The Hiroshima/Nagasaki point was a bit lame but i was responding to Hail Ant’s implication that the US and all the “good” states of the world would never use a nuke ( in that case an a-bomb i think) but that the rogue states would. The only evidence i have (scant as it is, praise be) is that this is not true.
My point about Germany in the 1930s was badly worded.
What i meant was from the perspective of the security of the western world there is little correlation between a highly-advanced industrialised European nation like Germany in the 1930s was and the vanquished present day Iraq or the archaic communist state of North Korea. As Shodan has accurately shown, the use of the term “the situation in” was incorrect on my part. The situations in and aspirations of the three states are/were similar but the actual abilities to accomplish their megalomaniacal international ambitions differ considerably.
My point (not made clearly sorry) was that that the German Reich was a genuine serious threat to the Western liberal democracies (and various other geo-political entities for that matter) as World War Two later made clear but that these modern rogue states do not constitute the same magnitude of threat.
BTW I have to state that i have no sympathy whatsoever with these horrific regimes i just wanted to respond to what i thought was wrong with Hail Ant’s post (nothing personal!!)
What’s this “allowed” (well, “aloud” ) crap? Having nukes is like having territory: if you can get it, and keep it, it’s yours.
As the modern nations developed and borders became more firmly drawn, they naturally entered into treaties to keep those borders intact, on the premise that if two nations decide where the line is, neither has to spend oodles of cash keeping military units in place on the border just to cancel each other out. In a similar vein, the NNPT was drawn up so the nations that didn’t already have nukes could be confident that their nonnuclear neighbors weren’t building them. Without such an understanding, every developed nation on Earth would have to keep a nuke or two squirreled away, just to discourage attackers.
North Korea signed such the treaty and are now breaking it or threatening to break it. Can the build the nukes and keep them? If so, then they are “allowed” to have them.
How is the concept of a nuclear-armed country run by a dictator who starves his own people, a country that sells tactical missiles to countries with elements sympathetic to groups like Al-Qaida not a threat to world security?
Poppycock. Nukes have been “used” constantly from 1945 onward, as bargaining chips and threats. Threatening to use them has been such an effective tool that no-one has actually felt the need to hit an enemy city, post Nagasaki.
One can certainly say the Indians and Pakistanis are “using” their nukes to menace each other, though they’ve yet to clobber each other’s cities. North Korea need only conduct a successful test, even on its own territory, to cause a major shift in international politics.
I myself can’t fault the Americans for using the nascent A-bombs in 1945. They had been attacked in 1941, after all, and what Japan was doing on the Asian continent was similar in tone to what Germany was doing in Europe. They get no sympathy from me and I don’t recognize the inherent sanctimony in the “But the Americans are the only ones that used nukes!” argument as a valid debate point.
Actually, I’m damn glad that the Americans got the technology first. An isolationist, wealthy nation with nukes is far less likely to use them capriciously then a hungry would-be imperial power eager to absorb its neighbors.
mogiaw, South Korea is a major industrial center. Some of the largest shipyards in the world are in SK, and one of the largest shipbuilders (Hyundai) is located there. If NK were to launch an attack on SK, the effects on the world economy would be devistating. Even if we were to push the NKs back to the 38th Parallel and keep them there, the damage to our economies would be horrific. If NK does get its hands on nukes, we’re going to have a very ugly and nasty situation on our hands.
In fact, I have a hard time seeing how we could avoid war if NK gets a workable bomb. Nk’s liable to make such insane demands on the rest of the world, that we’ll be forced to go to war in order to ensure our own economic survival.
Tuckerfan,
I sincerely doubt that North Korea would launch a nuclear attack on South Korea (or for that matter the US, or Japan or anyone else). The most probable outcome for N. Korea (or Iraq or any other non-major nuclear power) of such action would be total annihilation. One of the main priorities of any dictator is probably self-preservation so using nuclear weapons is not really a likely course of action for either Kim Jong-Il or Saddam Hussein (who probably doesn’t have nuclear weapons anyway). As i suggested above they might be used for blackmail purposes.
Quote from Michael Ellis
**How is the concept of a nuclear-armed country run by a dictator who starves his own people, **
Well starving one’s own people is not usually a threat to world security. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a coldblooded bastard and i already said that i find Hussein’s regime abhorrent but we’re talking about world security not the suffering of the Iraqi people at the hands of their ruler.
**a country that sells tactical missiles to countries with elements sympathetic to groups like Al-Qaida not a threat to world security? **
btw this arguing seems to be a highjacking of the OP, and since i’m not willing to turn in to some Chumpsky style hate figure i’m bowing out of this thread.
mog
PS I’m not pro-Iraq, or pro-North Korea, or pro-US for that matter i’m just anti-hysteria.
I just knew somebody would apply this sort of dubious straw man to the argument, but…
By tactical missiles, I meant SCUDs. In other words, short range ballistic missiles designed to hit ground targets. Those Patriots mentioned in the fas.org site are surface-to-air missiles designed to destroy SCUD-type missiles before they hit their targets. There’s a difference.
At least, the idea is to hit the scuds… It didn’t quite work that way during the gulf war (not suprisingly, because the patriots were designed to shoot down aircraft, not missles). Supposdly the Isrealis have designed them to be more effective, but I digress…