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Since I was the one to pitch the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons I should probably try to answer some of these. I don’t know what kind of a pla

Since I was the one to pitch the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons I should probably try to answer some of these. I don’t know what kind of a plan would be sufficient for you, but the point of this treaty is to come up with this plan and the signatories are intended to be all the nation’s states. Some very powerful governments (like Austria, Brazil, and Indonesia) have already signed it and it is already ratified by 59 nations. This is hardly a bunch of plebs signing a petition. What I’m pitching here is for you to contact your national government and encourage them to sign it if they haven’t done so already. I’m not gonna go into the philosophy of violence here. I’m just gonna leave my earlier appeal to authority as good enough of a justification. If the national governments of 86 nations think that total elimination is needed, as described by some of the world’s leading experts at the UN comity which called for this proposal, then perhaps arguments they have are good enough to overcome the problems proposed by the above conjectures of the philosophy of violence. The preamble of the treaty it self might actually answer some of your concerns. Perhaps you should read it, it is really legible and straight forward. So I will simply refer to it and leave it at that. https://undocs.org/A/CONF.229/2017/8 https://undocs.org/A/CONF.229/2017/8

post_from_work 5y ago
>>>Some very powerful governments (like Austria, Brazil, and Indonesia) have already signed it and it is already ratified by 59 nations. This is hardly a bunch of plebs signing a petition. Austria? Brazil? Indonesia? None of those are nuclear-armed states...which means that their "power" is effectively ZERO. It also costs them nothing to slap a signature on a document that has no material impact on their national security, because they have no capability to lose. You seem to have a very....idealistic view of international relations. Let me explain how nuclear disarmament would play out in the real world: UN Signatories: We don't think anyone should have nuclear weapons. US/Russia/China/etc: Nah, keeping these "just in case" is an important part of our international influence. UN Signatories: I guess we will have to forcibly disarm you? Nuke States: You can try. Invade me, and I'll burn your entire population to cinders, and make your lands glow in the dark for the next 10,000 years. ( https://geopolitics.news/euroasia/russia-adopts-nuclear-first-strike-policy/ https://geopolitics.news/euroasia/russia-adopts-nuclear-firs... ) UN Signatories: Ok on second thought we'll just send you another sternly-worded letter.... And that's how the conversation ends. Because sovereign states that are unable to enforce their will on others have no real power. >>>What I’m pitching here is for you to contact your national government and encourage them to sign it if they haven’t done so already. I'm a citizen of not only a nuclear-armed state, but arguably the world's most influential global hegemon: the USA. If any of my politicians even HINTED at supporting such a disarmament, I'd vote them out of office ASAP. I read the entire treaty here: ( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_... ). The Preamble reads like it was drafted by a drum circle of hippies, stoned on a beach in California. It's not written in a manner that is in any way persuasive to the people who actually need to be convinced: the national security leadership. If this is a policy you seriously want to advance, I recommend taking a hard look at how national security professionals establish values and objectives, assess problems, and work through cost-benefit analyses in pursuit of said objectives. Know your audience, or you will never talk them into an alternative course of action.
- CaptArmchair 5y ago
  > I'm a citizen of not only a nuclear-armed state, but arguably the world's most influential global hegemon: the USA. That's essentially an unveiled admission of a want to hold the rest of the world hostage and establish domination. There's little rational nor justifiable about such a want from the perspective of anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen. > Because sovereign states that are unable to enforce their will on others have no real power. Well, they signed the treaty anyway, did they? I'd say the implicit signal here was: "We don't listen to a hegemony who isn't willing to listen to the rest of the world." What they did was take a moral high ground, and condemn anyone who didn't sign. Call it virtue signaling, but in international diplomacy, it's a pretty powerful statement. The U.S. may have nuclear weapons, but it's still very much a part of the rest of the planet. The same is true for all the COP conferences from Rio to Glasgow, and climate protocols, over the past 30 years. > If this is a policy you seriously want to advance, I recommend taking a hard look at how national security professionals establish values and objectives, assess problems, and work through cost-benefit analyses in pursuit of said objectives. Which objectives? To who's benefit? Yours? The U.S.? The rest of the world? The U.S. is in a tentative spot of taking an exclusive role in determining what is or isn't a moral high ground. Whether that's nuclear disarmament, or reducing CO2 / curbing climate change, or social equity. This is used as an argument for new, upcoming powers like India or China to forge their own path forward, for better or worse. If the U.S. wants to keep playing a role of significance in the 21st and 22nd centuries, it will have to relinquish its hegemonic stance.
  - post_from_work 5y ago
    >>>That's essentially an unveiled admission of a want to hold the rest of the world hostage and establish domination. There's little rational nor justifiable about such a want from the perspective of anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen. We've already been holding the world hostage, arguably since we ended Breton Woods in favor of the Petrodollar, and definitely since the Soviet Union collapsed. This might be rational or justifiable to non-US citizens if we better communicated how Pax Americana is to their benefit. But we suck at soft power, and have squandered much of our goodwill with our devastation of the Middle East. So I fully understand and appreciate, for example, Russia and China doing everything in their power to break the back of our supremacy. >>>Well, they signed the treaty anyway, did they?....Call it virtue signaling, but in international diplomacy, it's a pretty powerful statement. It cost the signatories nothing substantive, and it changed nothing substantive. I will absolutely call it virtue signaling. >>>Which objectives? To who's benefit? Yours? The U.S.? The rest of the world? Which objectives? The objectives of the nations that employ said security professionals, as typically laid out in a "National Security Strategy" or similar document. So my point here is that in order to convince the people who control nuclear assets to change, one needs to understand them. You can't persuade them if you are not communicating with language that resonates with them in the first place. >>>This is used as an argument for new, upcoming powers like India or China to forge their own path forward, for better or worse. If the U.S. wants to keep playing a role of significance in the 21st and 22nd centuries, it will have to relinquish its hegemonic stance. This is actually something I strongly agree with. I think it is folly for a mismanaged nation of 330 million to expect to continue to lord over 7+ billion people that are rapidly closing the gap of technical and/or institutional competency across the board. The US is failing on several key fronts 1) failing to recognize the limitations of its hard (aka military) power 2) failing to make the necessary domestic investments in infrastructure and education to even keep it abreast of rising, high-population nations 3) failing to capitalize on existing soft power. We should have begun to pivot away from the Petrodollar after the Soviet Union fell, should have kept the footprint in Afghanistan smaller, and never should have invaded Iraq. I would have cut the active-duty Army and Air Force to the bone outside of special operations forces, and relied on expeditionary Navy/Marine forces, sailing from the US itself. That's still an overwhelming amount of combat power for most global security threats. Spend the money saved on high-speed rail, thorium reactors, fusion research, and pre-collegiate education that doesn't suck.

post_from_work 5y ago

>>>Some very powerful governments (like Austria, Brazil, and Indonesia) have already signed it and it is already ratified by 59 nations. This is hardly a bunch of plebs signing a petition. Austria? Brazil? Indonesia? None of those are nuclear-armed states...which means that their "power" is effectively ZERO. It also costs them nothing to slap a signature on a document that has no material impact on their national security, because they have no capability to lose. You seem to have a very....idealistic view of international relations. Let me explain how nuclear disarmament would play out in the real world: UN Signatories: We don't think anyone should have nuclear weapons. US/Russia/China/etc: Nah, keeping these "just in case" is an important part of our international influence. UN Signatories: I guess we will have to forcibly disarm you? Nuke States: You can try. Invade me, and I'll burn your entire population to cinders, and make your lands glow in the dark for the next 10,000 years. ( https://geopolitics.news/euroasia/russia-adopts-nuclear-first-strike-policy/ https://geopolitics.news/euroasia/russia-adopts-nuclear-firs... ) UN Signatories: Ok on second thought we'll just send you another sternly-worded letter.... And that's how the conversation ends. Because sovereign states that are unable to enforce their will on others have no real power. >>>What I’m pitching here is for you to contact your national government and encourage them to sign it if they haven’t done so already. I'm a citizen of not only a nuclear-armed state, but arguably the world's most influential global hegemon: the USA. If any of my politicians even HINTED at supporting such a disarmament, I'd vote them out of office ASAP. I read the entire treaty here: ( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Weapons https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_... ). The Preamble reads like it was drafted by a drum circle of hippies, stoned on a beach in California. It's not written in a manner that is in any way persuasive to the people who actually need to be convinced: the national security leadership. If this is a policy you seriously want to advance, I recommend taking a hard look at how national security professionals establish values and objectives, assess problems, and work through cost-benefit analyses in pursuit of said objectives. Know your audience, or you will never talk them into an alternative course of action.

CaptArmchair 5y ago
> I'm a citizen of not only a nuclear-armed state, but arguably the world's most influential global hegemon: the USA. That's essentially an unveiled admission of a want to hold the rest of the world hostage and establish domination. There's little rational nor justifiable about such a want from the perspective of anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen. > Because sovereign states that are unable to enforce their will on others have no real power. Well, they signed the treaty anyway, did they? I'd say the implicit signal here was: "We don't listen to a hegemony who isn't willing to listen to the rest of the world." What they did was take a moral high ground, and condemn anyone who didn't sign. Call it virtue signaling, but in international diplomacy, it's a pretty powerful statement. The U.S. may have nuclear weapons, but it's still very much a part of the rest of the planet. The same is true for all the COP conferences from Rio to Glasgow, and climate protocols, over the past 30 years. > If this is a policy you seriously want to advance, I recommend taking a hard look at how national security professionals establish values and objectives, assess problems, and work through cost-benefit analyses in pursuit of said objectives. Which objectives? To who's benefit? Yours? The U.S.? The rest of the world? The U.S. is in a tentative spot of taking an exclusive role in determining what is or isn't a moral high ground. Whether that's nuclear disarmament, or reducing CO2 / curbing climate change, or social equity. This is used as an argument for new, upcoming powers like India or China to forge their own path forward, for better or worse. If the U.S. wants to keep playing a role of significance in the 21st and 22nd centuries, it will have to relinquish its hegemonic stance.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  >>>That's essentially an unveiled admission of a want to hold the rest of the world hostage and establish domination. There's little rational nor justifiable about such a want from the perspective of anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen. We've already been holding the world hostage, arguably since we ended Breton Woods in favor of the Petrodollar, and definitely since the Soviet Union collapsed. This might be rational or justifiable to non-US citizens if we better communicated how Pax Americana is to their benefit. But we suck at soft power, and have squandered much of our goodwill with our devastation of the Middle East. So I fully understand and appreciate, for example, Russia and China doing everything in their power to break the back of our supremacy. >>>Well, they signed the treaty anyway, did they?....Call it virtue signaling, but in international diplomacy, it's a pretty powerful statement. It cost the signatories nothing substantive, and it changed nothing substantive. I will absolutely call it virtue signaling. >>>Which objectives? To who's benefit? Yours? The U.S.? The rest of the world? Which objectives? The objectives of the nations that employ said security professionals, as typically laid out in a "National Security Strategy" or similar document. So my point here is that in order to convince the people who control nuclear assets to change, one needs to understand them. You can't persuade them if you are not communicating with language that resonates with them in the first place. >>>This is used as an argument for new, upcoming powers like India or China to forge their own path forward, for better or worse. If the U.S. wants to keep playing a role of significance in the 21st and 22nd centuries, it will have to relinquish its hegemonic stance. This is actually something I strongly agree with. I think it is folly for a mismanaged nation of 330 million to expect to continue to lord over 7+ billion people that are rapidly closing the gap of technical and/or institutional competency across the board. The US is failing on several key fronts 1) failing to recognize the limitations of its hard (aka military) power 2) failing to make the necessary domestic investments in infrastructure and education to even keep it abreast of rising, high-population nations 3) failing to capitalize on existing soft power. We should have begun to pivot away from the Petrodollar after the Soviet Union fell, should have kept the footprint in Afghanistan smaller, and never should have invaded Iraq. I would have cut the active-duty Army and Air Force to the bone outside of special operations forces, and relied on expeditionary Navy/Marine forces, sailing from the US itself. That's still an overwhelming amount of combat power for most global security threats. Spend the money saved on high-speed rail, thorium reactors, fusion research, and pre-collegiate education that doesn't suck.