In an interview in the Guardian, Mohammed El Baradei predicted there might be as many as 20 nuclear states in coming decade. He described the a feeling of “inequity” as the driver of nuclear proliferation. He lamented the fact that nuclear weapons conferred a feeling of safety and prestige upon its possessors. He called upon the major nuclear powers to deeply cut their arsenals.
The number of potential nuclear weapons states could more than double in a few years unless the major powers take radical steps towards disarmament, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has warned. In a Guardian interview, Mohamed ElBaradei said the threat of proliferation was particularly grave in the Middle East, a region he described as a “ticking bomb”. …
ElBaradei, the outgoing director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the current international regime limiting the spread of nuclear weapons was in danger of falling apart under its own inequity. “Any regime … has to have a sense of fairness and equity and it is not there,” he said in an interview at his offices in Vienna. …
“We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power, you are buying insurance against attack. That is not lost on those who do not have nuclear weapons, particularly in [conflict] regions.” … When you see a lot of concern about the Middle East, it’s a result of people feeling totally repressed by their own government and feeling unjustly treated by the outside world. This combination makes it a ticking bomb.”
Baradei’s statements suggest that he is either clueless or surpassingly manipulative. The main driver of proliferation in the Middle East is the imminent Iranian nuclear bomb, which the Sunnis are hastening to equalize against. The secondary driver is the desire by Middle Eastern despotisms to buy insurance against Great Power intervention. It has little to do with feelings of injustice or a resentment at being “unjustly treated by the outside world”. Under ElBaradei’s watch, the sheriff model of nuclear weaponry, in which a monopoly of weapons of mass destruction was confined to a few powers, is in imminent danger of collapse. He in fact makes the self-serving prediction that it will collapse in spite of his efforts and not because of them. At the heart of the collapse has been the refusal of the sheriffs to forcibly prevent others from breaking their monopoly on nuclear weapons. The concentration of force among consensus authorities, which is at the heart of the sheriff model, was doomed from the moment a general armament became feasible. And now the breakout is near.
The leaders of the Western World, far from recoiling from their errors are hastening to compound it. “ElBaradei won global fame – and the Nobel peace prize for himself and his agency – by standing up to the Bush and Blair governments over claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. His relationships with the Obama administration, and to some extent the Brown government, are better, since both have embraced banning nuclear weapons. Obama has started talks with Moscow on mutual cuts in arsenals.” In their world that makes sense. As the number of nuclear powers is set to double, the sheriffs are melting down their shooting irons. I suppose that is the politically correct way of thinking. Gone is the day when people would instinctively understand this warning.
The Romans had a maxim: ‘Shorten your weapons and lengthen your frontiers.’ But our maxim seems to be: ‘Diminish your weapons and increase your obligations. Aye, and ‘diminish the weapons of your friends’.
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And if the goal of Obama and Brown is to remove the US and Britain from any relevance in world affairs, then extreme cutbacks in those nuclear arsenals, plus allowing Iran to develop a working nuclear weapon? Why then surrender is the only logical option. Who could have seen that coming? Iran even promised it would never do anything like blackmail.
In the 1990’s the superpowers drastically cut their nuclear arsenals – and cut their conventional forces just as deeply. The U.S. eliminated half its ICBM’s, including all of its biggest missiles, all ground launched cruise missiles, all Pershing missiles, and scrapped most of the B-52 force. Even France got rid of all of it’s land based missiles. Relations between the Federal Republic of Russia and the USA got downright cordial, with B-52 and Tu-95 Bear bomber units performing friendship visits to each other’s bases. The U.S. built facilities to dispose of Russian rocket fuel and paid Russia for its Plutonium for use as fuel.
And the result of that was….
Pakistan developed nuclear weapons and conducted tests. India responded with nuclear tests. Saddam kept trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and North Korea started a nuclear program, stopped it for a while, and then started it up again.
The additional proliferation was all in response to the superpowers appearing to step back and decrease their involvement in world affairs. So obviously, we just did not do enough of that.
The political left went after Bush over Iraq rather than use the war as a lesson to others on the path to acquiring nukes. Saddam was a serial violator of his agreements (including the destruction of WMD in a verified manner — the fact the evidence was, by and large, disposed off in secret was a politically useful detail for the Left).
In 2003 Iran suspended its nuke program. Libya gave up its nuke materials. But by 2004 the Left and their minions in the press had politically aligned with the nuclear proliferaters in order to take down George Bush. Unfortunately, we all have to live with the results.
Not polite, but facts are facts.
1. Nuclear proliferation is rife primarily in the Muslim World.
2. This has happened largely under the tenure of a Muslim Arab pretending to be the World’s “nuclear watchdog”.
How did we ever drink so deeply from the invidious multicultural cup to think that it would have turned out any differently? See also how deftly this Arab scum quotes from the Marxist Psalterbook of Preposterous Pretexts for Western consumption.
The effort to control nuclear proliferation has always had a horses-already-out-of-the-barn futility about it. Eventually, technology and money would make nukes an irresistable acquisition. We were only staving off the inevitable — although it was and is a noble cause.
I’m convinced tools like El Baradei are simply part of the ongoing subversion of international political institutions. Much like the laughable UN Human Rights Commission, El Baradei goes through the motions but is not in the slightest way interested in achieving the stated goals of the organization he heads.
The idea that some countries may have nuclear weapons — in some cases hundreds of nuclear weapons — and other countries may not have any at all is not compelling. Therefore, if we want the countries without nuclear weapons to refrain from developing them, then the countries with them must commit themselves to reducing and eventually eliminating their own nuclear weapons.
Our refusal to engage ourselves in such a commitment is a major reason why Iran and other countries will develop nuclear weapons.
If they build them that’s just fine if they use them well that’s just fine too of course a reply in kind from us would devastate the user country.
These folks believe it’s their destiny to die submitting the world to islam.
My opinion is the first countries to exchange nukes in war will be Pakistan and India.
from there a domino effect nuke strikes Shia against sunni iran against israel will turn the region into a peaceful, glassy area that glows in the dark.
These folks want to die.
So, to El Baredei, “Inequity” is the root cause of proliferation.
Add it to economic inequity as another cause of terrorism, poverty, racism and crime in general and you’ll see some commonalities spring up.
It looks like the UN’s WMD watchdog, the globe’s media, Comintern, Syria’s Assad and Nancy Pelosi are all on the same page. In their world view, if only Bush had worked more with our UN “allies” to build global equality, then Saddam would have stopped funding Palestinian suicide bombings in Tel Aviv.
Seriously though, Baredei appears to be demoting his agency here. If his agency exists to prevent proliferatiion but, instead, is engaged in managing proliferation, then hasn’t his office ceased to function? Imagine a baseball commissioner whose mission is stamping out steroid use in professional sports stating that little leaguers should equalize their anabolics usage with the national leaguers’. He’d be fired immediately.
Why does El Baredei still have a job?
El Baradei and the UN proceed with their nuke disarmament plans in the same manner as the drunk looks for his keys under the lightpost. He/they get accolades (and subsistence) from the intelligentsia in the West, so that’s where the focus is. No one has ever gone broke criticizing the US. The places he should focus on would, and probably do, tell him to pound sand.
And @#6. Playing the moral equivalence card doesn’t hold much water. That’s like saying denying my 5 year old a car is unfair because I drive one. The fact is these weapons have been proven very useful, but require a lot of political maturity to use properly. I wouldn’t experiment with giving my 5 year old a car to prove a point. I also wouldn’t experiment with going without one myself.
el Baradei works for the UN. What is the last relevant thing that the UN did? I said before that the only thing that obtains or deters behavior in a state is force or the credible threat of force. The UN has neither.
Mike Sylwester @ 6. See above. States want to acquire power because that is the nature of the State. Use of that power varies with the particular state. Some want to conquer other states, others simply want to be left alone and others are somewhere in between. This is the way the world works. Nuclear weapons are power.
A previous poster talked about the fragility of the role of America as the policeman to the world. We are. Because somebody has to be. Our nukes and the really scarily accurate and reliable delivery systems make us the really bad dude with whom nobody wants to tangle. Its lucky for the world that we are what we are.
The genie is out of the bottle. The only way the world can be kept secure is by means of the will and benign activities of the baddest dude. Nukes are required equipment.
@6. Mike Sylwester:
I’m afraid that your argument puts far too much faith in the trustworthiness of the people currently seeking to build nukes. Much like suggesting to the armed man that has broken into your house that you will put down your gun to show him that he doesn’t need to feel threatened.They do not seek accomodation,they seek naked power and conquest. Islam converts at the edge of the sword, nukes are a pretty big sword.
re: El Bozoboy; “it’s a result of people feeling totally repressed by their own government and feeling unjustly treated by the outside world”, he seems to think that some poor downtrodden sheperd on a hillside in Pakistan suddenly developed the desire to build a nuke. If there is a single living soul that has done more to spread the danger of nukes I would be hard-pressed to find a more likely candidate than El Baredei. Can’t be gone and forgotten soon enough!
“…the desire by Middle Eastern despotisms to buy insurance against Great Power intervention.”
Bingo! The mullahs noticed that NOT having nukes didn’t save Saddam.
How much harder will it be (for internal or external forces) to overthrow a thugocracy once it is nuclear armed?
Mohammed El Baradei makes a very good case for attacking Pakistan. If possessing nuclear weapons inoculates one from the possibility of attack then we and India should jointly declare war on Pakistan to vigorously object to that notion.
“The idea that some countries may have nuclear weapons…and other countries may not have any at all is not compelling. Therefore, if we want the countries without nuclear weapons to refrain from developing them, then the countries with them must commit themselves to reducing and eventually eliminating their own nuclear weapons.”
You’ve convinced me! But remember: “Think globally, act locally.” I’m going to start by telling peaceful citizens to give up their firearms in order to persuade criminals to give up theirs. Yeah, I’m sure that will work. Next I’m going to travel to Somalia to persuade those pirates to switch from Ak-47′s and RPG’s to squirt guns and water balloons.
Wow. We are now back to the 1930′s both economically and politically, looking on ineffectually as one brutal dictatorship after another acquires the weapons they need to spark a new global war.
There is only one way that countries equipped with truly massive military superiority can ensure that they will suffer massively devastating damage, and this is it.
At some point we (or those who come after us) will be compelled to ask what it is (was) about Western democracies that compelled them to sleepwalk repeatedly towards and then over a cliff like this.
Therefore, if we want the countries without nuclear weapons to refrain from developing them, then the countries with them must commit themselves to reducing and eventually eliminating their own nuclear weapons.
I think the contrary is true. Countries like Australia and Japan and most of Europe were content not to develop their own arsenals for so long as such weapons were in the hands of the Great Powers alone. Countries that were firmly inside the alliance system relied on the umbrellas of their patrons for deterrence. There was no need to develop an independent deterrent. If you lived in a society where only a trustworthy police force were allowed to have guns and no one else did, then many people would never bother to buy one, even on the sly.
But I think the world sheriff system is nearly dead. And now we will observe the contrary effect. With each new entrant into the nuclear game their geopolitical rivals must arm. The Iranian bomb will be met by the Sunni Arab bomb; a North Korean weapon will put huge pressure on Japan and possibly Australia to develop their own independent deterrent. To return to the example of the sheriff, once the citizens notice that the rogues are arming themselves and the sheriff isn’t disarming the rogues, sooner or later all citizens for their survival will buy their own guns. Universal armament, not disarmament is the alternative state of nuclear monopoly.
The evidence for this proposition is already partly in and will gather force. The US has reduced its missile and warhead holdings drastically. That did nothing to reduce proliferation. The only things that slowed proliferation were international controls and sanctions over fissile material, sanctions which were ultimately backed by the implied threat of force by the great powers. But the agency entrusted with maintaining the sanctions was ElBaradei’s. And we know how good he was. Now even he himself predicts the numbers of nuclear states will double. Why? Is it because the old nuclear powers have built up their arsenals? No. It is because the sanctions and proliferation regimes have failed. He either didn’t do his job, or to be fair, his job was impossible to do.
It seemed doomed to fail. Technological diffusion and the reluctance of the Great Powers to disarm aspirants meant that one, then two, three and more states entered the club. When rogue states could develop them with impunity (like Pakistan) and when the sheriff was publicly humiliated for searching the home of a known felon known to be making inquiries about WMDs without finding anything, then the nonproliferation regime was dead. It’s dead. For whatever reason, good or bad, it’s dead.
But now we will empirically observe that when the sheriff model collapses, the alternative state isn’t Eden but Dodge City. It’s happening already and that is the point of ElBaradei’s disingenuous admissions. There will be a boom in nuclear weapons acquisitions and US disarmament had and will have nothing to do with the outcome. Obama can reduce the US holdings to zero. He can give away every penny the US has to reduce resentments. It’s not going to make a lick of difference to the countries who fear Iran, for example. They are going to arm if Iran arms. Once the criminals begin arming with impunity, reducing the weapons available to the sheriff to provide an inspiring example won’t do anything except end the last residual hope of disarming the rogues.
It seems inevitable that the new acquirers of nuclear weapons will use them. I wonder how long it will take before the next one is used and how many will be used before mankind decides it must be stopped. But can it ever be stopped? I recall a song from my youth that had the line “in the year 2525, if man is still alive”. I thought that was nonsense at the time but not now.
One of the things that leave me to wonder about the sanity of the world is this; The average Lefty has a deep loathing of Religious people in general, even more so for them if they be conservative (particularly if socially conservative). One of their favorite terror-fantasies is a religious nut with power trying to impose his agenda upon them.
Why is it that they block efforts to stop Islamist (as reactionary as you can get!) terrorists from getting access to nukes? This should be their ultimate nightmare! Is their self-loathing so deeply programmed that they cannot see that they are, in effect, working to destroy any chance of their cherished Progressive society ever coming to light? And do they think that they would last a New York Minute if the Wahabbis ever came to power?
Alvin/17
Humankind’s alive in 2525. As for men (and women, children)… depends which ones.
Mr. Fernandez: I must pick a nit. Dodge City had Matt Dillon. I think Deadwood is closer.
…and thus for the thousandth time is the fundamental soundness of IMPERIUM demonstrated.
but by all means let’s test this oldest of political facts. why don’t we just give a bunch of city-killing weapons to certain small psychotic states and see whether that produces a more anxious or a less anxious world. i’ve got my popcorn and weed right here yo.
someone please remind me why the UN exists? after 60 years of proving itself ineffective at anything other than padding the pockets of some lucky third world staffers and their leaders back home; i can’t think of a reason to justify its existence. it’s not like we need a central location from which to communicate to each other anymore.
where I work, we don’t fund failed experiments for 60 years and counting.
@22. steeple
But you don’t work for a trans-nationalist, anti-excellence company do you?
We are still funding LBJs Great Society.
Governments by and large are just stupid, or crazy, often both.
>> But now we will empirically observe that when the sheriff model collapses, the alternative state isn’t Eden but Dodge City.
Wretchard, succinctly put. If you can see that, why can’t this administration?
tommy, It’s not that they can’t see it it is that they won’t see it. They are so committed to their vision of the world that any information that does not comply is simply discarded.
Precisely Anton, BHO has spent his life marinated in left-wing ideology. This is what happens when a school of thought literally shouts down all opposition. These people have built a colassal wall around their so-called open minds. Nobody gets in, unless you’re on the guest list.
Maybe, just maybe, we need something really nasty to happen right about now. This may sound a little insane, but consider:
If the current crop of WMDs is used in anger (preferably on a small scale) then the entire world will get a wake-up call. Note, by the way, that just about everybody who was adult (or near to it) when the reports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came through is now dead. Nobody now alive, and certainly nobody with any power and even more certainly not the empty suit, knows just how horrible (in the old, true, sense) those things are. Of course, just about all the weapons that would be used in a future nuclear war dwarf those two bombs.
Why does this matter? Not because of nuclear weapons. Because there are waiting in the wings weapons so ghastly and so nearly impossible to defend against that they make nukes look like children’s toys. Biohacking as a hobby already exists; how long before some insane genius manages to build some entirely novel disease against which nobody has any immunity? And slightly further into the future, the real “ultimate doomsday weapon” will arrive if it isn’t stopped. Describable in two words; grey goo.
How many uncontrolled replicating nanoassemblers are required to kill all life on Earth, down into the depths of the seas and into the porous rocks a kilometre down?
Anyone guessed yet?
One.
Once again I present the idea that is a small but growing meme. At 10-year intervals, perhaps on Hiroshima Day and at significant anniversaries (the next one is 2015) one of the major nuclear powers sets up a demonstration, and invites all the world’s press, TV and all the world’s leaders to watch from a safe distance. Demonstrate what? A nice big fusion bomb. And also, in so doing, demonstrate that the world cannot afford certain types of mistake.
@25 Anton. I find that very hard to accept – someone rejecting a reasonable argument, out of ideology when the results are so, so destructive. And not just to the general public, but to the very administration that deigns to lead us.
But, alas, my practical experience is in line with you, Anton. I remember a discussion I had with an elderly nun, once. She’s a very nice person, but a committed, Dennis Kucinich, lefty. I carefully explained to her the pacifist culpability for World War II. To paraphrase a line from “Christmas Story”, she looked at me like I had lobsters coming out of my ears. I didn’t dent her world view one iota.
Uncle.
Morton Doodslag thinks the Big El may be pulling a Sergeant Schultz on the Muslim world arming itself. I agree. The presumptive applicability of “Heinlein’s Razor” has been overcome; what the evidence shows is that Baradei has intentionally ensured no success is possible, all while claiming plausible deniability.
It’s unsettling to accept The Truth that global society is nothing more than the Wild West writ large, except that instead of Smith and Wesson, all the outlaws are packing uranium, tritium and deuterium.
However, given the current failure of the UN and toothless international efforts to stop proliferation, and the clear withdrawal of the U.S. from the “sheriff” position… the natural argument is in favor of a strong global government with freedom to employ the use of force against dissident and holdout nations. That will solve everything!!!!
On that cheerful note, everyone enjoy your weekends.
El Baradei is Muslim. Like any good Muslim, he seeks to establish the rule of Islam and prevent anybody from stopping it. Why should what he is doing surprise anybody?
To RWE in #2 – the US bought Russian enriched uranium from their warheads and from their submarine reactors. We have not yet received any plutonium from them that I know of. We wouldn’t have any use for it until our government-funded MOX fuel fabrication plant is up and running. TVA’s reactors will do the burning.
I’ve been following proliferation for over 30 years as a nuclear engineer. To the knowledgable, it has ALWAYS been a matter of WHEN, not IF, the non-proliferation regime would collapse.
People remain people and the lust for power will never subside within the hearts of some of them. Nuclear force is a new power that will disseminated across the race, just like the use of metal, agriculture, and gunpowder did before.
El Baradei has certainly perverted the institution of the IAEA and turned a marginally effective agency into one of our worst problems.
@27. Fletcher Christian: It makes me sick to my stomach to think about what that would mean if the demonstration was conducted by a rouge nation. It wouldn’t be some tiny atoll in the Pacific, they would choose NYC or London. The sadly ironic part is that the terrorists would be killing their biggest supporters.
@28. tommy: I have long held the belief that Marxism, and pretty much the rest of the Leftist political spectrum is demonstrative of a mental disorder. They refuse to see the failure (repeated over and over) of the Socialist Utopia Experiments, literally hundreds of millions of people have died to provide the empirical proof of it’s absurdity, but they refuse to see. I cannot find any other explaination for this refusal than madness.
Attitudes like Mike Sylvester’s don’t happen in a vacuum. Sheriffs don’t suddenly “fail” unless there is a reason and a purpose for their failures.
Keeping the Pax Americana, and the nuclear monopoly of the US, Russia, and China (the only significant nuclear powers) plus a few followers on: India, Israel, France, and the UK required a political will that would give more power to arms manufacturers, defense workers, the military, and less to feminists, PC platitude spewers, Welfare workers, and so on.
It’s akin to why women loathe/hate guns. Despite the fact that guns give women the ability to deter violent attacks, they hate the fact that it also empowers their bitter, hated rivals, ordinary men. Most women would rather live lives of dangerous and deadly threats of physical violence without any recourse except begging and pleading than give average men the ability to stand up also to thugs. Because their “closest” enemy is ordinary men (with whom they are workplace/cultural rivals).
The SWPL yuppie class reflexively hates any military spending and finds it’s own power threatened. They’d rather have NYC, DC, Chicago, and Dallas all nuked out of existence and the US in some Vichy America, than spend a single penny on nuclear deterrence. Why? Because their real enemy is not Jihadists intent on annihilating themselves and millions of fellow Americans, but indeed, the ordinary Americans who are their rivals for power.
After all, if the highest goal of the society is to defend itself, who needs for example enforcers of PC sensibility? That’s way down on the list.
33. whiskey: You haven’t met my wife or daughters, three of the four have CCW permits (the youngest one isn’t 21 yet) it’s not the chromosome that is the problem it is the society.
Cities run by Libtards create dependency; don’t defend yourself call the cops and die waiting; don’t walk across that bridge to safety from the hurricane, wait in the stadium for “someone” to rescue you. The Left has bred an entire generation of city dwellers that accept no responsibility at all for their actions.
They seemed to be conditioned to inaction (good little proles, sit over there and wait).
Whiskey,
Get some dough from an ATM and find a Greyhound going to some Smallville in Oklahoma, Texas, or Idaho, whatever is closer to you location. Keyword rural or semi-rural. For a month. You need to get away from SWPL metrosexuals/pacific-aggressive spinsters/femifasci & co, to get a bit different perspective. There are normal people out there, even if it may be hard for you to believe.
Or get off your whiny horse and become a predator–hunt the single amazons and turn them. I do that once a while, and although it does not always yield a victory, there is enough of them for the activity to be satisfying.
Whitehall 31: I defer to your greater knowledge, sir, but I believe that in addition to Uranium for reactor use we bought Russian Pu for use in nuclear thermal generators (RTGs) in spacecraft.
I did a study for the Air Force at Cape Canaveral into the likely hazards to be encountered by RTGs in pre-launch processing.
If you want to get frosted, do a search for Russian Heptyl, and find the item that describes how the US Govt built a rocket propellant disposal facility in Russia at the cost some millions of US taxpayer dollars only to find out after it was built that the Russians were using that fuel to launch US made satellites in competition with our own launch industry.
Whiskey, and here is what I have to show for it!
Gallup
What happens when the Shining City on the Hill is overrun by jackasses.
Everyone else sees themselves elevated, yet what they see is only the sinking of what they have come to recognize as the standard.
The fragile experiment, so powerful in its conception & design, is fractured; broken by the only forces that could precipitate its demise – the forces from within.
Normal working women hating norman working men? That simply isn’t a reality I’ve seen in my life.
Rather the truth seems much more prosaic. Most people get a little lonely in their life, try to find a mate, make things work, sometimes it works, sometimes not, life goes on.
I think Whiskey is using some categories in his analysis that really don’t exist.
What el barry is talking about when he says ‘fairness and equity’ is the fact that Israel has nukes and Iran doesn’t. He believes that Iran is driven to develop nukes because Israel has them. Israel’s nukes are a provocation to Iran and to a lesser extent to the Muslim world. I’m sure that he believes that as long as Israel has nukes some countries in the Muslim world will be driven to get nukes also.
It’s certainly true that Egypt hates the fact that Israel has nukes. They miss no opportunity to call for a nuke free middle east and to denounce Israel for its possession of nukes. However, Egypt and the rest of the Arabs know that Israel hasn’t used their nukes or threatened to use them ever. The reason for the Arab push to nuke-up is 100% Iran.
El B probably recognizes all of these facts. He justifies Iran’s push to develop nukes as a normal response to Israel having nukes.
Regarding El B’s prediction of 20 countries it probably won’t come to that. Before that happens someone will use a nuke. Then the great powers will step in and do something. Neither China, nor Russia, nor certainly the US can tolerate a world where little tin pot countries shoot off nukes because they feel like it. It will be messy but something will be done when things hit the fan.
RWE,
That would have been Pu-238, a minor isotope with a small fission cross section but a high thermal density. I had an internship in college with a consulting company looking at ways to get a higher yield from commercial spent fuel. It is neither weapons material nor commercial power plant fuel.
The US is short of that stuff since we shut down our production reactors. We use it largely for space craft power sources as you mentioned. Our sub fuel reprocessing doesn’t yield any either since that’s 90 to 95% U-235. One needs to irradiate U-238 to get Pu-238 via Np-239? (I forget the exact transmutations – it’s been 30 years – but it was a question on my PE exam).
Bob, how I wish you were right about “The Whiskey Categories.” The archetypes cited may not be “ordinary working women” (seems filthy, in quotes like that) but are all too common among those who didn’t have to have their consciousness raised, having been raised in the new consciousness. Corporations, academe and federal service are dangerous careers in many ways, and certainly no place to meet a lady. I’d put lady in quotes, but then it would look filthy, too.
what’s to make of the two charts in this nyquist column?
What does “reserve” mean?
Why does Russia have 7000 battlefield (war-winning, short of an ICBM exchange) nukes and we have –what –a couple hundred?
What? Why? Where? Whoa !!!
Obama’s new budget plan includes a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of long-lasting nuclear weapons that don’t need to be tested.
Last October, (SecDef not Bill) Gates warned that
“[t]o be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.”
This sounds like a good idea, right? A similar idea would be for all the homes and businesses in the American neighborhoods where President Obama received 100% of the vote to show the way to ending crime in our country by taking the bars off their windows, the locks off their cars, and the cops off their streets. That should solve the crime problems once and for all, eh?
6. Mike,
“The idea that some countries may have nuclear weapons — in some cases hundreds of nuclear weapons — and other countries may not have any at all is not compelling. Therefore, if we want the countries without nuclear weapons to refrain from developing them, then the countries with them must commit themselves to reducing and eventually eliminating their own nuclear weapons.
Our refusal to engage ourselves in such a commitment is a major reason why Iran and other countries will develop nuclear weapons.”
Yeah, that argument never works. Want to see why? Go out and plant a 4ft by 8ft sign in your front yard stating that you have no weapons to protect yourself. See how long before some thugs come to relieve you of your stuff maybe even your wife or life…
13. El Heffe,
“How much harder will it be (for internal or external forces) to overthrow a thugocracy once it is nuclear armed?”
Not working so good for Pakistan at this point. How does a nation use nukes when the fight is on their own soil?
15. Nomenklatura,
“We are now back to the 1930’s both economically and politically, looking on ineffectually as one brutal dictatorship after another acquires the weapons they need to spark a new global war.”
To be more precise we are at 1938 about May or so. When the 0 decides he is going to sign a peace agreement with Iamadud and throw Israel into a do or die position. We will then be at September 29. And the world catches fire.
24. Tommy,
“But now we will empirically observe that when the sheriff model collapses, the alternative state isn’t Eden but Dodge City.
Wretchard, succinctly put. If you can see that, why can’t this administration?”
Tommy they are actively seeking this state of affairs. (No crisis should be wasted) See Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Here is a link to a cartoon version published by of all people GM for their workers. Mises.org
43. Buddy,
Yep, that is a kick in the ol’ nuggets eh?
B.Larsen #43 > what’s to make of the two charts in this nyquist column?
Those are “good” charts. The blue columns do not look like the sum of the red and yellow columns, especially for the current American levels. There seems to be another ungraphed classification. Can anyone explain that without buying Levine’s book?
Morenuancedthanyou @46 There seems to be another ungraphed classification.
Maybe the charts are weighted for yield? Good question.
Ahh, for the good old days of peace, love and prosperity under the Clinton Administration, when …
The US introduced an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon in 1997, the B61-11, by putting the nuclear explosive from an earlier bomb design into a hardened steel casing with a new nose cone to provide ground penetration capability. The deployment was controversial because of official US policy not to develop new nuclear weapons. The DOE and the weapons labs have consistently argued, however, that the B61-11 is merely a “modification” of an older delivery system, because it used an existing “physics package.”
FAS used to love mini-nukes
The FAS takes a much dimmer view today, but back then I applauded (SARCASM ON) President Clinton for his new “green” “mini” nuclear weapons that produce 90% less radioactive fallout. (/SARC)
It was much simpler for President Truman, an easy instance of “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.”
anton 18
“The average Lefty has a deep loathing of Religious people in general, even more so for them if they be conservative (particularly if socially conservative).”
This cannot be pointed out or repeated often enough.
The left is possessed with a deep, abiding bigotry towards religion, with particulary vicious hatred for all but the most emasculated and exsanguinated forms of Christianity. The only mildly passionate Christianity tolerated by the left is ‘liberation theology’ which isn’t real religion at all but is collectivism hiding behind a bible (see Notre Dame).
I’m not talking about dispassionate, intelligent debates about the finer points of theological discourse, here. That’s a healthy thing. No, I’m talking about seething, palpable bigotry and hatred.
Nearly all white Obama voters have feelings towards devout Christians that are not meaningfully different from the evil feelings that the old bigoted southerners had towards black folks. The best proof of this is what the left did to Sarah Palin, but there are many, many other examples.
In order for the leftist philosophy to be true, there has to be a straw man – a bogeyman – that represents an ultimate level of evil that cannot be topped. The evil the left has chosen is the white male Christian heterosexual non-marxist. No matter what someone who doesn’t fit that category does, no matter how much destruction, death, or suffering is caused by someone gay, or black, or Muslim, or female, or collectivist, they are NOT permitted to be perceived as more evil than the white male Christian heterosexual non-marxist who is just goobing along in life minding his own business.
To do so – to admit that your bogeyman really isn’t always evil, or that your officially designated ‘oppressed’ are not reflexively simon pure – would mean that the most basic and cherished axiom of the left was false, and that therefore everything else that follows from that premise is also false. The idea of having to do the hard work of rebuilding the infrastructure of their worldview is too daunting for most on the left. So they resolve the cognitive dissonance by downgrading the horrors of the non-white, non-gay, non-female, non-religious, and non-capitalists, no matter how awful, relative to any real or perceived wrongs by the hated bogeyman, no matter how slight.
It’s intellectually easier, that way, and immersion in cultural marxism creates the milieu where the illusion that this represents logic can more easily be believed.