‘Limited’ Tactical Nuclear Weapons Would Be Catastrophic

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/limited-tactical-nuclear-weapons-would-be-catastrophic/

by rntn • 4 years ago

28 7 4 years ago

ogogmad• 4 years ago

This war will likely upend the European security order. It also demonstrates how little real protection nuclear weapons provide. The world would be better off without these weapons.

This should not imply unilateral disarmament though, as argued here: https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence...

As we’ll see, there is a certain inescapable logic to many of the conclusions of deterrence theory, but the conclusions themselves viewed without considering that logic seem absurd (and occasionally are, even with the logic)

The only solution IMO seems to be worldwide nuclear disarmament, all at once, with the threat of overwhelming force against anyone who tries to re-arm afterwards. Something tells me that the anti-NATO folks on the Far Left who hold ineffective anti-war rallies don't understand the need for the threat of force if agreements aren't followed.

Seanambers• 4 years ago

But isn't the real problem that you cannot be sure that the other side have actually disarmed. So there is this incentive to build and or keep nuclear weapons in secret - just in case. Then you have this outcome where both sides still have nuclear weapons, but not publicly so that it is no longer a deterrence but a a pure offensive weapon.

sschueller• 4 years ago

What a miserable world we live in where this is definitely the case.

VictorPath• 4 years ago

Something tells me that the anti-NATO folks on the Far Left who hold ineffective anti-war rallies don't understand the need for the threat of force if agreements aren't followed.

As Putin's recent addresses have been denouncing gays in the West, and the vast majority of conservative republicans to liberal democrats in the US congress have voted to send more arms to the Ukraine, I suppose the provenance of peace in this conflict is, as you say, on what is called the "Far Left".

Whether anti-war rallies are ineffective or not I can not say. The lowest estimate for the London anti-war rally in 2003 was 750,000 people. In my experience when more than 750,000 show up against something it has a political effect. Of course rallies and marches alone do not change things, a sustained campaign of education, organization and agitation is needed. Historical records show the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War had political effects in preventing escalation.

There is the far left, and there are architects of the Vietnam War like Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He spent his retirement warning of the dangers of a small conflict between major powers spiraling into a full-scale nuclear conflict, and that it was something that could happen, he was in the room when these decisions were made and he helped craft these decisions. Not a far left view, but a Republican Ford CEO who worked to crush the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions.

The point being there is danger on either side. Nuclear proliferation and escalation seems more dangerous than moves toward disarmament to me. Nowadays the US, UK, France, Russia, China, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea are all members of the nuclear club. And Russia and China both have significant nuclear triangle capabilities.

In a class-based society of nation states, where idle class heirs expropriate surplus labor time from wage workers, over a long enough timeline, a war involving nuclear weapons seems an inevitably.

oneoff786• 4 years ago

Something tells me that the anti-NATO folks on the Far Left who hold ineffective anti-war rallies don't understand the need for the threat of force if agreements aren't followed.

Anti NATO left? That seems like an incredibly small and meaningless sub population compared to the last right president who openly declared the US should pull back from NATO.

hackflip• 4 years ago

In a fairy tale nuclear disarmament would be great. But as long as any individual nation/dictator wants nukes, all nations will want nukes.

bell-cot• 4 years ago

Admitting that I'm no fan of the modern-day SA...I don't understand why they published this as an Opinion piece. It's ~95% "Cold War 101" lecture, with a few 'Putin's a bad guy', 'invading Ukraine was evil', 'any use of nuclear weapons would be horrific' opinions thrown in. (Which currently need about as many "does not represent the official position of..." disclaimers as "chocolate is yummy" would.)

And a full article could provide far more historical perspective. Russia's history of "military operations" in eastern Europe goes back centuries. It was using its nuclear status as cover for those long before Mr. Putin even graduated from college. The beginnings of WWI could also be very instructive - how a small conflict, various ambitions and alliances, plenty of over-confident nations, public reactions to events, and very wide-spread failure to appreciate just how hellishly destructive a war fought with then-modern technology could actually be - resulted in a conflict which killed over 16 million, ended Europe's dominance of the modern world, and left battlefields so toxic and dangerous that they are still being cleaned up. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_rouge Though the French-language page is far longer and more detailed.)

‘Limited’ Tactical Nuclear Weapons Would Be Catastrophic

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