I don’t know how many times we have to repeat this: It will *not *“happen regardless.” Right now, ally nations like Poland, Japan, South Korea and others have not assembled their own nuclear arsenals, and a big reason for this is because they are allied with the United States. If the U.S. were to divest itself of all its nukes, these ally nations ***would ***suddenly have huge incentive to go nuclear.
These things are interlinked.
No it’s more like I’m thinking about the issue.
I like the think I’ve made a good faith effort in this thread to treat your proposal fairly and discuss the topic. But this is where I’m cashing in my chips.
Because, the fact that Russia is not willing to listen to us on thinks it deems to be in it’s own interest is militantly unsurprising to anyone except, apparently, you. If Russia DID listen to us on everything and do what we say or want, that makes them a puppet. Not sure why I have to lay this out, but then you are so all over the place that perhaps even you don’t understand what the hell you are saying at any given time.
But you don’t seem to grasp that bad actors are constrained by the threat of total destruction, so there are limits to how bad they can be. Russia is constrained in it’s foreign policy with respect to it’s former territory or former, um, ‘client’ states by the fact that the US has nukes. Take that away and they aren’t constrained anymore, or at least to the same degree because the major threat of a US nuclear strike is taken off the table. That gives them many more options, bad options from our point of view and our allies points of view than they currently have. Same goes for most other nuclear powers. The real issue, however, is it throws the current balance into chaos, with our allies AND adversaries, as well as neutrals having to scramble to try an protect themselves when the US no longer can. That would be EXTREMELY dangerous to world safety at a time when things are already chaotic enough. You would, at a stroke, destabilize a situation that has been stable for over 60 years and probably spark the very nuclear war you say you are trying to prevent.
As for your last paragraph, it’s laughable. No, I don’t see disarmament in the foreseeable future. With your wonderful…well, plan is giving it far too much credit…I see a nuclear exchange as likely…maybe very likely…and I see rearmament at a break neck pace as not only possible but highly probable. Countries that don’t have nukes today would, for sure, be making them as rapidly as they can, hoping to get enough made to protect themselves from the major powers that have them who would be using them to further their own aims and goals. Japan and South Korea, for instance, absolutely would be getting nukes, because, unlike you, they KNOW China would be using them to push it’s aims and claims in the region. Taiwan would, of course, be fucked as there is no way they would survive. You would destabilize that entire region in the first few months after your great plan…and that’s just one region on the planet.
Hell, your plan would probably go down as the greatest bone headed cluster fuck in history…and we’ve had 3 years of freaking Trump, so that’s actually a very high bar to cross. :smack:
Don’t you mean “we guys” and “make us safe”? Being that you’re addressing fellow citizens as a red-blooded American patriot presenting a good-faith argument for the best course of action by his own beloved country?
For what it’s worth, I think civilian nuke stores and private nuke ranges are a bad idea, 2nd Amendment notwithstanding.
I don’t know if I agree. There’s something to be said for just tearing it down and starting over. Think of it as tearing off a thermonuclear band-aid. Something that’s going to happen so lets just do it and get on with the healing.
Hey! We agree on something.
The only choice we’re given is how many megatons.
And there we have the core problem. If you do not see potential disarmament in the foreseeable future, then you should be thinking about how to get there.
My proposal, just do it. Then let things play out. Let’s say Russia just went completely crazy started invading everyone. That would be preferable to having mutually insured self destruction in the case someone acts out. As I said at the very begging, it’s more dangerous to have nukes than it is not to have nukes. Any political consequences to disarmament do not offset the objective dangers nuclear ownership presents.
You, and everyone else trying to defend nukes, are too weak on this issue and it’s part of the reason why we are where we’re at. I’ll predict the future for you, countries are still going to do fucked up shit, and eventually nukes are going to be detonated. This is what, with 100% certainty, will eventually happen under your proposal to do nothing and sit idle while we all wait for mass destruction. I’d love to hear you guys say the shit you’ve said here to that guy who survived two nukes. It’s a lot easier to bring up excuses as to why we shouldn’t even attempt disarmament when you can separate yourself from the destruction and danger caused by nukes. Very very very similar to a gun nut who finally realizes guns are dangerous when his kid accidentally shoots themselves because they weren’t taught to respect firearms.
Let’s just see what happens seems like collosally bad public policy.
Barack Obama, I’m going to venture a guess - based off of your username - that you hold liberal views. Whenever Trump, or conservatives, propose something radical like “Let’s pull out of the Paris Accord” or “let’s deport all 11 million illegal immigrants” or “let’s abolish Social Security,” the response of liberals is never, “Sure, let’s roll the dice, who could guess what would happen.” It’s always to tick off a long list of the many reasons why doing that could be a bad decision.
So why, when it comes to your let’s-get-rid-of-all-our-nukes idea, your response is, “Let’s just experiment and see what happens, regardless of the many reasons people have already provided as to why it’s bad?”
I’m not sure that’s a sound assumption, let alone one supporting a tired “liberals are hypocrites” conclusion.
Maybe we should launch them all and “just see what happens”, I’m looking forward to that cannibalism and telepathic dog.
Gamma World player?
Why? Specifically, why is it so urgent, right now, today, that we need to destabilize the entire framework that has kept our species in relative peace for over half a century? No one is really racing to build up huge stockpiles of nukes today with the exception of a few rogue states who are being hammered for it via sanctions. China isn’t building a ton of new nukes, nor is Russia…what they are working on is new launchers. The US is doing the same while also working on anti-missile systems. So, tell me why you think that now, today, we need to freak out and go all radical. Also…why us? Your plan makes no sense for anyone, but why the emphasis on the US?
You don’t have a proposal. You have unicorn wishes and dragon tears. No major power is going to make a radical change and just hope for the best and see how it plays out. That’s crazy.
Why would it be preferable for Russia to go crazy and nuke the US or Western Europe to mutually assured destruction? And you have basically ignored the 800 lb gorilla in the room. You’ve repeatedly been told that by taking away the US it makes it MORE likely that there will be a nuclear exchange. Do you just not understand the reasoning, or are just ignoring it because it doesn’t conform to your world view or mental image?
Simply put, the probability of a nuclear war goes up if the US suddenly decides to get rid of all it’s nukes. This is because all the countries who rely on the US nuclear shield are going to have to scramble to build their own nukes as rapidly as they can. THEY aren’t going to just go ‘well, hopefully Russia/China/North Korea/whoever won’t nuke us, and if they do, well, that’s better than the whole world dying…let’s see what happens!’. At the same time, there will be a huge power vacuum the US will leave behind, and a small window for countries like Russia to take advantage of it. China will be behind the curve since they haven’t put a ton into nuclear weapons (as opposed to launchers), so Russia is going to have a window to push it’s agenda while it is absolutely dominant…with the flip side being that they aren’t in any other aspect of their military or economy.
Basically, cutting the the chase, your ‘proposal’, if we can give it that much credit, is most likely going to lead to millions of deaths that wouldn’t happen if we just continue with the status quo…which, again, there doesn’t seem any compelling reason, at this late date, not too.
No one is defending nukes. They are defending reality. This isn’t weak, it’s acknowledging that reality is real. What you are advocating (assuming this is all on the up and up, which I’m unconvinced of as the thread progresses) is, simply put, never going to happen. Because it’s stupid. And dangerous.
Your predictions of the future are based on emotion and your weird world view. We’ve had nukes since before most of the people in this thread were born. So, your 100% certainty prediction is, simply put, coming out of your ass. You can’t make such a prediction because nothing is ever 100% certain. Since you’ve ignored everyone trying to tell you, I’ll say that the probability of someone fucking up is going to be MUCH higher if the US did this crazy crap you are advocating.
Also, way to work guns and gun nuts into your OP. :rolleyes: At any rate, I don’t see any point in continuing this. You have yet to even bother to try and address the multiple points people have raised, instead spewing crazy crap and insults.
What if they don’t drop just one? What if they drop hundreds? Even if your fantasies about our cyber warfare capabilities were correct, it’s not going to be all that comforting to the survivors that we managed to shut off the electricity in Russia.
The reality is they probably wouldn’t even (intentionally, deliberately) drop a nuke. What they would do is push their current foreign policy initiatives to the max. Russia would invade the Ukraine and, possibly (maybe even probably) go after the Baltic states as well as to re-assert dominance on Eastern Europe. NATO would have some hard choices to make…do they push back and risk nuclear war, nuclear war where Russia is clearly dominant, or do they concede? Even today, WITH the US, there is some question of whether NATO would really fight it out over the Baltic states, and pretty much they wouldn’t over the Ukraine. It’s the US that balances the equation. For China, they would push their South and East China Seas to the hilt, and almost certainly they would invade Taiwan. Again, the only thing keeping them from doing that is the US ALONG with our other allies, but the US is the keystone.
The thing is, doing all of that would be natural for both of those countries, but the question is, what might happen if they do that and someone else pushes back? Or if Japan builds a bunch of nukes and China continues to try and push in the East China Sea, or if NATO decides, no, we really can’t afford to let Russia roll into the Baltic states or re-assert dominance over Poland and the other eastern European countries formerly under it’s boot heel. IOW, if there is a miscalculation due to the changing dynamic and shift in power caused by a total US vacuum. Hell, what does the US do if China decides they don’t like those freedom of navigation exercises anymore and ‘accidentally’ takes out a destroyer, or if they decide to make their point by attacking a carrier battle group? Does the US completely withdraw from everything, everywhere? Withdraw our military forces from around the world and bring them all home? If so, what sort of chaos would THAT additionally cause? And this leaves aside other bad actors who might decide to do something stupid, or the changing dynamic between China and Russia now that they would be the biggest nuclear powers. Things have been tense to the point of war between them in the past, and even though right now they are getting along, it’s mainly because both see the other (and a few others) as checks on the US.
Like I said earlier, the OP’s plan reminds me a lot of how Trump does things. He doesn’t understand the dynamic, doesn’t understand the history, doesn’t care about any of that, and just wants to Do Something™ and ‘see what happens’. It’s exactly what happened in Syria with the Kurds. Except the OP is actually jumping the Trump by an order of magnitude.