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Treaty banning nuclear weapons approved at UN
- Turing_Machine 9y agoNext up: mice vote to bell cat.
- dustinmoorenet 9y agoWith enough mice, it might just work.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoNot if the cats are the ones who already have nuclear weapons.
- reality_hacker 9y agoIt is more about economic power. UN could make Iran to give up on nuclear weapon using economic sanctions, but in this situation cats are much stronger economically.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoThat most conflicts are internal and not between major nation states shiws that the UN has been successful in its mission.
- tbihl 9y agoAn alternative reading is that every country that has possessed nuclear weapons has acknowledged that their destructive capabilities make them a virtual suicide pact that would be fulfilled in the case of war between major powers.
- muninn_ 9y agoI wouldn't be so quick to credit the UN with this. I would say it's more likely that between mutually assured destruction upon major powers, and the United States' role as global peacekeeper and Don't Do Something Crazy or We Will Bomb You mantra we've reached a state of world peace. Not because of the UN.
- thg 9y agoIt's more like "play by our rules and do what we tell you or we will bomb you". The US isn't the global peacekeeper, the US is the main instigator for wars. Planting and supporting dictators and authoritarian regimes who are then painted as "the enemy" when they no longer want to be the pets of the US. History is written by the winners, I guess, and all that pro-US propaganda that's so proliferate in the entire western world seems to be working really good. Did you know that the US supported Hitler at first and big US corporations (I.T.T., General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil Co., and the Chase National Bank) all continued trading with Germany during the war because there was money in it and the US politicians didn't want to give those big corporations a big sad? The US is the "global peacekeeper" only when the target country they're invading doesn't want to go along with whatever the US wants. The UN is a whole lot more global peacekeeper than the US will ever be.
- marcoperaza 9y agoBelieve what you want, but the Pax Americana is real and is empirically the most peaceful time in world history. It is partly due to nuclear deterrents and partly due to the US maintaining a massive military presence in hot spots (Korea, South China Sea, Taiwan, Persian/Arab Gulf, Eastern Europe). Yes, it is often coercive and we have certainly supported unsavory regimes. It is worth considering what the alternatives to those regimes are. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, the House of Saud is actually a moderating force keeping the Wahhabist mullahs from taking over completely. Liberal democracy will not work everywhere today, as our horribly misguided experiment in Iraq has demonstrated. I recommend Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom for a discussion of the problem, but a very short summary is that you cannot have a functioning democracy without substantial economic development (natural resource money does NOT count for many reasons) and a middle class that feels highly invested in stability, growth, and trade. The US government never supported Hitler. America is a free country so of course there were many private individuals and companies who did. No different than how Western academia was extremely fond of the Soviets until the 1950s. The US actually provided massive aid to the allies before entering the war, through the lend lease program among others. The fact is that it wasn't clear at the time that it was in the United State's interests to oppose Hitler. It was a far away problem, there was a strong isolationist mood in the US, and even the Brits were trying their hand at coexisting with him.
- arethuza 9y agoAs I'm currently in hospital as the result of a cat bite I feel obliged to side with the mice on this one...
- tree_of_item 9y agoDid it get infected or something? What happened?
- danharaj 9y agoYou should always seek medical attention for a cat bite because the odds of a severe infection are high.
- arethuza 9y agoYes - I stupidly didn't think it looked that bad. I was borderline for my arm being operated on to clean out the infection - which was a bit alarming when I didn't expect to be admitted. The impact of the antibiotics was incredible - visible improvement within a couple of hours. Scary to think what could have happened if we didn't have access to working antibiotics!
- arethuza 9y agoA dog attacked one of our cats and when iredcued him he was do scared he bit by arm and wouldn't let go - took 5 mins to get him off. I didn't think it was that bad, but after nearly two days my arm was very red and I was feeling a bit ill. Popped to nearest NHS hospital expecting to. E told I was overreacting, but I was immediately admitted and put on IV antiobiotics (6 doses a day). Fortunately all fine and I'm going home today!
- qb45 9y agoSeriously, it doesn't look like either USA or Russia are enthusiastic to sign that kind of deal in the current climate and if they don't then who even cares? Putin on nukes, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo
- ioquatix 9y agoSurprising display of sanity and logic.
- monochromatic 9y ago> All of the countries that bear nuclear arms and many others that either come under their protection or host weapons on their soil boycotted the negotiations. Why is it surprising that the countries without nukes want to disarm the countries with nukes?
- Shivetya 9y agoabout as effective as the banning of chemical weapons. not that is not a great idea but the NPT is better acted on. a treaty such as this ban requires rational actors and we have one fully irrational country (NK) and a few other suspect ones that might even employ proxies to use the weapons. the real question about such a treaty is, say you could get China, Russia, and the US, to agree. How do you disarm nations that won't. You could try trade sanctions but that is likely to cause the irrational to use their weapons. I do like the idea of signatory nations not allowing such weapons on their territory but giving the current theory on their usage what does that gain?
- muninn_ 9y agoI saw this same headline on Reddit World News and it made me pretty angry. The headline was something along the lines of "World votes to abolish nuclear weapons, 9 nuclear powers including US vote no". Why "including the US" ? This is just clearly pushing an agenda. Why not "including France" ? What does this little snippet add to the journalism other than to press a little bit on anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment? Really annoying.
- andrepd 9y agoThe US being in board or not makes the difference between this being a joke, or actually having some kind of force or influence. France signing this agreement or not matters fuck all. There's that little difference. It's very relevant whether the USA signed it or not. Nothing to do with anti-US sentiment so no need to burst an artery just yet.
- muninn_ 9y agoNo it's not. Because without France, UK, Russia, China as well then no treaty on nukes matters.
- rfrey 9y agoThe headline is relevant because the US is the most powerful military force in the world, and also involved in more conflicts than any other nation. The US position is more relevant than any other nation's.
- bnegreve 9y agoReddit is an us-based media, so this is not surprising that articles are targeted for this audience. If you believe Reddit is an universal and unbiased media, you're wrong. > Why not "including France" ? What does this little snippet add to the journalism other than to press a little bit on anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment? Changing "including US" to "including France" would not reduce the anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment because France is part of Europe. edit: remove pointless comment.
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- monochromatic 9y ago> All of the countries that bear nuclear arms and many others that either come under their protection or host weapons on their soil boycotted the negotiations. Completely meaningless posturing to pass this treaty. Par for the course at the UN.
- tomdell 9y ago> Previous UN treaties have been effective even when key nations have failed to sign up to them. The US did not sign up to the landmines treaty, but has completely aligned its landmines policy to comply nonetheless. Idk - it might be a step toward eventual disarmament, even if far in the future.
- nonbel 9y ago> "The US did not sign up to the landmines treaty, but has completely aligned its landmines policy to comply nonetheless." Actually there is a department in the US called "wildlife services" that places poison gas landmines all around the country to try controlling coyote populations. Apparently they just show up and place them near peoples property without alerting anyone or putting up warning signs. Every now and then one of them goes off and poisons a person or dog. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/29/521917387/calls-mount-for-ban-on-cyanide-bombs-after-death-of-family-pet http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/29/521917387/... https://www.predatordefense.org/m44s.htm https://www.predatordefense.org/m44s.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSV8pRLkdKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSV8pRLkdKI
- justin66 9y agoThose are awful enough, but they are not landmines.
- gh02t 9y agoI saw an interesting talk by one of the guys responsible for nuclear weapons policy under Obama. He focused on a game-theoretic analysis of whether or not "nuclear zero" (total global disarmament) was really possible. The analysis he gave suggested a scheme where countries could simultaneously disarm down to very low levels (maybe a couple hundred worldwide) while maintaining a credible mutual deterrent, but going below that was exceedingly difficult. Basically one of the major nuclear powers would have to be willing to take a "leap of faith" to get to total disarmament, which is hard to swallow politically. It's all hypothetical analysis now though as it seems like we are currently on track to maintain the status quo or even start another buildup. I hope not, it's a waste of money and effort for negligible tangible benefit over what we have now.
- marcoperaza 9y agoNuclear disarmament by the established nuclear powers is a horrible idea. This is how we return to the era of great power wars that came to a close with World War 2. Do you really want to see warfare between America, China, and Russia? Or how about a return to European wars? People seem to magically think that the era of great power wars has ended because of economic interdependence or good will between nations. Europeans thought the same thing at the turn of the 20th century and again during the 1920s. What keeps the peace is knowing that even in defeat your enemy can make you pay a price you are not willing to pay.
- gilrain 9y agoThe risk of conventional war is insignificant compared to the very real risk of destroying our only habitat.
- marcoperaza 9y agoThere are nowhere near enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world. In fact, there aren't even enough to wipe out mankind. This is even more true since we've reduced the size of nuclear stockpiles significantly.
- ahallock 9y agoIsn't having nuclear weapons around actually a deterrent to war because of mutually assured destruction?
- spo81rty 9y agoI think the only hope is missile defense systems which could yield these missiles useless. Only then would they provide no value as a deterrent.
- tomjen3 9y agoIt is presumably always possible to smuggle some into a capital or other large city and set them of. Makes for an interesting attempt to figure out who put them there too.
- tristanj 9y agoI doubt nuclear defense systems are viable anymore, modern ICBMs travel too fast to intercept. Newsweek covered Russia's latest ICBM developments, and they don't look good. http://www.newsweek.com/us-russia-nuclear-arms-race-over-and-russia-has-won-581704 http://www.newsweek.com/us-russia-nuclear-arms-race-over-and... >The RS-28 ICBM, scheduled to become operational in 2018, assures Russia the ability to annihilate the United States in retaliation for any American first strike, while providing Russia a silo-killing first-strike capability of its own. >The RS-28 is itself a wonder of modern technology, capable of flying in excess of five times the speed of sound, altering its trajectory to confuse anti-missile radars, and delivering 15 independently targetable nuclear warheads (each one 10 times as powerful as the bombs the United States dropped on Japan at the end of World War II) or three “Object 4202” hypersonic warheads, which destroy their targets through kinetic energy (i.e., through impact). >A nuclear warhead-armed RS-28 would take about 30 minutes to reach the United States from a silo in central Russia; its warheads would be capable of destroying an area about the size of Texas. [When] armed with the “Object 4202” hypersonic warheads, each of which is capable of destroying an American missile silo, the time would be cut down to 12 minutes or less.
- dogma1138 9y agoNukes make large scale warfare between superpowers much less likely. Nukes can also diescalate any situation between superpowers before it blows into a full out war. I'm not entirely sure that complete disarmament would actually benefit the world as a whole. Also at thisn point disarmament is pointless you can't disarm physics and knowledge any nuclear capable country would be able to rebuild a tactically significant arsenal within a span of 2 years or even at a much shorter period if they poses either large stockpiles of nuclear fuel or have sufficiently large production capabilities. This is nothing more than posturing.
- laretluval 9y agoLOL
- dang 9y agoYou've been posting a lot of unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you please stop doing that? We're hoping for a higher standard of discussion here.
- jMyles 9y agoSeems like a good occasion to go back and read Eisenhower's farewell address - probably one of the 100 best speeches in the history of the English language IMO. > Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
- DrScump 9y agoIt was also Ike who coined the term "military-industrial complex".