Should the US let any nation develop nuclear weapons, or only ones that we approve of

5/17/2007 4:00:14 AM

It's old science. Whether the US approves or not becomes increasingly irrelevant.


Nukes are like democracy -- countries that have them don't go to war with each other. It's like how if everyone had guns, everyone would be safer.

5/17/2007 4:12:45 AM

^^ Every nation of foreign stature in maybe 20 years will have nuclear weapons, weather we like it or not. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is dead according to George W. Bush and non-signatories.

5/17/2007 7:22:42 AM

i don't think we have the right to have nukes either...
you know something about genocide just doesn't seem right to me.
that doesn't mean i think we should get rid of them now that they exist.

5/17/2007 8:01:55 AM

Unless you can find someway to expunge the wealth of knowledge we have accumulated in
nuclear physics it is simply impossible to get rid of nukes. That is unless you can somehow reverse the
sum total of human history and stop ruthless leaders from seeking power and world domination. Not to mention terrorists.

5/17/2007 9:07:40 AM

this question is kind of like asking "should everyone be allowed to reproduce?" obviously, we would only like to allow people to have children if they will be responsible parents. however, figuring out who would be a responsible parent is next to impossible, so we let anyone have children. Plus, it's hard to keep people from bwning anyway.

So it is with nukes. Ideally, countries that are stable and don't have crazy dictators would be the only ones that have nukes, if nukes had to exist. But, I don't think it is feasible to try and say who should or shouldn't have nukes, since politics would be the ultimate factor in the decision, and I don't like that. that and it's hard to keep nations from doing it anyway, thus...

5/17/2007 9:57:26 AM

Look at Egypt and Saudia Arabia. After Iran began their mission these countries decided to start their own nuclear program and we don't give a shit. That's because the people in power in these countries don't have extremist views and publicly admit to wanting to kill millions of innocent people. I don't have a problem with some countries having nukes, but others just need to be treated like children because they act like them.

5/17/2007 10:45:32 AM

Quote :

"That's because the people in power in these countries don't have extremist views"

you're talking about Saudi Arabia here?

5/17/2007 12:00:38 PM

The situation as I see it is difficult, but clear. NO one should have nukes. They shouldn't exist. Now, we don't live in happy fairy land, so obviously someone is always going to try to make nukes. However, I do think there are a few rules we could follow for a good solution:

1.) The United States and all other nations who are willing to do so should completely get rid of all nuclear weapons. This provides a good example to the nations who might build and use nukes. Face it, the reason Iran wants nukes is because it knows that we, Israel, etc might one day strike. I don't think even the Iranians are crazy enough to just attack another country with nuclear weapons unless it feels threatened by that nation.

2.) Even if another nation or terrorist group IS crazy enough to attack us or someone else with nukes, what good does it do for us to have them as well? We shouldn't retaliate against any country that nukes us with more nukes - what the hell good would that do? How would that fix the problem? All we'd do is kill hundreds of thousands (or millions with current technology) of more innocents. How would that help anything? And if a terrorist group nuked us, it REALLY wouldn't do us any good to have nukes, because how would we respond? Attack the country that terrorist originally comes from? That hardly makes sense

No, the best solution is for everyone who is willing to destroy all nuclear weapons in their arsenals. It's the right thing to do, and I'd bet dollars for donuts that it would deter other nations from building them. And as I said, even if it didn't, it wouldn't change the fact that we should NEVER, EVER, EVER use nukes against anyone, even if their governments attacked us first.

5/17/2007 12:12:23 PM

Quote :

"I don't have a problem with some countries having nukes, but others just need to be treated like children because they act like them."

this sums up my views in one sentence

5/17/2007 12:13:14 PM

If someone nukes us, we should nuke them right back. Mutually assured destruction is the only sufficient countermesure against nukes. Unless you could come up with some working shield.


Also when the aliens start to invade we're going to need nukes to blow them up.

5/17/2007 12:38:38 PM

Quote :

"and publicly admit to wanting to kill millions of innocent people."

no nation did this

5/17/2007 12:38:58 PM

^^ Don't forget about dem asteroids coming to get us

5/17/2007 1:00:18 PM

It's like if the world was based on who could run the furthest Nigeria would be the superpower. But it's all about who can kill the most, or who has the capacity to do so. Until that that train of thought is destroyed, impossible, we will always have the problem of disarmament.

5/17/2007 1:08:55 PM

^^^are you saying that amin jihad from Iran didn't say he wanted to wipe Isreal off the map or that Israel's population isn't innocent?

[Edited on May 17, 2007 at 1:14 PM. Reason : fix]

[Edited on May 17, 2007 at 1:15 PM. Reason : fa]

5/17/2007 1:13:42 PM

^7 thats the biggest pussy shit I've ever heard of. Shouldn't nuke in retaliation? Shaggy's got it right.

And to say that all nukes should be destroyed is great, but thats living in a fantasy land

[Edited on May 17, 2007 at 1:16 PM. Reason : g]

5/17/2007 1:16:00 PM

We SHOULDN'T nuke in retaliation, if we don't have to.

5/17/2007 1:17:21 PM

Quote :

"thats the biggest pussy shit I've ever heard of. Shouldn't nuke in retaliation? Shaggy's got it right."

You're welcome to your opinion, but I fail to see how it helps anything. Again, all you'd be doing is killing tons of innocent people. How is that an adequate response?

Quote :

"And to say that all nukes should be destroyed is great, but thats living in a fantasy land "

me:

Quote :

"Now, we don't live in happy fairy land, so obviously someone is always going to try to make nukes"

5/17/2007 4:11:31 PM

Some days I feel like we should just nuke all of the middle east...

Other days, I feel like we should nuke all of DC.

Moral of the story... Don't give me any nukes.

5/21/2007 9:01:16 AM

Quote :

"you're talking about Saudi Arabia here?"

Saudi Arabia does not support terrorism or mass killings of innocent people. Just because a few of its citizens do this, doesn't mean the gov. does as well.

5/21/2007 9:06:11 AM

The "right to nukes"? No.

5/21/2007 1:10:00 PM

the real answer here is, no country has the right to dictate what other countries can and can't have.

5/21/2007 1:38:51 PM

Well, I assume most of the nuclear proliferation in the world is due to the spread of our own technologies, first with Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and more recently with the theft of documents from Los Alamos. Once the Soviets got a hold of our stuff, it was only a matter of time before it filtered down to China, Iran and North Korea etc. Luckily, for most smaller and impoverished countries, a nuclear weapons program would eat up much of their annual budgets, but this only pushes them towards biological and chemical proliferation.

5/21/2007 1:45:16 PM

Aren't we now building nukes again? What gives? Apparently we're engaged in some sort of arms race with ourselves.

I don't see why we don't just stop manufacturing them and disable the ones we have. If push comes to shove, I doubt we'll have forgotten how we made them.

5/21/2007 6:20:36 PM

oh these new nukes are environmentally friendly. You know, we have to put scrubbers on them
to get rid of the green house gases and such...

5/21/2007 6:33:37 PM

Quote :

"Do other countries have the right to nukes? "

Do convicted murders have the right to live in your neighborhood?
Do sex offenders have the right to public school jobs?
Do thieves have the right to bank account information?
Do illegal aliens have the right to automatic citizenship?
Do marketing companies have the right to your e-mail account?
Do your kids have the right to the cookie jar?
Do you have the right to choose between your own life and death?

Some say "Yes sir". Some say "No way Jose".

5/21/2007 6:46:07 PM

Technically, yes. However I am perfectly comfortable with the United States acting as "nuke police" and regulating it, because quite frankly, I feel our country is in the best position to do so with the best intentions. That being said, we shouldn't think other countries are EVIL for trying to do what is in the interest of their countries.

5/22/2007 6:05:32 PM

Quote :

"If someone nukes us, we should nuke them right back. Mutually Assured Destruction is the only sufficient countermeasure against nukes. Unless you could come up with some working shield."

With the aging and declining stockpiles of warheads in Russia, and the declining yet at least maintained warheads here, MAD isn't as assured as it once was. It's way worse for Russia, because they don't have the $$ too keep their previously enormous stockpile around in its entirety.

But MAD requires other factors than just nukes. Both parties must have ICBMs, and there has to be warning of an attack. Plus there has to be a form of second strike capability. If the US were fire off a volley of ICBMs to Cambodia, and leveled the whole place border to border, we could sleep snug in our beds the next night because they possess no ability to strike back at us. We could do it tomorrow if we wanted to, just on a whim. No worries. We can never do that to Russia.

And Russia is really the only player MAD even works for. They are the only country that meets the criteria. China looks like they're up next, they just need to work on their 2nd Strike capability.

Plus you can't nuke a terrorist group, unless the group is the whole population. The resources and capabilities needed to step up to the MAD table with us and the former Soviet Union are quite unattainable to terrorist groups at this time. That usually includes having a space program and a healthy stockpile of warheads. It is just too expensive. I'm not saying obtaining a couple of warheads would be too hard to the dedicated, but it takes a lot more than 2 or 3 to wipe out the United States.

5/23/2007 12:29:43 AM

Quote :

"^^^are you saying that amin jihad from Iran didn't say he wanted to wipe Isreal off the map or that Israel's population isn't innocent?"

In context, Ahmedinajad (sp?) didn't say that he wanted to destroy Israel. He said he wanted Israel to cease to exist, or words to that effect. There is an important difference there.

Do I trust him? No. (and while they're definitely even more guilty than we are, we've fumbled the Iranian situation BIG TIME for a while now, and have aggravated it when we could probably largely resolved it). But did he say he wanted to execute wholesale destruction of Israel? Not that I've ever heard.

Also, while I generally prefer them hands-down to their enemies, Israel is hardly an innocent state by any measure (although most of their population is, just like any other country, in case you want to play the semantics game with me).


___________________________________________

as far as the original question, this is one of those times where I really don't give a shit about the philosophical debate or any nuances of the ethics surrounding it. In the real world; in practical terms, totally disarming ourselves of nuclear weapons is simply not a viable option at all, and I don't really want ANYONE else to gain a nuclear capability. Proliferation is bad, mmmkay?

5/23/2007 12:41:59 AM

And to answer the question posed in the Topic, as of right now I think all countries should have the right to have nukes. I don't really see why they shouldn't. To me it's kinda like the right to bear arms in this country. Everyone should be able to "defend" themselves, however you choose to use that word.

Yeah, I understand the counter-argument to the analogy; guns aren't nearly as dangerous, big-ass difference between a handgun and a nuclear warhead, they let lots of crazy people to get hands on a gun and bad things happen, etc. They are good points, but it doesn't seem fair to deny a recognized sovereign nation the right to develop technology.

The only time I would be cool with a group of nations doing that would be during a time of war, and I could definitely argue that doing so to another country could be considered an act of war, or at the very least blatant aggressive intimidation. *shrug* Ahh the world we live in.

Besides, it all becomes irrelevant after a period of time anyway. The more players that step up to our little MAD table, the more diluted the strategy becomes. It works best with the fewest possible competitors. Things get too complicated with too many participants.

5/23/2007 12:48:11 AM

I am not so blind that I would defend the proliferation of nuclear weapons and an eventual nuclear holocaust because of some abstract concept such as "freedom". If we give people the "freedom" to acquire nuclear weapons, then we agree that they have the freedom to use them and thus destroy humanity. We should not try to rationalize such an irrational decision.

For this issue, we should erase the lines of the administrative districts we call "states" and "countries" and realize we are all human beings and this issue would effect us all. We should act to prevent and penalize those who push the diffusion of such weapons to places with extremist ideologies and ties to terrorist organizations.

5/23/2007 1:02:38 AM

Quote :

"For this issue, we should erase the lines of the administrative districts we call "states" and "countries" and realize we are all human beings and this issue would effect us all. We should act to prevent and penalize those who push the diffusion of such weapons to places with extremist ideologies and ties to terrorist organizations."

How naively virtuous. I commend you on your idealism.

I'd love to live in pink-bunnyslipper, happy, let's hug everyone and be friends land. Sounds like a sweet, timid little place. This will just never happen.

Quote :

"I am not so blind that I would defend the proliferation of nuclear weapons and an eventual nuclear holocaust because of some abstract concept such as "freedom". If we give people the "freedom" to acquire nuclear weapons, then we agree that they have the freedom to use them and thus destroy humanity. We should not try to rationalize such an irrational decision."

Eventual nuclear holocaust? The 1960s called, they want their nuclear paranoia back. Who are we to say no to anyone? Getting the material to even build a bomb is hard enough.

5/23/2007 1:24:10 AM

its a moot point. its like sticking your finger in hole in the damn, to stop the flood.

eventually, every mid-sized corporation will have access to the technology to build a nuclear warhead.

5/23/2007 1:40:35 AM

^ "in the damn"

You cuss too dam much.

5/23/2007 3:46:14 AM

Quote :

"eventually, every mid-sized corporation will have access to the technology to build a nuclear warhead."

Too much infrastructure is needed for anything like this to happen. Even 50+ years after the Manhattan Project, the length of time required to produce enough weapons grade Uranium for a single bomb is well over a year. The equipment needed to diffuse the isotope out of regular Uranium is very complex, extremely expensive and difficult to hide because so much is needed. Plus the IAEC and a lack of available sources makes it extremely tough to get Uranium in the first place.

Realistically only large, well funded organizations with access to advanced technology, scarce resources, and tons of expendable $$ can hope to produce nuclear weapons.

5/23/2007 6:35:53 AM

Quote :

"Golovko:the real answer here is, no country has the right to dictate what other countries can and can't have."

Absolutely correct.

Quote :

"Scuba Steve: Luckily, for most smaller and impoverished countries, a nuclear weapons program would eat up much of their annual budgets, but this only pushes them towards biological and chemical proliferation."

You're right, this is a double-edged sword. Although, I think we could argue that one side is far sharper than the other.

At its current economic state, North Korea will never be a viable nuclear threat to us because it doesn't possess the economic resources to amass and maintain a stockpile of warheads. Plus they are extremely lacking in delivery capabilities. They'd be better off to pursue biological weapon research.

Quote :

"Pupils DiL8t:I don't see why we don't just stop manufacturing them and disable the ones we have. If push comes to shove, I doubt we'll have forgotten how we made them."

The US hasn't produced a nuclear warhead since 1991. We continue to maintain, refit, and upgrade the warheads that we do have.

We can't dismantle our entire stockpile. That would be a horrible breach in policy and doctrine, and would leave us vulnerable to attack. We would be at a huge disadvantage, and in the event of attack would likely not be around long enough to reassemble even a single warhead.

Quote :

"mathman:oh these new nukes are environmentally friendly. You know, we have to put scrubbers on them to get rid of the green house gases and such... "

god help us all if we ever figure out how to produce the explosive force of a nuclear warhead but without the biological/environmental collateral damage.

Quote :

"Cherokee: I feel our country is in the best position to do so with the best intentions."

And N Korean leadership, as well as Iran and other nations feel like our intentions are to bend them over and fuck them in the ass. Intentions are subjective. No country with significant nuclear power is dumb enough to use them except in the most desperate situation.

First Strike Doctrine pretty much requires that you're capable of destroying your enemy's ability to return fire or minimize the retaliatory damage. Plus there has to be some goal or advantage to an attack.

No country can do this to us. I doubt even Russia is capable of it anymore. So guess what kids, you're safe and have pretty much nothing to worry about. Any nuclear exchange between countries that we're likely to see will happen between other states, but not with us.

5/23/2007 12:27:29 PM

USSR/Russia was never capable of it

and we weren't against them

hence MAD

5/23/2007 12:44:30 PM

^^ It's not an ICBM "exchange" that worries me anymore.

5/23/2007 12:55:21 PM

Quote :

"theDuke866:USSR/Russia was never capable of it and we weren't against them hence MAD the development of Second Strike Doctrine"

Fixed that for you.

Plus MAD was a theory at best. It was never adopted as Nuclear Strategy by either the US or the former Soviet Union.

Quote :

"hooksaw:It's not an ICBM "exchange" that worries me anymore."

What keeps you up at night?

[Edited on May 23, 2007 at 1:03 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on May 23, 2007 at 1:04 PM. Reason : :]

5/23/2007 1:02:27 PM

Strange. For some reason, I thought that we had started making more at some point this decade. Perhaps, as you said, we just started recycling the old ones we had.

5/23/2007 2:55:05 PM

^^ Nothing really "keeps me up at night"--except TWW and caffeine. But I am somewhat concerned--and I think rightfully so--about an attack with a dirty bomb or a small nuclear device or chemical or biological agents. It's certainly not impossible or even improbable for any one or a combination of these weapons to be used on US soil.

5/23/2007 10:15:16 PM

the biological component of the whole WMD scare is really where smart terrorists should start.

chemical and nuclear delivery systems are conventional, expensive, and obvious

it would be cake for someone to sneak a really nasty genetically altered virus into a major metropolitan area

shit, release it in a busy airport terminal at Kennedy, Regan, LAX, Atlanta or Miami.. the rest will take care of itself

5/23/2007 11:29:55 PM

dirty bombs - less lethal than conventional bombs, take a shower to wash off any nuclear junk
chemical weapons - hard to deliver, less lethal than conventional bombs
biological weapons - hard to make, hard to deliver, less lethal than conventional bombs

Hooray for irrational fears

5/24/2007 2:28:53 AM

Quote :

"chemical and nuclear radiological delivery systems are conventional, expensive relatively inexpensive, and obvious easy"

Sayer

Fixed it for you. I strongly believe that a chemical attack in the United States is the most likely possibility. The attack could be as simple as poisoning a major food and/or water supply, or it could involve crashing a vehicle into a giant chlorine tank. Unfortunately, there are numerous scenarios that would not be very difficult to execute.

Quote :

"A terrorist attack on a single 90-ton chlorine tank car could generate a cloud of toxic gas that travels 20 miles. If the attack took place in a city, it could kill 100,000 people within hours. Now multiply that nightmare by another 100,000. That’s the approximate number of tank cars filled with toxic gases shipped every year in the United States."

http://www.issues.org/23.1/p_wein.html

Quote :

"The biggest danger to food safety and security is believing there is no danger, said Dr. Elsa Murano, undersecretary for food safety with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 'My fear is that we will become complacent and think there is no danger, and that's when we will be the most vulnerable,' she said."

http://southwestfarmpress.com/mag/farming_danger_denial_major/

5/24/2007 2:30:32 AM

^ha, scaremongering bullshit. It's cute that you think a professor of business knows anything about chlorine gas attacks.

Meanwhile, insurgents are actually using chlorine attacks and killing...... TWELVE people at a time!!! Remember that sarin gas attack in a heavily populated, closed in area in Tokyo? Killed twelve people. The conventional london bomb attacks killed 52.

In reality, chlorine is very ineffective at killing people because people can just smell it and go inside. The simple countermeasures to chemical and biological weapons make them so ineffective.

Conventional bombs are much more effective at killing people than any equivalent amount of chemical, radiological, or biological material.


[Edited on May 24, 2007 at 2:55 AM. Reason : How about actual medical opinions: http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic712.htm]

5/24/2007 2:44:02 AM

^ Shut the fuck up, you idiot. You obviously didn't read the article--it's much more than chlorine.

Quote :

"Particularly problematic are the nation’s 148 oil refineries. Of these, 50 use hydrofluoric acid in their alkylation process, which provides high octane while maintaining low sulfur and nitrogen content. Although only 4% of the nation’s hydrofluoric acid is used by these 50, they top the list of most dangerous chemical facilities because the scale of their operations is immense. Some refineries store hundreds of thousands of pounds of hydrofluoric acid, which could seriously harm or kill hundreds of thousands of people. Collectively, these 50 refineries have more than 10 million pounds of hydrofluoric acid on their premises."

The publication at issue is put out by the following entities:

National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Engineering
Institute of Medicine
University of Texas at Dallas

All well-known right-wing organizations, right? And the Southwest Farm Press? A bastion of conservative thought, no doubt. You fucking moonbat--you're absolutely rabid!

I know more about this than you do--deal with it. And I'm not even going to try to prove it to your loony ass.

BTW, here are just some of Dr. Lawrence M. Wein's qualifications:

Quote :

"He has used mathematics to analyze treatment protocols for patients with HIV, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease; the national transplant waiting list for kidneys; the selection of strains to include in the annual influenza vaccine and the design of proteins. His homeland security work concerns bioterrorism and border issues."

Quote :

"His HIV work on drug-switching policies led to a successful multicenter clinical trial. His smallpox work influenced the George W. Bush administration's post-attack vaccination policy; his anthrax work led to plans in Washington, D.C., to use postal workers to distribute antibiotics after a large attack; and his testimony before a congressional committee on his biometric analysis of the US-VISIT Program was instrumental in the switch from a two-finger to a ten-finger system. He has won several research awards and was Editor-in-Chief of Operations Research from 2000 to 2005."

And his research papers:

http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/wein/personal/papers.html

But, of course, somebody on T-dub is so much smarter than a Stanford professor. Who would've thought it?





[Edited on May 24, 2007 at 3:19 AM. Reason : .]

5/24/2007 3:02:14 AM

^The shriller your response, the more desperate you look.

Who "puts out" the publication has NOTHING to do with an EDITORIAL in by someone in a COMPLETELY UNRELATED field. Someone doesn't become credible simply because they might be published next to credible people.

That fallacy aside, the ACTUAL SCIENCE and EXPERIENCE shows that chemical weapons, including chlorine gas, are not as lethal or dangerous as conventional weapons. Did you even read the link I posted?

I certainly read yours -- I read the made up numbers that the management professor pulled out of his ass in order to scare his gullible readers (you). I also read the second link where the head of a large organization was making a political statement to the press. There's no real information there for any educated person to even analyze.

Quote :

"I know more about this than you do--deal with it. And I'm not even going to try to prove it to your loony ass."

Riiiight. You mean you know you are wrong and are too much of a pussy to defend your own idiotic position. We all get it -- you don't respond to evidence and logical arguments. Nevertheless, it's amusing to make you squirm and doubletalk your way through absurd defenses.
------------

^and the squirming has already begun. Do you actually know what any of that quoted work involves? None of it actually deals with medical science -- rather, it deals with the administration of medicine. I don't expect someone who is not logical to understand the difference, though.

Furthermore, the fact that he is a political appointee makes him even less credible. It's his job to play up the threat in public in order to get more funding for his cause.

And, of course, you are focusing this tangent about credibility because you can't address the real point: radiological, chemical, and biological weapons aren't as dangerous as conventional weapons. All you have shown are PR statements by political figures. I've given you analysis by scientists.

[Edited on May 24, 2007 at 3:28 AM. Reason : l;]

5/24/2007 3:17:14 AM

^ Somebody's got rabies! You better get a shot or something, Foamy.

Quote :

"TOMMY THOMPSON, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY [December 6, 2004]: I for the life of me cannot understand why the terrorists have not, you know, attacked our food supply. Because it is -- it is so easy to do. And we're importing a lot of food from the Middle East."

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0412/06/ltm.05.html

But I'm sure Thompson made this up, too. I'm done with you, you bed-wetting, liberal assbag. Piss off.

[Edited on May 24, 2007 at 3:28 AM. Reason : .]

5/24/2007 3:26:42 AM

If you take 40 more years, you might actually come up with a clever insult!

It'll take more than a lifetime for you to come up with a rational defense of your position, though.

5/24/2007 3:32:59 AM

^nice post

5/24/2007 3:54:08 AM