Actually, now that I’ve looked up anthrax, I agree with you. Since it’s not spread from person to person, the anthrax shell, like the DU one, will just contaminate those around it. Any biological agent with a greater potential to spread would be different, though.
I’m thinking that I’d have trouble characterizing something as a Weapon of Mass Destruction if I had to use statistics and circumstantial evidence gathered over a decade even to decide if there was a mortality issue. If that’s a weapon, it’s not a very good one.
Getting a little side-tracked. The central point was that those who do categorise weapons with very little actual destructive capability (eg anthrax shells) as WMD (for example George Bush or Tony Blair) yet are prepared to use weapons of a similar category themselves should not automatically be trusted to not use the real deal.
Yes, but you seem to be making two points here, neither of which stands up to even casual scrutiny.
a. You seem to think that anthrax is not an actual threat. A little [light reading](http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj00/win00/davis.htm) indicates that this is not true. You also haven't demonstrated that DU is even in the same ballpark as far as lethality. The US left something like 320 tons of DU in Iraq after the first Gulf War. Leave that much anthrax lying around anywhere and you'd have thousands of casualties and an area of land unusable for decades. So your argument that an anthrax shell is equivalent to a DU shell seems just plain wrong.
b. Even if you accept the use of DU as a WMD (and let me restate that I think that argument is insupportable), you can’t really compare the decision to use DU (whose connection to illness remains a matter of debate) to the decision to use nuclear weapons with the concomittent huge devastation and international consequences. That’s like saying that someone who is willing to litter can’t be trusted not to be a serial killer.
Again, my point was not what I categorise it as, but what George Bush and Tony Blair categorise it as. Question: Al Qaeda explode a bomb containing Uranium-238 in an American city. Does George Bush consider that a weapon of mass destruction?
But to summarise again: the US has a history of using weapons that fall within the definition of WMD - atomic bombs on Japan, millions of tons of chemicals on Vietnam, radiological weapons in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Do we have any reason to believe that they wouldn’t use more destructive WMD?
More importantly, in the context of the topic, the US seems intent on producing nuclear weapons that are not intended as a detterant, but are actually designed to be usable. How can it be reasonable to do this while still trying to hold other states to their obligations under a treaty that the US has completely ignored for decades?
Oh? Some secret deployment of bunker-busting nukes that I didn’t hear about? Certainly, no person with a normal IQ would classify DU projectiles as ‘radiological weapons’, so I am sort of curious as to what you are referring to…
Leaving aside the arguments about who has a moral right to have nuclear weapons, the legal basis for who should them is the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The countries which signed it agreed to its terms; that the five nuclear powers then existing (US, USSR, UK, France, China) would continue to have the right to own nuclear weapons, that no other country could build nuclear weapons, and that the nuclear powers would generally not use nuclear weapons against the non-nuclear powers. India, Israel, and Pakistan never signed the treaty so technically they’ve broken no agreements by building nuclear weapons. North Korea did sign the treaty but has since revoked its signature. Iran is also a signatory.
… or equate defoliants in Vietnam with nerve gas and other chemical weapons.
Perhaps it’s time to just ignore ** Avenger ** and get back to the OP.
Personally, I think ** Hyperelastic** and ** Thudlow Boink ** got it right.
I am using ‘radiological weapons’ to mean weapons that produce radioactivity. Not particularly contraversial I would have thought. Perhaps you can use your hypernormal IQ to further educate me :rolleyes:
And for you Mr bump, a little background on what your ‘defoliants’ have done and continue to do to the people of Vietnam. Cite
Please feel free, that was my suggestion above.
The overwhelming majority of the world’s countries signed a treaty saying that they would refuse to ever develop nuclear weapons. That’s the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.
The US, and other nations as well, are simply trying to hold them to their word. Shouldn’t countries be held to account for their promises?
Oh yes, Forgot I was going to come back on that. The NNPT places a requirement on the nuclear nations to disarm at the earliest possible opportunity. Instead they have continued to develop new and more advanced weapons. Why should other countries be bound by a treaty that has been ignored by the nuclear powers.
Well, you must realise that the treaty, as written, allows the present nuclear powers unlimited discretion in determining when the “earliest possible opportunity” has arrived. You must also realise that, should any greater restriction have been placed on the nuclear powers, they would have refused to sign. The treaty, as is, effectively says precisely what the title of this thread says. If the non-nuclear powers didn’t recognize this, they’re collectively a bunch of idiots. They have no recourse now to complain about the inherent unfairness of the arrangement. They signed on despite these patent disparities.
Well, you must realise that the treaty, as written, allows the present nuclear powers unlimited discretion in determining when the “earliest possible opportunity” has arrived. You must also realise that, should any greater restriction have been placed on the nuclear powers, they would have refused to sign. The treaty, as is, effectively says precisely what the title of this thread says. If the non-nuclear powers didn’t recognize this, they’re collectively a bunch of idiots. They have no recourse now to complain about the inherent unfairness of the arrangement. They signed on despite these patent disparities.
Certainly I accept all of that. You must in turn accept that, having signed up to an agreement and having done precisely nothing to even move towards fulfilling their obligations, the nuclear powers cannot reasonably object if some states no longer wish to be bound by the treaty.
In fact I can and do. If treaties are to mean anything, the signatories cannot sign out whenever they feel like it. Unfortunately for the non-nuclear powers, they agreed to a treaty that allows the nuclear powers to act whenever they damn well please. If they were so dense as to not grasp that from the outset, that’s their problem. They have no recourse to fair play because the treaty is not fair. If you signed a legally binding contract that said I can come take all of your stuff whenever I’m in a surly mood, and then criticize me for being surly, I doubt the judge would be very sympathetic to your plight, whatever the intrinsic value of surliness. He would tell you that if you object to surliness so much, it was pretty damn stupid of you to sign the contract in the first place.
Of course signatories can withdraw from treaties. The US government has mooted the possibility of them withdrawing from this one. The treaty doesn’t say that the nuclear powers can do what they want, it says that they will destroy their nuclear weapons as soon as possible. As you have noted, this period is not defined. But, by no stretch of the imagination can this include building and developing new systems as has happened. The treaty is in disrepute.
Your example is in no way analogous. If I live next door to you and have several guns aimed at your door, you would understandably feel threatened. You might vow to arm yourself similarly, but defer on me promising to get rid of them as soon as I can. If you find me a couple of days later lugging a machine gun into my house, you might consider me in breech of this agreement, rather than just cursing your own stupidity.
I guess that SALT treaties didn’t make the news in your area. To update you, they were a series of negotiations between the United States and Soviet Union which resulted in the reduction of nuclear weapons. So I guess the NPT is still in effect after all.
The fact is that the terms of the treaty were there on the table. Most countries signed them (and also re-signed them in 1995 - so apparently there wasn’t too much buyer’s remorse). A few countries looked the deal over and took a pass. That’s their right.
Well I did consider that. At the time there was some hope that they would be a first step towards real disarmament. In retrospect that hope was misplaced, so I think we can discount them.
I agree. I also feel that it is their right to withdraw from the treaty if they no longer feel it is advantageous for them to remain within it.
I’m afraid I’d be cursing my own stupidity. If I thought I had any hope of reducing the threat to myself, I would have laid down specific guidlines that you must adhere to. The signatories of the NPPT did no such thing to the nuclear powers. They have no cause to complain, nor any recourse to terms, since there effectively aren’t any. The specific onus is entirely on them to NEVER develop nuclear weapons, a very precise state of affairs. I personally see no problem with holding them to exactly those conditions.
But you also feel the United States is wrong because it only complied with the letter of the treaty rather than with your interpretation of its spirit. Maybe the United States felt that was more advantageous to them.