Mumbai Made Clear the Dangers of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation
Beyond such lessons, however, there may lie another: the inherent danger of living in a world where more and more countries can acquire nuclear weapons. With the six-party talks to denuclearize North Korea stalled, and the unsurprising failure of the international community’s feeble and inconsistent efforts to forestall Iran from acquiring the capability to produce fissile material for bomb use, one hears it sometimes said that we can live with nuclear weapons proliferation because even idiosyncratically belligerent governments can be deterred just like the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.
On one level, the Indo-Pakistani nuclear standoff might seem to offer grounds for encouragement in this regard because despite the history of rivalry and warfare between the two countries, they have more than once stepped back from the brink of nuclear confrontation.
The Mumbai terrorist attacks and their potential to re-poison the relationship between India and Pakistan suggests that we should not be too sanguine about the stability of nuclear deterrence in a proliferated world. Even if nuclear weapons tend to encourage mutually-deterring relationships between possessor states (an assumption that, while plausible, is no more than an extrapolation from a single U.S.-Soviet case study and a mere decade of sometimes tension-filled Indo-Pakistani nuclear confrontation), there is no guarantee that any actual possessors’ relationship will be stable.
This is true particularly where bitter regional rivalries are susceptible to inflammation from other factors (e.g., cross-border terrorism and/or squabbles over contested frontiers). One would have to have a great deal of faith indeed in the conflict-moderating impact of nuclear weapons in order to be comfortable that the net result will be more stable and less dangerous than before. It is certainly possible that in such contexts the introduction of nuclear weapons would not increase stability. It would merely worsen the potential downside risks if troubled relationships deteriorate.
And deteriorate they can. The specter of a stable, nuclear-armed, Indo-Pakistani standoff being unsettled by the wildcard variable of a terrorist atrocity should remind us that future nuclear deterrent relationships in a proliferated world may be far more problematic and breakdown-prone than even the risky roller coaster ride of U.S.-Soviet confrontation. In other words, the fact that the world managed to live uneasily for a while with the Cold War nuclear dyad may tell us very little about whether it will be possible to avoid catastrophe with the advent of more and more players possessing nuclear weapons.
Among its many other effects, therefore, one should hope that the horror in Mumbai will at least encourage a greater international commitment to nuclear nonproliferation. The world can scarcely afford to allow nuclear weapons capabilities to be layered upon regional rivalries that are subject at any time to sudden crisis.
“” … Counter-terrorist analysts may conclude that we are now moving into a new phase of the war in which “terrorists” seek once again to take the fight against the “infidel” to the latter’s own turf, but where the locations targeted for “mass murder” have expanded from government buildings and major symbolic monuments to essentially any place (at which civilized) people congregate …. “”
Taking it as a given this is indeed a war, for the survival of Judeo-Christian/Western/Human/Civilization — and to further clarify and simplify their various analyses’ point of departure — “counter ‘terrorist’ analysts” aught perhaps first call our psychopathologically hesperophobic barbaric enemy by its name.
And then that enemy’s terroristic activities might been seen as, named as and treated as acts of war and not as the kind of essentially mundane criminal activity implied by (for example) calling the consequences of such activities “mass” or any other kind of “murder.”
For it was in the execrable Jimmy Carter’s mindlessly muddled response to the acts of war committed against the United States of America by those whose usurping of the government he had championed in Teheran that got this mess started. And that the Jimmy Carter War — or WW-IV — is still under way these almost thirty years on — and that it as likely the masterminds are located in once great Britain or in Melbourne as in Pakistan and/or Afghanistan — is testament only to the bumbling ineptitude, incompetence and essentially incidental “presidencies” and prime-minister-ships of almost every one of the succeeding forty years of Western “leaders.”
United States of America’s President and Armed-Forces Commander-In-Chief, George Walker Bush, in the statement of policy that was, for a time, referred to as the “Bush Doctrine,” almost got it right – but stopped short of naming the actual enemy and instead declared war on the enemy’s tactics.
(A bit like ignoring the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and declaring war on carrier based aircraft)
Meanwhile Mr Bush continues to insist that the murderously barbaric totalitarian ideology that has for 1,400-odd years murdered and raped and conquered and enslaved the peoples occupying great swathes of the Earth, is as benevolent as is the gentle rain from Heaven.
All of this, in any case, before eight years of viciously corrupt and treasonous un-and-anti-American “Democratic” party politics and one-party mass-media-led propaganda effected the morphing of almost his entire cabinet member into clones of Brent Scowcroft and of the basta*d-offspring of the Soviet agent Alger Hiss et al comprised Foggy Bottom brahmanas. The treasonous onslaught then led to the president’s firing of his cabinet’s only Intact American Male, Secretary Rumsfeld and to Mr Rumsfeld’s replacement by the lifetime member of the Permanently Parasitical Class, who, during his CIA days, was known by the entire agency, perfectly fittingly, as “The Little Basta*d” — and finally effected the wimping out on even Mr Bush’s imperfect Doctrine of both the president and the entire administration.
And as none dare call Judeo-Christian/Western/Human Civilization’s deadliest-ever enemy by its name, all of post-Christian Europe is effectively, demographically, already lost to it, its Trojan Horses, courtesy of Foggy Bottom’s institutionalized traitors, pour in and hostilely colonize our nation’s every corner – and an unknown, un-qualified, un-and-anti-American Arab African, the mumble-mouthed mobbed-up, murtadd Muslim milquetoast, B Hussein bin B Hussayn bin Hussayn Muhummad Ubama, pretends to the presidency.
Wow.
God Almighty, please save us.
Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles – CalifUBAMAcated 90028
What Brian Richard Allen said, x 10
PAY ATTENTION BARACK: MISSILE DEFENSE IS DO OR DIE
There are no second chances if we get this one wrong:
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2008/12/missle-defense-do-or-die.html
Brian Richard Allan….Wow! Awesome post sir! Couldn’t add anything to that if I tried and I dare anyone else to.
The Historian:
PAY ATTENTION BARACK: MISSILE DEFENSE IS DO OR DIE
There are no second chances if we get this one wrong:
As things stand, neither Pakistan, India, Israel, N Korea, or Iran have missiles that can deliver a nuke warhead to CONUS.
I favor a missile defense and continued work on it. But I don’t see us in dire danger from any of those nations “nuking” us any time soon, least of all Israel.
Nor are any of the nations mentioned capable of hitting us such that America would be so destroyed there would be no 2nd chances. Russia is capable, China is close.
Nor do I worry about a nation – Iran or Pakistan or the NORKs get mentioned – that are “undeterrable”. Each understands they would face obliteration for even trying to nuke a few US cities, even an overseas base of carrier force.
90068 agrees with 90028.
Cedarford it would be completely illogical even if any of those countries had nukes to launch them at the us “openly”…. They have no need to launch anything… they only need to use them and hide behind the UN and others.
The West has lost its courage and will not even decide nuclear weapons are an acceptable option AFTER the nukes of Islam start landing on us.
Afghanistan, empty as it is, should have been turned into molten glass within one week of Sept 11. That would have been the maximum possible deterrent to the rest of the OIC. So much as a insurgent peep originating from the OIC after our destruction of Afghanistan would have clearly showed whether the US needs to continue the destruction of those countries waging war against us.
We have lost our courage and we make half-measures and hope that if we understand how serious our response seems to US that is sufficient to deter THEM. They understand only victory or defeat. If they aren’t defeated they understand they are on the road to victory.
India should nuke Pakistan and the US should follow on and nuke any country that militarily responds to India’s retaliation. There is zero comfort in going to our graves with false self-satisfaction that we are following rules invented to allow our opponents to kill us.
“Paging Gen. Curtis LeMay and William Sherman. Please pickup the red courtesy phone.”
Scott M:
As I said on the other thread, “I long for the day when they pray for our good health.”
MI
robotech master:
Cedarford it would be completely illogical even if any of those countries had nukes to launch them at the us “openly”…. They have no need to launch anything… they only need to use them and hide behind the UN and others.
I was responding to a missile threat, as in “The Historian” saying missile defense is now a life or death situation given the pissant country threat he linked to.
But as for the “Arch Evildoer” threat, even AQ is “deterrable” in the sense that bin Laden said he would have veto’d KSM’s 9/11 target list had they included large dams or nuke power plants – because bin Laden thought it would lead to nuclear retaliation with 10s of millions of Believers slaughtered and much of the world approving of it. The myth of “undeterrable” Muslim monsters is mainly fostered by Neocons wishing for more preemptive wars.
And the “UN” stopping us? After cities nuked and millions dead? No way. To even try would violate the UN Charter on the right of nations to defend themselves? Nor would any other treaty like Geneva, Human Rights Convention apply or stand in the way of eradication of the WMD-using enemy.
Moaning that “the UN will stop us” or ACLU lawyers will, is silly talk. The UN will be ignored. All that counts is Russia and China going along with the US. And any ACLU lawyer that tried to sue to stop our defense response would be dragged out of court by a mob and burned alive.
******************
Scott M:
The West has lost its courage and will not even decide nuclear weapons are an acceptable option AFTER the nukes of Islam start landing on us.
Another stupid person making a declarative statement completely ungrounded in reality. We would do what has to be done.
Afghanistan, empty as it is, should have been turned into molten glass within one week of Sept 11. That would have been the maximum possible deterrent to the rest of the OIC.
Another stupid statement.
Afghanistan, the Pak Northern territories are, save a few small cities, thousands of small villages in thousands of steep valleys each of which is shielded from nuke bomb blast in an adjacent valley.
Nor would India, China, friendly Mongolia, East Russia, the Koreas, and Japan have been very appreciative of the US not only murdering millions in a 1st mass nuke WMD use, but also crapping up their countries with fallout and destroying their agriculture for 5 years. All over a handful of buildings wrecked with the American’s own airplanes they didn’t guard too well.
Brian Richard Allen, that’s the best post I’ve seen in a long time, Sir.
Though Scott M comments appear to be aginst current prudence, it is a fact that the West has not come up with a credible deterrent strategy against the single minded pursuit of domination by Islamic states which are deliberately playing Non-State actors on their behalf so that these states themselves can hide under the cover of plausible deniability. A day may come when Nuclear devices are handed over to these surrogate Non-State actors and we will never know which state perpetrated the mass murder. We will be again bound by the same prudence to not attack on the basis of suspicion.
There is more of half-heartedness and wishful thinking in tackling these diabolical approaches of Terrorist Islamic states than prudence and sense of fairplay.
Nuclear proliferation is inevitable, has there ever been an example of a technology being kept from spreading over the long term once it has been invented?
Effective policy might delay the spread somewhat but once the genie climbed out of the bottle, it was always going to be impossible to stop that spread altogether. What is needed now is a plan to maintain security and peace in a world where nukes are far more common than was originally envisioned.
Somehow I doubt that this will be achieved by a pre-emptive nuking of afghanistan, pakistan, everyotherstan, Iran and anywhere else that gets up our noses.
Quite apart from the practical considerations as pointed out by Cedarford, what would it say about ‘western values’ if the west appointed itself judge, jury and excecutioner to the world and decided that it was so self-evidently correct in its own views that anybody daring to think differently should die in a holocaust a hundred times worse than any atrocity that the world has ever seen?
Iran must be prevented from going nuclear.
If it is not, then shortly afterward, the Saudis, Egyptians, Turks, and probably even the Iraqis, will also go nuclear — because they will not trust a bunch of “cut and run” Democrats “way off in Washington” to protect them from the Iranian thug-regime right next door.
That puts the world’s most dangerous weapons into the hands of the world’s most unstable peoples’ at the heart of the world’s most important resource region.
The Israelis would have to put their own nukes onto a state of permanent, hair-trigger, panic alert.
And all that’s before considering the roughly two-dozen terror groups that would be trying to beg, buy, or steal one of the nukes from someone in one of those corrupt and incompetent governments.
Barack Obama is now the only person who can stop this cascade of events from beginning. Let’s hope he has the brains to know it — and the spine to do it.