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Nice anti-nuke story. I know people want us to give up our Nukes, but with a host of middle eastern countries within grasp of nuclear technology, doing so would

Nice anti-nuke story. I know people want us to give up our Nukes, but with a host of middle eastern countries within grasp of nuclear technology, doing so would be asinine. It's also interesting to note no where in the article do they talk about how the US has continually reduced its nuclear stockpile, or that we've been at the forefront of promoting non-proliferation. What's also missing from the article is several policies from the Bush Administration which sought to update the technology we already have to keep the technology a lot safer and easier to maintain like the Reliable Replacement Warhead program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliable_Replacement_Warhead_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliable_Replacement_Warhead_Pr... "The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) was a proposed new American nuclear warhead design and bomb family that was intended to be simple, reliable and to provide a long-lasting, low maintenance future nuclear force for the United States. Initiated by the United States Congress in 2004, it became a centerpiece of the plans of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to remake the nuclear weapons complex. In 2008, the Congress denied funding for the program, and in 2009 the Obama administration called for work on the program to cease."

HarryHirsch 13y ago
Nice anti-nuke story. I know people want us to give up our Nukes, but with a host of middle eastern countries within grasp of nuclear technology, doing so would be asinine. Not sure. Nuclear weapons serve a purpose in war, that is to take out a large installation, an air force or a navy base, say, with just one hit. Then you send in ground troops. But whatever "host of middle eastern countries within grasp of nuclear technology" there may be, they still have no capability to invade North America. On the other hand, the United States have the capability to invade any Middle Eastern country. The scenario is very unlikely. The real risk is false alarms, and the true heroes are Vassili Archipov and Stanislav Petrov. These, and their unknown American, British, French, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and Israeli counterparts.
- Thrymr 13y ago
  > Nuclear weapons serve a purpose in war Not really, in a tactical sense in any war short of WWIII. No one can really use them without the threat of massive reprisal. No rational player would use them to take out an air force base. Strategically, they're only really good for holding a gun to everyone's head (including your own). That can apply on a scale from the small and crazy (North Korea) to the huge, dysfunctional, and bankrupt (USSR).
  - arethuza 13y ago
    "No one can really use them without the threat of massive reprisal" You can, of course, use them if your opponent is not capable of a massive reprisal - which the Soviets weren't until the late 1960s (at least against the United States). That's why Curtis LeMay, and later Thomas Powers, were so keen to land a "Sunday punch" on the Soviets - fortunately the political leaders of the US (notably JFK during the Cuban crisis) would have nothing to do with such a plan - to their eternal credit. A fairly interesting novel describing a world where LeMay had got his way is Resurrection Day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day
  - VLM 13y ago
    >huge, dysfunctional, and bankrupt (USSR). And the USA, to be fair.
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    Not necessarily. Would the US risk a major incident with China or Russia if India and Pakistan decide to lob small nuclear warheads at each other? What if one of those powers aligned with one side or the other?
- VLM 13y ago
  "The real risk is false alarms," The real risk is false flag ops. Say Tel Aviv vaporizes tomorrow and no one takes responsibility. Who do we nuke? They'll be demands we blast "somebody" of course. As everyone knows, the enemy of the day would probably be Iran. Now the Iraqis have no great love of the Iranians, so the logical thing for any upwind country to do, is when they obtain a special weapon, use it to frame a downwind country that's known to be further along the process than they are. I believe this is a major part of the motivation for the Iranians to build their own nukes. Obviously their neighbors benefit by framing them, so their only hope is to build a deterrent force before they get framed. Who benefits if Pakistan and India degenerated into a limited nuke war? Well whoever that is, is somewhat likely to want to encourage it, which wouldn't take much. This is the hidden danger of the US/Russia MAD scenario, we could take onesie-twosie potshots at each other with no retribution because someone else would be blamed (probably China) The fact this fairly likely scenario hasn't played out is pretty interesting.
  - hga 13y ago
    You can deduce the source of the fissionables and the design of the weapon by analyzing the isotopes left over.
    - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
      Only using science though. and Hans Blick, the UN weapons inspector, was able to determine that Saddam had no WMD capability. sadly we did not believe science, and I expect, in the afterglow of a nuclear explosion, that we shall not believe the tales told by isotopes either we are a dumb species
      - hga 13y ago
        To the best I can determine, he's a lawyer, not a scientist (no biography says what any of his non-terminal degrees were in). You're also welcome to explain what these bits from his Wikipedia entry have to do with "science": "Hans Blix personally admonished Saddam for "cat and mouse" games and warned Iraq of "serious consequences" if it attempted to hinder or delay his mission. In his report to the UN Security Council on 14 February 2003, Blix claimed that "If Iraq had provided the necessary cooperation in 1991, the phase of disarmament – under resolution 687 – could have been short and a decade of sanctions could have been avoided."" He also famously got tricked by Sadam prior to the 1991 war ... any particular reason he should have gotten extra respect when he said the same thing again?
arethuza 13y ago
"with a host of middle eastern countries within grasp of nuclear technology" Who? Israel already has a significant nuclear arsenal and very capable delivery systems - and given their history who would grudge them this? [NB I say that as someone who theoretically lives within range of their weapons.] Apart from Iran, who might soon be able to build fission bombs and who would have difficulty delivering them very far, who are to be included in this "host" of countries?
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  Syria was developing a nuclear program before they had their facilities bombed by the Israelis. Saudi Arabia has shown interest though they don't want to rock the geopolitical boat, but if Iran developed the bomb then it would likely set off a local arms race. Egypt has the industrial capacity, wealth, and local nuclear technology to develop nuclear weapons if they desired and their government is in so much flux that the chances of a future Egyptian regime deciding to develop the technology (especially if Iran were to acquire it) can't be ruled out.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    I remember Iraq was bombed by Israel to stop Iraq from pursuing a nuclear program, but I didn't know the same thing happened in Syria. Israel bombed the plant site in Iraq with F-16s that had been in their possession for a very short time.
    - InclinedPlane 13y ago
      Somewhat related, most people don't realize how far along Iraq's nuclear program was at the time of the first Gulf War, even despite the Israeli raid on Osirik. Iraq had enriched a large amount of Uranium using calutrons, had recovered some HEU from their experimental reactors, and had done a considerable amount of R&D on bomb designs. If Saddam had not invaded Kuwait when he did it's almost certain that he would have had a functional nuclear weapon or several by the mid-1990s at the latest.
durandalmk2 13y ago
America's commitment to non-proliferation is debatable, especially in the middle east. We block requests for our client state to join existing nuclear treaties. America's belligerant aggressive posture/actions in the region make nuclear programs the most viable defensive strategy for nations attempting to protect themselves.
psn 13y ago
Shrug. The article is mostly a tale of two, uh, causes of excitement. It doesn't make a sweeping claim about getting rid of anything. "continually reduced its nuclear stockpile, or that we've been at the forefront of promoting non-proliferation." I'm amused. Its easy to promote other people not having weapons :). Its worth noting that the US is still the world's largest nuclear power. The RRW program would have featured replacing every existing weapon, probably the US resuming tests, and it was pretty expenvise - are you really surprised it got cancelled?
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  To make things crystal clear here: the US has vastly reduced its deployed nuclear warheads and stockpiles over time. The US currently has less than 1/10th as many warheads deployed as during the peak of the Cold War, and that number is continuing to drop. Also note that in fact Russia has more deployed warheads than the US currently.
  - justatdotin 13y ago
    let's not ignore the fact that USA continues to develop new nukes, designed for deployment, not detterence.
alexqgb 13y ago
Why would it be asinine? Seriously, so what if they have nukes? Simply having them doesn't mean you can use them. After all, that's what the Cold War demonstrated. If you're going to use them, you have to use them in numbers great enough to wipe out every city in every nation opposing you. In essence, your own use must be heavy enough to absolutely ensure no possibility of retaliation. Accordingly, it's not enough for Tehran to nuke Tel Aviv. They also have to nuke every city in every nation that's part of NATO and they'd have to do so at the exact same time. In the Soviet era, we mitigated a threat of this magnitude with the Nuclear Triad, which distributed our weapons on moving platforms around the globe, ensuring that even if we were obliterated by a Soviet attack, we could make our very last act one of equally devastating retaliation. The resulting situation, known as Mutually Assured Destruction (yes, MAD), was the thing that not only kept the Cold War cold, but ensured (in theory) that any direct conflicts that did break out would never go nuclear. You must realize that there is absolutely no way for any middle eastern country to build arsenals and delivery platforms formidable enough to replicate the Soviet stance. And even if there were, the enormous gulf between the size of their economies and ours means they couldn't get a quarter of the way there without the US rearming - even from from scratch - and recreating the MAD dynamic. The nuclear logic is simple: unless you can use them on a scale large enough to avoid any threat of retaliation, you cannot use them at all. You can't even threaten to use them without putting your own life at risk. In that regard, they're like trying to take hostages on an airplane post-9/11. Knowing what we all know now, every one of passengers will be thinking the exact same thing: corner the bastard and either cripple or kill him. Like soldiers dressed in bright red coats, nuclear arms are a relic of age that has passed, never to return. The more openly we can acknowledge this, the better off the world will be.
- malandrew 13y ago
  I don't know about anyone else, but the simple fact that a large portion of human beings would elect other human beings with the capacity and resolution to press the button in case of a MAD-type event to be completely asinine. The people with the drive and resolution to press the button that would cause assured destruction of you and your kind are the absolute last people that should ever be in a position of leadership. How we, the Russians and several other countries reached the conclusion that such people should be leading us is frightening and reflects quite poorly on the capacity of our species to scale. Is there any other social, colony-creating species out there that has developed a similar mechanism for retaliation against some threat that also guarantees the wiping out of their own colony?
znowi 13y ago
Peculiar thing is that the Middle Eastern threat is created by the US itself, artificially. Even if, which is unlikely, some of those countries manage to develop a viable nuclear weapon and a viable delivery system, its hypothetical launch will be triggered not by an act of terror, but by the US aggression. It may actually be a good thing for the Middle East to acquire nuclear weapon. It just might soften the US militant zeal a bit.
sehugg 13y ago
I didn't read the article as making a judgement on whether nuclear weapons are good/bad, but since you asked... At least one study claims a conflict with few as 100 detonations could result in enough fallout to trigger a 10-year global famine: http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/ http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/
moocowduckquack 13y ago
Personally, I suspect that a few governments track where pretty much all the nuclear material is in the world, given the public state of ground penetrating radar technology and the likelyhood of advanced versions of that tech being put on satellites.

HarryHirsch 13y ago

Nice anti-nuke story. I know people want us to give up our Nukes, but with a host of middle eastern countries within grasp of nuclear technology, doing so would be asinine. Not sure. Nuclear weapons serve a purpose in war, that is to take out a large installation, an air force or a navy base, say, with just one hit. Then you send in ground troops. But whatever "host of middle eastern countries within grasp of nuclear technology" there may be, they still have no capability to invade North America. On the other hand, the United States have the capability to invade any Middle Eastern country. The scenario is very unlikely. The real risk is false alarms, and the true heroes are Vassili Archipov and Stanislav Petrov. These, and their unknown American, British, French, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and Israeli counterparts.

Thrymr 13y ago
> Nuclear weapons serve a purpose in war Not really, in a tactical sense in any war short of WWIII. No one can really use them without the threat of massive reprisal. No rational player would use them to take out an air force base. Strategically, they're only really good for holding a gun to everyone's head (including your own). That can apply on a scale from the small and crazy (North Korea) to the huge, dysfunctional, and bankrupt (USSR).
- arethuza 13y ago
  "No one can really use them without the threat of massive reprisal" You can, of course, use them if your opponent is not capable of a massive reprisal - which the Soviets weren't until the late 1960s (at least against the United States). That's why Curtis LeMay, and later Thomas Powers, were so keen to land a "Sunday punch" on the Soviets - fortunately the political leaders of the US (notably JFK during the Cuban crisis) would have nothing to do with such a plan - to their eternal credit. A fairly interesting novel describing a world where LeMay had got his way is Resurrection Day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day
- VLM 13y ago
  >huge, dysfunctional, and bankrupt (USSR). And the USA, to be fair.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Not necessarily. Would the US risk a major incident with China or Russia if India and Pakistan decide to lob small nuclear warheads at each other? What if one of those powers aligned with one side or the other?
VLM 13y ago
"The real risk is false alarms," The real risk is false flag ops. Say Tel Aviv vaporizes tomorrow and no one takes responsibility. Who do we nuke? They'll be demands we blast "somebody" of course. As everyone knows, the enemy of the day would probably be Iran. Now the Iraqis have no great love of the Iranians, so the logical thing for any upwind country to do, is when they obtain a special weapon, use it to frame a downwind country that's known to be further along the process than they are. I believe this is a major part of the motivation for the Iranians to build their own nukes. Obviously their neighbors benefit by framing them, so their only hope is to build a deterrent force before they get framed. Who benefits if Pakistan and India degenerated into a limited nuke war? Well whoever that is, is somewhat likely to want to encourage it, which wouldn't take much. This is the hidden danger of the US/Russia MAD scenario, we could take onesie-twosie potshots at each other with no retribution because someone else would be blamed (probably China) The fact this fairly likely scenario hasn't played out is pretty interesting.
- hga 13y ago
  You can deduce the source of the fissionables and the design of the weapon by analyzing the isotopes left over.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    Only using science though. and Hans Blick, the UN weapons inspector, was able to determine that Saddam had no WMD capability. sadly we did not believe science, and I expect, in the afterglow of a nuclear explosion, that we shall not believe the tales told by isotopes either we are a dumb species
    - hga 13y ago
      To the best I can determine, he's a lawyer, not a scientist (no biography says what any of his non-terminal degrees were in). You're also welcome to explain what these bits from his Wikipedia entry have to do with "science": "Hans Blix personally admonished Saddam for "cat and mouse" games and warned Iraq of "serious consequences" if it attempted to hinder or delay his mission. In his report to the UN Security Council on 14 February 2003, Blix claimed that "If Iraq had provided the necessary cooperation in 1991, the phase of disarmament – under resolution 687 – could have been short and a decade of sanctions could have been avoided."" He also famously got tricked by Sadam prior to the 1991 war ... any particular reason he should have gotten extra respect when he said the same thing again?

arethuza 13y ago

"with a host of middle eastern countries within grasp of nuclear technology" Who? Israel already has a significant nuclear arsenal and very capable delivery systems - and given their history who would grudge them this? [NB I say that as someone who theoretically lives within range of their weapons.] Apart from Iran, who might soon be able to build fission bombs and who would have difficulty delivering them very far, who are to be included in this "host" of countries?

InclinedPlane 13y ago
Syria was developing a nuclear program before they had their facilities bombed by the Israelis. Saudi Arabia has shown interest though they don't want to rock the geopolitical boat, but if Iran developed the bomb then it would likely set off a local arms race. Egypt has the industrial capacity, wealth, and local nuclear technology to develop nuclear weapons if they desired and their government is in so much flux that the chances of a future Egyptian regime deciding to develop the technology (especially if Iran were to acquire it) can't be ruled out.
- protomyth 13y ago
  I remember Iraq was bombed by Israel to stop Iraq from pursuing a nuclear program, but I didn't know the same thing happened in Syria. Israel bombed the plant site in Iraq with F-16s that had been in their possession for a very short time.
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    Somewhat related, most people don't realize how far along Iraq's nuclear program was at the time of the first Gulf War, even despite the Israeli raid on Osirik. Iraq had enriched a large amount of Uranium using calutrons, had recovered some HEU from their experimental reactors, and had done a considerable amount of R&D on bomb designs. If Saddam had not invaded Kuwait when he did it's almost certain that he would have had a functional nuclear weapon or several by the mid-1990s at the latest.

durandalmk2 13y ago

America's commitment to non-proliferation is debatable, especially in the middle east. We block requests for our client state to join existing nuclear treaties. America's belligerant aggressive posture/actions in the region make nuclear programs the most viable defensive strategy for nations attempting to protect themselves.

psn 13y ago

Shrug. The article is mostly a tale of two, uh, causes of excitement. It doesn't make a sweeping claim about getting rid of anything. "continually reduced its nuclear stockpile, or that we've been at the forefront of promoting non-proliferation." I'm amused. Its easy to promote other people not having weapons :). Its worth noting that the US is still the world's largest nuclear power. The RRW program would have featured replacing every existing weapon, probably the US resuming tests, and it was pretty expenvise - are you really surprised it got cancelled?

InclinedPlane 13y ago
To make things crystal clear here: the US has vastly reduced its deployed nuclear warheads and stockpiles over time. The US currently has less than 1/10th as many warheads deployed as during the peak of the Cold War, and that number is continuing to drop. Also note that in fact Russia has more deployed warheads than the US currently.
- justatdotin 13y ago
  let's not ignore the fact that USA continues to develop new nukes, designed for deployment, not detterence.

alexqgb 13y ago

Why would it be asinine? Seriously, so what if they have nukes? Simply having them doesn't mean you can use them. After all, that's what the Cold War demonstrated. If you're going to use them, you have to use them in numbers great enough to wipe out every city in every nation opposing you. In essence, your own use must be heavy enough to absolutely ensure no possibility of retaliation. Accordingly, it's not enough for Tehran to nuke Tel Aviv. They also have to nuke every city in every nation that's part of NATO and they'd have to do so at the exact same time. In the Soviet era, we mitigated a threat of this magnitude with the Nuclear Triad, which distributed our weapons on moving platforms around the globe, ensuring that even if we were obliterated by a Soviet attack, we could make our very last act one of equally devastating retaliation. The resulting situation, known as Mutually Assured Destruction (yes, MAD), was the thing that not only kept the Cold War cold, but ensured (in theory) that any direct conflicts that did break out would never go nuclear. You must realize that there is absolutely no way for any middle eastern country to build arsenals and delivery platforms formidable enough to replicate the Soviet stance. And even if there were, the enormous gulf between the size of their economies and ours means they couldn't get a quarter of the way there without the US rearming - even from from scratch - and recreating the MAD dynamic. The nuclear logic is simple: unless you can use them on a scale large enough to avoid any threat of retaliation, you cannot use them at all. You can't even threaten to use them without putting your own life at risk. In that regard, they're like trying to take hostages on an airplane post-9/11. Knowing what we all know now, every one of passengers will be thinking the exact same thing: corner the bastard and either cripple or kill him. Like soldiers dressed in bright red coats, nuclear arms are a relic of age that has passed, never to return. The more openly we can acknowledge this, the better off the world will be.

malandrew 13y ago
I don't know about anyone else, but the simple fact that a large portion of human beings would elect other human beings with the capacity and resolution to press the button in case of a MAD-type event to be completely asinine. The people with the drive and resolution to press the button that would cause assured destruction of you and your kind are the absolute last people that should ever be in a position of leadership. How we, the Russians and several other countries reached the conclusion that such people should be leading us is frightening and reflects quite poorly on the capacity of our species to scale. Is there any other social, colony-creating species out there that has developed a similar mechanism for retaliation against some threat that also guarantees the wiping out of their own colony?

znowi 13y ago

Peculiar thing is that the Middle Eastern threat is created by the US itself, artificially. Even if, which is unlikely, some of those countries manage to develop a viable nuclear weapon and a viable delivery system, its hypothetical launch will be triggered not by an act of terror, but by the US aggression. It may actually be a good thing for the Middle East to acquire nuclear weapon. It just might soften the US militant zeal a bit.

sehugg 13y ago

I didn't read the article as making a judgement on whether nuclear weapons are good/bad, but since you asked... At least one study claims a conflict with few as 100 detonations could result in enough fallout to trigger a 10-year global famine: http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/ http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/

moocowduckquack 13y ago

Personally, I suspect that a few governments track where pretty much all the nuclear material is in the world, given the public state of ground penetrating radar technology and the likelyhood of advanced versions of that tech being put on satellites.