Serious Business 1: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

The question is simple. Do nuclear weapons make the world safer?

During the Cold War, nuclear weapons played main role. It was the fuel which fueled the Cold War and at the same time prevention against a real war, known as the M.A.D. But after the collapse of Soviet Union (coughs at GM_K7) nuclear weapons werent the wonderful tool to keep peace (note: there is a difference between keeping peace and making peace). Now that a significant portion of the USSRs weapons are unaccounted for we are dealing with the treat of people with nukes who don't mind dying. Thats the crux of mutually assured destruction, the assumption that nobody wants to die.

Sadly, there is a faction out there that has money, numbers, and the willpower to end civilization if thats what it takes. Now we can't take back nukes, we cant go back and warn FDR of the implications of starting the program. Call me a cynic, but I also don't think that if there was a global treaty to dismantle nuclear weapons that we'd be safe. Weapons would be hidden, and rogue organization are very good at hiding themselves and their weapons already anyways.

So I think that given the current circumstances we are safer with nuclear weapons, to at least deter conventional warfare by actual nations. Since World War 2 there has not been 1 major conflict on the scale of World War 2 since, all because of nukes. I'm not saying theres not violence and war, but there are no more attempts at "world domination" at least.

If we disarmed would we honestly be any safer? The problem with nuclear weapons is that its a all-or-nothing deal. Either we get rid of every single one, and the world becomes safer, or we miss a few, and the people who hold them al the sudden have a huge potential advantage.

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

So long as men have differences and are willing to kill each other because of them we can never be safe.

I don't think nuclear weapons make the world any safer or any moe dangerous.  They are just another weapon like the rifle or the tank.

Machineguns that mow don infantrymen didn't deter nations form starting WWI and killing millions no did the ability to bomb cities into oblivian stop WWII so why would nukes stop a war?  After the initial shots nations would still start attacking each other with rifles and sticks.  Also there are countermeasures so MAD might not be quite so effective anymore.  Why worry about the potential for a nuclear war if you can shoot the out of the sky?

No matter what weapons we come up with war will always include peope who can blend into a crowd, strike at any time go anywhere and do any mision. Frankly THAT scares me more than nukes. I KNOW what a nuke can do. I have no clue what my neighbor is capable of

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

I think it is incredibly short-sighted to attribute the smaller scale of wars since WWII to the presence of nuclear weapons. Simply put, communication has become good enough that people can't reasonably be isolated in their own little worlds like the people of Nazi Germany and
Stalin's USSR. People that would try to take over the world either don't make it to office, or don't have the influence with their people to organize the kind of thing that could lead to a WWII-scale conflict.

Diplomacy has gotten better. Large numbers of people in every country go through school with the sole intention of promoting peace and reducing conflict. WWII taught the world a lesson: failures in diplomacy and communication led to a massive conflict that couldn't be resolved for several years. Focus on preventing war, and, interestingly, wars become less frequent and less intense.

At the moment, there are several nations that have the capacity participate in nuclear war.

Let's say all of the nuclear powers disarmed completely, and all of the remaining nukes were the ones that slipped off to rogue organizations. What changes? Since they don't have physical locations that we can glass, we wouldn't be able to hurt them if we had nukes to retaliate with.

To the countries capable of building and maintaining nukes, they are simply a burden. They are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, they foster ill-will from the public, they make other nations less trusting. It's just not worth it to know you can shake a stick at another big country. Too much is gained from trade and interaction for one to have a reason good enough to want to take over another.

Nuclear weapons cannot be used with much success when attempting to destroy anything but infrastructure. Underground organizations do not have visible infrastructure the way established countries do, so nukes are simply not a real threat to them. How do you take down an organization that works in secrecy? With your own forces working to infiltrate and dismantle their system, not blindly attempting to stomp them out of existence with big explosions.

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

Do nuclear weapons make world safer place? No.
I agree with Neon that nuclear weapons arent effective defense against terrorist groups.I would certianly encourage the world to disarm their nuclear weaponary, but thats just not possible.
It doesnt work that way, you cannot invent a weapon, distribute it around the globe for 50 years and then expect that everyone will just give it away at once. We have to learn with what we did. I believe that the nuclear weapons prevent the WWIII from happening (although it will happen eventually, when our planet runs out of resoruces). Wars rage in the middle-east, and nasty things happen in Africa, but the great super-powers such as USA, Russia, China, Britian... are relatively calm. Ofcourse its due to better communication, but would you really behave to someone you dont like the same way you would behave to him if you knew he wont nuke you right after you touch him? I dont think so. Nuclear weapon was the hero during the Cold War, and is now the bogeyman of 21st century. But the Cold War starts all over again, North Korea testing their own nuclear weapons, Russia beggining the race once again and USA expanding into the middle-east.

I would like to see all nukes disappear, but if it means a long process which can provoke another incident I say keep them (dont spread them). I think its safer to have them stored in monitored bunkers than secretly laying in you backyard.

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

yes, if they all blow up the world will be safer three seconds after...

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

I think nuclear war is pretty much inevitable. Humanity as a whole could do wonders if they united, atleast noticeable part of the human population, but lets face it, we never wont. Perhaps thats just what we need, perhaps people need to be brought to the very edge of destruction for them unite. God made an attempt with the Noems Arc, perhaps we need nukes instead of water this time?
But can we ever unite? Does our instict allow that? Can we manage to do that with such vast cultural differences? I think thats discussion for another Serious Business topic.

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

They make it safer because countries are afraid to attack and afraid to use them in case of retaliation. But no weapon made to kill would make anything safer (think American trigger-happy policy).

I think its quite difficult. There are so many of them, and so many are hidden, we will never get rid of them. Some countries might dispose of most of them, but definitely not all of them, because, when its certain defeat people will fight to the death with all means. Also, they can get into the wrong hands.

I guess we need to try to come up with more restrictions and try to get rid of as much as possible them. Btw, some years ago Russia proposed a plan to the USA to reduce the both countries nuclear stockpiles to 1000 missiles, but USA rejected. Its a long way to go I guess.

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

I believe they do, due to the principles of MAD, which is Mutually Assured Destruction. It essentially states that no matter how overwhelming a first strike is, there will still be enough nukes and launching platforms for a devastating retaliation. This, of course, is something most countries would wish to avoid. Death is not some the general population of the world looks at in favor.

However. A challenger appears. The Islamic religion, at least in the fanatic sects, believe that to die in service of your country/war is the greatest honor possible. MAD would not apply. Therefore, it makes the world far more dangerous as well.

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

Nukes are a delicate issue. Despite it having the awesome destructive capacity that it has, nukes have done good in ways that are not easily noticed right away. With that you'd have to go back in history.

One topic that is still controversial is the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most people would say it was justified in that it helped stop an invasion of Japan, leading the millions of casualties on both the Allied and Japanese sides. Notice I say "helped" because it wasn't the sole reason Japan surrendered. As any history buff would know, shortly after the first bomb was dropped, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The prospect of fighting the Soviet Union was probably more frightening to the Japanese high command than the A-bomb was. Granted, both A-bombs were serious messages to Japan; Hiroshima proved that we had the Bomb and Nagasaki proved that we could make more of them (in fact, the scientists assured MacArthur that by the time the invasion of Japan took place, they could produce up to 7 more). All that said, the Japanese were scared by the Soviet declaration of war because 1) It would be a two front war and 2) by this time, social unrest was going up dramatically; if the Soviets continued their attack, maybe even to Japan itself, Communist doctrine would inevitably have made a large impact on the people and could have seriously threatened the Imperial and Militaristic government that had been established for centuries. These three factors, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Soviet offenseive all were important in forcing a Japanese surrender, thus preventing not only an uncountable amount of casualties, but it could have also possibly have prevented a Communist revolution in Japan or even a split of Japan like what happened in Korea and Vietnam. In a way, ironically, the first nuclear weapons helped LESSEN the Cold War, and in this case, probably helped out the world a bit.

Another thing that nuclear weapons did was to almost force global cooperation and negotiation. If it wasn't for the threat of nuclear annihalation, would the US have taken such careful steps to avoid an invasion of Cuba by US forces during the Cuban Crisis? If it wasn't for the US's superior nuclear armament, would the Soviest have backed down during the Crisis? If it wasn't for the concept of MAD, what could have kept the Soviet Union from launching a first strike when it was starting to collapse during the Reagan era?

I think that Nuclear weapons in a way DID help make the world less volatile or less prone to another major conflict such as WW2; inventions such as the Internet and faster communication did also help as was mentioned above. But nowadays, when our major threat are well organized terrorist groups hell bent on achieving their agenda without regard to human life, nuclear weapons are not exactly as helpful. The one thing we DON'T want happening though is a nuclear weapon in the hands of the terrorist groups, because they can now destroy US without us being able to retaliate against THEM effectively. In this case then, nuclear weapons may now be more of a danger than a deterrent.

Nuclear weapons in a way make us both safer, because now there is increased want for negotiation, but also pose a danger, in the thought that in some point in time, someone will push the button, whether it be from an organized nation or otherwise.

*Edit* Btw, sorry for the wall of text there

 

Re: Serious Business: Does nuclear weaponary make the world safer?

I see Nuclear weapons as a prevention against major conflicts. Conflicts between major countries equipped with nuclear weapons. And it works!
Yes, there are terrorist groups, but I am not saying that MAD applies to them. Either we have nukes and we have a kind of MAD between the major countries and terrorists still capable of getting their own nuke in the future, or no MAD at all if we were to dispose of all nukes, and yet terrorist groups would still be able to obtain one.
Remember the technology is already there, you cannot destroy information, you can find plans to make one bomb even on the internet! The only thing that stops terrorist groups is the security of current supplies of nukes and plutonium. And every security can, and will be broken at some point in time.

Indeed it is. But please dont think that USA wants to keep their weapons cause they are evil and plan to destroy the world. Its about national pride. Why would you reduce the number of missiles because of someone who has always been an enemy to you? For USA thats like acknowledging that they lost.

 

Itsmyship: The point of nuclear weapons in to days world (in my opinion) is to scare others and stop an assault from happening at all. Although I voted yes, I dont encourage using nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction. Though I think its true that dropping the bomb spared more lifes than it costed, and lets face it, if you lead a country would you rather sacrifice 200, 000 enemy civilians or let another tens if not hundreds of your soldiers die?
Id pick the first one of course, I dont want to fight for a country which is going to let me down because of my own enemy.

 

I don't thunk that nukes currently make the world safer. Yes they make conflict less likely, but if one occurs, then the casualty total will be horrendous.

Sure they kept the world safe during the Cold War, but MAD doesn't seem to apply with today's enemies. Terrorists would love to get their hands on one, and blow America and the Middle East off the map. MAD would only work in the suicidal, radical's favor; killing both Americans and themselves at the same time.

Hopefully, with defences how they are, we could destroy any nuclear warheads before getting too close to populated areas, though fallout could still be a problem.

 

Poll locked!
Results:
<img src="http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/1864/grafvideoep4.jpg">

Two thirds of people who voted believe that Nuclear weapons do not make the world safer. One third believes that they do. Pretty close if you ask me, atleast on topic such as this.

Thank you for taking part of Serious Business 1!

 

What's up with locking a poll only two days after it started?
Most of the time we don't even lock polls around here...

By the way, nukes for the win! They really do make the world a safer place, I'm not going to spend a lot of words on this one, since I haven't really spend a lot of time on thinking over this subject, but people just don't like the idea of receiving even more nukes as a counter on their own attack. That's what prevents people from attacking countries who have them directly. The more countries with nukes, the better.

However, they should be able to handle them, not threaten other countries with them all the time, especially not when they have a lot of bad people in their countries. (I don't want to use the word "terrorist", since it's quite obvious that people have become quite biased about what it means over the last couple of years. I certainly don't want to spread racism around here.)

 

If there were people actually discussing the thread, I would be more than happy to let it be opened, however the amount of discussion so far is pretty low (and I am dissapointed) therefor I have no reason to continue this debate.

Ill try to make the new Serious Business about more general topic which concerns wider audience, hope it helps.