# This author wants to award the nobel peace prize to nuclear weapons **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 11, 2009, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413 "2009-10-11T17:47:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/21 "2009-10-12T00:36:55Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Pinochet, Arenas, Batista, Trujillo, Samoza…any of these names ring a bell? Sure they ring a bell. And…? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/22 "2009-10-12T00:45:39Z")
It is simply the illogic. More nukes makes us safer. I suspect we would be safer if all nukes were destroyed. MAD was crazy. If you buy we did not have nuclear war because Russia had them, and we had them , then we can avoid nuclear war forever by giving them to everybody. MAD never made sense. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/23 "2009-10-12T01:36:00Z")
> [@Alex\_Dubinsky](#): > > That’s exactly what happened. Bloody america couldn’t wait to invade the soviet union and suppress its dangerous revolutionary ideology for the benefit of all moneyed gentlemen. That’s why we nuked Japan for no good reason… twice. That’s why we tried to invade Cuba, and did other dumb things. The West was always the agressor. The communists were content with doing nothing because they more than agreed with the West’s paranoia that it would revolt against capitalism from within. This is an absolutely ridiculous statement. At the end of WWII, the U.S. was a military colossus. For six years it was the only country with nuclear weapons. Its war machine was producing ungodly amounts of weaponry - provided not just to its own soldiers, but to soldiers of every allied country including the Soviet Union. Its industrial infrastructure was completely intact, and its economy never even went into recession during the war. The U.S. occupied countries across the globe. It was the sole superpower in the world. And what did the U.S. do with all that might? It went home. It dismantled its military, and spend billions helping its former enemies rebuild. It voluntarily shrunk its military so much that a mere six years after the end of WWII it had trouble fielding enough soldiers for the Korean war. Likewise, at the end of the cold war, Russia was in complete disarray, its military completely incapable of fighting any sort of major conflict. The U.S. was the sole superpower in the world. And what did it do with all that unilateral power? Nothing. It voluntarily shrank its military again - during the 1990’s the U.S. military underwent a major downsizing, at a time when the economy was booming and it could have afforded to maintain an even larger military had it wanted to. And if had wanted to overthrow Castro in the 90’s, no one could have stopped it. And yet, nothing happened. Some expansionist empire. As for nuking Japan for ‘no good reason’, that’s just silliness. There was a total war going on. Cities were being firebombed across Europe and Asia. Japan was digging in and preparing to defend against an invasion, and the nukes helped break Japan’s will to fight and probably saved two or three million people. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/24 "2009-10-12T02:19:29Z")
I coined this saying in another thread, but it applies here too: Regional nuclear wars are like a knife fight- fascinating to watch from a safe distance, not something you want to get caught in. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/25 "2009-10-12T02:24:07Z")
Trouble is, there is no “safe distance”. Strontium-90 isn’t forever, but close enough. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/26 "2009-10-12T03:21:21Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > This is an absolutely ridiculous statement. At the end of WWII, the U.S. was a military colossus. For six years it was the only country with nuclear weapons. Its war machine was producing ungodly amounts of weaponry - provided not just to its own soldiers, but to soldiers of every allied country including the Soviet Union. Its industrial infrastructure was completely intact, and its economy never even went into recession during the war. The U.S. occupied countries across the globe. It was the sole superpower in the world. > > And what did the U.S. do with all that might? It went home. It dismantled its military, and spend billions helping its former enemies rebuild. It voluntarily shrunk its military so much that a mere six years after the end of WWII it had trouble fielding enough soldiers for the Korean war. > > Likewise, at the end of the cold war, Russia was in complete disarray, its military completely incapable of fighting any sort of major conflict. The U.S. was the sole superpower in the world. And what did it do with all that unilateral power? Nothing. It voluntarily shrank its military again - during the 1990’s the U.S. military underwent a major downsizing, at a time when the economy was booming and it could have afforded to maintain an even larger military had it wanted to. And if had wanted to overthrow Castro in the 90’s, no one could have stopped it. > > And yet, nothing happened. Some expansionist empire. > > As for nuking Japan for ‘no good reason’, that’s just silliness. There was a total war going on. Cities were being firebombed across Europe and Asia. Japan was digging in and preparing to defend against an invasion, and the nukes helped break Japan’s will to fight and probably saved two or three million people. [Timeline of United States military operations - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations) I can not understand what planet you live on. This is a nice list of our peaceful ways. it does not include our CIA assassinations and overthrows in the name of corporate freedom. We spend more on the military than the rest of the world. Good grief. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/27 "2009-10-12T03:37:43Z")
The time to give the Peace Prize to Nuclear Arms was in the 50s or 60s. MAD relied on the assurance that all nuclear weapons were controlled by sane, reasonable men who were fully aware and alive to the knowledge that using nukes would begin a war that would obliterate Western Civilization from the planet. Since the 70s, this is increasingly no longer so. What’s going to happen if Iran and Israel, or Pakistan and India nuke each other, for instance? It’s highly unlikely to start WWIII. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/28 "2009-10-12T03:49:53Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Pinochet, Arenas, Batista, Trujillo, Samoza…any of these names ring a bell? What do Latin American dictators have to do with this issue? None of them had nukes. I can pick random names too. Suzanne Somers, David Duchovny, Chris Farley, Brad Pitt, Malcolm McDowell… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/29 "2009-10-12T04:17:24Z")
All of those have Kevin Bacon numbers less than three, the same cannot be said of South American dictators. Sorry if I my point evades you, I rather thought that American support for such dictatorships was widely understood, and that it was largely justified on the basis of “anti-Communism”. In other words, a mirror image of the dreaded international communist conspiracy whose ghost is invoked. Any tinhorn who could afford a pair of snappy aviator glasses and a really stupid hat could declare that the people who were trying to oust him were Communists, and could be assured of our complete support. Did it ever fail? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/30 "2009-10-12T12:16:43Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > [Timeline of United States military operations - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations) I can not understand what planet you live on. This is a nice list of our peaceful ways. it does not include our CIA assassinations and overthrows in the name of corporate freedom. > We spend more on the military than the rest of the world. Good grief. Your statement utterly misses the point that Sam made. The U.S. has been the aggressor in far too many cases of one nation bullying another. However, **Alex\_Dubinsky** made the rather absurd claim that the U.S. was always the agressor, (at least following 1945), and that the only thing that kept the U.S. from invading and or destroying the U.S.S.R. was that the Soviets acquired nukes, themselves. **Sam Stone** ’s post demonstrated that that was a false claim: we held back and refrained from attacking the U.S.S.R. for six years during which time relations between our countries continuously deteriorated while only we possessed the bomb and an air force capable of delivering it. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. each initiated proxy wars and supported the overthrow of governments and the suppression of people throughout the Cold War as we each engaged in paranoid fantasies about what the other planned to do, but claiming that the U.S. was the sole aggressor is ludicrous and demonstrates an execrable ignorance of history. ( **Alex\_Dubinsky** might have been making an odd allusion of the idiotic 1919 invasion of Russia that figured so prominently in Soviet paranoid fantasies for a need to defend themselves from what would actually be a non-existent future attack, but his willingness and your willingness to ignore the Soviet attacks on Finland and Poland, the taking of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and numerous other examples of aggression, is just silly.) ---
**Author:** ![sweeteviljesus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@sweeteviljesus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweeteviljesus)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/31 "2009-10-12T14:00:28Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Trouble is, there is no “safe distance”. Strontium-90 isn’t forever, but close enough. This is beside the point of this thread, but in a regional conflict, there certainly is a safe distance. I am not getting sick from Chernobyl half a world away. ---
**Author:** ![Henrichek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5daacb/32.png) [@Henrichek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Henrichek)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/32 "2009-10-12T14:59:49Z")
> [@sweeteviljesus](#): > > This is beside the point of this thread, but in a regional conflict, there certainly is a safe distance. I am not getting sick from Chernobyl half a world away. It’s not so easy as a specific distance though, as fallout spreads with the wind and can affect areas quite far away too. In some areas here in northern Sweden we received quite high doses of Cesium-137 from rainfall after the Chernobyl disaster, which are still concentrated in mushrooms, berries, fish, and in animals that eat them. For example, in the first year after the disaster, 78% of the produced reindeer meat had to be discarded. The radiation levels are lower now of course, and only a few dozen animals must be discarded every year. Some kinds of mushrooms are best avoided however, as their levels are sometimes significantly over the safety threshold. Not to sound too apocalyptical though, there haven’t been any great increases in cancer malignancy here, but we have nonetheless been affected. That was something like 1000 miles away, so please keep a significantly longer distance than that if you really need to play with nuclear fallout generating activities :). ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/33 "2009-10-12T15:16:59Z")
> [@sweeteviljesus](#): > > This is beside the point of this thread, but in a \*\*regional \*\*conflict, there certainly is a safe distance. I am not getting sick from Chernobyl half a world away. Yes, lets please nip this tangent in the bud. Many, Hundreds? of atomic bombs were tested in the open air in the 40s,50s, 60s?. People around the world did not keel over dead or become mutant zombies. The real danger to the world due to a limited regional nuclear conflict is one that causes a global nuclear conflict, starts WW3 with conventional means, or causes a global economic depression/collapse. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/34 "2009-10-12T15:38:51Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Your statement utterly misses the point that Sam made. > > The U.S. has been the aggressor in far too many cases of one nation bullying another. However, **Alex\_Dubinsky** made the rather absurd claim that the U.S. was always the agressor, (at least following 1945), and that the only thing that kept the U.S. from invading and or destroying the U.S.S.R. was that the Soviets acquired nukes, themselves. > **Sam Stone** ’s post demonstrated that that was a false claim: we held back and refrained from attacking the U.S.S.R. for six years during which time relations between our countries continuously deteriorated while only we possessed the bomb and an air force capable of delivering it. > > The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. each initiated proxy wars and supported the overthrow of governments and the suppression of people throughout the Cold War as we each engaged in paranoid fantasies about what the other planned to do, but claiming that the U.S. was the sole aggressor is ludicrous and demonstrates an execrable ignorance of history. > > ( **Alex\_Dubinsky** might have been making an odd allusion of the idiotic 1919 invasion of Russia that figured so prominently in Soviet paranoid fantasies for a need to defend themselves from what would actually be a non-existent future attack, but his willingness and your willingness to ignore the Soviet attacks on Finland and Poland, the taking of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and numerous other examples of aggression, is just silly.) Stone added that we went home and were not aggressive. We were ,and have been over and over. He said clearly, that we did nothing. We did plenty . Through the CIA and our regular use of the military, we have been involved in aggression . ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/35 "2009-10-12T15:53:20Z")
To nuclear weapons? Why not to physics, instead? Or electrons? Or uranium? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/36 "2009-10-12T15:54:51Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > All of those have Kevin Bacon numbers less than three, the same cannot be said of South American dictators. > > Sorry if I my point evades you, I rather thought that American support for such dictatorships was widely understood, and that it was largely justified on the basis of “anti-Communism”. In other words, a mirror image of the dreaded international communist conspiracy whose ghost is invoked. Any tinhorn who could afford a pair of snappy aviator glasses and a really stupid hat could declare that the people who were trying to oust him were Communists, and could be assured of our complete support. Did it ever fail? Assuming that was addressed to me, I’m still not getting how this addresses the OP. The article linked to explicitly acknowledges that: > [@](#): > > …Hundreds if not thousands of wars, small and large, have been fought since Hiroshima and Nagasaki… What he’s talking about is WWII and pre-WWII industrialized warfare between the global powers, which seems to have halted once nuclear weapons appeared on the stage. Of course, correlation isn’t causation, but it does make one think. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/37 "2009-10-12T15:59:45Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > It is the logic. We didn’t use them because Russia got them. And the obverse that Russia didn’t use them because we didn’t. The idea that nukes makes the world safer in illogical. Apparently when countries that fear the US attacking them, getting nukes it is a no no. I wonder why we object? If we gave Iran nukes, then Israel would be less likely to attack them. The US might be more wary of attacking Iran. See ,peace in our time. I don’t think you get the point of the proposal. It is not concerned with the fact that MAD prevented a nuclear war, but that MAD prevented a conventional WW III. The question is, was what would have happened if nukes had never been invented? The speculation is that there would have been a conventional war, a war which didn’t happen because it would have obviously escalated into a nuclear one. This didn’t happen in regional conflicts because even in the worst case the national interests of us or the Soviets were not threatened enough to break the first use barrier. BTW we had several years where we could have attacked the Russians with nukes before they had them, but those were more idealistic times and there were even proposals for having all nukes controlled by the UN. I think just having gone through the horrors of war helped also. But, give HST some credit. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/38 "2009-10-12T16:58:00Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I don’t think you get the point of the proposal. It is not concerned with the fact that MAD prevented a nuclear war, but that MAD prevented a conventional WW III. The question is, was what would have happened if nukes had never been invented? The speculation is that there would have been a conventional war, a war which didn’t happen because it would have obviously escalated into a nuclear one. This didn’t happen in regional conflicts because even in the worst case the national interests of us or the Soviets were not threatened enough to break the first use barrier. The flip side to this is that the Soviet Union kept the Warsaw Pact “client states” under its thumb for forty years, draining nations like the Ukraine and Poland for resources and goods, and keeping the Baltic states impoverished even compared to the other nations of Eastern Europe, and generally repressing the hell out of technical innovation, free expression in literature and arts, and investment in human capital. How many lives were wasted, and what could have been had the nations of Western Europe pushed back on the Soviet Union and been allowed more open commerce? Indeed, it was the American installation of intermediate range nuclear missiles in Southern Europe which precipitated the Soviets to attempt to install weapons in Cuba and subsequently led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which resulted in Khrushchev being deposed and the economic and political reforms he hoped to enact being stillborn. Praising nuclear weapons as the savior of mankind and deliverance from warfare is like a battered wife praising her husband for not beating her more severely. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/39 "2009-10-12T17:28:17Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Assuming that was addressed to me, I’m still not getting how this addresses the OP. The article linked to explicitly acknowledges that:… You assume wrong, it is addressed to the theme of post #19. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2009, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413/40 "2009-10-12T17:30:44Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > The flip side to this is that the Soviet Union kept the Warsaw Pact “client states” under its thumb for forty years, draining nations like the Ukraine and Poland for resources and goods, and keeping the Baltic states impoverished even compared to the other nations of Eastern Europe, and generally repressing the hell out of technical innovation, free expression in literature and arts, and investment in human capital. How many lives were wasted, and what could have been had the nations of Western Europe pushed back on the Soviet Union and been allowed more open commerce? Indeed, it was the American installation of intermediate range nuclear missiles in Southern Europe which precipitated the Soviets to attempt to install weapons in Cuba and subsequently led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which resulted in Khrushchev being deposed and the economic and political reforms he hoped to enact being stillborn. > > Praising nuclear weapons as the savior of mankind and deliverance from warfare is like a battered wife praising her husband for not beating her more severely. > > Stranger So, you think the Iraqis who lost their family to the results of the American invasion should thank us because at least it wasn’t Saddam? Do you think that a satellite nation could have gotten out from under in the '50s or '60s without a war? One can argue that Khrushchev being deposed was good in the long run since if the reforms did work the rot inside Communism would have been reduced and the fall postponed. Brezhnev’s mismanagement was a good thing for the world in the long run. Remember also that the same Khrushchev who denounced Stalin and allowed One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich be published also stomped on Hungary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-author-wants-to-award-the-nobel-peace-prize-to-nuclear-weapons/513413.md?page=3)