the balance so much, causing such a humanitarian crisis?? No one could have predicted that (heavy sarcasm here)!!
What you are suggesting is a LOT worse and a lot more destabilizing. It’s, seriously, the kind of silly, stupid shit that TRUMP would do on a whim. It’s his level of thought and understanding.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you are right. The US could, in fact, retaliate to a Russian nuking, oh, say New York city, but shutting down the Russian power grid, disabling their hospitals and isolating the country (whatever that means). What do you think the result would be? Russia caving in and saying, sorry about that smoking crater that was New York…we won’t do that again? Or, perhaps LA is now a smoking crater, maybe Chicago…maybe a half dozen or a dozen other cities? What’s going to stop them?
And, of course, your idea that we could shut down the Russian grid across the board, let alone for any sort of extended time period, is wildly unrealistic. We MIGHT be able to do some nasty cyber attacks on Russian infrastructure…almost certainly we could…but not that broadly, and certainly not for a really extended time period. And if we COULD, the Russians would, rightfully, consider that an existential threat to be dealt with by extreme measures. Such as nukes. Especially since the US would have nothing left after shooting that fantasy bolt.
Errr, what? No they will not. :dubious: Do you think these things are on a hair-trigger or shoddily assembled, so that if they rust a bit, or are jostled, they will go off?
Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons have been assembled since the dawn of the Nuclear Age. The majority of them were simply disassembled after a while with no incident whatsoever. There has not been a single accidental or wartime detonation of a nuclear weapon since Nagasaki in 1945.
To be fair, there have been close enough calls that one might judge that the fact there was no inadvertent nuclear war or nuclear escalation, or even an accidental multi-megaton explosion (like at Goldsboro) owes a tiny little bit to luck, which is not cool when you think about it.