Theory: The case for nukes. War is a greater threat than proliferation is.

Forums: Politics, War, Proliferation, Geopolitics, Nukes
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In the past I've advocated, with tongue in cheek, that everyone should have nuclear weapons. A nuke in every pot and a chicken on every table, I said. I did so out of frustration with people who think that the USA and other members of the nuclear club have some kind of god-given right to be the only ones to have nukes and to counter their hawkish positions justifying military attacks on other countries to prevent them from acquiring nukes as well as due to the reality that states with nuclear weapons are less, not more, likely to attack each other (see India/Pakistan or that North Korea is the regime in most need of changing but that it is not seriously considered).

Since then, with the catastrophic war in Iraq's ongoing toll increasing I feel that this is a theory that is increasingly validated. Nuclear proliferation increases the likelihood of nukes falling into the wrong hands and being used by terrorists and also increases (much less so) the chances of it being used by a state. However the wars that have been fought to prevent acquisition of weapons of mass destruction have resulted in many more people dying than a nuclear terror attack would likely cause.

What do you think? I am all in favor of preventing nuclear proliferation through peaceful means (treaties, economic enticement) but when it comes to doing it by force it seems like a case of killing people on the off chance that people might possibly be killed and if countries like Iraq had nukes I think that the war would have been avoided and many more lives spared than the risks of Iraq having nukes posed.

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I am for whatever works. I certainly don't count on the most developed nations to halt or even slow down the killing and destruction.

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I don't know of any invasion which has ever taken place to prevent a nation from acquiring nuclear weapons.

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By the way, don't try to claim that's why Iraq was invaded. That was just a casus belli. As recently as 1997, the PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, produced a policy statement that the United States should invade Iraq for the purpose of establishing military bases there. (That Iraq has the world's second largest proven reserves of light sweet crude didn't hurt, either.) They sent a letter to Clinton in 1997 to urge him to do so, signed by several PNAC founding members, such as Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, all of whom would take important positions in the Bush administration. The yellow cake uranium story was bogus, and Joe Wilson had told the CIA that after returning from a mission to Africa to find out if it were real. They couldn't get him, so Cheney sent his hatchet man, "Scooter Libby," out to pull some dirty tricks, and the ham-handed s.o.b. ended up outing Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, as a CIA agent. Hans Blix said before the invasion that there were no nuclear weapons programs there, and no evidence has been found of them since that time.

The Iraqis, probably inspired by Pakistan, and certainly aided by Pakistan's ISS, tried to build a breeder reactor outside Baghdad in the 1970s--which the Israelis took out with an air-strike in 1978 (?--about that time). This was all well-known in 2002 and 2003; except, perhaps, by that sap Bush.

(According to Wikipedia, the Israelis took out the reactor construction site in 1981.)

One needs to make a distinction between casus belli and realpolitik.

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@Setanta,

Wrong. The weapons of mass destruction stock piled by the Ba'ath party in Falluja are now under the control of Dae'sh-Islamic State-and the main reason that the city has never been retaken even though surrounded by superior forces. 90,000 civilians in the city are at stake.

The Turbin gas canisters-used to murder over 100,000 civilians by the party were believed to have been destroyed by Dae'sh simply because they were so unstable.

The bumbling of the Obama administration, in the case of Iran's centrifuge development, left the world clueless as to their development.

Only a fool would believe anything wikipedia says.

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@Setanta,

I agree that it wasn't the main motivation for the architects behind the war, but as you mention it was the casus belli without which the war would not have happened. If they didn't get to play the WMD card ("mushroom cloud over New York" etc) then they would not have had the political capital for the war.

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@Setanta,

Invasion is not the only threat that those who use proliferation as the casus belli present. For example Israel's covert wars against their neighbors to prevent them from acquiring the nukes they themselves use as a deterrent has claimed lives that their neighbors' acquisition of nuclear weapons would not likely have caused and if they had their way and convinced the US to bomb Iran over non-proliferation it could have claimed many more lives.

Ultimately the threat of proliferation has been merely a specter thus far, while the threat from people who use it as a casus belli has claimed more lives than proliferation has or is likely to.

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India and Pakistan have nuclear devices because they have sufficiently well-educated and intelligent people who could take on the project. Iran has nuclear devices for exactly the same reason. Even the Hermit Kingdom has them for that reason. What the so-called nuclear club wants has little relation to reality. The reality is that a great many nations can and will have nuclear devices. Pandora's box was opened in July, 1945.

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@Setanta,

I agree with this and to me it strengthens the point I am making. The nuclear club can offer incentives and disincentives to acquiring nukes but short of invading and occupying the countries there is little they can do to deter a sufficiently motivated state as it is not all that difficult to make nukes.

I think nonproliferation is a worthwhile goal, and support the use of things like sanctions and economic incentives toward this goal, but I think that the cost of using military might to deter nations from joining the nuclear club is higher than the cost of them joining the nuclear club (i.e. war is a greater threat than proliferation is).

Thankfully for the most part the world has understood this, and has not engaged in misadventures like Iraq very often.

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@Robert Gentel,

I'm not worried about some nation using nukes. I'm worried about some nut, christian or musliam who decides its his god given instruction to detonate a nuke in the most populated city he can find. With more and more nuclear plants around the world it will make it easier for someone to steal enough radioactives to make one.

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@RABEL222,

That is certainly a concern but the odds are it kills fewer people than a war to prevent a nation from acquiring nukes would. Especially if you are worried about someone stealing nuclear material from a nuclear reactor, it would likely be limited to use in a dirty bomb (the nuclear fuel and waste are often not otherwise weaponizable without reprocessing) and those don't do nearly as much damage.

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@RABEL222,

Spent fuel rods from the nuclear chain reaction are much more dangerous than they were before they were inserted into the pile. The absorption-to control the reaction-destabilizes and increases the radionuclides to the point that their half life can't be ascertained.

These spent fuel rods are kept deep in cooling pools of liquid nitrogen for 30 years then transferred to heavy water pools where they will remain for the next 160,000- 1.5 million years-when they are expected to be safe enough to move.

The weapon grade material is present however any attempt to use it would be forlorn. So called 'dirty bombs' were the creation of the imaginative media more than anything tactical and none have ever been discovered or any attempt to construct one is known.

There are about 800,000 spent rods in the world that are known. Nuclear proliferation-such as limiting the bomb grade material- was abandoned in the 1980's simply because the process would produce more dangerous and unstable radionuclides that would have to be stored somewhere. Since reducing the number of bombs in the world would produce more issues than leaving them alone proliferation has been abandoned.

After Fukushima, along with 9/11 the spent fuel rods here at Browns Ferry-about 400 of them-were sunk even deeper in the Earth in something that looks like a combination of a wasp nest and a huge beach umbrella.

There are very few, if any, strategic, ballistic intercontinental nuclear missiles that are armed to attack other countries simply because tactical battlefield launchers and short range submarines systems are far more effective and not prone to be shot down by missile shields. The impact time of 18 minuets for a ballistic missile to impact intercontinentaly makes it obsolete to drone launchers that can deliver a more powerful weapon in 45 seconds, it is believed, to anywhere in the world.

The fear of a powerful, all encompassing cyber attack is the most urgent issue for America's safety than any nuclear or biological threat, or conventional military invasion. Since all countries that have nuclear weapons systems realize that they are not a consistent threat and would be shot down and a tactical attack would destroy the remaining arsenal on the ground-nuclear proliferation is no longer an issue to America's safety.

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

....Nuclear proliferation increases the likelihood of nukes falling into the wrong hands and being used by terrorists and also increases (much less so) the chances of it being used by a state. However the wars that have been fought to prevent acquisition of weapons of mass destruction have resulted in many more people dying than a nuclear terror attack would likely cause....

Here's a hypothetical situation. A dictator may be developing nuclear (or biological) weapons in secret. He denies it, but there is evidence. Pretty much everyone agrees that this dictator is evil and willing to hurt a lot of people to advance his agenda, based on his past acts. For the sake of argument, let's say that the chance he has nuclear and/or biological weapons programs is 50%. Note that I am not referring to the chance that he actually has the weapons but, rather, the chance that he has development programs. Peaceful attempts have been made to persuade him to let UN inspectors verify that he doesn't have these weapons, but he has not cooperated, at least not enough to accomplish the verification. What should the world now do?

For the sake of this hypothetical, I have placed the chance that he is developing these weapons at 50%. Let's say that he actually is developing them. What are the consequences likely to be? In my opinion, here are some things that might happen.

1. He may finish his development program and succeed in creating the weapons.
2. He may have more than one of the weapons and may now begin to amass more and more of them.
3. He may use the weapons and kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people. This would not necessarily be a single event.
4. He may have his people smuggle the weapons in pieces into a country he doesn't like, reassemble them there, and detonate them from within (nuclear explosion or plague) and then deny responsibility.
5. He may give or sell the weapons to terrorists whom he regards as allies.
6. He may use the world's knowledge of his weapons to intimidate neighboring countries to give ground and may even annex (one way or another) his neighbors.

How does this compare with the possible losses from forcibly disarming him or proving that he has no weapons? Something like this situation will probably occur in the future more than once.

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

Robert Gentel wrote:
....Nuclear proliferation increases the likelihood of nukes falling into the wrong hands and being used by terrorists and also increases (much less so) the chances of it being used by a state. However the wars that have been fought to prevent acquisition of weapons of mass destruction have resulted in many more people dying than a nuclear terror attack would likely cause....

Here's a hypothetical situation. A dictator may be developing nuclear (or biological) weapons in secret. He denies it, but there is evidence. Pretty much everyone agrees that this dictator is evil and willing to hurt a lot of people to advance his agenda, based on his past acts. For the sake of argument, let's say that the chance he has nuclear and/or
biological weapons programs is 50%. Note that I am not referring to the chance that he actually has the weapons but, rather, the chance that he has development programs. Peaceful attempts have been made to persuade him to let UN inspectors verify that he doesn't have these weapons, but he has not cooperated, at least not enough to accomplish the verification. What should the world now do?

For the sake of this hypothetical, I have placed the chance that he is developing these weapons at 50%. Let's say that he actually is developing them. What are the consequences likely to be? In my opinion, here are some things that might happen.

1. He may finish his development program and succeed in creating the weapons.
2. He may have more than one of the weapons and may now begin to amass more and more of them.
3. He may use the weapons and kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people. This would not necessarily be a single event.
4. He may have his people smuggle the weapons in pieces into a country he doesn't like, reassemble them there, and detonate them from within (nuclear explosion or plague) and then deny responsibility.
5. He may give or sell the weapons to terrorists whom he regards as allies.
6. He may use the world's knowledge of his weapons to intimidate neighboring countries to give ground and may even annex (one way or another) his neighbors.

How does this compare with the possible losses from forcibly disarming him or proving that he has no weapons? Something like this situation will probably occur in the future more than once.

Sounds like the hype to the invasion of Iraq.

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How about when there is no evidence, but a coterie of self-interested government officials just make it up to justify their overweening ambition? Jeeze, Brandon, how transparent can you be?

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The legacy of invasion of Iraq is not some fairy tale of making the middle east safe from an evil Ba'athist dictator. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed to be fighting the American invasion, and he was the one who was responsible for people being beheaded while they screamed, Brandon's private nightmare. The Americans hunted him down and killed him, with the help of many Iraqi sunnies, but Al Qaeda in Iraq did not go away. The clown calling himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi eventually took over AQI, and renamed it Islamic State in Iraq.

ISIS is the legacy of the invasion of Iraq, not some heroic move scenario of George Bush riding to the rescue of the middle east.

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@edgarblythe,

Exactly what I was thinking.

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The invasion Iraq and removable of Saddam Hussein created the middle east unrest and in Syria. Were the governments of these countries admirable. No, but they probably would have been removed by the people when they got tired of them. We stick our noses in things that arnt any of our business way too much. And actually it not to help anyone but some U S billionare make more money.

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

Sounds like the hype to the invasion of Iraq.

Not an argument.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

How about when there is no evidence, but a coterie of self-interested government officials just make it up to justify their overweening ambition? Jeeze, Brandon, how transparent can you be?

How does this address my hypothetical situation? I get to state the set-up for my own hypothetical.

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Theory: The case for nukes. War is a greater threat than proliferation is.

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