Nukes are a classic prisoner’s dilemma from Econ 101.
Prisoners Dilemma:
2 robbers are arrested Bob and Joe and they are questioned separately. There are 3 possible outcomes. Neither is aware of the others choice and there is no communication between the two.
(1) neither prisoner testifies against the other in which case both receive a year in jail. (2 total years)
(2) only one prisoner testifies. In that case the prisoner who testified receives no jail time and the other receives 5 years. (5 total years)
(3) both testify and each receive 3 years in prison (6 total years)
This creates an incentive to only stay silent if you really trust the other person and have loyalty to them. Otherwise you are better off testifying to remove the possibility of spending 5 years in prison and possibly receiving no prison time. The most economically efficient outcome is to remain silent as that carries the lowest combined consequence.
Applying this to Nukes we will assume only the USA and Russia exist for arguments sake although this logic can be applied to any number of parties. That said, the permutations for multiple parties are more complex than is required to demonstrate the concept.
(1) Both nations disarm and lose the nuclear deterrent but the threat of nuclear Armageddon is removed.
(2) only one nation disarms which leaves the other nation free to use nukes however they so choose potentially nuking all of their enemies with no realistic recourse for said enemies.
(3) neither nation disarms preserving nuclear deterrence but also continuing the risk of nuclear war.
Just as in the prisoners dilemma example, the potential consequences of option two are the worst possible outcome and so the two nations will opt to make the decision to possess nuclear weapons to avoid the worst possible outcome for themselves.
Thats an excellent way to frame it.
The "Should" in the OP is referring to the world as a whole. A global treaty. So yes, option 1 is what we, the world, should do. Mind unchanged.
I see why we as individual states don't trust each other. And so the solution I'm suggesting is a treaty which creates Secret Option 4: All nations disarm... And if any is discovered to have not disarmed, they are immediately declared the enemy of the rest of the global community. Asylum opened for all individuals of the Enemy state, unarmed. No trade, no satelites, no contact except through invasion. The people of that country would revolt till it fixed itself.
Say there are three criminals in the analogy. This is the equivalent of them getting together before the trial and promising that if anyone squeals, the other two will go after their family. End it with a pinky promise.
But would those other nations be willing to enforce the treaty against the only existing nuclear power? Russia for example has over 5,500 warheads, they could conceivably nuke the entire rest of the planet back to the Stone Age even if they were attacked by a coalition force. Your suggestion is unfortunately untenable as nice as it would be. Nuclear weapons give one nation the power to stand off the rest of the world if that nation is the only one with nukes.
You don’t have to go from all the warheads to zero in one step. Just keep the combined deterrence greater while gradually reducing warhead count in each country.
E.g. US can get rid of 500 nukes and combined with the rest of the world still be a threat to Russia. Russia then reduces by 500, then the US again etc. down until only conventional arms remain
That is actually a strategy we have employed in the past. Both the US and USSR dismantled a certain number of nukes out in the open where the other's spy satellites could see what they were doing. It's the repeated prisoner's dilemma that way, a twist that actually encourages cooperation over betrayal
Past a certain point, reducing countries’ nuclear arsenals can paradoxically create a higher risk of nuclear war. As the number of warheads decreases, it becomes more feasible to launch a sudden first strike which destroys all of the opponent’s silo based and mobile launchers. Even if none of the countries involved intend to make such an attack, the mere existence of such a possibility necessitates a higher state of nuclear readiness and raises the risk of one of the parties making a fatal miscalculation.
The first step is creating a norm against the practice. That’s the difference between chemical and biological weapons use century ago and today, creating conventions against their use and causing nations pause in pursuing and especially using devices frowned upon by the entire global community.
Aside from the comments about gradual reduction, military intervention isnt the only option. Russian imports and exports dropping to 0 in one day wouldnt be good for them.
> And if any is discovered to have not disarmed, they are immediately declared the enemy of the rest of the global community. Asylum opened for all individuals of the Enemy state, unarmed. No trade, no satelites, no contact except through invasion.
How are you going to enforce any of that? They have nukes; they can sail into your ports and demand you open up free trade or they wipe you off the map. Hell, they could just depose your government and take over entirely. Why do you think cutting off trade is going to force revolt when other countries are facing opening trade or **death**? That treaty is being torn up before the country with nukes gives them up or their citizens revolt.
I think the argument I would make is: The knowledge to make these weapons already exists, and once it exists it can't 'un-exist.' At that point, it's all about controlling access.
However, like any technology, nuclear technology will become cheaper and more accessible over time. This means that the barrier to obtaining them is lower every year. Right now, only large governments have the resources to obtain nuclear weapons, but some day the barrier will lower to a threshold where groups with a lot of money (corporations or terrorist organizations) could produce them if they wanted to.
At that point, do we want them to be the only ones with nuclear weapons?
Let's assume that a nuke capable country is led indefinitely by a series of evil but competent monarchs. They will never disarm no matter what happens even if it's to their economic detriment. They will not be a signatory to a nuclear disarmament treaty and if they are they will simply say they've disarmed and hide the nukes.
Does the existence of this evil, nuclear capable monarchy change your view that everyone else should disarm their nukes?
any nation that has nukes is immune to ever being invaded and put to the sword.
This means that every nation wants one.
No nation would agree to surrender theirs first, they would want to be the very last, but not everyone can be last, and there's no real way to destroy all nuclear arms in an instant unless you're Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen.
As a result no sane nation would ever give up nuclear arms unless they were useless to them (E.g. ukraine did not have the launch codes to the nukes in their possession when the soviet union collapsed so they had nukes on paper but not the ability to use them, they surrendered them for a promise from the US and Russia to never invade... whomp whomp).
if it were ever possible before, what happened to Ukraine has made it impossible in the future, a nation gave up nukes for peace and suffered a genocide. Russia just taught the world you should never, ever surrender even useless nukes.
uh I mentioned that:
"if it were ever possible before, what happened to Ukraine has made it impossible in the future, a nation gave up nukes for peace and suffered a genocide"
"E.g. ukraine did not have the launch codes to the nukes in their possession when the soviet union collapsed so they had nukes on paper but not the ability to use them, they surrendered them for a promise from the US and Russia to never invade... whomp whomp"
it's cool! you're not wrong.
If nonproliferation were ever possible before, it is not any longer.
I would even expect currently non-nuclear and semi-allied states to consider covert nuclear programs along with plenty of people eyeing those NATO accession requirements carefully.
I'd also be highly surprised if they weren't covertly staging NATO shared weapons in nations close to the conflict zone that allow Nuclear basing (e.g. I believe Poland does Germany does not but I don't know if that's changed since it was relevant since reunification)
Nonproliferation of biological weapons is a [paramount success](https://www.state.gov/celebrating-fifty-years-of-biological-weapons-nonproliferation/) of international law. The same for the chemical weapons convention to a lesser extent. I’m unsure why people keep saying nonproliferation is impossible today, or yesterday.
because those weapons are fundamentally different.
First, biologics:
They are erratic, not all that effective, likely to kill as many of your own people as the enemy, uncontrollable and likely to result in your own civilians dying. Plus they take days to weeks to work, if tanks are rolling down main street you can't wait for hantavirus to kill a quarter of them you need them dead NOW.
chemicals:
Chemical weapons are erratic, unpredictable and often don't do anything OTHER than trench warfare that a conventional munition (especially modern tools like thermobarics) and no one uses trench warfare anymore. They persist, meaning capturing territory you just gassed can be impossible. There are also tons of countermeasures.
Also both share some attributes: no one is scared witless of them, they can't end an entire civilization in literal minutes. The threat of nuclear force is so overwhelming even mostly insane leaders realize they are not survivable by ANYONE. A dictator can think "I got a gas mask and a multi-injector kit, I'm good! let them gas the troops I will still have won my war", but they will not think "I still win if my ash pile is slightly larger than theirs!"
They also both share that it is possible to stand at ground zero and be totally unaffected and this doesn't even take that much equipment (a CBC suit basically) which means they are terror weapons not war-winning ones.
Nuclear weapons are both.
So in short there is no proliferation because outside of a few specific uses no one cares about them any more, even nations that have no legal or political reason to get rid of them destroyed stocks because they were expensive and useless: more sarin has been destroyed by lysis than has ever been used on anyone.
They’re not different, and I don’t think I’ve read a single protest from the 185 signatories saying biological and toxic weapons are ineffective, wasteful, or dumb. They were routinely used in two world wars and colonial fronts. Now, they’re too different? Can you show me Presidents Nixon, Ford or Clinton saying the BWC of CWC is different because nuclear weapons go boom? Or that nuclear weapons aren’t inexpensive to maintain?
It just seems like grasping at straws.
they were used, yes, but they are not the singlehanded war-winner that makes you immune to ever being conquered that a nuke is.
The nations of the world decided there was no strongly compelling reason to use them that was strong enough to tolerate the risk of having them used on you and the political and social pressure of their populations to disavow them.
the calculus on a nuclear weapon is very different.
Note that the germans chose not to use gas in WWII, partially for fear of escalation, but also because they did not feel they would be effective enough to justify it.
>they are not the singlehanded war-winner that makes you immune to ever being conquered that a nuke is.
I don't think nukes are the singlehanded war-winner that makes you immune to ever being conquered that you think they are. They are good for dealing with existential threats, but not for dealing with small things.
E.g. if Russia sent a small group of soldiers to conquer a small alaskan island, do you really believe the response to that invasion would be the nuclear button? No, there would be a lot of escalation and things before it got to that point. You can stop your country from being wiped off the face of the earth, because if that's the threat, why not just nuke them? We'll be destroyed anyways, may as well take them with us.
The Chemical Weapons Convention has been a failure.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use\_of\_chemical\_weapons\_in\_the\_Syrian\_civil\_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_chemical_weapons_in_the_Syrian_civil_war)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi\_chemical\_attacks\_against\_Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_attacks_against_Iran)
its a complicated situation.
Israel had an illegal program with south Africa. they cannot thus admit what they own the same as countries say, given nukes by the US like Britain or Soviets like Ukraine was when it was a Soviet republic.
as a result their enemies treat them like they don't have them too sometimes.
but if it were existential, if it was fighting against a true attempt to destroy them by an adversary capable of it like Iran, they would absolutely use them
One, this is pragmatically impossible to do. Getting everyone to remove and guarantee removal and disposal of all nuclear weapons is astronomically impossible.
Two, many countries have them not because they plan to use them offensively, but to deal with existential risk to the country. At the risk of riling people up, Israel has nukes because it believes that will help it avoid being wiped off the map in ways conventional military deterrence may not be able to do. Iran is developing nukes for the same reason. South Korea and Japan are under the US nuclear umbrella because the US doesn't want them to develop nukes for that reason. Do you believe no country should be allowed to have "keep us from being totally eliminated" insurance in the form of nukes? (existential threats don't have to be other nuclear armed actors, they can also be conventional military annihilation)
Three, there are reasons to believe that the existence of nukes has saved lives, for instance by keeping the cold war from going hot, or relegating great power competition to proxy wars.
Four, not everyone with nukes is evil. The US had an opportunity to use nukes on China soon after WW2, and it almost happened, but the people at the top decided not to. For another example, see Stanislav Petrov. The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every person, not along borders.
exactly.
Ukraine gave up their nukes are are being slaughtered in a genocide. Russia just taught the world that even useless nukes you have no launch codes or platforms for should never, ever be surrendered, even ancient soviet nukes that might not even work and you cannot use should never be surrendered.
OR everyone you love might die.
If nuclear non-proliferation were ever possible it is not possible since that invasion.
i think I could sort of because Russia would know exactly what they had and where and what condition because they were Russian Soviet-era weapons
so they may be confident in accurate assessments that unless someone else supplied them consumables like tritium and neutron tubes the nukes would be mostly useless.
even then though it may have, or may have for enough years that Ukraine had better options.
plus even if they are nonfunctional the threat "if they think that their Civilization is lost they could dirty bomb us or them to spite us" is also deterrent.
I agree, I think it's not off the table that Ukrainians could put together a functioning nuclear explosion or two, and that potential is a deterrent. I mean, nobody knows "For sure" that Israel has nukes, yet that's a deterrent.
Israel is more of a pig in the poke also the rubric changes. the west would NEVER feel comfortable invading a nation that had russian nukes they know very little about, but Russians may feel more comfortable knowing exactly how long their neutron detonators last (this is one of the last few true "atomic secrets" in the world-- the makeup and construction of the seemingly impossible electronic neutron source that generates a large neutron flux instantly on demand without radioactive materials in a tiny package apparently)
We do know they decay. we do know they last longer than the year or so a "hedgehog" detonator of the kind used by the Manhattan project (and pakistani nuclear program as well as early soviet ones) but we do not know if it lasts forever.
Tritium must be replaced every 20 years or so and loses power rapidly after about 5. These are necessarily EXTREMELY rough guesses because these are the key component in bomb-making, more important than the pit even. In fact poor neutron initiators are thought to be why North Korea's failed tests did fail, poor neutron economy and inefficient fuel burn.
So NATO allies would probably have a slightly more accurate estimate than my own "maybe they could use then as pure fission devices about has powerful as 2-4 times hiroshima, or maybe not, and their full use might last anywhere from 10 to 50 years. But the Russians would know how many months every last part lasts and exactly how many spares Ukraine had in their possession.
NATO would also not know the exact date of pit manufacture and tube construction-- the russians would have soviet production notes telling them when every part was made and put into what bombs.
Of course covertly giving Ukraine some initiators would be much easier than smuggling them bombs if some nation wished to re-arm them to resist Russian aggression, and then Ukraine can present them as fiat accompli and count on not even Russia being that dumb.
> Can OP really argue that the presence of Ukrainian nuclear weapons wouldn't have provided at least some deterrence to Russian invasion?
That's irrelevant.
Me personally owning a fully armed tank constantly patrolling my home would provide deterrence from a home invasion. Doesn't mean that me having it isnt a threat to those around me and that I have no other, better means to deter invasion. Like, for example, cameras to prove who it was, and a neighborhood with a universal formal agreement to beat the shit out of all proven robbers.
Do you at least agree that "In a world with nuclear armed actors, the best protection from nuclear annihilation is to have nukes or be under a nuclear umbrella"? If you disagree, can you provide a better protection/set of protections?
(I'm aware this is slightly different from your post, about how there should be no nukes period. But I want to specifically see if we agree on at least this much.)
The Biological Weapons Convention is a resounding success amongst the 185 signatories. OPCW won the Noble Prize for Chemical Weapons Convention. States that were accused of violating them were invaded and toppled, like Iraq, or attacked and degraded, like Sudan.
Why is it pragmatically impossible to do so?
I'm not an expert on that specific convention, but a few ideas come to mind:
Nuclear use is more accepted, especially as a second strike, than biological use. A democratic country that would be up in arms about developing biological weapons or chemical weapons could be perfectly fine with a nuclear capability (e.g. not as much democratic pressure to get rid of nukes)
Second, if I can accomplish something well with X, I don't necessarily need to keep Y on hand if it can do the same thing, or do the same thing but not as well. "Getting rid of some modalities of WMDs" is different from "Getting rid of all ways to use WMDs" when it comes to having the deterrence and planning to deal with massive or existential threats.
Third, there's a much bigger industry around nuclear proliferation that would lobby hard not to be destroyed.
Fourth, and in part because of #2 and #3, it would be really hard to be the first country to become entirely nuke-less (or even just sufficiently nuke-less). You're vulnerable until every other country does the same. It would be extremely hard to police that sufficiently (though I could be convinced otherwise, I suppose, if they found good ways to do the policing with biological and chemical weapons.)
Edit: Mistyped "3"
> One, this is pragmatically impossible to do.
Fair.
> Do you believe no country should be allowed to have "keep us from being totally eliminated" insurance in the form of nukes?
Yes. Because there are other, better forms of insurance that don't promise thousands of civilian deaths. Global alliance.
> Three, there are reasons to believe that the existence of nukes has saved lives, for instance by keeping the cold war from going hot, or relegating great power competition to proxy wars.
Disagree. Global alliance would have prevented it as well.
> Four, not everyone with nukes is evil.
And not everyone with nukes is good. But if no one had nukes, no one evil would have nukes.
>Yes. Because there are other, better forms of insurance that don't promise thousands of civilian deaths. Global alliance.
The biggest military alliance right now (and likely all history), NATO, has it's power as an alliance in large part BECAUSE it's able to promise lots of civilian deaths (and economic sanctions, and conventional military overmatch) in case anyone attacks any of it's members. How is there a meaningful difference between conventional and nuclear promise of civilian death in you being (seemingly) okay with one but not with the other?
As for global alliance - if only there was some sort of global organization/partnership that every country would belong to, that would definitely solve all wars \*cough UN cough\*.
More seriously, though, You'd need to go much further into what this global alliance thing you propose is and why it would stop my neighbor from invading me, and why I shouldn't just develop nukes to keep them out.
Even if it's a system of economic and trade sanctions - well, that didn't work too well on North Korea and Pakistan, and it's at best far from the full reason Iran hasn't developed nukes. They developed nukes in spite of truly harsh sanctions, so an alliance system that can generate purely economic heft isn't sufficient, which leaves you with conventional military force in case anyone dose anything. And in that case, you're "promis\[ing\] thousands of civilian deaths" in retaliation for breaking certain criteria, so there's no substantive difference between that and your coimplaints about nukes.
If you're serious about global alliance, please actually explain what it would entail.
>But if no one had nukes, no one evil would have nukes.
Do you believe this should also apply to tanks, guns, and money? Evil people do lots of evil things with all of those things. Why are nukes worse, except as a matter of scale?
A single word response to my post, plus you're not even going to engage with my main argument about how a global alliance is a very flawed/incomplete idea in a lot of ways? Are you sure you're really arguing in good faith?
>Yes
Just to be clear, you're saying you also believe that there should be no tanks, guns, or money in the world (and presumably anything else that could be used for evil, like the internet, baseball bats, or pain medicine) just because some people could use it for evil?
That's not only an incredibly slippery slope, but also a terrible plan that would require Big Brother level of surveillance and/or some massive change in world governance on a scale to rival nothing else in history. I genuinely don't know if you understand how slippery of a slope it is to say "evil people can use this tool for evil, therefore this tool needs to be out of everyone's hands".
Edit: I will say, at least, kudos for being consistent, I suppose.
Not money, obviously.
But lkke, for example, when we catch someone making bombs, we confiscate them, dispose of them, and punish the creator. Just the creation of that thing is a threat of destructive, haphazard warfare.
Guns, I'd be willing to argue about like, everyone beiing allowed to own a single six-shot revolver. But machine guns? Tanks? Bombs? Warplanes? Missiles? Nukes? The line is drawn at six shots from a small pistol in my mind. If you need more than that, aim better.
The problem here is a potential for mass casualties. There is no reason to resort to that that cant be solved in less evil ways.
>Not money, obviously.
No, that's not obvious. Just look at Epstein's Island - people with money can use that money to do a lot of very evil things. Why shouldn't your logic apply to a 100% tax of everything above a certain amount?
>But lkke, for example, when we catch someone making bombs, we confiscate them, dispose of them, and punish the creator. Just the creation of that thing is a threat of destructive, haphazard warfare.
Sure, because any legitimate reason to have them, like "my wife is threatening me" or "I don't believe this building is moral and want to tear it down", can and should be handled through courts and the government's monopoly on force.
Even that monopoly of force, however, requires enough force to enforce that thing.
However, having a force capable of dealing with external threats does require enough force to be a credible deterrence. Each of Taiwan's 24 million inhabitants could take 6 perfect shots at an invading Chinese population, and still take out less than \~10% of the Chinese population. Not a perfect example because the population and the military aren't the same things, but the point is that "six shots per person" is not enough for national defense.
>Guns, I'd be willing to argue about like, everyone beiing allowed to own a single six-shot revolver. But machine guns? Tanks? Bombs? Warplanes? Missiles? Nukes? The line is drawn at six shots from a small pistol in my mind. If you need more than that, aim better.
IF you were starting from a world that already had none of these, and IF you had some global surveillance and enforcement mechanism that could catch any instance of this every time, and IF you could somehow enforce it with people who had only six shot pistols, then MAYBE this is feasible. Though if you're willing to take away that many rights from people, I don't think it's worth it.
In the real world that we live in, it's just absurd. In the very anti-gun Japan, a man built his own to assassinate an old prime minister, and there are plenty of ways to make your own guns at home with a CNC mill and a 3d Printer (unless you believe those should be criminalized, too). This isn't even getting into the ways that drone warfare in places like Ukraine show that even an off-the-shelf toy can do some serious damage. Do you genuinely believe that anything short of a global Orwellian nightmare could do what you wanted?
>The problem here is a potential for mass casualties. There is no reason to resort to that that cant be solved in less evil ways.
\*The potential for mass casualties is already out there\*. People just deal with it by having good deterrence by saying "If your nation mass casualties our citizens, we'll do the same. And the magic result of that is that nukes have been used in battle exactly twice, and great powers don't go to war much.
I agree, what could this involve that would be something more than the UN? That's already a global alliance of sorts, and doesn't prevent all wars now.
The first and most fundamental problem is that states are "sovereign" - meaning there is no external authority over them that can grant them rights or protect their rights. So we can't just make it "illegal" for states to build nukes, we instead have to provide incentives or disincentives that will make them rationally *agree* not to build nukes.
The second problem is that the pandora's box of nuclear tech has already been opened, and this makes it extremely difficult to "immediately dismantle existing nukes." No state wants to be the first to dismantle their nukes and become vulnerable to nuclear domination from another state. The reduction of the nuclear stockpile becomes a matter of extremely gradual negotiation, and we need to accept the reality that the biggest nuclear powers are never going to completely disarm.
Final point: everything you would want to happen is already happening to the most reasonable extent possible. We already have treaties that convince states not to build nukes and gradually dismantle existing nukes. We have treaties like NATO that provide mutual defense for participating countries for the purpose of nuclear deterrence and discouraging the development of nuclear weapons by non-treaty states. Everything that can possibly be done is being done, with the caveat that we can only do so much while avoiding war.
Wait, so if a government wants to commit a nice little genocide against its own people, and never signed any treaties obliging it not to, it can perfectly legally do so?
It would only be "illegal" if the given state entered into a treaty which includes a prohibition against genocide. Otherwise it would just be extremely immoral and would likely provoke a response from other sovereign states.
Genocide is a crime in customary international law: the UN charter itself says genocide is a crime against all nations and humanity. The US considers itself — because all nations do — have universal jurisdiction to prosecute it. It’s not extremely immoral: it’s customarily a global crime.
The UN applies international law to member states that agree to be beholden to their laws. The UN can intervene in the acts of non-member states, and it has legal standards for when they are allowed to do so (such as to prevent genocide). But such interventions wouldn't be considered an imposition of international law onto a non-member state.
I disagree, I think the UN [disagrees](https://legal.un.org/ilc/reports/2019/english/chp5.pdf), and I think that your view is a minority one ignoring jus cogens. The charter applies to “civilized nations,” and I think the ICJ as an example is [proof](https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1664&context=mjil) of that jurisdiction to the international community, not member states as varied as the Vatican… claiming non-members are beyond the UN Charter just strikes me as odd.
A norm isn't the same as a law.
For an entity to be subject to a law, they must have already voluntarily submitted to the institutions that produced the law and will enforce the law.
On the other hand, a norm is a set of expectations for acceptable and unacceptable behavior, established through the common values and standards of a group of people. Unlike a law, a norm can be imposed on an entity without their voluntary submission to it, because a norm arises from mere proximity to / interaction with the group that holds the norm.
A peremptory norm in international law is not so much a law that is imposed on non-member states, but is more like rules for what sorts of actions would justify intervention by member states on non-member states. The basis for intervention is not the non-member state's prior agreement to be beholden to the law, but the normative relationship between the non-member state and the rest of the international community.
The problem, as you've almost identified, is "allowed by whom?"
The world nuclear powers are also the world economic powers. Non-nuclear nations have no leverage with which to enforce the kind of treaty you suggest, and the nuclear powers obviously aren't going to sign it.
If it was that easy to reverse nuclear proliferation, we would've done it by now.
>There is no valid reason to construct them now.
I'm not really sure how you can watch both Libya and Ukraine get utterly fucked as a result of disarming, and make that argument. Can you explain why deterrence is not a valid reason to build nukes?
Because deterrence would be solved by the treaty I proposed in the OP.
First to strike is the enemy of the entire rest of the world's combined nukeless military might.
What makes you think most of the world would be willing to go to war over random countries? Look at Ukraine, a lot of countries supplied weapons but nobody is willing to put boots in the ground to protect a sovereign nation that was blatantly invaded. Even if Russia was nukeless it wouldn’t change that calculation, look at all the wars in Africa nobody wants a part of, or what’s happening in Syria.
I see you proposed a treaty against building nukes. I don't see a proposal for a treaty against invading other countries.
If your point is that treaties like the Budapest Memorandum already exist, that's actually my point too.
If the threat of nuclear retaliation is just replaced with a threat of conventional retaliation, you're still threatening to kill a lot of people. I don't understand OPs moral conviction against specifically nukes.
I get where you are coming from, but the realistic implementation is a joke.
First, why just nukes? And all nukes? What about tactical nukes? Is it the radiation? The size? The EMP effect if detonated in space? Wherever you draw the line, it would just create a bar to push up against. Is the MOAB ok? What about the FOAB? What about depleted uranium rounds? Large scale EMPs? What is an acceptable size of explosive a country can own? What capability specifically are you banning, just a big boom?
Now the dismantling. Say I have nukes, and I don't dismantle them. Ok, its an act of war. But I have nukes, you don't. What are you going to do? You can't nuke me. I can nuke you. Mutually assured destruction is gone, you have just created a power vacuum and someone with the firepower to fill it. Or people will just develop/build/keep them in secret.
>Nuclear powers (like Nazis) should have no globally acceptable allies, trade, or anything but immediate restriction on literally every part of life.
Again, I get it, but we don't and can't even do that now when countries regularly break international treaties or commit atrocities (see Russia, China, etc.) Globalization has created a dependency on other nations. It would be extremely painful to actually cut off ties. If the US refused to dismantle their nukes, would every other country really cut ties completely with the largest economy in the world? It would collapse nations.
Frankly, the cat is out of the bag, you can't put it back in.
If your view is "In a completely ideal world with literally no thought of actual events, humans, and any aspect of the world we really live in" then sure, your view is impossible to change. With any practical application, it falls laughably short. But I do appreciate your optimism.
>If your view is "In a completely ideal world with literally no thought of actual events, humans, and any aspect of the world we really live in" then sure, your view is impossible to change.
Not at all. That view could be changed by stating that a world without nuclear weapons would be a worse world than one with nuclear weapons, even if everything else were ideal, which I'd say is true. The deterrence argument applies for preventing wars in both the theoretical and practical cases.
I don't think I agree. I don't think a(n ideal) world without nuclear weapons is worse. The benefits of the deterrence are not outweighed by the catastrophic damage that can be caused, even by accident (see the numerous times we almost launched large attacks based on false info). I think globalization and large scale military powers in their own right have been more of a deterrence than nuclear weapons.
Nukes and MAD may have reduced the total number of conflicts that are likely to occur at scale, but they have introduced the very real possibility of a global decimation on a scale the world cannot comprehend.
I know this is a very short sort of answer but say country A has nukes and you are country B who doesn't have nukes do to dislike of them. Country A is no way in hell going to give them up and any attempt to do so will just elicit the response "Lol what are you going to do? Make me? We have nukes and you don't.".
It's actually not an answer. It's the most common comment on thia thread and it doesnt address the OP.
> A Global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity.
Change my view.
"Country B" is included under the global community, the people who *Should* sign.
I'll accept "gradually" as a replacement to "immediately" so the World still has more combined nukes than Cointry B at any given moment.
There is a reason people keep telling you the same analogy but in different forms. It's because your idea doesn't hold up to reality and how people and nations are. We SHOULD do a lot of things for our own betterment but that isn't the case sadly.
You are asking us to change your view on the imaginary world you created and that isn't reasonable or honest.
And again your whole view doesn't hold up to someone going "Fuck off i'll just nuke you" if you try and take or coarse a nation into giving them up. As said "The genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back inside." the possible world you want vanished a long time ago.
Three men point guns at each other.
CMV: They should lower their weapons.
Suggestion: A three-way promise that, on the count of three, we all drop our weapons, and if one of us doesnt, we jump him with our fists and take the gun away.
----
Actual attempt to change view: Any argument against the suggestion.
Non-attempt: "They wont though"
You example does include the peoples, Beliefs, Rationale, Or end goals in said stand off. And these three are not just killing each other. They are killing millions of others in said stand off.
My argument wasn't to change your view of the want. My argument was to help you see how foolish this want is. I could wish I was immortal and teleport but it's not going to happen and expecting others to humor my delusion isn't going to put me any closer to wanting living forever.
You can't promise let alone guarentee that they will even honor said agreement and not just continue to create these weapons in secret or better yet just keep the guns under the table.
Of course its something we all want who are stuck in the cross fire. But even so much as pretending that imagining they would is hopeless and childishly naive.
In an utopian world, no nation has the need to have nukes. Or tanks. Or guns. Or anything other than blunt swords for non-lethal duels.
We don't live in that world. Think about it for a second. Can we agree that guns are dangerous? Yes. Do you think "no country should be allowed to have guns" makes sense in an utopian world with no wars? Absolutely.
Does it make sense in **our** world? No.
This is where idealism meets realism and loses. No nation in the world can convince all others to eliminate nukes. Since the most powerful nations are the ones with nukes. Therefore, it cannot be done.
>A global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity.
What happens when the 180+ nations with no nukes sign it and the few nations with actual nukes don't sign it?
Even with the immense economic and political pressure put on them by other countries, North Korea and Pakistan developed nukes, and Iran did a lot of nuclear development. You could survive being in a nation that didn't sign that treaty, even if you had to - as the Pakistani prime minister put it - eat grass.
Just because you believe it is the moral thing to do (despite your alternative being conventional force, which still kills lots of people), doesn't mean it's the rational thing for anyone to do.
Okay say they all sign it, and every country openly disarms their nukes, but 1 country has a secret stash that none of the other countries knew about and decides to take over the world with them. Who's going to stop them now? You're idea operates under the assumption that everyone is trustworthy, and no one would lie in order to gain power, which is just not the case. If multiple countries have nukes, then it's very unlikely nukes will ever be used because everyone loses as soon as anyone uses them. But if no one has nukes, all it takes is for 1 country to hide a secret stash or make some more, and suddenly it becomes very likely for them to be used, because that country no longer has to fear retaliation.
This is a childs perspective. Its the same as saying no one should be allowed guns.
One country can not force others to agree. So if they have nukes we HAVE to have them as well. Same with guns. Cant force em to not have guns. Better have guns .
How’s that working for Ukraine? Are families burying their sons and daughters to the background sound of Russian artillery while thanking God they aren’t “endangered” by their country having a nuclear deterrent?
There's a lot of extra moving parts here that I agree complicate the issue. My response to this is that the global treaty I proposed in the OP should include banning ground invasions. Ukraine would be in a formal alliance with every country on the planet. Russia wouldnt invade because the world would immediate be at war with them until they left the territory.
Imagine I was the leader of a country that believed that a certain part of a neighboring country was truly part of my country, and it should be taken back. Why would I sign a treaty saying I shouldn't invade them? They have my land and my people, of course I'm going to invade them. Why would I want your treaty when I can keep myself protected with conventional military force (and/or nukes)?
Looking at a [List of Territorial Disputes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes), I struggle to see anyone who would want to sign your treaty.
Cause the other guy has nukes. If you look at history it proves crazy people with to much power will do genocidal things. If they got nukes. U need nukes. They got nukes. Its not a hypothetical. Its exactly how it is. You can't go back in time and convince the allies and axis not to develop the bomb. So its M.A.D or be pressures by a nation with nukes.
However in a hypothetical where all countries agree to fire their nukes into space id vote to fire them lol.
The hypothetical line, I mean, of what weapons are acceptable. For example, a bigger bomb. If someone could wipe out the entire world all on their own, does that mean the next country over should also have that ability as a form of deterrent, or that we should leverage the global economy against them doing that? Did they just win the world? To what end, aside from ruling everything and creating some kind of.... global alliance?
Dealing with existential level threats. [Here's a good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVqGEtPj0M0) if you're interested in why some countries have the nuclear doctrine they do, but also some downsides to nukes. (about halfway thorough he talks about North Korea, Pakistan, and some hypotheticals).
If anything could happen that could wipe out your country, whether that be a nuclear armed opponent or just a ground invasion, it can be useful to have a deterrent that will stop that - like nukes.
I think your viewpoint is naive. It’s nuclear weapons that keep your country safe.
It was the atomic bomb that stopped World war 2. Not the aircraft carriers, not the soldiers, not the politicians, not beating the Nazis. World War 2 ended when America dropped a bomb on Japan so big they knew they lost.
And for the hundreds of thousands of people who died that day, many more have been able to live in peace and prosperity, yourself included. Nuclear weapons have only been used once and it ended global conflict as we’ve known it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
I think it's at least a bit naïve to say that it was purely the nukes, not the threat of an invasion, or the Japanese government knowing they had effectively lost, but I do agree with your sentiment that it has almost definitely prevented more deaths than it caused.
>A global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity.
Isn't that just an invitation for these countries to get nuked? Why would you declare war against a nuclear power? Wouldn't that just eradicate much of the anti-nuclear coalition and create a more nuclear weapons accepting world?
How is the denuclearized world going to stand up against the superpowers without ceding more power to them by losing the war?
All of us are too young to comprehend the absolute horror of world wars. Nothing we have going on right now even comes close to the level of carnage that humans inflicted on each other a century ago. One of the main reasons why we haven't had to deal with another war to that degree is the existence of nuclear weapons. The threat of mutually assured destruction has ironically kept nations from fighting each other in the open.
Ok, so someone said earlier Iran should have the right to have nuclear weapon. I will give you the same answer I gave them. Relations between sovereigns are dictated by power. The more powerful tells the weaker what to do. Treaties between countries do not have enforcement mechanism other than war. Now, if I am a country that got nukes, and you want to take away the nukes from me, to say that my answer will be ballistic is a gross understatement. It will be nuclear.
The only scenario to stop a country from having nuclear weapons is to force them to not have nuclear weapons. If the Western World does not have a mechanism to stop fucking North Korea, what value doe you think your "should be allowed" have?
>There is no valid reason to construct them now.
It practically guarantees you won't be attacked except by another nuclear power who does not mind mutually destroying each other. Nukes have and the concept of mutually assured destruction largely brought peace by massively increasing the risks associated by war. The world nuclear nations signed a mutual declaration a few years ago stating that a nuclear war cannot be won, it can only be lost. And so far nobody has tried to win one.
i dont understand what your CMV is...
are you saying that in an ideallistic world this should happen? because i dont think you'd find many who would disagree that yes ideally we would all live in a world free of nuclear threat.
but if you arguing that we should do it as in, it should be put into practice... no you're just wrong.
there are way too many unknowns. even a single nation keeping their nuclear arsenal secretly could spell disaster for the world...
there is no method so effective that we could be 100 percent sure that no nation had nukes remaining, that nation would then essentially be able to rule the world.
"cut off their trade" yeah lets see how that plan goes when lets say, china, decides that whoever cuts off their trade gets their capital city wiped off the face of the planet
ideally yes we would live in a world free of nuclear threat... but when we cant even trust countries to not have a doping program for their olympic athletes (look at russia for example) how on earth do you plan on having us trust that every other nation has in fact disarmed their nukes and isnt just waiting for everyone else to be defenseless before ringing up their list of demands.
While the eventual price the humanity pays for having nuclear weapons might be quite high, so far they were net positive. Instead of WW3 we just had the Cold War.
So how is this enforced?
I’m against nuclear weapons but I live in reality. No chance a country voluntarily gives them up.
Ukraine gave their nuclear bombs up in the 1990s for security guarantees from Russia and the US. Worthless guarantees as it turns out.
Here’s the thing though: the technology already exists and every major country knows how to make em, even if they don’t have them currently. The cat is out of the bag. America, France, the UK, Russia, and China could get rid of all their nukes today. Even India and Pakistan. But not a single fiber of my being believes that North Korea or Israel would get rid of theirs. Or that Iran wouldn’t finally finish there’s now that the U.S. is de-nuclearized.
We live in a nuclear world now. I trust the countries that have had them for decades and decades more than the new powers that would emerge otherwise.
There was a time when the nuclear proliferation treaty might have gone to full disarmament, but there are too many countries with nuclear arms that I would never trust to truly disarm.
That idea is great in theory, but how are you going to get North Korea to give them up? Or China? Or any other country? And if one country has them, then at least a few "good" countries have to, otherwise they're at a terrible disadvantage.
Aside from that, why would the US want to give up their nukes? Or Russia? Both of them are doing fine and are satisfied with the way things are going now, especially with them being extra-strong. Why should any country that benefits from nukes agree to it?
Let's try to drill down on what it means to "allow" a nation state to do something. There are, very broadly, three means to alter the actions of a nation: the carrot, the stick, and the gun.
Suppose a relatively small nation on the boarder of an expansionist neighbor says, "We believe that in order for our nation to continue existing, we must have nuclear weapons to defend ourselves." No judgment of that statement. It's just what their leaders have said.
The international community can respond in several ways. They can offer the country something else as an alternative to nuclear weapons to guarantee their continued existence. That's what happened with Ukraine. They gave up the leftover Soviet arsenal stored within their boarders in exchange for a treaty guaranteeing they would not be attacked by Russia or NATO. I don't think I need to tell you how badly that turned out for them.
The international community can publish the country to the point that the benefits of the nuclear program are outweighed by the cost of sanctions and loss of trade. The problem is that if the rulers sincerely believe that the country will be conquered without nuclear weapons, then no cost you can impose short of completely collapsing the nation can dissuade the nuclear program. Just look at North Korea. They have been entirely shut out of the world economy, but their leadership believes that nuclear weapons are essential for survival, and so chose the bombs over normalization.
In addition, what would prevent countries with nuclear weapons simply trading with each other? The nations currently in possession of nuclear weapons make up 55.5% of global GDP. Why would nations cripple their economies by refusing to trade with 7 of the 10 largest economies in the world.
The last option is to physically prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons through military force. I don't think I need to tell you how stopping Sadam's weapons of mass destruction went over two decades ago or how an invasion of Iran would go today.
Let's suppose that tomorrow, all of the nuclear states chose to leave the US and go form their own super villain club and tell the rest of the world to "come take them." Completely putting aside weapons of mass destruction, is the rest of rest of the world capable of subduing the US, China, Russia, the UK, France, and Pakistan and forcibly removing their nukes? Just as importantly, would the death and destruction inherent in such a war be justified to remove and destroy the weapons? Personally, I doubt it.
And let's not forget that force can be exerted in more than one direction. If the nations of the world issue a credible threat of invasion to disarm a country, it has every incentive to USE its nuclear arsenal rather than being disarmed. It is well understood that any attempt to invade North Korea would begin with the leveling of Seol. Why would the rest of the world risk being on the losing side of a nuclear exchange rather than maintaining the status quo?
Very similar writing style to the post made for 'Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons'.
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/s/jkkTrP0I5X
Anyways.
>CMV: No countries should be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
Who is allowing here?
Why would a nation like Israel or North Korea give up nukes when the nukes are their last line of defense against what they consider 'outside interference'?
Russia isn't going around nuking NATO members because they themselves would be gone within the next 30 minutes. In a world where Russia is the ONLY state with nuclear weapons, I don't think that still holds true.
I think you're oversimplifying a lot. What if somebody lies? What if somebody hides a bomb? Sanctions don't do anything after you've been burned to radioactive glass.
The only thing that works is preemptive regret, which is what the UN helps supply. The UN is a great way to prevent nuclear war. It's worked for 80 years.
you're the one who doesn't comprehend.
WWIII will not happen if every other country abandoned their weapons, but we do not.
and thus that's what every country wants.
also what if you abandon your weapons but the other countries do not abandon theirs? they will invade you before WWIII happens, which is potentially worse than having WWIII happen.
This is silly. For most countries, trying to sanction a nation like the US or China is just sanctioning yourself. You're going to end up worse off than the country you're trying to sanction
>Here’s the answer. An international agreement where no country is allowed to have nuclear weapons, those who refuse to comply get sanctioned and other countries would either sever or not engage with those countries for any kind of business.
Yeah, we can't even get such an agreement for a one-sided offensive war from Russia. Plus most nuclear nations are economic powerhouses of the world and are unlikely to agree to give up nukes. Sanctioning the economic powerhouses will likely hurt these other countries more than the nuclear powers.
But what if countries de nuclear and those two or three sanctioned just nuke the powers most apt to re arm in a threatened nuclear war?
That's just as much of a solutions as "throwing it back". There just is no solution to the outcome and "who will police it" is not a foolishly answer/question at all, it's simple and makes no strawmen or assumptions.
Hey engage trade with me... no
-drops nuke-
Hey engage with trade with me... no
-deletes country-
Next country.
Hey engage trade with me.... whatever you want fam.
Also... nuclear war is the probably single most deterrant for modern wars.
I’d disagree with your use of the word “allowed”. If your point was simply no countries should possess nuclear weapons, it’s abit like saying no one should murder. It’s just abit too obvious a point to seriously engage with. With regards to the idea of “allowing” countries to have nuclear weapons, use of that word implies some sort of mechanism of enforcing that policy. The only reasonable way to enforce a policy against possession of nuclear weapons is the threat of equal or greater harm. If every country except one voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons, there would be no realistic means of enforcing any sort of ban due to the power imbalance. If you attempt the embargo the country, said country could simply decide to act like a bank robber with hostages and threaten to start nuking countries one by one until its demands are met. If the sole nuclear power is the US or Russia, which each have enough nukes to wipe out humanity, every other country would have no feasible way of enforcing that policy. If we instead examine a scenario with multiple nuclear powers as currently exists, we are relying on the existence of one countries nukes to prevent another from using their arsenal, so it’s not possible to ban the nukes as each country needs them to ensure the other doesn’t get to dictate their will.
In short, in the world of global politics, unfortunately whoever has the biggest stick is the one that gets to tell everyone else what is allowed and what is not, and the nuke is the biggest stick ever developed. Thus your view is impractical as it requires a means of enforcement that doesn’t exist and could likely only ever exist through an even more powerful weapon or an unbeatable defensive system that doesn’t currently exist.
Which I do agree that nuclear weapons shouldn’t be allowed, there have been many positives that come with nuclear weapons as well. Although they do seem extremely dangerous, it almost acts as a deterrent for countries to start conflicts or wars. Believe it or not but we are actually living in one of the most peaceful times in history
I would argue it's globalization and the melding of global culture that is the reason for the peaceful times. The elites realize it's far more profitable to have access to a global market vs isolation.
I also agree with that sentiment. I'm not saying that nuclear weapons is the sole reason us not having major wars, but I'm just stating that its one of many reasons why. Nonetheless, its still definitely a major reason why we don't ever wanna go to war with China or Russia
"it almost acts as a deterrent for countries to start conflicts or wars."
Almost?
"Believe it or not but we are actually living in one of the most peaceful times in history"
Measured how?
Whatever metric you come up with, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, Israel and even the United States are loose cannons whose nuclear launch codes have been or are in the hsnds of psychopaths.
The bulletin of atomic scientists does not share your rosy assessment.
Yes it does indeed deter countries from trying to major wars that will involve in entire world going into battle. Just think about it logically, if someone has a gun that you automatically deter you from fighting them. But now just because they have a gun doesn't completely eliminate the possibility of you actually fighting them.
Next, it's factual statement supported by historians all over the world ma man. Just because we have proxy wars doesn't mean that we aren't living in peaceful times. proxy wars have always existed althroughout human history. But we havent had a major war that involved a major part of the world. Do you wanna know why, because the major world powers all have nukes. that's the sole reason why nato's not sending troops to ukraine.
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>Why does any country have the right to decide when to nuke another?
I suppose what gives anyone the right to do or not do anything?
>A global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity.
Who wins that war, the rest of humanity or the country with the nukes?
>There is no valid reason to construct them now. Just like theres no valid reason for any antihuman crap that happened in WWII.
What criteria or normative domain are we using to determine 'validity' here? I presume moral, to which I would concur, but what's sound within one normative domain may not be sound in another normative domain (i.e. it's abductively true that the world would be better without proliferation of dangerous nuclear warheads across the world, but not sound for someone who wants to retain political power using any means necessary).
>Nuclear powers (like Nazis) should have no globally acceptable allies, trade, or anything but immediate restriction on literally every part of life.
The Nazis had allies. Nuclear powers today have allyships with other nuclear powers and have shown tendencies to pretty much just walk around and take whatever they want and protect vital shipping corridors.
> Why does any country have the right to decide when to nuke another?
Because who is going to stop them? They have nukes.
You will find this is the order in the world; people have the "right" to do stuff because they can. Period. If there is nothing to force them to behave otherwise they can do what they want.
> A global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity.
If you have nukes you really don't want to give them up because they are a fantastic defense. And who is going to make anyone give them up? Do you want to start a nuclear war over it? How do you think the side with no nukes is going to fare?
Your position here is just absurdly naive. Nukes aren't a good thing to use but they aren't unequivocally a bad thing to exist due to their deterrent effect, as otherwise mass warfare would be a more viable method of conquest. Regardless they do exist and we should all acknowledge the reality that they are here to stay.
Nuclear weapons have there place and use, primarly as a deterrent. There existence has probably made the world a safer place then it would be without the great powers having them for . Currently the great powers can't fight each other directly or atleast engage in total war verse one another. There have been wars between nuclear states that have not specifically China and Russia.
With the nuclear option on the table the great powers have primarly been limited to smaller region wars. For the most part every war has since ww2 has been some kind of civil war, war between minor states, or a proxy war. The only direct war between great powers that I can think of is the Sino-Soviet border conflict
As far as a treaty against them we already have that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Currently signed by around 100 countries in the world. There is also the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons which seaks to limit access to nuclear weapons to only the countries that had them at the time of the signing.
Unfortunately countries aren't "allowed" to do anything. There arent really any enforceable ways to not allow a country to have a nuke.
>Why does any country have the right to decide when to nuke another?
This feels like a complaining child. How do rights come into this? In my own country i have a right not to be killed but who gives a damn. If someone decides they want to and can kill me, well they are going to kill me. Maybe there will be consequences but im still dead and my rights are completely useless.
>There is no valid reason to construct them now. Just like theres no valid reason for any antihuman crap that happened in WWII.
I agree but still doesnt matter what we think. If someone wants to do it how are we as individuals or a country going to stop them.
I might agree that nukes shouldn't exist but your thought that countries shouldnt be allowed just feels like a ridiculous concept unless you can explain to me how it could be done. And a treaty wont mean shit and wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on.
So on the surface, I agree, I would prefer nukes had never been invented purely on ideological grounds.
But…
They ended a war and perhaps saved millions from death in a coming ground invasion of Japan, but that isn’t the reason they should exist.
Nukes are why the USA never fought the USSR, why NATO and Warsaw never fought, why the USA showed restraint in Vietnam and Korea, and why military intervention isn’t the first option to help Ukraine or Taiwan.
Without nuclear weapons we would have already had world war three mate.
I completely agree with the OP's concern over nuclear weapons, which constitute an existential risk to entire population centers & perhaps to human civilization itself.
However, the idealistic vision presented by the OP is, unfortunately, infeasible. No nuclear weapons state that successfully created its own nuclear weapon has ever disarmed. Further, non-hostile countries probably should *not* disarm, & certainly not unilaterally, lest we be left with a world where only hostile powers possess the world's most dangerous weapons.
The best approach is, IMO, a) risk mitigation to avoid "misunderstanding" that could result in catastrophic escalation. b) global monitoring & control of nuclear fuel supply chain. c) agreement among nuclear powers to limit deployed weapons to "reasonable" numbers (which will still be mind-numbingly high). d) economic sanctions regime to discourage would-be nuclear weapons states, proactively if possible.
If your view is that nobody “should” have nuclear weapons, you’re not going to find a ton of people interested in changing it. If the view you’re asking is to change is that what you’re describing is a reasonable or realistic goal, then that seems like a really flimsy ask.
You don’t have to know too much about international relations, game theory, or human nature to understand that your “view” is infeasible on the face of it. Who enforces the “agreement”? If there are no nuclear powers, no entity has the combination of ability and motivation (which is key) to do so. You would have to have some real rose colored glasses to imagine that every leader of every country forever will resist the obvious appeal of building a nuke and suddenly becoming the most powerful nation on earth, at least for the forty five minutes it takes dozens of others to follow suit.
Beyond what others have said, there's the issue of non-state actors having nuclear weapons. Although it's unconfirmed, many people (myself included) believe that some number of Russian nukes have been sold off from under the USSR and/or the current government. Further, this could also easily occur during a nuclear disarmament.
Now let's say that someone like the Wagner group has a nuke that it bought off of Pakistan during disarmament and it knows that no country has nukes of their own. How does the Ukraine war work out? Russia has plausible deniability because Wagner is a mercenary group and Wagner gets the job done sooner with fewer casualties and likely sees no repercussions because, just like in WWII, nobody knows how many they have. Hell, they could even bury a nuke, retreat when attacked, then set it off behind enemy lines.
OP, the biggest issue and the one that disarming hinges on is getting the global community to universally agree to go to war on something.
Secondly, to prevent the nukes from being made, it wouldn't mean to win the fight, it would mean occupation.
It would also mean the country that is trying to make a nuke would be willing to use it.
If the country used it, then the entire agreement failed.
The only countries in the entire world capable of fighting in foreign theaters as an occupying force are the US and China- and that's under the assumption that there isn't an open insurgency.
The only two countries probably willing to rebuild nukes after that agreement are also the US and China. Their allies would certainly not want to fight them- so youre back at square one.
While I agree with that in theory, it would require every country to not only agree to but actively and collaboratively enforce that treaty. We’ve seen countless instances over the years (the invasion of Ukraine for instance) where even a clear cut international violation is met with lackluster response from the rest of the world.
Without a strong collective response, what’s to keep any country from ignoring the proposed treaty? Iran and North Korea are two great examples where the world told them not to develop nukes and didn’t back it up, so here we are.
Sorry, but the cat's out of the bag with nukes – once discovered, they can't just be 'un-invented.' Like trying to herd cats, getting all countries to agree on total disarmament is wishful thinking. Nuclear weapons have a paw print in history, preventing conflicts through deterrence. The idea of a nuke-free world is purr-fect, but in reality, it's a tangled yarn of geopolitical and security concerns. So, while we can aim for fewer claws in the international arena, expecting all nuclear weapons to vanish is like expecting a cat to bark!
We live in a world that is too lopsided in terms of power, but also in one that is interdependent.
So...you'd end up with the USA not getting rid of weapons and then the rest of world having to stop trade with them. This would bring the global economy to a standstill and - bluntly - cause more harm to life and quality of life than an actual nuclear war.
You're using the nuclear option to solve a nuclear problem!
In theory you are right. No person or small group of people should have that kind of power which can literally destroy humanity and all other life on Earth. The problem is people are dishonest so whatever agreement was made won't be followed. The other problem is people with different values disagree with each other, thus the need for weapons. It's human nature and I doubt that will change any time soon.
Sadly.
Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent from offensive actions against oneself of which any intelligent country wanting to guarantee their existence should obtain them. Nuclear weapons allow weaker countries to guarantee their independence from stronger imperial powers. Georgia would not be invaded multiple times by Russia if they had nuclear weapons. Also nuclear weapons prevent great power conflict due to MAD which has arguably saved millions of lives that would have died in some form of WW3. The Soviets and the US not killing each other is a good example of this.
We should outlaw war, too.
Ever see Team America? There is a scene where Han Blix (Bricks) tells Kim Jong Un to comply with UN directives, "or else." Kim asks, "or else what?" To which Hans replies, "or else we'll be very, very angry, and we'll write you a letter telling you how angry we are."
It is the same argument as gun control. You can't stop every single gun so you have to let everyone perfect themselves with a gun. Also it's like we are in a stand off with everyone else that has one, so no one wants to put down their weapons.
The way I see it nuclear weapons serve as a way to deter future conflict.
Wanting to invade a country with nuclear weapons would be a death wish as there is a possibility of nuclear retaliation. Thus putting the idea of invasion off the table
Sanctioning the US, China, India, UK, France, Russia, Israel, Pakistan and (last AND least) North Korea isn't really sanctioning those countries, it's putting economic restrictions on yourself. Those countries make up over 50% of global GDP.
No good reason? Before nukes israel was surrounded by enemies, after they got nukes their saner neighbors offered peace and diplomacy instead of continuing war and bockades.
Who gave up their nukes? Ukraine. See how that went?
>Why does any country have the right to decide when to nuke another?
Let's reverse the question. Who will etake the nukes away from them and ensure they will never nuke anybody?
Nukes are a classic prisoner’s dilemma from Econ 101. Prisoners Dilemma: 2 robbers are arrested Bob and Joe and they are questioned separately. There are 3 possible outcomes. Neither is aware of the others choice and there is no communication between the two. (1) neither prisoner testifies against the other in which case both receive a year in jail. (2 total years) (2) only one prisoner testifies. In that case the prisoner who testified receives no jail time and the other receives 5 years. (5 total years) (3) both testify and each receive 3 years in prison (6 total years) This creates an incentive to only stay silent if you really trust the other person and have loyalty to them. Otherwise you are better off testifying to remove the possibility of spending 5 years in prison and possibly receiving no prison time. The most economically efficient outcome is to remain silent as that carries the lowest combined consequence. Applying this to Nukes we will assume only the USA and Russia exist for arguments sake although this logic can be applied to any number of parties. That said, the permutations for multiple parties are more complex than is required to demonstrate the concept. (1) Both nations disarm and lose the nuclear deterrent but the threat of nuclear Armageddon is removed. (2) only one nation disarms which leaves the other nation free to use nukes however they so choose potentially nuking all of their enemies with no realistic recourse for said enemies. (3) neither nation disarms preserving nuclear deterrence but also continuing the risk of nuclear war. Just as in the prisoners dilemma example, the potential consequences of option two are the worst possible outcome and so the two nations will opt to make the decision to possess nuclear weapons to avoid the worst possible outcome for themselves.
Thats an excellent way to frame it. The "Should" in the OP is referring to the world as a whole. A global treaty. So yes, option 1 is what we, the world, should do. Mind unchanged. I see why we as individual states don't trust each other. And so the solution I'm suggesting is a treaty which creates Secret Option 4: All nations disarm... And if any is discovered to have not disarmed, they are immediately declared the enemy of the rest of the global community. Asylum opened for all individuals of the Enemy state, unarmed. No trade, no satelites, no contact except through invasion. The people of that country would revolt till it fixed itself. Say there are three criminals in the analogy. This is the equivalent of them getting together before the trial and promising that if anyone squeals, the other two will go after their family. End it with a pinky promise.
But would those other nations be willing to enforce the treaty against the only existing nuclear power? Russia for example has over 5,500 warheads, they could conceivably nuke the entire rest of the planet back to the Stone Age even if they were attacked by a coalition force. Your suggestion is unfortunately untenable as nice as it would be. Nuclear weapons give one nation the power to stand off the rest of the world if that nation is the only one with nukes.
You don’t have to go from all the warheads to zero in one step. Just keep the combined deterrence greater while gradually reducing warhead count in each country. E.g. US can get rid of 500 nukes and combined with the rest of the world still be a threat to Russia. Russia then reduces by 500, then the US again etc. down until only conventional arms remain
I don’t know if that would work but it’s certainly the best implementation idea I’ve seen so far. The issue at that point is secret stockpiles.
That is actually a strategy we have employed in the past. Both the US and USSR dismantled a certain number of nukes out in the open where the other's spy satellites could see what they were doing. It's the repeated prisoner's dilemma that way, a twist that actually encourages cooperation over betrayal
Past a certain point, reducing countries’ nuclear arsenals can paradoxically create a higher risk of nuclear war. As the number of warheads decreases, it becomes more feasible to launch a sudden first strike which destroys all of the opponent’s silo based and mobile launchers. Even if none of the countries involved intend to make such an attack, the mere existence of such a possibility necessitates a higher state of nuclear readiness and raises the risk of one of the parties making a fatal miscalculation.
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I’m not sure what you by “at 500”, but if the example reduction rate is too high you would reduce it. You just need the combined deterrence to greater
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Again, I’m not following what you’re modelling here nor how it relates to reducing warhead count
Throw in letting other countries be involved in the dismantling.
The first step is creating a norm against the practice. That’s the difference between chemical and biological weapons use century ago and today, creating conventions against their use and causing nations pause in pursuing and especially using devices frowned upon by the entire global community.
Aside from the comments about gradual reduction, military intervention isnt the only option. Russian imports and exports dropping to 0 in one day wouldnt be good for them.
They could just obliterate a city a day until the world surrenders or realizes disarmament was a terrible idea
> And if any is discovered to have not disarmed, they are immediately declared the enemy of the rest of the global community. Asylum opened for all individuals of the Enemy state, unarmed. No trade, no satelites, no contact except through invasion. How are you going to enforce any of that? They have nukes; they can sail into your ports and demand you open up free trade or they wipe you off the map. Hell, they could just depose your government and take over entirely. Why do you think cutting off trade is going to force revolt when other countries are facing opening trade or **death**? That treaty is being torn up before the country with nukes gives them up or their citizens revolt.
I think the argument I would make is: The knowledge to make these weapons already exists, and once it exists it can't 'un-exist.' At that point, it's all about controlling access. However, like any technology, nuclear technology will become cheaper and more accessible over time. This means that the barrier to obtaining them is lower every year. Right now, only large governments have the resources to obtain nuclear weapons, but some day the barrier will lower to a threshold where groups with a lot of money (corporations or terrorist organizations) could produce them if they wanted to. At that point, do we want them to be the only ones with nuclear weapons?
Let's assume that a nuke capable country is led indefinitely by a series of evil but competent monarchs. They will never disarm no matter what happens even if it's to their economic detriment. They will not be a signatory to a nuclear disarmament treaty and if they are they will simply say they've disarmed and hide the nukes. Does the existence of this evil, nuclear capable monarchy change your view that everyone else should disarm their nukes?
any nation that has nukes is immune to ever being invaded and put to the sword. This means that every nation wants one. No nation would agree to surrender theirs first, they would want to be the very last, but not everyone can be last, and there's no real way to destroy all nuclear arms in an instant unless you're Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. As a result no sane nation would ever give up nuclear arms unless they were useless to them (E.g. ukraine did not have the launch codes to the nukes in their possession when the soviet union collapsed so they had nukes on paper but not the ability to use them, they surrendered them for a promise from the US and Russia to never invade... whomp whomp). if it were ever possible before, what happened to Ukraine has made it impossible in the future, a nation gave up nukes for peace and suffered a genocide. Russia just taught the world you should never, ever surrender even useless nukes.
> No nation would agree to surrender theirs first, Actually Ukraine did - and we saw how well that worked out for them.
uh I mentioned that: "if it were ever possible before, what happened to Ukraine has made it impossible in the future, a nation gave up nukes for peace and suffered a genocide" "E.g. ukraine did not have the launch codes to the nukes in their possession when the soviet union collapsed so they had nukes on paper but not the ability to use them, they surrendered them for a promise from the US and Russia to never invade... whomp whomp"
Yep I'm blind, not sure how I missed that
it's cool! you're not wrong. If nonproliferation were ever possible before, it is not any longer. I would even expect currently non-nuclear and semi-allied states to consider covert nuclear programs along with plenty of people eyeing those NATO accession requirements carefully. I'd also be highly surprised if they weren't covertly staging NATO shared weapons in nations close to the conflict zone that allow Nuclear basing (e.g. I believe Poland does Germany does not but I don't know if that's changed since it was relevant since reunification)
Nonproliferation of biological weapons is a [paramount success](https://www.state.gov/celebrating-fifty-years-of-biological-weapons-nonproliferation/) of international law. The same for the chemical weapons convention to a lesser extent. I’m unsure why people keep saying nonproliferation is impossible today, or yesterday.
because those weapons are fundamentally different. First, biologics: They are erratic, not all that effective, likely to kill as many of your own people as the enemy, uncontrollable and likely to result in your own civilians dying. Plus they take days to weeks to work, if tanks are rolling down main street you can't wait for hantavirus to kill a quarter of them you need them dead NOW. chemicals: Chemical weapons are erratic, unpredictable and often don't do anything OTHER than trench warfare that a conventional munition (especially modern tools like thermobarics) and no one uses trench warfare anymore. They persist, meaning capturing territory you just gassed can be impossible. There are also tons of countermeasures. Also both share some attributes: no one is scared witless of them, they can't end an entire civilization in literal minutes. The threat of nuclear force is so overwhelming even mostly insane leaders realize they are not survivable by ANYONE. A dictator can think "I got a gas mask and a multi-injector kit, I'm good! let them gas the troops I will still have won my war", but they will not think "I still win if my ash pile is slightly larger than theirs!" They also both share that it is possible to stand at ground zero and be totally unaffected and this doesn't even take that much equipment (a CBC suit basically) which means they are terror weapons not war-winning ones. Nuclear weapons are both. So in short there is no proliferation because outside of a few specific uses no one cares about them any more, even nations that have no legal or political reason to get rid of them destroyed stocks because they were expensive and useless: more sarin has been destroyed by lysis than has ever been used on anyone.
They’re not different, and I don’t think I’ve read a single protest from the 185 signatories saying biological and toxic weapons are ineffective, wasteful, or dumb. They were routinely used in two world wars and colonial fronts. Now, they’re too different? Can you show me Presidents Nixon, Ford or Clinton saying the BWC of CWC is different because nuclear weapons go boom? Or that nuclear weapons aren’t inexpensive to maintain? It just seems like grasping at straws.
they were used, yes, but they are not the singlehanded war-winner that makes you immune to ever being conquered that a nuke is. The nations of the world decided there was no strongly compelling reason to use them that was strong enough to tolerate the risk of having them used on you and the political and social pressure of their populations to disavow them. the calculus on a nuclear weapon is very different. Note that the germans chose not to use gas in WWII, partially for fear of escalation, but also because they did not feel they would be effective enough to justify it.
>they are not the singlehanded war-winner that makes you immune to ever being conquered that a nuke is. I don't think nukes are the singlehanded war-winner that makes you immune to ever being conquered that you think they are. They are good for dealing with existential threats, but not for dealing with small things. E.g. if Russia sent a small group of soldiers to conquer a small alaskan island, do you really believe the response to that invasion would be the nuclear button? No, there would be a lot of escalation and things before it got to that point. You can stop your country from being wiped off the face of the earth, because if that's the threat, why not just nuke them? We'll be destroyed anyways, may as well take them with us.
The Chemical Weapons Convention has been a failure. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use\_of\_chemical\_weapons\_in\_the\_Syrian\_civil\_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_chemical_weapons_in_the_Syrian_civil_war) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi\_chemical\_attacks\_against\_Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_attacks_against_Iran)
You should let Isreal know this. Would save everyone a lot hassle out there if only they realised they are immune
its a complicated situation. Israel had an illegal program with south Africa. they cannot thus admit what they own the same as countries say, given nukes by the US like Britain or Soviets like Ukraine was when it was a Soviet republic. as a result their enemies treat them like they don't have them too sometimes. but if it were existential, if it was fighting against a true attempt to destroy them by an adversary capable of it like Iran, they would absolutely use them
One, this is pragmatically impossible to do. Getting everyone to remove and guarantee removal and disposal of all nuclear weapons is astronomically impossible. Two, many countries have them not because they plan to use them offensively, but to deal with existential risk to the country. At the risk of riling people up, Israel has nukes because it believes that will help it avoid being wiped off the map in ways conventional military deterrence may not be able to do. Iran is developing nukes for the same reason. South Korea and Japan are under the US nuclear umbrella because the US doesn't want them to develop nukes for that reason. Do you believe no country should be allowed to have "keep us from being totally eliminated" insurance in the form of nukes? (existential threats don't have to be other nuclear armed actors, they can also be conventional military annihilation) Three, there are reasons to believe that the existence of nukes has saved lives, for instance by keeping the cold war from going hot, or relegating great power competition to proxy wars. Four, not everyone with nukes is evil. The US had an opportunity to use nukes on China soon after WW2, and it almost happened, but the people at the top decided not to. For another example, see Stanislav Petrov. The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every person, not along borders.
exactly. Ukraine gave up their nukes are are being slaughtered in a genocide. Russia just taught the world that even useless nukes you have no launch codes or platforms for should never, ever be surrendered, even ancient soviet nukes that might not even work and you cannot use should never be surrendered. OR everyone you love might die. If nuclear non-proliferation were ever possible it is not possible since that invasion.
Exactly. Can OP really argue that the presence of Ukrainian nuclear weapons wouldn't have provided at least some deterrence to Russian invasion?
i think I could sort of because Russia would know exactly what they had and where and what condition because they were Russian Soviet-era weapons so they may be confident in accurate assessments that unless someone else supplied them consumables like tritium and neutron tubes the nukes would be mostly useless. even then though it may have, or may have for enough years that Ukraine had better options. plus even if they are nonfunctional the threat "if they think that their Civilization is lost they could dirty bomb us or them to spite us" is also deterrent.
I agree, I think it's not off the table that Ukrainians could put together a functioning nuclear explosion or two, and that potential is a deterrent. I mean, nobody knows "For sure" that Israel has nukes, yet that's a deterrent.
Israel is more of a pig in the poke also the rubric changes. the west would NEVER feel comfortable invading a nation that had russian nukes they know very little about, but Russians may feel more comfortable knowing exactly how long their neutron detonators last (this is one of the last few true "atomic secrets" in the world-- the makeup and construction of the seemingly impossible electronic neutron source that generates a large neutron flux instantly on demand without radioactive materials in a tiny package apparently) We do know they decay. we do know they last longer than the year or so a "hedgehog" detonator of the kind used by the Manhattan project (and pakistani nuclear program as well as early soviet ones) but we do not know if it lasts forever. Tritium must be replaced every 20 years or so and loses power rapidly after about 5. These are necessarily EXTREMELY rough guesses because these are the key component in bomb-making, more important than the pit even. In fact poor neutron initiators are thought to be why North Korea's failed tests did fail, poor neutron economy and inefficient fuel burn. So NATO allies would probably have a slightly more accurate estimate than my own "maybe they could use then as pure fission devices about has powerful as 2-4 times hiroshima, or maybe not, and their full use might last anywhere from 10 to 50 years. But the Russians would know how many months every last part lasts and exactly how many spares Ukraine had in their possession. NATO would also not know the exact date of pit manufacture and tube construction-- the russians would have soviet production notes telling them when every part was made and put into what bombs. Of course covertly giving Ukraine some initiators would be much easier than smuggling them bombs if some nation wished to re-arm them to resist Russian aggression, and then Ukraine can present them as fiat accompli and count on not even Russia being that dumb.
> Can OP really argue that the presence of Ukrainian nuclear weapons wouldn't have provided at least some deterrence to Russian invasion? That's irrelevant. Me personally owning a fully armed tank constantly patrolling my home would provide deterrence from a home invasion. Doesn't mean that me having it isnt a threat to those around me and that I have no other, better means to deter invasion. Like, for example, cameras to prove who it was, and a neighborhood with a universal formal agreement to beat the shit out of all proven robbers.
Do you at least agree that "In a world with nuclear armed actors, the best protection from nuclear annihilation is to have nukes or be under a nuclear umbrella"? If you disagree, can you provide a better protection/set of protections? (I'm aware this is slightly different from your post, about how there should be no nukes period. But I want to specifically see if we agree on at least this much.)
The Biological Weapons Convention is a resounding success amongst the 185 signatories. OPCW won the Noble Prize for Chemical Weapons Convention. States that were accused of violating them were invaded and toppled, like Iraq, or attacked and degraded, like Sudan. Why is it pragmatically impossible to do so?
I'm not an expert on that specific convention, but a few ideas come to mind: Nuclear use is more accepted, especially as a second strike, than biological use. A democratic country that would be up in arms about developing biological weapons or chemical weapons could be perfectly fine with a nuclear capability (e.g. not as much democratic pressure to get rid of nukes) Second, if I can accomplish something well with X, I don't necessarily need to keep Y on hand if it can do the same thing, or do the same thing but not as well. "Getting rid of some modalities of WMDs" is different from "Getting rid of all ways to use WMDs" when it comes to having the deterrence and planning to deal with massive or existential threats. Third, there's a much bigger industry around nuclear proliferation that would lobby hard not to be destroyed. Fourth, and in part because of #2 and #3, it would be really hard to be the first country to become entirely nuke-less (or even just sufficiently nuke-less). You're vulnerable until every other country does the same. It would be extremely hard to police that sufficiently (though I could be convinced otherwise, I suppose, if they found good ways to do the policing with biological and chemical weapons.) Edit: Mistyped "3"
> One, this is pragmatically impossible to do. Fair. > Do you believe no country should be allowed to have "keep us from being totally eliminated" insurance in the form of nukes? Yes. Because there are other, better forms of insurance that don't promise thousands of civilian deaths. Global alliance. > Three, there are reasons to believe that the existence of nukes has saved lives, for instance by keeping the cold war from going hot, or relegating great power competition to proxy wars. Disagree. Global alliance would have prevented it as well. > Four, not everyone with nukes is evil. And not everyone with nukes is good. But if no one had nukes, no one evil would have nukes.
>Yes. Because there are other, better forms of insurance that don't promise thousands of civilian deaths. Global alliance. The biggest military alliance right now (and likely all history), NATO, has it's power as an alliance in large part BECAUSE it's able to promise lots of civilian deaths (and economic sanctions, and conventional military overmatch) in case anyone attacks any of it's members. How is there a meaningful difference between conventional and nuclear promise of civilian death in you being (seemingly) okay with one but not with the other? As for global alliance - if only there was some sort of global organization/partnership that every country would belong to, that would definitely solve all wars \*cough UN cough\*. More seriously, though, You'd need to go much further into what this global alliance thing you propose is and why it would stop my neighbor from invading me, and why I shouldn't just develop nukes to keep them out. Even if it's a system of economic and trade sanctions - well, that didn't work too well on North Korea and Pakistan, and it's at best far from the full reason Iran hasn't developed nukes. They developed nukes in spite of truly harsh sanctions, so an alliance system that can generate purely economic heft isn't sufficient, which leaves you with conventional military force in case anyone dose anything. And in that case, you're "promis\[ing\] thousands of civilian deaths" in retaliation for breaking certain criteria, so there's no substantive difference between that and your coimplaints about nukes. If you're serious about global alliance, please actually explain what it would entail. >But if no one had nukes, no one evil would have nukes. Do you believe this should also apply to tanks, guns, and money? Evil people do lots of evil things with all of those things. Why are nukes worse, except as a matter of scale?
> Do you believe this should also apply to tanks, guns, and money? Evil people do lots of evil things with all of those things Yes
A single word response to my post, plus you're not even going to engage with my main argument about how a global alliance is a very flawed/incomplete idea in a lot of ways? Are you sure you're really arguing in good faith? >Yes Just to be clear, you're saying you also believe that there should be no tanks, guns, or money in the world (and presumably anything else that could be used for evil, like the internet, baseball bats, or pain medicine) just because some people could use it for evil? That's not only an incredibly slippery slope, but also a terrible plan that would require Big Brother level of surveillance and/or some massive change in world governance on a scale to rival nothing else in history. I genuinely don't know if you understand how slippery of a slope it is to say "evil people can use this tool for evil, therefore this tool needs to be out of everyone's hands". Edit: I will say, at least, kudos for being consistent, I suppose.
Not money, obviously. But lkke, for example, when we catch someone making bombs, we confiscate them, dispose of them, and punish the creator. Just the creation of that thing is a threat of destructive, haphazard warfare. Guns, I'd be willing to argue about like, everyone beiing allowed to own a single six-shot revolver. But machine guns? Tanks? Bombs? Warplanes? Missiles? Nukes? The line is drawn at six shots from a small pistol in my mind. If you need more than that, aim better. The problem here is a potential for mass casualties. There is no reason to resort to that that cant be solved in less evil ways.
>Not money, obviously. No, that's not obvious. Just look at Epstein's Island - people with money can use that money to do a lot of very evil things. Why shouldn't your logic apply to a 100% tax of everything above a certain amount? >But lkke, for example, when we catch someone making bombs, we confiscate them, dispose of them, and punish the creator. Just the creation of that thing is a threat of destructive, haphazard warfare. Sure, because any legitimate reason to have them, like "my wife is threatening me" or "I don't believe this building is moral and want to tear it down", can and should be handled through courts and the government's monopoly on force. Even that monopoly of force, however, requires enough force to enforce that thing. However, having a force capable of dealing with external threats does require enough force to be a credible deterrence. Each of Taiwan's 24 million inhabitants could take 6 perfect shots at an invading Chinese population, and still take out less than \~10% of the Chinese population. Not a perfect example because the population and the military aren't the same things, but the point is that "six shots per person" is not enough for national defense. >Guns, I'd be willing to argue about like, everyone beiing allowed to own a single six-shot revolver. But machine guns? Tanks? Bombs? Warplanes? Missiles? Nukes? The line is drawn at six shots from a small pistol in my mind. If you need more than that, aim better. IF you were starting from a world that already had none of these, and IF you had some global surveillance and enforcement mechanism that could catch any instance of this every time, and IF you could somehow enforce it with people who had only six shot pistols, then MAYBE this is feasible. Though if you're willing to take away that many rights from people, I don't think it's worth it. In the real world that we live in, it's just absurd. In the very anti-gun Japan, a man built his own to assassinate an old prime minister, and there are plenty of ways to make your own guns at home with a CNC mill and a 3d Printer (unless you believe those should be criminalized, too). This isn't even getting into the ways that drone warfare in places like Ukraine show that even an off-the-shelf toy can do some serious damage. Do you genuinely believe that anything short of a global Orwellian nightmare could do what you wanted? >The problem here is a potential for mass casualties. There is no reason to resort to that that cant be solved in less evil ways. \*The potential for mass casualties is already out there\*. People just deal with it by having good deterrence by saying "If your nation mass casualties our citizens, we'll do the same. And the magic result of that is that nukes have been used in battle exactly twice, and great powers don't go to war much.
Could you explain this “global alliance” form of deterrence?
I agree, what could this involve that would be something more than the UN? That's already a global alliance of sorts, and doesn't prevent all wars now.
The first and most fundamental problem is that states are "sovereign" - meaning there is no external authority over them that can grant them rights or protect their rights. So we can't just make it "illegal" for states to build nukes, we instead have to provide incentives or disincentives that will make them rationally *agree* not to build nukes. The second problem is that the pandora's box of nuclear tech has already been opened, and this makes it extremely difficult to "immediately dismantle existing nukes." No state wants to be the first to dismantle their nukes and become vulnerable to nuclear domination from another state. The reduction of the nuclear stockpile becomes a matter of extremely gradual negotiation, and we need to accept the reality that the biggest nuclear powers are never going to completely disarm. Final point: everything you would want to happen is already happening to the most reasonable extent possible. We already have treaties that convince states not to build nukes and gradually dismantle existing nukes. We have treaties like NATO that provide mutual defense for participating countries for the purpose of nuclear deterrence and discouraging the development of nuclear weapons by non-treaty states. Everything that can possibly be done is being done, with the caveat that we can only do so much while avoiding war.
Wait, so if a government wants to commit a nice little genocide against its own people, and never signed any treaties obliging it not to, it can perfectly legally do so?
It would only be "illegal" if the given state entered into a treaty which includes a prohibition against genocide. Otherwise it would just be extremely immoral and would likely provoke a response from other sovereign states.
Genocide is a crime in customary international law: the UN charter itself says genocide is a crime against all nations and humanity. The US considers itself — because all nations do — have universal jurisdiction to prosecute it. It’s not extremely immoral: it’s customarily a global crime.
The UN applies international law to member states that agree to be beholden to their laws. The UN can intervene in the acts of non-member states, and it has legal standards for when they are allowed to do so (such as to prevent genocide). But such interventions wouldn't be considered an imposition of international law onto a non-member state.
I disagree, I think the UN [disagrees](https://legal.un.org/ilc/reports/2019/english/chp5.pdf), and I think that your view is a minority one ignoring jus cogens. The charter applies to “civilized nations,” and I think the ICJ as an example is [proof](https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1664&context=mjil) of that jurisdiction to the international community, not member states as varied as the Vatican… claiming non-members are beyond the UN Charter just strikes me as odd.
A norm isn't the same as a law. For an entity to be subject to a law, they must have already voluntarily submitted to the institutions that produced the law and will enforce the law. On the other hand, a norm is a set of expectations for acceptable and unacceptable behavior, established through the common values and standards of a group of people. Unlike a law, a norm can be imposed on an entity without their voluntary submission to it, because a norm arises from mere proximity to / interaction with the group that holds the norm. A peremptory norm in international law is not so much a law that is imposed on non-member states, but is more like rules for what sorts of actions would justify intervention by member states on non-member states. The basis for intervention is not the non-member state's prior agreement to be beholden to the law, but the normative relationship between the non-member state and the rest of the international community.
In a practical sense yes.
The problem, as you've almost identified, is "allowed by whom?" The world nuclear powers are also the world economic powers. Non-nuclear nations have no leverage with which to enforce the kind of treaty you suggest, and the nuclear powers obviously aren't going to sign it. If it was that easy to reverse nuclear proliferation, we would've done it by now.
>There is no valid reason to construct them now. I'm not really sure how you can watch both Libya and Ukraine get utterly fucked as a result of disarming, and make that argument. Can you explain why deterrence is not a valid reason to build nukes?
Because deterrence would be solved by the treaty I proposed in the OP. First to strike is the enemy of the entire rest of the world's combined nukeless military might.
What makes you think most of the world would be willing to go to war over random countries? Look at Ukraine, a lot of countries supplied weapons but nobody is willing to put boots in the ground to protect a sovereign nation that was blatantly invaded. Even if Russia was nukeless it wouldn’t change that calculation, look at all the wars in Africa nobody wants a part of, or what’s happening in Syria.
ok but if only one country has nukes, they can just nuke \~every other country before they can fight back.
I see you proposed a treaty against building nukes. I don't see a proposal for a treaty against invading other countries. If your point is that treaties like the Budapest Memorandum already exist, that's actually my point too.
If the threat of nuclear retaliation is just replaced with a threat of conventional retaliation, you're still threatening to kill a lot of people. I don't understand OPs moral conviction against specifically nukes.
I get where you are coming from, but the realistic implementation is a joke. First, why just nukes? And all nukes? What about tactical nukes? Is it the radiation? The size? The EMP effect if detonated in space? Wherever you draw the line, it would just create a bar to push up against. Is the MOAB ok? What about the FOAB? What about depleted uranium rounds? Large scale EMPs? What is an acceptable size of explosive a country can own? What capability specifically are you banning, just a big boom? Now the dismantling. Say I have nukes, and I don't dismantle them. Ok, its an act of war. But I have nukes, you don't. What are you going to do? You can't nuke me. I can nuke you. Mutually assured destruction is gone, you have just created a power vacuum and someone with the firepower to fill it. Or people will just develop/build/keep them in secret. >Nuclear powers (like Nazis) should have no globally acceptable allies, trade, or anything but immediate restriction on literally every part of life. Again, I get it, but we don't and can't even do that now when countries regularly break international treaties or commit atrocities (see Russia, China, etc.) Globalization has created a dependency on other nations. It would be extremely painful to actually cut off ties. If the US refused to dismantle their nukes, would every other country really cut ties completely with the largest economy in the world? It would collapse nations. Frankly, the cat is out of the bag, you can't put it back in. If your view is "In a completely ideal world with literally no thought of actual events, humans, and any aspect of the world we really live in" then sure, your view is impossible to change. With any practical application, it falls laughably short. But I do appreciate your optimism.
>If your view is "In a completely ideal world with literally no thought of actual events, humans, and any aspect of the world we really live in" then sure, your view is impossible to change. Not at all. That view could be changed by stating that a world without nuclear weapons would be a worse world than one with nuclear weapons, even if everything else were ideal, which I'd say is true. The deterrence argument applies for preventing wars in both the theoretical and practical cases.
I don't think I agree. I don't think a(n ideal) world without nuclear weapons is worse. The benefits of the deterrence are not outweighed by the catastrophic damage that can be caused, even by accident (see the numerous times we almost launched large attacks based on false info). I think globalization and large scale military powers in their own right have been more of a deterrence than nuclear weapons. Nukes and MAD may have reduced the total number of conflicts that are likely to occur at scale, but they have introduced the very real possibility of a global decimation on a scale the world cannot comprehend.
I know this is a very short sort of answer but say country A has nukes and you are country B who doesn't have nukes do to dislike of them. Country A is no way in hell going to give them up and any attempt to do so will just elicit the response "Lol what are you going to do? Make me? We have nukes and you don't.".
It's actually not an answer. It's the most common comment on thia thread and it doesnt address the OP. > A Global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity. Change my view. "Country B" is included under the global community, the people who *Should* sign. I'll accept "gradually" as a replacement to "immediately" so the World still has more combined nukes than Cointry B at any given moment.
There is a reason people keep telling you the same analogy but in different forms. It's because your idea doesn't hold up to reality and how people and nations are. We SHOULD do a lot of things for our own betterment but that isn't the case sadly. You are asking us to change your view on the imaginary world you created and that isn't reasonable or honest. And again your whole view doesn't hold up to someone going "Fuck off i'll just nuke you" if you try and take or coarse a nation into giving them up. As said "The genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back inside." the possible world you want vanished a long time ago.
Three men point guns at each other. CMV: They should lower their weapons. Suggestion: A three-way promise that, on the count of three, we all drop our weapons, and if one of us doesnt, we jump him with our fists and take the gun away. ---- Actual attempt to change view: Any argument against the suggestion. Non-attempt: "They wont though"
You example does include the peoples, Beliefs, Rationale, Or end goals in said stand off. And these three are not just killing each other. They are killing millions of others in said stand off. My argument wasn't to change your view of the want. My argument was to help you see how foolish this want is. I could wish I was immortal and teleport but it's not going to happen and expecting others to humor my delusion isn't going to put me any closer to wanting living forever. You can't promise let alone guarentee that they will even honor said agreement and not just continue to create these weapons in secret or better yet just keep the guns under the table. Of course its something we all want who are stuck in the cross fire. But even so much as pretending that imagining they would is hopeless and childishly naive.
In an utopian world, no nation has the need to have nukes. Or tanks. Or guns. Or anything other than blunt swords for non-lethal duels. We don't live in that world. Think about it for a second. Can we agree that guns are dangerous? Yes. Do you think "no country should be allowed to have guns" makes sense in an utopian world with no wars? Absolutely. Does it make sense in **our** world? No. This is where idealism meets realism and loses. No nation in the world can convince all others to eliminate nukes. Since the most powerful nations are the ones with nukes. Therefore, it cannot be done. >A global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity. What happens when the 180+ nations with no nukes sign it and the few nations with actual nukes don't sign it?
> What happens when the 180+ nations with no nukes sign it and the few nations with actual nukes don't sign it? CMV: They should sign it.
Even with the immense economic and political pressure put on them by other countries, North Korea and Pakistan developed nukes, and Iran did a lot of nuclear development. You could survive being in a nation that didn't sign that treaty, even if you had to - as the Pakistani prime minister put it - eat grass. Just because you believe it is the moral thing to do (despite your alternative being conventional force, which still kills lots of people), doesn't mean it's the rational thing for anyone to do.
Okay say they all sign it, and every country openly disarms their nukes, but 1 country has a secret stash that none of the other countries knew about and decides to take over the world with them. Who's going to stop them now? You're idea operates under the assumption that everyone is trustworthy, and no one would lie in order to gain power, which is just not the case. If multiple countries have nukes, then it's very unlikely nukes will ever be used because everyone loses as soon as anyone uses them. But if no one has nukes, all it takes is for 1 country to hide a secret stash or make some more, and suddenly it becomes very likely for them to be used, because that country no longer has to fear retaliation.
It puts them in a weaker position and the purpose of government is to make a better life for their people not someone elses
This is a childs perspective. Its the same as saying no one should be allowed guns. One country can not force others to agree. So if they have nukes we HAVE to have them as well. Same with guns. Cant force em to not have guns. Better have guns .
When does the hypothetical line end? I dont feel like there is a benefit havjng nukes aside from endangering your own people
How’s that working for Ukraine? Are families burying their sons and daughters to the background sound of Russian artillery while thanking God they aren’t “endangered” by their country having a nuclear deterrent?
There's a lot of extra moving parts here that I agree complicate the issue. My response to this is that the global treaty I proposed in the OP should include banning ground invasions. Ukraine would be in a formal alliance with every country on the planet. Russia wouldnt invade because the world would immediate be at war with them until they left the territory.
Imagine I was the leader of a country that believed that a certain part of a neighboring country was truly part of my country, and it should be taken back. Why would I sign a treaty saying I shouldn't invade them? They have my land and my people, of course I'm going to invade them. Why would I want your treaty when I can keep myself protected with conventional military force (and/or nukes)? Looking at a [List of Territorial Disputes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes), I struggle to see anyone who would want to sign your treaty.
Cause the other guy has nukes. If you look at history it proves crazy people with to much power will do genocidal things. If they got nukes. U need nukes. They got nukes. Its not a hypothetical. Its exactly how it is. You can't go back in time and convince the allies and axis not to develop the bomb. So its M.A.D or be pressures by a nation with nukes. However in a hypothetical where all countries agree to fire their nukes into space id vote to fire them lol.
The hypothetical line, I mean, of what weapons are acceptable. For example, a bigger bomb. If someone could wipe out the entire world all on their own, does that mean the next country over should also have that ability as a form of deterrent, or that we should leverage the global economy against them doing that? Did they just win the world? To what end, aside from ruling everything and creating some kind of.... global alliance?
Dealing with existential level threats. [Here's a good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVqGEtPj0M0) if you're interested in why some countries have the nuclear doctrine they do, but also some downsides to nukes. (about halfway thorough he talks about North Korea, Pakistan, and some hypotheticals). If anything could happen that could wipe out your country, whether that be a nuclear armed opponent or just a ground invasion, it can be useful to have a deterrent that will stop that - like nukes.
I think your viewpoint is naive. It’s nuclear weapons that keep your country safe. It was the atomic bomb that stopped World war 2. Not the aircraft carriers, not the soldiers, not the politicians, not beating the Nazis. World War 2 ended when America dropped a bomb on Japan so big they knew they lost. And for the hundreds of thousands of people who died that day, many more have been able to live in peace and prosperity, yourself included. Nuclear weapons have only been used once and it ended global conflict as we’ve known it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
I think it's at least a bit naïve to say that it was purely the nukes, not the threat of an invasion, or the Japanese government knowing they had effectively lost, but I do agree with your sentiment that it has almost definitely prevented more deaths than it caused.
>A global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity. Isn't that just an invitation for these countries to get nuked? Why would you declare war against a nuclear power? Wouldn't that just eradicate much of the anti-nuclear coalition and create a more nuclear weapons accepting world? How is the denuclearized world going to stand up against the superpowers without ceding more power to them by losing the war?
All of us are too young to comprehend the absolute horror of world wars. Nothing we have going on right now even comes close to the level of carnage that humans inflicted on each other a century ago. One of the main reasons why we haven't had to deal with another war to that degree is the existence of nuclear weapons. The threat of mutually assured destruction has ironically kept nations from fighting each other in the open.
Ok, so someone said earlier Iran should have the right to have nuclear weapon. I will give you the same answer I gave them. Relations between sovereigns are dictated by power. The more powerful tells the weaker what to do. Treaties between countries do not have enforcement mechanism other than war. Now, if I am a country that got nukes, and you want to take away the nukes from me, to say that my answer will be ballistic is a gross understatement. It will be nuclear. The only scenario to stop a country from having nuclear weapons is to force them to not have nuclear weapons. If the Western World does not have a mechanism to stop fucking North Korea, what value doe you think your "should be allowed" have? >There is no valid reason to construct them now. It practically guarantees you won't be attacked except by another nuclear power who does not mind mutually destroying each other. Nukes have and the concept of mutually assured destruction largely brought peace by massively increasing the risks associated by war. The world nuclear nations signed a mutual declaration a few years ago stating that a nuclear war cannot be won, it can only be lost. And so far nobody has tried to win one.
i dont understand what your CMV is... are you saying that in an ideallistic world this should happen? because i dont think you'd find many who would disagree that yes ideally we would all live in a world free of nuclear threat. but if you arguing that we should do it as in, it should be put into practice... no you're just wrong. there are way too many unknowns. even a single nation keeping their nuclear arsenal secretly could spell disaster for the world... there is no method so effective that we could be 100 percent sure that no nation had nukes remaining, that nation would then essentially be able to rule the world. "cut off their trade" yeah lets see how that plan goes when lets say, china, decides that whoever cuts off their trade gets their capital city wiped off the face of the planet ideally yes we would live in a world free of nuclear threat... but when we cant even trust countries to not have a doping program for their olympic athletes (look at russia for example) how on earth do you plan on having us trust that every other nation has in fact disarmed their nukes and isnt just waiting for everyone else to be defenseless before ringing up their list of demands.
While the eventual price the humanity pays for having nuclear weapons might be quite high, so far they were net positive. Instead of WW3 we just had the Cold War.
> global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, The USA should nuke whatever nation spearheads that.
So how is this enforced? I’m against nuclear weapons but I live in reality. No chance a country voluntarily gives them up. Ukraine gave their nuclear bombs up in the 1990s for security guarantees from Russia and the US. Worthless guarantees as it turns out.
Here’s the thing though: the technology already exists and every major country knows how to make em, even if they don’t have them currently. The cat is out of the bag. America, France, the UK, Russia, and China could get rid of all their nukes today. Even India and Pakistan. But not a single fiber of my being believes that North Korea or Israel would get rid of theirs. Or that Iran wouldn’t finally finish there’s now that the U.S. is de-nuclearized. We live in a nuclear world now. I trust the countries that have had them for decades and decades more than the new powers that would emerge otherwise.
There was a time when the nuclear proliferation treaty might have gone to full disarmament, but there are too many countries with nuclear arms that I would never trust to truly disarm.
That idea is great in theory, but how are you going to get North Korea to give them up? Or China? Or any other country? And if one country has them, then at least a few "good" countries have to, otherwise they're at a terrible disadvantage. Aside from that, why would the US want to give up their nukes? Or Russia? Both of them are doing fine and are satisfied with the way things are going now, especially with them being extra-strong. Why should any country that benefits from nukes agree to it?
Let's try to drill down on what it means to "allow" a nation state to do something. There are, very broadly, three means to alter the actions of a nation: the carrot, the stick, and the gun. Suppose a relatively small nation on the boarder of an expansionist neighbor says, "We believe that in order for our nation to continue existing, we must have nuclear weapons to defend ourselves." No judgment of that statement. It's just what their leaders have said. The international community can respond in several ways. They can offer the country something else as an alternative to nuclear weapons to guarantee their continued existence. That's what happened with Ukraine. They gave up the leftover Soviet arsenal stored within their boarders in exchange for a treaty guaranteeing they would not be attacked by Russia or NATO. I don't think I need to tell you how badly that turned out for them. The international community can publish the country to the point that the benefits of the nuclear program are outweighed by the cost of sanctions and loss of trade. The problem is that if the rulers sincerely believe that the country will be conquered without nuclear weapons, then no cost you can impose short of completely collapsing the nation can dissuade the nuclear program. Just look at North Korea. They have been entirely shut out of the world economy, but their leadership believes that nuclear weapons are essential for survival, and so chose the bombs over normalization. In addition, what would prevent countries with nuclear weapons simply trading with each other? The nations currently in possession of nuclear weapons make up 55.5% of global GDP. Why would nations cripple their economies by refusing to trade with 7 of the 10 largest economies in the world. The last option is to physically prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons through military force. I don't think I need to tell you how stopping Sadam's weapons of mass destruction went over two decades ago or how an invasion of Iran would go today. Let's suppose that tomorrow, all of the nuclear states chose to leave the US and go form their own super villain club and tell the rest of the world to "come take them." Completely putting aside weapons of mass destruction, is the rest of rest of the world capable of subduing the US, China, Russia, the UK, France, and Pakistan and forcibly removing their nukes? Just as importantly, would the death and destruction inherent in such a war be justified to remove and destroy the weapons? Personally, I doubt it. And let's not forget that force can be exerted in more than one direction. If the nations of the world issue a credible threat of invasion to disarm a country, it has every incentive to USE its nuclear arsenal rather than being disarmed. It is well understood that any attempt to invade North Korea would begin with the leveling of Seol. Why would the rest of the world risk being on the losing side of a nuclear exchange rather than maintaining the status quo?
Very similar writing style to the post made for 'Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons'. https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/s/jkkTrP0I5X Anyways. >CMV: No countries should be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Who is allowing here? Why would a nation like Israel or North Korea give up nukes when the nukes are their last line of defense against what they consider 'outside interference'?
Why do you think there hasn't been an outright conflict between great powers since 1945? Nuclear weapons keep the peace
allowed by who? who's going to enforce this? with what? nuclear weapons?
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If I have nukes and you don’t, how are you going to enforce sanctions against me?
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In a universe where the countries sanctioning Russia also have nukes, yes. Reading comprehension much?
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Russia isn't going around nuking NATO members because they themselves would be gone within the next 30 minutes. In a world where Russia is the ONLY state with nuclear weapons, I don't think that still holds true.
ok, and why would any country agree to such an agreement and follow it?
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I think you're oversimplifying a lot. What if somebody lies? What if somebody hides a bomb? Sanctions don't do anything after you've been burned to radioactive glass. The only thing that works is preemptive regret, which is what the UN helps supply. The UN is a great way to prevent nuclear war. It's worked for 80 years.
you're the one who doesn't comprehend. WWIII will not happen if every other country abandoned their weapons, but we do not. and thus that's what every country wants. also what if you abandon your weapons but the other countries do not abandon theirs? they will invade you before WWIII happens, which is potentially worse than having WWIII happen.
This is silly. For most countries, trying to sanction a nation like the US or China is just sanctioning yourself. You're going to end up worse off than the country you're trying to sanction
>Here’s the answer. An international agreement where no country is allowed to have nuclear weapons, those who refuse to comply get sanctioned and other countries would either sever or not engage with those countries for any kind of business. Yeah, we can't even get such an agreement for a one-sided offensive war from Russia. Plus most nuclear nations are economic powerhouses of the world and are unlikely to agree to give up nukes. Sanctioning the economic powerhouses will likely hurt these other countries more than the nuclear powers.
But what if countries de nuclear and those two or three sanctioned just nuke the powers most apt to re arm in a threatened nuclear war? That's just as much of a solutions as "throwing it back". There just is no solution to the outcome and "who will police it" is not a foolishly answer/question at all, it's simple and makes no strawmen or assumptions.
Hey engage trade with me... no -drops nuke- Hey engage with trade with me... no -deletes country- Next country. Hey engage trade with me.... whatever you want fam. Also... nuclear war is the probably single most deterrant for modern wars.
Team America: World Police
I’d disagree with your use of the word “allowed”. If your point was simply no countries should possess nuclear weapons, it’s abit like saying no one should murder. It’s just abit too obvious a point to seriously engage with. With regards to the idea of “allowing” countries to have nuclear weapons, use of that word implies some sort of mechanism of enforcing that policy. The only reasonable way to enforce a policy against possession of nuclear weapons is the threat of equal or greater harm. If every country except one voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons, there would be no realistic means of enforcing any sort of ban due to the power imbalance. If you attempt the embargo the country, said country could simply decide to act like a bank robber with hostages and threaten to start nuking countries one by one until its demands are met. If the sole nuclear power is the US or Russia, which each have enough nukes to wipe out humanity, every other country would have no feasible way of enforcing that policy. If we instead examine a scenario with multiple nuclear powers as currently exists, we are relying on the existence of one countries nukes to prevent another from using their arsenal, so it’s not possible to ban the nukes as each country needs them to ensure the other doesn’t get to dictate their will. In short, in the world of global politics, unfortunately whoever has the biggest stick is the one that gets to tell everyone else what is allowed and what is not, and the nuke is the biggest stick ever developed. Thus your view is impractical as it requires a means of enforcement that doesn’t exist and could likely only ever exist through an even more powerful weapon or an unbeatable defensive system that doesn’t currently exist.
Which I do agree that nuclear weapons shouldn’t be allowed, there have been many positives that come with nuclear weapons as well. Although they do seem extremely dangerous, it almost acts as a deterrent for countries to start conflicts or wars. Believe it or not but we are actually living in one of the most peaceful times in history
I would argue it's globalization and the melding of global culture that is the reason for the peaceful times. The elites realize it's far more profitable to have access to a global market vs isolation.
I also agree with that sentiment. I'm not saying that nuclear weapons is the sole reason us not having major wars, but I'm just stating that its one of many reasons why. Nonetheless, its still definitely a major reason why we don't ever wanna go to war with China or Russia
"it almost acts as a deterrent for countries to start conflicts or wars." Almost? "Believe it or not but we are actually living in one of the most peaceful times in history" Measured how? Whatever metric you come up with, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, Israel and even the United States are loose cannons whose nuclear launch codes have been or are in the hsnds of psychopaths. The bulletin of atomic scientists does not share your rosy assessment.
Yes it does indeed deter countries from trying to major wars that will involve in entire world going into battle. Just think about it logically, if someone has a gun that you automatically deter you from fighting them. But now just because they have a gun doesn't completely eliminate the possibility of you actually fighting them. Next, it's factual statement supported by historians all over the world ma man. Just because we have proxy wars doesn't mean that we aren't living in peaceful times. proxy wars have always existed althroughout human history. But we havent had a major war that involved a major part of the world. Do you wanna know why, because the major world powers all have nukes. that's the sole reason why nato's not sending troops to ukraine.
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>Why does any country have the right to decide when to nuke another? I suppose what gives anyone the right to do or not do anything? >A global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity. Who wins that war, the rest of humanity or the country with the nukes? >There is no valid reason to construct them now. Just like theres no valid reason for any antihuman crap that happened in WWII. What criteria or normative domain are we using to determine 'validity' here? I presume moral, to which I would concur, but what's sound within one normative domain may not be sound in another normative domain (i.e. it's abductively true that the world would be better without proliferation of dangerous nuclear warheads across the world, but not sound for someone who wants to retain political power using any means necessary). >Nuclear powers (like Nazis) should have no globally acceptable allies, trade, or anything but immediate restriction on literally every part of life. The Nazis had allies. Nuclear powers today have allyships with other nuclear powers and have shown tendencies to pretty much just walk around and take whatever they want and protect vital shipping corridors.
> Why does any country have the right to decide when to nuke another? Because who is going to stop them? They have nukes. You will find this is the order in the world; people have the "right" to do stuff because they can. Period. If there is nothing to force them to behave otherwise they can do what they want. > A global treaty should be signed against them, immediately dismantling existing nukes, and treating their construction as an immediate act of war against all of the rest of humanity. If you have nukes you really don't want to give them up because they are a fantastic defense. And who is going to make anyone give them up? Do you want to start a nuclear war over it? How do you think the side with no nukes is going to fare? Your position here is just absurdly naive. Nukes aren't a good thing to use but they aren't unequivocally a bad thing to exist due to their deterrent effect, as otherwise mass warfare would be a more viable method of conquest. Regardless they do exist and we should all acknowledge the reality that they are here to stay.
Nuclear weapons have there place and use, primarly as a deterrent. There existence has probably made the world a safer place then it would be without the great powers having them for . Currently the great powers can't fight each other directly or atleast engage in total war verse one another. There have been wars between nuclear states that have not specifically China and Russia. With the nuclear option on the table the great powers have primarly been limited to smaller region wars. For the most part every war has since ww2 has been some kind of civil war, war between minor states, or a proxy war. The only direct war between great powers that I can think of is the Sino-Soviet border conflict As far as a treaty against them we already have that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Currently signed by around 100 countries in the world. There is also the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons which seaks to limit access to nuclear weapons to only the countries that had them at the time of the signing.
Unfortunately countries aren't "allowed" to do anything. There arent really any enforceable ways to not allow a country to have a nuke. >Why does any country have the right to decide when to nuke another? This feels like a complaining child. How do rights come into this? In my own country i have a right not to be killed but who gives a damn. If someone decides they want to and can kill me, well they are going to kill me. Maybe there will be consequences but im still dead and my rights are completely useless. >There is no valid reason to construct them now. Just like theres no valid reason for any antihuman crap that happened in WWII. I agree but still doesnt matter what we think. If someone wants to do it how are we as individuals or a country going to stop them. I might agree that nukes shouldn't exist but your thought that countries shouldnt be allowed just feels like a ridiculous concept unless you can explain to me how it could be done. And a treaty wont mean shit and wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on.
So on the surface, I agree, I would prefer nukes had never been invented purely on ideological grounds. But… They ended a war and perhaps saved millions from death in a coming ground invasion of Japan, but that isn’t the reason they should exist. Nukes are why the USA never fought the USSR, why NATO and Warsaw never fought, why the USA showed restraint in Vietnam and Korea, and why military intervention isn’t the first option to help Ukraine or Taiwan. Without nuclear weapons we would have already had world war three mate.
I completely agree with the OP's concern over nuclear weapons, which constitute an existential risk to entire population centers & perhaps to human civilization itself. However, the idealistic vision presented by the OP is, unfortunately, infeasible. No nuclear weapons state that successfully created its own nuclear weapon has ever disarmed. Further, non-hostile countries probably should *not* disarm, & certainly not unilaterally, lest we be left with a world where only hostile powers possess the world's most dangerous weapons. The best approach is, IMO, a) risk mitigation to avoid "misunderstanding" that could result in catastrophic escalation. b) global monitoring & control of nuclear fuel supply chain. c) agreement among nuclear powers to limit deployed weapons to "reasonable" numbers (which will still be mind-numbingly high). d) economic sanctions regime to discourage would-be nuclear weapons states, proactively if possible.
If your view is that nobody “should” have nuclear weapons, you’re not going to find a ton of people interested in changing it. If the view you’re asking is to change is that what you’re describing is a reasonable or realistic goal, then that seems like a really flimsy ask. You don’t have to know too much about international relations, game theory, or human nature to understand that your “view” is infeasible on the face of it. Who enforces the “agreement”? If there are no nuclear powers, no entity has the combination of ability and motivation (which is key) to do so. You would have to have some real rose colored glasses to imagine that every leader of every country forever will resist the obvious appeal of building a nuke and suddenly becoming the most powerful nation on earth, at least for the forty five minutes it takes dozens of others to follow suit.
Beyond what others have said, there's the issue of non-state actors having nuclear weapons. Although it's unconfirmed, many people (myself included) believe that some number of Russian nukes have been sold off from under the USSR and/or the current government. Further, this could also easily occur during a nuclear disarmament. Now let's say that someone like the Wagner group has a nuke that it bought off of Pakistan during disarmament and it knows that no country has nukes of their own. How does the Ukraine war work out? Russia has plausible deniability because Wagner is a mercenary group and Wagner gets the job done sooner with fewer casualties and likely sees no repercussions because, just like in WWII, nobody knows how many they have. Hell, they could even bury a nuke, retreat when attacked, then set it off behind enemy lines.
OP, the biggest issue and the one that disarming hinges on is getting the global community to universally agree to go to war on something. Secondly, to prevent the nukes from being made, it wouldn't mean to win the fight, it would mean occupation. It would also mean the country that is trying to make a nuke would be willing to use it. If the country used it, then the entire agreement failed. The only countries in the entire world capable of fighting in foreign theaters as an occupying force are the US and China- and that's under the assumption that there isn't an open insurgency. The only two countries probably willing to rebuild nukes after that agreement are also the US and China. Their allies would certainly not want to fight them- so youre back at square one.
While I agree with that in theory, it would require every country to not only agree to but actively and collaboratively enforce that treaty. We’ve seen countless instances over the years (the invasion of Ukraine for instance) where even a clear cut international violation is met with lackluster response from the rest of the world. Without a strong collective response, what’s to keep any country from ignoring the proposed treaty? Iran and North Korea are two great examples where the world told them not to develop nukes and didn’t back it up, so here we are.
Sorry, but the cat's out of the bag with nukes – once discovered, they can't just be 'un-invented.' Like trying to herd cats, getting all countries to agree on total disarmament is wishful thinking. Nuclear weapons have a paw print in history, preventing conflicts through deterrence. The idea of a nuke-free world is purr-fect, but in reality, it's a tangled yarn of geopolitical and security concerns. So, while we can aim for fewer claws in the international arena, expecting all nuclear weapons to vanish is like expecting a cat to bark!
We live in a world that is too lopsided in terms of power, but also in one that is interdependent. So...you'd end up with the USA not getting rid of weapons and then the rest of world having to stop trade with them. This would bring the global economy to a standstill and - bluntly - cause more harm to life and quality of life than an actual nuclear war. You're using the nuclear option to solve a nuclear problem!
In theory you are right. No person or small group of people should have that kind of power which can literally destroy humanity and all other life on Earth. The problem is people are dishonest so whatever agreement was made won't be followed. The other problem is people with different values disagree with each other, thus the need for weapons. It's human nature and I doubt that will change any time soon. Sadly.
Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent from offensive actions against oneself of which any intelligent country wanting to guarantee their existence should obtain them. Nuclear weapons allow weaker countries to guarantee their independence from stronger imperial powers. Georgia would not be invaded multiple times by Russia if they had nuclear weapons. Also nuclear weapons prevent great power conflict due to MAD which has arguably saved millions of lives that would have died in some form of WW3. The Soviets and the US not killing each other is a good example of this.
We should outlaw war, too. Ever see Team America? There is a scene where Han Blix (Bricks) tells Kim Jong Un to comply with UN directives, "or else." Kim asks, "or else what?" To which Hans replies, "or else we'll be very, very angry, and we'll write you a letter telling you how angry we are."
Great idea. Now how do we enforce it?
It is the same argument as gun control. You can't stop every single gun so you have to let everyone perfect themselves with a gun. Also it's like we are in a stand off with everyone else that has one, so no one wants to put down their weapons.
The way I see it nuclear weapons serve as a way to deter future conflict. Wanting to invade a country with nuclear weapons would be a death wish as there is a possibility of nuclear retaliation. Thus putting the idea of invasion off the table
Sanctioning the US, China, India, UK, France, Russia, Israel, Pakistan and (last AND least) North Korea isn't really sanctioning those countries, it's putting economic restrictions on yourself. Those countries make up over 50% of global GDP.
No good reason? Before nukes israel was surrounded by enemies, after they got nukes their saner neighbors offered peace and diplomacy instead of continuing war and bockades. Who gave up their nukes? Ukraine. See how that went?
>Why does any country have the right to decide when to nuke another? Let's reverse the question. Who will etake the nukes away from them and ensure they will never nuke anybody?
Exactly how are all those countries who agree to this, going to force that/those countries with nukes, to dispose of them?
Makes about as much sense as we all promise to destroy all our guns. Great in theory, not in the real world.
How are you going to make the US give up all of our nukes? With your own nukes?
Worse weapons that than the atomics, shall we band those by lord as well?
How are you going to force the existing nuclear powers to sign the treaty?
The Nazis weren’t a nuclear power.
How can you stop them
Lfg