Treaty banning nuclear weapons approved at UN

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/07/treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons-approved-un

by bahjoite • 9 years ago

57 65 9 years ago

theguardian.com

Turing_Machine2• 9 years ago

Next up: mice vote to bell cat.

dustinmoorenet• 9 years ago

With enough mice, it might just work.

Turing_Machine2• 9 years ago

Not if the cats are the ones who already have nuclear weapons.

FullMtlAlcoholc• 9 years ago

That most conflicts are internal and not between major nation states shiws that the UN has been successful in its mission.

tbihl• 9 years ago

An 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_4• 9 years ago

I 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.

arethuza3• 9 years ago

As 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• 9 years ago

Did it get infected or something? What happened?

qb45• 9 years ago

Seriously, 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

ioquatix• 9 years ago

Surprising display of sanity and logic.

monochromatic2• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

about 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_4• 9 years ago

I 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• 9 years ago

The 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_4• 9 years ago

No it's not. Because without France, UK, Russia, China as well then no treaty on nukes matters.

rfrey• 9 years ago

The 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• 9 years ago

Reddit 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.

muninn_4• 9 years ago

I don't believe it to be unbiased.

How does changing "including US" to "including France" would help reducing the anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment? I'm afraid I understand what's going on.

What do you think is going on? I don't think either title is good. I just wanted to illustrate the point.

AlphaSite• 9 years ago

Because it’s probably posted by an American, for American audiences, of course you would highlight the detail which matters to yourself.

monochromatic2• 9 years 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• 9 years 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• 9 years 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/...

https://www.predatordefense.org/m44s.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSV8pRLkdKI

gh02t3• 9 years ago

I 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.

barry-cotter• 9 years ago

The article lies. The US still uses and reserves the right to use land mines in the Koreas.

Someone• 9 years ago

Short-term, yes, but long-term? Who knows.

The first advocates for abolishing slavery probably weren't slave owners, most of the first to fight for women's suffrage didn't have the right to vote, nor are the first to fight against DRM the ones on the power side of that debate.

Animats• 9 years ago

Not really. Today, any reasonably industrialized country could develop nuclear weapons if they wanted to. The technology is over 70 years old, and there are few secrets left below the H-bomb level. It takes far less infrastructure than it used to. Here's a modern centrifuge enrichment plant in the US [1]. Here's a typical WalMart distribution center.[2] They're about the same size. The plants needed used to be huge; Oak Ridge had one building that was a mile long, and they were using most of the power from a TVA dam.

Opting out of that decision makes sense for most countries. Having nuclear weapons puts you on a lot of target lists.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/LMHS58VtRR22 [2] https://goo.gl/maps/Sxg6FDc5bwP2

wildmusings5• 9 years ago

Nuclear 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• 9 years ago

The risk of conventional war is insignificant compared to the very real risk of destroying our only habitat.

wildmusings5• 9 years ago

There 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• 9 years ago

Isn't having nuclear weapons around actually a deterrent to war because of mutually assured destruction?

mac01021• 9 years ago

It certainly does not deter the USA or Russia or China from invading Panama or Latvia or Burma.

GhostVII• 9 years ago

But it deters the USA from invading Russia or China

pacaro• 9 years ago

I don't believe that Soviet era military doctrine recognized mutually assured destruction.

spo81rty• 9 years ago

I 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• 9 years ago

It 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• 9 years ago

I 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...

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• 9 years ago

Nukes 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• 9 years ago

LOL

dang• 9 years ago

You'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• 9 years ago

Seems 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• 9 years ago

It was also Ike who coined the term "military-industrial complex".

Treaty banning nuclear weapons approved at UN

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