Mutually Assured Stupidity
The State Department has published an unofficial report on a proposed new doctrine that will guide the US relationship, primarily with Russia, but also with the world. It is described as “mutually assured stability” in which “increasingly interdependent states having incentives to cooperate on political, military, and economic issues, [act and thereby] reducing the need for adversarial approaches to managing security challenges.”
The report’s authors explain what steps must be undertaken to achieve this desirable “end state” but decline to say whether that pathway is feasible or not. “This report does not assess the feasibility of the desired end state, nor the feasibility of achieving the proposed essential components.” The basic roadmap consists of a staged build-down of nuclear weapons stockpiles with Russia, getting the stockpiles of rogue nuclear powers under control and lastly confidence building measures and economic cooperation.
At the end of the process Russia/USSR should no longer be the notional enemy. In the new scheme of things either everyone is the enemy or nobody is. According to Recommendation #4:
Recommendation 4. Change U.S. doctrine and posture away from defining our nuclear posture based on perception of Russia as the primary threat, toward a doctrine of general deterrence, a posture in which attacks from any direction are discouraged without singling out a particular adversary or enemy (reciprocal action required).
To that end, the reports proposes create a kind of super nuclear weapons crime lab so that groups which might aggress may be sure they will be found out and brought to justice. This concept is called Mutual Assured Attribution. “Mutual Assured Attribution: Related to achieving Effective Clarity and building on national nuclear forensics capabilities developed during the Cold War, but advanced by new technologies, cooperating nations work to assure detection and attribution of fissile materials or nuclear weapons found loose anywhere in the world, prior to or after a nuclear detonation. Potential rogue states or terrorist groups must be deterred from believing they could conduct attacks under a cloak of anonymity.”
Then presumably some mechanism of justice will swing into action. In one tantalizing paragraph the report hints at some kind of mechanism for sanctions, but there is nothing definite about it, except to hint that the punishment or warning will fit the crime.
When prevention through means such as effective clarity fails and surprise occurs, nations must have means of action, possibly through allies and partners and including defense, dissuasion, and counter-actions.
It is then the reader realizes why the study’s authors refused to guaranty the feasibility of the roadmap. The two paragraphs above show why the new concept of Mutual Assured Stability is a completely different game from the classic deterrence model of mutually assured destruction. There are two key differences between the two models.
First. During the Cold War there were two known actors in the game. The US and the USSR. Us versus them. In the new model proposed by the State Department, nobody even knows who the players are. That is in fact to be determined by the sleuthing of a nuclear crime so the international community will point a finger in unison. You will know the enemy only after you have been struck — and the lab results come in. Whether this is feasible is nothing to the point. The key fact is that while the enemy was a constant in the Cold War, in the new game the enemy is a variable in X, instantiated only on assignment.
Second. During the Cold War the consequences of an attack were clearly known to all players. There was nothing ambiguous about it. It was crystal clear. There were multiple means on both sides for assuring the outcome so that the chain of events could never be in doubt. If one player attacked the other then both died. The paradigm was descrbed as “two scorpions in a bottle”. And since both scorpions wanted to live neither died. The new paradigm is a scorpion looking under rocks for the other scorpion — but only after he has been stung.
Will this work? Who knows. But the game theoretic is not promising.
Perhaps the most bizarre recommendation in the new scheme of things and indicator of the study group’s almost desperate attempts to make this new concept work is this proposal.
Public Health and Other Quality of Life Cooperation: Cooperating nations join together on a full range of public health and quality of life issues of mutual interest. The goal is the creation of benefit to countries that may counter perceived value from armed conflict.
The idea that offering other countries some kind of Obamacare in order to persuade them lay down their nuclear weapons is commendable for its optimism. But it’s feasibility is open to doubt. Perhaps the most mordant commentary on the idea of mutually assured stability as a doctrine were provided by events themselves. The New York Times heads its story “Progress Is Cited on New Reactor in North Korea” by which is meant North Korea is building nuclear weapons.
SEOUL, South Korea — While the region’s attention has remained focused on whether the new North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, can consolidate his power, his country has been making significant progress in the construction of a new reactor widely seen as a cover for making more fuel for nuclear weapons, analysts say, citing satellite imagery of the building site. …
The experimental light-water reactor under construction — and North Korea’s efforts to enrich uranium — could eventually provide the country with a means to increase its nuclear stockpile significantly, experts have warned.
On the other side of the world Reuters reports that “the U.N. nuclear watchdog will try to persuade Iran to address questions about its suspected nuclear weapons research at a meeting on Friday, more than two months after previous talks ended in failure.”
This is relevant because the best predictor of the effectiveness of “mutual assured stability” is the corresponding effectiveness of the very similar efforts being undertaken today. Hillary’s “reset button” with Russia; the IAEA’s efforts to stop nuclear proliferation; the State Department’s offerings of aid to countries like North Korea to stop building bombs. All have been tried. But which of these have worked? And what does this tell us about the prospects of a much larger program working based on the success encountered so far?
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Mutual Assured Attribution. It’s B.S. Here’s why:
Assume it is 2015, and a Big Boom has just killed a hundred thousand people in the United States.
Assume the president calls in all the spooks, and the guys with all the forensic technology, and the say, “It’s Iran!”
The president asks, “Are you sure?”
They say, “Fairly Certain.” (Real intel analysts never say “it’s a slam dunk.” That’s for amateurs. And politicians.
Is the president going to nuke Tehran on a “fairly certain?” or just ask for tighter sanctions?
If the president DOES decide to nuke Tehran on a “fairly certain”… Well, we’re fairly certain it was Osama behind 9-11. Will the world believe a US president saying “Iran nuked us… we can prove it, but we won’t. Trust us”? Will Americans believe it?
What if he’s Republican?
And going from Fairly Certain to Extremely Certain won’t help. What we need is to go in the opposite direction. What Bush tried to give us. A National Clumsy Response which says, in effect: Forensics? If we are nuked, and we even kinda sorta suspect you did it, kiss your capital city goodbye. Kiss the others goodbye. One way or another, expect imminent Regime Change. So, best if you don’t give us any reason to suspect. You don’t want to go there.
The more precise you try to be, the more you encourage enemies to think they can hide just over that line of precision.
This Mutually Assured Stability nonsense would make for a great high school social studies paper.
Who authored this monkey poop, Samantha Powers?
This is a theoreticians wet dream.
Out in the real world, it’s perhaps aimed at a paranoid Putin.
There’s a story quoted in Niven/Pournelle’s “Mote in God’s Eye”. Socrates was supposed to be the most persuasive person who ever lived. He wanted to go home for the night, but his friends wanted him to stay over. “Can’t I give you my reasons?” for this, he asked. “No, we won’t listen to you,” they said.
I’m afraid that will be the fate of this argument regarding Russia too, Putin (nor many of its other targets) aren’t listening.
“It is described as “mutually assured stability” in which “increasingly interdependent states having incentives to cooperate on political, military, and economic issues, [act and thereby] reducing the need for adversarial approaches to managing security challenges.””
I read this as the state guarantees that it will keep its citizens from being a bother to the environment or an economic threat to other nations through despotic control as long as the partner states promise the same. Citizens will be controlled by the state and all economic activity will be controlled by the state.
I just wanted to clarify that this isn’t a Department of State report. The below disclaimer is at the beginning of the report:
Disclaimer
This is a report of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), a Federal Advisory Committee established to provide the Department of State with a continuing source of independent insight, advice and innovation on scientific, military, diplomatic, political, and public diplomacy aspects of arms control, disarmament, international security, and nonproliferation. The views expressed herein do not represent official positions or policies of the Department of State or any other entity of the United States Government.
Let me see if I have this right.
I am a low rent biker thug interested in beer and broads. (apologies to bikers). I currently live in an abandoned warehouse somewhere, where I am housing stolen guns to be used against my neighboring thugs in our contest for the beer and broads in our neck of the woods.
Now, the inestimable luminaries at DOS decide I am not nice, but would be happy if my rate of criminal activity were ‘stable’. To provide incentive they will move me and mine into a nicer neighborhood, encourage the existing natives to disarm, and possibly offer up their women, girls, good liquor and designer drugs for my use.
I will then become a ‘stable’ member of their utopian community while de-stablizing my new neighborhood. Results. Run down warehouse district (Detroit!) is still an unstable mess and the middle class neighborhood is following fast behind.
Redistribution?
Sounds like I will be bringing chaos to what was once stable.
If naivete were a federal criminal offense, we’d have to lock up the entire State Department. Not for nothing did HST dismiss them in contemptuous shorthand — “the striped pants crowd.” And he had Dean Acheson and George Marshall to work with. Today, well …
According to a guy in Hartford Connecticut sketchy foreign policies is what happens when you get the wrong farm equipment:
“Fifty-year old manure spreader. Not sure of brand. Said to have been produced in Kenya . Used for a few years in Indonesia before being smuggled into the US via Hawaii . Of questionable pedigree. Does not appear to have ever been worked hard. Apparently, it was pampered by various owners over the years. It doesn’t work very often, but when it does it can sling s–t for amazing distances. I am hoping to retire the manure spreader this November. I really don’t want it hanging around getting in the way. I would prefer a foreign buyer to relocate the manure spreader out of the country. I would be willing to trade it for a nicely framed copy of the United States Constitution.
Location: Currently being stored in a big white house in Washington , D.C.”
I think the Russians are happy to keep this equipment stored in Washington.
So are we going to call the Justice League or the Super Friends?
Intellictual sophistry for late night beer and bull sessions at Oxidental/Columbia/Harvard. Real world; if you mess with us we nuke you. Mess with our people and we kill you/your regime, all your relatives, and for good measure we dig up your grandparents on both sides and kill them again. Your genetic line disappears from the face of the earth.
Good fences make good neighbors. An armed society is a polite society.
Yet another graphic demonstration of the completely muddle headed, dare I say moronic idealism of the “progressive” TWANLOC.
It’s like telling everyone to disarm completely and leave their doors unlocked when they go to bed at night. If an evil or psychotic person takes advantage of the situation and murders you in your sleep….well no worries, we’ll have our cracking great forensics team come in and discover who murdered you and your family. Then society can impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on them! That’ll show ‘em! No concern whatsoever that you and your family are DEAD!
One of the things that makes them TWANLOC is the delusion that government exists to lord it over the vast swath of “subjects” who are not part of the Nomenclatura, with thousands of nanny state laws and regulations that effectively enslave the population.
Anyone with common sense who ever read the U.S. Constitution realizes the proper roll of the U.S. government is to provide for the National Defense and provide the minimum of infrastructure necessary to form a cohesive nation of separate states.
Pursuit of this silliness would result in the U.S. government abdicating its primary Constitutional responsibility and raison d’etre.
Armageddon Rex
I just wanted to clarify that this isn’t a Department of State report. I am sorry I gave that impression and have amended the text to make that clear.
The bipolar world is over. A multipolar world can go forward along one of two paths. A kind of universal “gun control” (nonproliferation) enforced by a ruthless consensus hegemon or it will become a world in which everyone is effectively armed, either via concealed or open carry.
Since as a practical matter the Obama administration has gotten out of the hegemon game and there is little evidence that Russia wants to join the the beat cop routine, then it follows that the world is going to arm up. This is already happening.
Once this goes a little further there will be widespread concealed carry. For example, some advanced countries could have programs in place to build their own nukes at short notice. Maybe Japan has components it can marry up and know will work with a high degree of confidence.
But once nonproliferation collapses and a breakout becomes general the “law abiding” countries of the world will soon find themselves at a disadvantage if only the criminals can buy the guns. With the hegemon holed up in the precinct house and refusing to come out, content to simply send letters to the citizens to turn in their guns, the incentive to get ready by other means will be compelling to all the citizens intent on defending their homes.
Perhaps nuclear weapons can never be outlawed or eliminated entirely. But the best counter to their indiscriminate and widespread use remains a hegemon. There has to be a cop and he has to come out of the precinct house when necessary.
Sorting through the clouds, I found a silver lining. You can bet that the “national nuclear forensics capabilities” have moved up to #1 on the target list.
Not sure how silver that is. Right now I figure New York is #1 and DC (Dirtbag City) is #2.
I’m good with that. Nukes on New York and DC would be the best thing that ever happened to America. At least as long as Congress was in session.
Two good sized bombs and America is reborn.
Haji can’t shoot.
“Perhaps nuclear weapons can never be outlawed or eliminated entirely. But the best counter to their indiscriminate and widespread use remains a hegemon. There has to be a cop and he has to come out of the precinct house when necessary.”
You conservative you. If some really loathsome woman wearing a White House pass walks toward you with a cup of coffee, run……
This alone is why nearly everyone in DOS needs a pink slip! Reality is, it’s to late, George W Bush was plagued with these delusional thinkers, they’re the ones that leaked like sieves every time Bush wanted to do anything concerning Foreign Matters of State, Condi could barely keep a lid on it thanks to Billy Boy Clinton, who planted a vast majority of these loons during his eight years of treason. Like the DOJ, DOS is full of Demoncrat operatives, lifelong bureaucrats who Hate America and its founding Morals and Ethics… The clocks need new clogs otherwise it will continue to get worse.
Let me tune up my fiddle, there seems to be smoke in the air.
So are we going to call the Justice League or the Super Friends?
Which one has Scarlet Johanson? Oh wait, that’s the Avengers or something. Never mind.
. . .Reality is, it’s to late, George W Bush was plagued with these delusional thinkers, they’re the ones that leaked like sieves every time Bush wanted to do anything concerning Foreign Matters of State . . .
And they engaged in deliberate policy sabotage in Iraq during the occupation there.
It takes a village idiot.
The Sun King has advanced in life by running his yap and appearing smart. Why wouldn’t he think that some words to these middle eastern maniacs would immediately convince them to quit the barbarism. I bet Putin, Assad, et. al. “horse-laugh” everytime he opens his teleprompter. This piece reads like something out of The Onion.
“… the punishment or warning will fit the crime.”
Six months after an attack we’ll send a Junior High production of “The Mikado.” That’ll scare them.
Remember the Palestians photographed literally red handed sticking their bloody hands out the window? Justice by consensus with the Enemy means no justice at all.
Frank J, a long time ago at imao.us, advocated a “nuke the moon” strategy, thereby indicating a level of unpredictability and creativity such that we should not be messed with. Ever.
The report could be a psy-op–you know, make people think you’re “going Kumbaya” when in reality you’ll still be using Predators and Sharks with Lasers to take out people you don’t like, just like now. When it’s done by a Democrat this is called Realpolitik. If a Republican does it, it’s called Evil Lying.
Of course, it’s hard to believe the nuclear terrorist types will fall for it. They might just want to nuke us anyway, for being nice. The prospect of “the community” fingering them (if that is at all believable) and punishing them just gets them to their 72 raisins with that much more assurance.
“This report does not assess the feasibility of the desired end state, nor the feasibility of achieving the proposed essential components.”
I want a pony.
5 @Jatah
Ah, plausible deniability by keeping an “independent” actor at an arm’s length. Just like that Small Wars Journal whitepaper about how to carry out a counterinsurgency against those evil bastard Tea Partiers.
“You will know the enemy only after you have been struck.”
Herman Kahn said that the two options were “Launch On Warning” where you launch a retaliatory strike based on radar info and “Launch Under Attack” where you wait until the bombs start bursting on your own soil before you fire.
This new approach appears to be “Launch After Extended Discussions in Which a Group Of Lawyers Say It is Okay.” The same lightning fast reflexes wielded by the crack team of barristers that held all those successful open prosecutions of captured terrorists will be brought to bear on the problem of strategic nuclear warfare. Slim Pickens will ride a pallet of lawbooks down onto the enemy.
In the words of Bill Murray, “Thanks, Egon, that’ll do it.”
SCORPIONS
The tiny flag identified the scorpion as the US scorpion. Standing quietly in the sand, surrounded on all sides by other scorpions, the US scorpion did not know which of the scorpions would attack, but knew he would know as soon as the forensic experts completed their investigation, and so felt confident of his safety.
I offer you, O scorpions
He said, demeanor grave
Stability and friendship now
A new road we shall pave
The State Department has a plan
A roadmap if you will
That scorpions will surely find
Exciting and a thrill
The plan is simple, plainly so
Our nukes we will destroy
Defenseless then, we place our trust
That you will not deploy
Your own nukes but that you will see
That using this approach
We’ll all be safe as houses and
No rogue state will encroach
Upon the land and dignity
Of others in the group
And if they do our experts then
Will shortly have the poop
And fingers pointed by us all
The miscreant to shame
And you surviving scorpions
Will know just who’s to blame
“…we do not live in an irrational or meaningless world. On the contrary, there is a moral logic which is built into human life and which makes possible dialogue between individuals and peoples. If we want a century of violent coercion to be succeeded by a century of persuasion, we must find a way to discuss the human future intelligibly. The universal moral law written on the human heart is precisely that kind of ‘grammar’ which is needed if the world is to engage this discussion of its future.” John Paul II
Simply put, either a sizable majority of the world becomes Orthodox/Catholic or a good portion of it is likely to be destroyed by nuclear weapons. We cannot rely on people of good will if there are none.
If you are 60% sure that some state actor nuked you, but you don’t respond, the last thing they will praise you on is your forensics ability and your morality. They will praise you on your cowardice, and will then believe, rightly or wrongly, that they can nuke you again…at their own choosing…”probably” without repercussions.
They’d be right.
Until our President was impeached.
And if our answer was impeachment and not immediate removal, they’d nuke us again to see if we simply continued our Constitutional process.
The Constitution is NOT a suicide pact. Woe unto those politicians that for some reason, must have this ‘splained to them.
Re:#12 of stoicheion:
….This is totally out of order….and beyond commonsense.
” Nukes on New York and DC would be the best thing that ever happened to America. At least as long as Congress was in session.
Two good sized bombs and America is reborn.”
….regardless of what provoked this mindless flippancy, I’m really surprised such adolescent smirking is allowed to stand.
You have no further credibility.
“You have no further credibility.”
Get a grip Charlie. Loosen up, learn to surf.
If I was into common sense, I would point out that the Canary Island Fault is being held up by a prayer. My best calculation was 6 nukes of about 30 K tons each would shake it loose.
At which point a wall of water 30 meters high travelling at 600 KPH crosses the Atlantic. The East coast of America looses everything within 2 Km’s of the Ocean. If you are counting that is about 100 million people. The French coast is destroyed, along with London and the South of England. Spain, Italy and Greece also.
Don’t get mad at me. I have been urging Iran be bombed since 1979. The way to kill a snake is to cut off it’s head. You cannot arm wrestle a snake.
I could end the war on terror in 90 days.
First I close Gitmo. I would amputate the right hand and left foot of every terrorist the US military captured. That would require withdrawing from the Geneva Convention. Once out of the GC, I would tell the Muslims that every terrorist attack would be answered by the destruction of a Mosque. If there were 9 terrorist attack that week, I would destroy 9 mosques. They would be mosques that preach Jihad. If that didn’t eliminate terrorist attacks, I would up the ante and start nuking a city for each attack.
That would require leaving the NPT. Once the USA was out of that worthless treaty I would pull some of the 30,000 disassembled nukes out of storage and start putting them back together to sell to my allies. Imagine Pooties face when we inform him we are selling Poland 100 Nuclear weapons and the Missiles to put them on.
You have no creditability. You liberals have been bashing your head against the wall for decades. The whole time telling us the wall will come down any moment now, while you wipe the blood from your eyes. I’m not going to take a turn. My head isn’t that hard.
Conventional wisdom on Terrorism and how to tame (civilize) Iran is wrong.
After pointing out the stakes (1 to 400 million dead, western civilization destroyed) I offered some alternative solutions.
That upset you because you don’t see a problem. That is because you have you head lodged some place that restricts your vision. Pull it out. Wake up. Smell the cordite.
Haji can’t shoot.
Wretchard:
The police man has turned in his gun and badge. He would rather tax the rich so the poor will vote for him. It is the liberal, democratic dream come true, the yankee has gone home. Obama will, as the Kennedys put it, ” tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.” And the countries that face nuclear armed agressor states will either practice appeasement or develop nuclear weapons themselves. In Asia, I would expect in a few years time Japan, South Korea, Australia, perhaps others will conclude the only counter to North Korea and China is nuclear weapons in their hands. In the Middle East I would expect Turkey, perhaps Saudi Arabia if the house of Saud lasts that long, to join Israle, Pakistan, India and Iran as nuclear powers.
Of course, the more nuclear weapons in the hands of more actors, the greater the probability that someone, somewhere will miscalcualte. Perhaps the Iranians will believe a small nuclear war is worth it to kill Jews (their public statements certainly support this idea). Or perhaps North Koreas leaders will think that a small nuke or two in Japan will get them even more aid from South Korea. Or perhaps Pakistan will decide to give a small nuke to terrorists heading for Mumbai. There are many possibilities. In such an international system, stability will be nothing but a fond memory.
However, this is what American liberals and democrats want. Judge them by their actions, not their words. It is simple commons sense to know that without a hegemon, the world will not resemble Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. It will resemble Lord of the Flies.
Tom Clancy, in “Sum of all Fears,” said we could tell who manufactured a nuke after it had gone boom. Here I thought deciding who to retaliate against would be easy. And then, I remembered the lawyers.
The police man has turned in his gun and badge.
The irony of this international policy is that liberal orthodoxy would never believe this could work at home. In most left-of-center Western countries self-defense is frowned upon. Gun ownership is bad because you might ‘hurt yourself’. Public safety is to be left exclusively to the police man with his gun and badge.
But internationally the liberal orthodoxy believes the complete opposite. The police man must — absolutely must — not only turn in his gun and badge, he must if possible melt it down. This it is supposed, will lead to “mutual assured stability”.
But why should it? It cannot be simultaneously true that domestic order can only be maintained by a police man and international order can only be maintained without a police man.
What is likely is that in both cases the domestic and international orders will need a mix of policing and self-defense. A home gun is not a substitute for the police, nor are the police a complete protection against crime. The two are complementary. But since liberalism never does anything by halves, we are to have no policemen on the international scene and unlimited policemen on the domestic front.
The probable result will be catastrophe. This should be self-evident to anyone. I believe that even the authors of the study knew this, but felt compelled to somehow make the best case for a ludicrous notion on the grounds that everybody deserves an advocate.
11. wretchard: “Perhaps nuclear weapons can never be outlawed or eliminated entirely. But the best counter to their indiscriminate and widespread use remains a hegemon”
Exactly.
I read the report as being directed solely to Russia and suggesting some sort of alliance as dual hegemons. (see Recommendation 13. Develop a U.S.-Russia understanding on how each would act or not act if a nuclear weapon was used anywhere else in the world.)
More, recommendations 14 -18 suggest a broader alliance – increasing “U.S.-Russia economic interdependence and investment,” extending cooperation and creating new collaborations in advanced research and technology.
We are two decades past the demise of MAD as a viable cold war doctrine, nearly a decade past the publication of W’s Three Conjectures for the post cold war environment. So, its hard for me to be too critical of an effort to establish some sort of formal doctrine for our current reality. That said, I don’t see much chance for the specific idea of a “dual hegemon” as proposed.
Bottom line: I read the document in question as evidence that W’s thinking, quoted above, remains central to serious discussions.
Hmmmm. Got through this time.
The dual hegemon situation is a time which has not yet come. It is still in Russia’s current interest to make trouble, up to an until the point when some kind of WMD attack against it occurs or near enough that it scares them. At that point, everyone will come to Xenu or Gaia or Crystals and the world will go through some form of the events outlined in the Three Conjectures. The great powers will realize that to preserve their cities and indeed their civilizations, they will have to re-establish hegemony either alone in conjunction with other powers.
If the Great Powers are themselves largely disarmed, with what will they re-establish hegemony?
The most feasible aim is to achieve the lowest force level compatible with keeping the weeds down. What we empirically observe, however, is differential grown between the weeds and the vegetables. If one could observe a decline in the Pakistani nuclear arsenal which matched the proposed cuts in US weapons, then it is all trending in the right direction. Carried on indefinitely the world could reach some minimum required to maintain order.
But if on the other hand Pakistan, Iran and North Korea increase their weapons holdings, while the US reduces it’s stockpile and persuades Russia to do the same, we arrive eventually at a world with no hegemon. In that case if an WMD attack occurs on say, Singapore, what then?
The utility of nuclear weapons is to create the authority to disarm the wild and restless. Ridding them for the sake of it is not a good idea. Nuclear weapons are mostly evil, but if they have one good trait, it is that they have preserved the peace through fear these last sixty odd years.
To melt down the gun of the police man even as the gangsters are making their own home-made shotguns will not end well. If the only two sheriffs in town both scrap their shooting irons, or leave themselves with three bullets each, it will not end well either.
One problem with peace lobby is they think that weapons constitute the threat to man. Rid yourself of the weapon and all is well. That is not true. It is man that constitutes the threat to man. You cannot take the human factor out of the equation. Barring a complete disarmament of the world, the kind of regimes which hold weapons of mass destruction is as important as the weapons they hold themselves. Canada can build nukes. Who worries about Canada? Nobody worries about them because the Canadians are more interested in hockey than in taking over the world.
On the other the North Koreans would eat a hockey puck from sheer hunger. But all the same they will pawn their last bag of rice for more weapons. It’s not just the weapons that are the problem. The men behind the weapons are equally important.
Disarmament is only half the battle, and sometimes the wrong half.
The co-hegemon idea was formulated in fiction years ago in Jerry Pournelle’s “Co-Dominium” future reality.
There were a lot of things that were created to make the underlying premise of the Co-Do work, but for as long as there was a Co-Do between the US and Russia, it was an alliance of total cynicism and duplicity by both sides. It ended up corrupting the US because of the intimate relationship developed between American and Russian politicians, as they both began adopting the most unprincipled and pragmatic solutions to every problem.
The conclusion of the Co-Do ended up being a nuclear war which ended up wrecking a lot of the planet. The only thing that saved any civilization was the fact that in Pournelle’s CoDO universe, there were many settlements on planets in other star systems.
That won’t save us, and neither will this simple minded cynicism embodied in this little working paper.
It is cynical because it cannot possible work as we understand human beings and the way nation states work. It was probably created as a means of conning the simple minded into thinking that some new day of human relations had been born along with the election of Barack Obama.
Haven’t we had enough unreality with this guy already?
@34: It’s not just the weapons that are the problem. The men behind the weapons are equally important.
Disarmament is only half the battle, and sometimes the wrong half.
Oh piffle. Mankind is what it is. The bang behind its bombast is something else.
Wow, check out that gadolinium reading!
(From Sum of All Fears, where identifying the country of origin of an atomic blast was a plot point.)
Long term peace is only possible between stable democracies. By long term I mean several generations. Statist governments ALWAYS end up with a tyrant or despot. Look at Pootie and Russia. Any of the Arab Spring countries.
So for this pie in the sky to work, democracy must florish. They have the cart in front of the horse.
“Nuclear weapons are mostly evil, but if they have one good trait, it is that they have preserved the peace through fear these last sixty odd years”
Not sure I would describe the last 69 years as “peace”. While there have been no nuclear wars in the period, there has not been a years where there wasn’t some sort of conflict involving death and destruction going on. Mostly small wars but dead is dead. A soldier killed by an IED is just as dead as a soldier killed in an artillery bombardment.
The widows still miss their husband and the orphans their father.
In the absence of ” Mutual Assured Attribution,” (and that absence is likely), the policy has to be “nuke all who might have done it.”
Such a policy insures the guilty gets punished, which creates deterrence. It also decreases the incentive to proliferate in the first place, if doing so puts you on the list of possible suspects.
In order to carry this out, though, we need to keep a bunch of nukes around – something that the current administration fails to understand.
The basic roadmap consists of a … getting the stockpiles of rogue nuclear powers under control…
D’oh!. So that’s the secret! We just have to get rogue nuclear powers under control. And here I thought it was complicated or something.
Of course, that’s not the only howler. That bit about confidence building measures and economic cooperation is a knee slapper too. The mostly-non-rogue nations of Europe are having a little trouble with those measures right now without even considering nukes. If Greece, Italy, Spain, France, & Germany can’t manage confidence and cooperation in the EU, how is it supposed to work when the Norks, Paks, Mullahs and the other international wrench chuckers are added to the mix?
Mutual Assured Attribution? Hmm, governed no doubt by the The Mutual Assured Attribution League International Guardians Nuclear and Atomic Nations Treaty. (MAALIGNANT) Ambassador Joe Wilson – Head Tea Sipper.
But all kidding aside, I didn’t realize Romney was devious enough to get a loon-ograph like this released under the imprimatur of the Obama Admin. He must have had to pull in some favors for it, but well played.
“increasingly interdependent states having incentives to cooperate on political, military, and economic issues, [act and thereby] reducing the need for adversarial approaches to managing security challenges” . . .
equals . . .
One World Government, run by the International Left.
Understand? there ya go. THAT’s the fairy dust they’re counting on to make it all work.
One may control Man or his tools. The former is slavery, the latter is unreasonable and really just a function of the first problem.
It’s best to forget loaded questions, only we keep coming back to this… There is nothing we can do.
Some guy on Craigslist has this up for sale. It seems to be the key piece of equipment for this Mutual Assurance.
“Fifty-year old manure spreader. Not sure of brand. Said to have been produced in Kenya. Used for a few years in Indonesia before being smuggled into the US via Hawaii. Of questionable pedigree. Does not appear to have ever been worked very hard. Apparently it was pampered by various owners over the years. It doesn’t work very often, but when it does it can really spread the manure and sling it for amazing distances.
I am hoping to retire this manure spreader next November. But I really don’t want it hanging around getting in the way. I would prefer a foreign buyer that is willing to relocated this manure spreader out of the country. I would be willing to trade this manure spreader for a nicely framed copy of the United States Constitution.
Location: Washington, D.C.”
Which group of bad guys aspiring to rule the world wish to remain anonymous, those publicly stating every other week that they intend to “wipe Israel off of the map”?
Everything you need to know about this report is encapsulated in the beginning “This report does not assess the feasibility of the desired end state, nor the feasibility of achieving the proposed essential components” where they admit that this is all fluffy bunny, hippy dippy, pipe dreams. That was actually pretty refreshing to hear them admit that this is an “I want a pony” report that they were forced to do. I also liked “These proposed components are essential to achieving mutual assured stability, but most likely are not sufficient” as this is both true, and accurate. The magic wand and deus ex machina details are decidedly missing. And I read @21 after I wrote the preceding so Joan, great minds think alike.
josh – @3 This is aimed at an Obama political appointee who made them do it in my opinion. That’s about as real world as this gets. Just remember, our tax dollars at work.
Docbill – @9 People who are in the global middle class in other countries restrain dictators from upsetting their source of income. The effect is not perfect and tends to increase as income goes up and the percent belonging to the global middle class rises. The amount of restraint is applied invisibly but appreciably reduces the number of dead that american parents and spouses have to bury. I like this effect but it requires a bit more infrastructure than fences and arms.
Wretchard – @11 What interests me about “concealed carry” of nukes is how we’re going to deal with a polish or italian Vanunu. We won’t be able to ignore it but any hope of an economic system that stabilizes the international system requires that we ignore it. The tension between the two will fuel the pundit circle jerk in the media-government complex for years.
stoicheion – @38 Nuclear weapons, turning statistics back into tragedies since 1945.
RE: 28. stoicheion
…as I posted earlier, you have no credibility. Apparently I stepped on a sore, exposed nerve or two. Rant on.
Everyone is paring America with Russia in this Kumbaya dream, I may have missed it but China is more of a worry than Russia is now! China of all the counties can absorb a limited Exchange and still come out better than America, It’s as if many of you have not been reading the “Publically” released Intel on China, the ones that talk about how we (USA) have nearly no freak’n idea what they (China) spend on its Military or what exactly they have and are creating! Other than we know they (China) have stolen most our secret weapon designs and some of the most advanced stuff was stolen YEARS! ago… Plenty of time to have them in production.
46. Charlie Griffith
RE: 28. stoicheion
Let’s stick to the facts, boys. You’re cramping my enjoyment.
Posting should be for the mutual benefit of all, even disagreements. If you want to urinate on each other, kindly take it elsewhere.
@45:
I wasn’t aware that Egypt, Pak, N. Korea, Syria or any number of real or potential rouge states have much of a middle class. Iran does but they can’t seem to get much traction on the mullahs. Turkey has one but so far the don’t seem to be rouge. Neither India or China are rogue or stupid.
What would make me feel better is if we pulled our protective curtain off Europe and told them to protect themselves. Eisenhour told Kennedy to do that, he didn’t and they have been living for free under out umbrella and dissing us at the same time for 60 yrs.
In regards to “Mutual Assured Attribution”, there was an international attempt to add ‘micro taggants’ into common explosives so that any errant explosions could be traced back to its manufacturer and putatively the purchaser. I don’t know how far this effort went nor am I certain that Al Qaeda signed onto the agreement. The problem with these assurance methods is that they immediately encourage black projects to produce materials with plausibly deniable origins.
Add to this fact that open democracies have a hard time keeping secrets. Especially Republican administrations with an enemy within democrat operative spy network to spew ‘embarrassing’ information that undermines US national security.
That said, a company like Apple might say that your first 10 customers are your competitors who are anxious to see what is in your new product. Priority one for national intelligence after the discovery of a new rogue nuke program is to gather radio active samples so they can be spectrally characterized for future attribution.
Any sort of artificial stability will with certainty cause instability. We have tried to infiltrate North Korea since the early 50’s and I only speculate that it is not easy to do in such a dismal police state. On the other hand, you do not have to go to WikiLeaks to find sensitive western intelligence leaks, just read the New York Times.
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“…I may have missed it but China is more of a worry than Russia is now…”
True, dual hegemons? How ’bout the two who share a common border and ideological heritage? Russia and China are more likely pairs.
Docbill – @49 An armed society is a polite society is necessary but not sufficient in my book. This is the problem with the “nuke the moon” scenarios. Sure, nobody wants to mess with you but nobody wants to do business deals with the crazy guy either. Iran’s an interesting country in part because they don’t actually behave as crazy as they, on paper, should. You have millenialists in high office but they aren’t behaving as if they really believed that the hidden imam is coming next Tuesday. My explanation for this discrepancy is the middle class exerting a restraint that, while insufficient for regime change to something less crazy, has reduced the level of actual crazy behavior to significantly lower levels.
Rogue states have their own internal politics and their middle class *is* a part of that. They do have an influence and are likely to always be the class that is most compatible with classic american impulses and approaches. We should encourage their empowerment where practical. It is so often cheaper than body bags.
Where the hell are the Reply links?
49. Docbill:
RE your, “What would make me feel better is if we pulled our protective curtain off Europe and told them to protect themselves. Eisenhour told Kennedy to do that, he didn’t and they have been living for free under out umbrella and dissing us at the same time for 60 yrs.”
Bravo! for that statement.
My first Presidential Vote was for Dwight Eisenhower as an Absentee on active duty with USAF at the time.
Actually, you could peer even further back to about 1917 and our first rescue of Europe from that particular Kaiser….then recall that the British said about us Americans on the eve of the Normandy invasion that we Americans “were overpaid, over fed, over sexed and over here”, referring to Kent being so heavily flooded then with our men and materiel. That particular snarkiness has by now been tactfully forgotten, but I recall when it first became known. “Dissing” us, indeed. Don’t forget “Lend Lease” about 1940 or so.
Then, add mention of the mammoth Marshall Plan which arguably put Europe back on its calorie-shortened legs generations ahead of what it could’ve ever accomplished on its own, had it not been supplied with literally boatloads of materiel and financial aid supplied by the United States Taxpayer.
Remember…I do….I was working then in colonial Hong Kong at the time….when deGaulle said that he wanted all Americans out of France? I think it was then Dean Rusk who muttered, “…does deGaulle mean also from out of all of the American cemeteries in France?”, or words to that effect.
Based upon this frustrating history, I see no further moral imperative for America to be the world’s policeman. Japan under our umbrella since 1945 is an example in East Asia. They remain traditionally xenophobic at our expense.
Now….as far as our current war against malignant Islam and their Muslims is concerned, Containment, real Containment, of this Central/Western Asian cauldron probably can be accomplished by Special Forces being applied from offshore where needed, without [hopefully] nuclear bombs and their widely dispersed and long lasting “collateral damage”. We must not depend too closely upon “allies” for much support beyond lip-service. We’re practically and essentially on our own.
In sum, we’ve only got to compare that sharply contrasting example of the Zenith of Dwight Eisenhower with the current travesty and living Nadir of that sad chameleon named Obama.
From Fouad Ajami @ Defining Ideas on ‘The Foreign Policy of David Axelrod”:
“The tide of war is receding” is one of the favorite mantras of this administration and its leaders. But what is receding before our eyes is the American influence in the world order. Mr. Obama has narrowed the horizons of a country with historically wide vistas. In the Obamian world, that which can’t be done with drones and the daring of our SEALs is left untended. In a note of exquisite irony, Barack Obama had made much of his predecessor’s poor standing in Islamic lands. Trumpet the polls, fall to them: Mr. Obama’s standing in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, is now lower than George W. Bush’s standing. A placard carried by a group of Syrian protesters tells it all: “We miss Bush’s audacity.”
Now it could be that the American people have been made weary by foreign engagements, and that the economic distress—our debt, our deficits, an anemic recovery, persisting high levels of unemployment—has made us reticent in the face of burdens abroad. That would be an irony all its own—a president who mismanaged the economy being rewarded for the lack of confidence his presidency itself has generated.
From the very beginning, Mr. Obama has been a herald of a “declinist” reading of America. We can’t aid the Syrians, our touch would sully them. We can’t identity ourselves with the democratic aspirations of the Iranians, for we must conciliate their rulers. We can’t defend the cause of liberty and freedom, for in that Obamian worldview, freedom is a fragile, uncertain bet the world over.
So our Secretary of State circles the globe, nine countries in thirteen days in one recent expedition. The bet of this president is that the American people will neither notice, nor care about, the erosion of the American ascendency that enabled this country to do good and to do well in the order of nations. Come November, the country will deliver its verdict on this stunted vision of its place in the world.”
FWIW, the report referenced by W did not originate in Obama’s White House or in Hillary’s State Department.
The signature on the letter of transmittal was that of William J. Perry, who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Perry is a former Secretary of Defense who has been closely collaborating with Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz as well as others on updating nuclear weapon policy.
While the report fails in its objective imo, it should be seen as a serious effort by very serious people. Hence, we might consider its failure as ‘data’ for our own evaluations.
I cannot understand the Leftie fetish about nuclear weapons. After all, the phrase about ‘creating a desert and calling it peace’ was invented for the Romans, who accomplished it without a single nuclear weapon. Can we even begin to count the hundreds of millions of human beings who have died throughout history in non-nuclear conflicts? If the West (and that includes the snarky Brits & the worthless French) gets rid of nuclear weapons, it will only be a matter of time before the Russian army is rolling through Europe — whether Russia joins in the ‘throw away all nukes’ or not.
A nuclear weapon is simply a bigger bang, with maybe some mildly distressing short-lived after effects. See thriving Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the real world, we are left with the old truth that if we want peace, we have to prepare for war.
As an aside, debt-driven chaos is certainly going to cause more global human suffering in the next decade than nuclear weapons. A new Administration in the US is going to have slash expenditures all over the board. It is good that some parties are pre-identifying themselves for slashing.
AM (#50) said “How ’bout the two who share a common border and ideological heritage? Russia and China are more likely pairs.” These two have a shared Ideologue but they have had their Bloody clashes on their boarders, it has only been recent that they began being friendly again, Russia has a lot of indigestion over her Far East Territories knowing China eyes them while playing the Dragon, shouldn’t be to long (less than 10 years) before the Chinese Tiger comes out to swallow up the Bears resources… Russia is going to have a rougher time keeping the Dragon satisfied as China’s military grows more and more powerful and sophisticated, China is probing Russia too.
Re: 57. CharlesWhite
Remember always China’s population of their copulating (sorry!) one billion. The Bear simply doesn’t have enough claws and teeth, even when all are used at the same time, to cope with that restless mass. Some accounts claim that the Russians aren’t copulating quite enough for their own maintenance.
A further complication for us is that the Chinese have a restless Muslim population in their West. Whether these particular Muslims are those faux “moderates” or not is open, and surely depends upon just who is doing the defining. Their loyalty is for their Koran only. Don’t forget the Russians have a Muslim problem also.
Lots of “eyes” out there doing their “beholding” from a variety of viewpoints.
Anyone think that Hillary, of all people, has any clues about these noxious stew-pots?
Kinuachdrach @ 56 said:
“I cannot understand the Leftie fetish about nuclear weapons.”
The Pantex site is where American nuclear weapons are maintained and disassembled. Go to the following URL that links to Pantex:
http://www.pantex.com/about/facts/index.htm
Click “Plutonium Pit Storage” and download the PDF. Read the following:
“The plant is authorized to stage up to 20,000 plutonium pits.”
In an earlier version (last month?) of this same document it was written that they already had 14,000 plutonium pits in storage. Someone must have realized this was a security breach and deleted the sentence. Each plutonium pit came from a decommissioned nuke.
Good news: The nukes were decommissioned and the plutonium pits are safely stored.
Bad news: The safely stored plutonium pits represents the “hard part” in making a nuclear weapon and could be re-weaponized in a matter of days.
14,000 nuclear weapons is an insane number of nuclear weapons. Keep in mind that the 14,000 nuclear weapons is what we had during the Cold War. Presumably the Soviets had an equal number. If all 14,000 nuclear weapons had gone off at once during an all-out nuclear war, the radioactive fallout would have knocked us back to the stone age.
Repeat after me: “It was a miracle that we survived the Cold War.”
Different topic: Early on in the election, I predicted that the MSM would start around-the-clock documentaries about the Mormon Church in an effort to discredit Romney. That process has begun:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/22/abc_world_news_does_four_minute_segment_on_mormon_church.html
Be prepare to get bored stupid about the Mormon Church. The MSM will be beating Romney over the head about this silly religion until we are all screaming for mercy. It would be nice if the MSM could show similar diligence in uncovering Obama’s academic records (fat chance).
Bugs @52
“Where the hell are the Reply links?”
——
If I remember correctly, reply links were voted out by Belmont-ers a while back.
(Many thanks Mr. Fernandez for the opportunity to choose)
I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I like how the lack of a ‘convenient’ reply link often causes me to pause and consider what others have written as I scroll through to the reply form down there. It also seems to facilitate a sense of sequence where I can see [several] trains of thought evolve as the thread expands – It creates a sense of wholeness, even as it allows me to easily spot newer comments.
Some might call it too linear, but I personally prefer this to what often becomes fractured and disjointed ponderousness of comment thread systems on so many other forums.
Potential rogue states or terrorist groups must be deterred from believing they could conduct attacks under a cloak of anonymity.”
Let’s have these alleged supersleuths demonstrate their capabilities for deterrence BEFORE being toddled off to safeguard the world’s nuclear security.
Let them make that demonstration by shredding the cloak of anonymity under which the disciples of ACORN/Alinsky currently turn close elections by committing vote fraud. That’s an order of magnitude easier than piercing the anonymity of those who prepare our own deaths by mass murder.
re: China (and State Department magical thinking)
What are the odds that China has fewer nuclear weapons than its client, Pakistan?
59. Eggplant
How about a MSM special on the hate group Obama was a member of for the 20 years prior to running for the presidency?
Funny how all well-paved roads seem to lead to Kipling…
Ari Tai (#62) “What are the odds that China has fewer nuclear weapons than its client, Pakistan?” Don’t ask Uncle Sam! He ain’t gott a clue how many, what size or what type of delivery systems… Uncle Sam just needs to have fewer thats all… Our fearless leaders know.
A Rommney commercial that I would LOVE to see is The Mormon Tabrinacal Choir singing God Bless America with Rev. Wright in full rant of God D@mn America and a voice over saying “Which faith do you trust more with your future?”
It seems that Mutually Assured Stability is the nuclear weapon version of “Redistributing the Wealth”. The result – intended or not – would be equivalent to a redistribution of nuclear weapon wealth so that all nations end up with approximately equal nuclear weapon capabilities.
Equality of outcome. The “fairness” doctrine strikes again. Was this paper written by the Teacher’s Union?
k @ 56: Can we even begin to count the hundreds of millions of human beings who have died throughout history in non-nuclear conflicts?
I’m not sure we can, I would guess the total number of humans who died in conflicts prior to 1900 is less than 100,000,000.
The number who died in conflicts 1900-2000 is what, on the order of 100,000,000? I guess that being a previous millenium qualifies as “history”, too.
The number of human who ever *lived* before 1900 is only on the order of 2b, IIRC. So, if maybe 5% ever died in inter-tribal conflicts, or however you want to define it, that would get your 100m. To a first approximation that would be 10% of men. I suspect this is on the high side. I’ll go with 50m casualities (fatalities) in all conflicts prior to 1900, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a more careful approximation came in about half of that.
FWIW
55. ScenarioA
FWIW, the report referenced by W did not originate in Obama’s White House or in Hillary’s State Department.
That’s all well and good, Sir, but I am reading it at face value, never mind its origins. At face value it appears to be a silly document, hence my earlier remark (#2) asking whether Samantha Powers was the author.
Eggplant @ 59: “If all 14,000 nuclear weapons had gone off at once during an all-out nuclear war, the radioactive fallout would have knocked us back to the stone age.”
With respect, Eggplant, you may be an unwitting victim of Leftist mis-education. First, several of the places where nuclear weapons have been exploded are now tourist sites — e.g. Trinity site in New Mexico. That was the start of my re-education, seeing that the blast crater from the first nuclear explosion is not as wide as today’s I-10 going through Houston. Human society has clearly thrived at the Ground Zeroes in Japan; and wildlife is thriving around supposedly dangerously-contaminated Chernobyl. Whenever Leftists try to use hypothetical fears to control us, we should automatically go into Missouri-style ‘Show Me’ mode.
Second, this is a big planet — at least, it is big by the measure of man. The land area of the planet is about 57,000,000 square miles. If the US set off 14,000 nuclear weapons, and the Russians did the same, that would be roughly one nuclear explosion per 2,000 square miles of land area. Knock humanity back to the Stone Age? Hardly! Although I do have to second Stoicheion @ 12 — it could provide a great opportunity for a rebirth of more productive, dynamic, just, caring societies; and not just in the USA.
Josh @ 68 suggests that perhaps only about 150 Million human beings in history have perished in war without the assistance of nuclear weapons.
Wikipedia is about as reliable as a fear-mongering Leftist, but it is always close to hand (just like those fear-mongering Leftists). Wikipedia presents a table giving a high-side estimate of about 512 Million human beings killed in wars going back to the 2nd Century AD. Whether the estimate is 150 Million or 512 Million, two things are obvious:
1. We human beings do not need nuclear weapons to kill each other on a huge scale.
2. More than 99.9% of the exceedingy large number of war deaths in the last 2 millenia have involved non-nuclear weapons.
So is there any reason to fear nuclear war more than any other kind of bloody murderous human conflict? And would eliminating nuclear weapons really remove the fear of war?
For some grisly bedside reading tonight, Doctor Google has this, among others:
“(4) Damage of Radiation – The Spirit of HIROSHIMA
http://www.hiroshima-spirit.jp/en/museum/morgue_w17.html
The radiation from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima affected those within … over 50 after the bombing , what long-term effects radiation taken into human …”
I was stationed near Nagasaki in 1955-6, and it was even then still a pretty flat city within that bowl-effect of geography which I think enhanced the blast effect. Then it had only three and four story buildings. All the visible damage had of course been cleared away, but the Urakami Cathedral ruins, I believe right under the epicenter(?)is still there as a reminder with its Memorial Park. The Mitsubishi shipyards, the intended target, were up and functioning again.
The enduring scientific controversy over that Fukushima reactor after their tsunami is, of course, directly and poignantly related.
Kinuachdrach @ 70 said:
“… you may be an unwitting victim of Leftist mis-education. First, several of the places where nuclear weapons have been exploded are now tourist sites — e.g. Trinity site in New Mexico.”
People are allowed access to the Trinity Site only a few times out of the year. The British nuclear weapon test sites in Australia are still restricted areas. Go to the following link:
http://ocw.nd.edu/physics/nuclear-warfare/notes/lecture-17
Scroll half way down to the map titled “Sample Radioactive Fallout Pattern”. Note that the fallout plumes are countable, e.g. I count about 40 plumes. The four really big plumes come from ICBM silo fields that would have been hit multiple times. Assuming that each silo field got hit 100 times, then I count 440 separate nuclear explosions represented by this map. Remember that we have 14,000 plutonium pits at Pantex. Take the linked map and increase the fallout plume coverage by 30 times and that provides a clue of what would have happened had the Soviets shot their whole wad at us. Also consider this, the Trinity gadget used in the first atomic bomb test had a yield of 20 kilotons. The Soviet SS-18 Satan had multiple variations. The SS-18 Mod 3 had a single warhead rated at 20 megatons (1000 times more powerful than the Trinity gadget). The SS-18 Mod 6 could carry up to 10 separate reentry vehicles each carrying a warhead rated at 800 kilotons. If the Soviets had shot their whole wad at us, all that would have been left would have been a radioactive greasy spot. Finally, the Soviets would not have shot their whole wad at us. Why bounce the rubble? They would have shared the experience by nuking all allies of the United States, e.g. Canada, Western Europe, Australia, etc. The whole planet would have been covered with a single continuous fallout plume.
I’m over posted, for which I apologize.
There is an enormous amount of hyperbole regarding nuclear war. I consider that a bad thing, based on the GIGO factor. It is almost impossible to make good decisions based on bad data. Below is the URL to an article about the only survivor of BOTH nuclear weapons;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/25/hiroshima-nagasaki-survivor-japan
Not sure if that is good luck or bad.
Nukes are no where near as bad as some would have us believe. There was a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) used by the anti-nuclear crowd in the early 50′s. One of many things that were not told you is that the fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people then Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Another is that there is NO evidence of an increase in either cancer or deaths cause by radioactivity since the bombs were dropped. IIRC, the main Mazda plant is built on ground zero at Nagasaki. The percentage of cancers among it’s employees is no greater then the general population.
Those with Pavlovian fear about nuclear weapons need to learn some facts. A weaponised Ebola would kill a lot more humans.
Charlie don’t surf.
Nuclear arms are just one of several technology dangers. For example- computational biology is curing diseases, but it could also make more deadly agents like mega-bird flu. Space flight may allow mining of asteroids, but also nudging them on a collision course with our earth. Nanotech will cause similar catastrophes in the wrong hands.
Genetic engineering is capable of changing our world more than God might appreciate. Carnivorous species could be made to eat plants. Their instincts might be altered to gather nuts and berries for the species they once mealed on. Imagine bugs that can’t bite, but feast on the mold in your home. And scorpions who do little dances to get out of your way rather than sting you for walking too close.
All of this is possible, only it’s forbidden in the book of Eden from creating such paradise. That’s my view anyway.
69. Don Rodrigo responded to my observation @55 about the report W referenced: “… but I am reading it at face value, never mind its origins. At face value it appears to be a silly document, hence my earlier remark (#2) …”
If you would accept the substitution of “tragically inadequate” for “silly” then we are in full agreement.
This report reflects thoughtful analysis by very serious and very well informed individuals. Whatever term we might want to choose to describe it, ‘silly’ should not be on the list.
Background. Four individuals – Shultz, Nunn, Perry, and Kissinger (3 of cabinet rank and a senior senator), have expressed alarm that events have been moving toward ‘a tipping point’ with regard to the spread of nuclear weapons. In 2008 they persuaded both McCain and Obama that the current situation is unstable and contains unacceptable risks so that whoever won the election, he would direct the State Department to request an analysis for a map for a pathway forward. Obama won so Hillary’s State Dept requested the study. Had McCain won, the same request would have come from his Secretary of State. This report is the response to that request.
Perry and his team appreciate the dimensions of their challenge. Kissinger has described achieving their goal as similar to finding a path to the peak of a mountain which is not yet in view.
From this perspective, given a fair reading I suggest – ‘inadequate’ yes, ‘silly’ no. And, btw, the author is a senior fellow at the (conservative) Hoover Institution.
i THINK the foreign policy outlined in the Coke commercial has a better chance at success. At the least, it built coca-cola bottlers in almost every country.
Now – in order to achieve world peace – we need to buy the world a Coke and teach it to sing in perfect harmony. Much better plan than “mutually assured stability”.
stoicheion @ 74 said:
“Another is that there is NO evidence of an increase in either cancer or deaths cause by radioactivity since the bombs were dropped.”
Over the years from different sources, I’ve heard this rumor that something really nasty occurred at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb sites shortly after the US took over Japan. The story I kept hearing was the top layer of those two cities had to be scraped off as radioactive waste and disposed of. Supposedly a bunch of people died who were involved in that process (Japanese POWs?) and the whole thing was hushed up. Again, this was hallway gossip.
The nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were air bursts. As such, they had no local fallout – the radioactive material rose into the stratosphere where most decayed and some spread across the northern hemisphere at low levels. An attack on missile silos would be different, as ground bursts would be needed.
The radiation exposures in those two events were a result of “prompt radiation” – that released by the fission reaction itself and by the radioactive part of the fireball before it rose too far to be an issue.
A small amount of radiation was created at the surface through neutron activation, but I don’t think it was enough to worry about.
Since we have transitioned to a discussion of the efficacy of nukes, a small point. IIRC Hiroshima was a 20kton weapon. Earlier this year the Air Force announced the successful test of a 30kton Conventional Bunker Buster. (The Grandmother of all Bombs lol) The original MOAB were 15ktons.
It is postulated that fuel air bombs can be even larger.
Add to the mix the greater precision available today and nukes aren’t quite as handy…plus their shelf life sucks.
ta
Eggplant @78. The radioactivity at Nagasaki and Hiroshima went where all radioactivity goes. It DECAYED away. Ten (10) half-lives is one thousandth (1/1,000th) of the original radioactivity. Most of the radioactivity has half lives of minutes, hours or days. After a few weeks almost all of the radioactivity is gone.
What is left there today is the few radioactive elements with long half lifes.
Where scraping topsoil was often used is when we cleaned up bombs damaged in accidents (broken arrows), where the rad material was concentrated over a few square yards, not over square miles. If fallout had collected in some spots due to rain, wind, etc., then it could removed back in 1945.
No, that is a 30 ton, not 30 Kton bomb. Original MOAB was 15 tons. It’s pretty hard to load 30 thousand tons of high explosive on a bomber! The conventional big bombs are 1000 times smaller than the Hiroshima/Nagasaki blasts.
OOOPS you are correct, John. Note to self: Must not blog after 1 am.
Of course 1000 rounds could be delivered.
rd @ 81 said:
“The radioactivity at Nagasaki and Hiroshima went where all radioactivity goes.”
I do not believe that is correct. It is true that a fair amount of krypton-85 would have been produced as fission products. However there would also have been significant amounts of Iodine-131, Strontium-89,90 and Cesium-137. Iodine-131 accumulates in the thyroid gland and leads to thyroid cancer. Strontium tends to accumulate in bones and leads to bone cancer. Ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have remained dangerous until those fission products were removed or naturally decayed away.
The fission products were never at ground zero. The bomb was set off at altitude (for maximum effect against the non-hardened target) and the fission products became part of a plasma that rapidly rose into the stratosphere.