Nuclear Logic?
 

"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Anyone else spot the fundamental flaw in this one?

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

:erm: yep :D

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

quick draw mcgraw! :shocked:

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Fundamental flaw.... not sure.

I would agree with the statement.

If no WOMD was ever used and everyone started collecting them, we could end up with a global catastrophe the moment one was launched (because everyone else would launch theirs)

I feel you may be confusing "first use".
In this instance, "first use" would refer to testing.

So, we build the WOMD and test it.
We see it's awesome destructive power and keep it to one side.



I am happy for anyone to bring Hiroshima and or Nagasaki, Enola Gay, Big Boy etc. etc. into the discussion.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

I think the point is that with Nuclear weapons, while a lot of people have them, no one sane* will ever dare launch a nuclear attack against another country, for fear they will be obliterated themselves. Note: this doesn't apply to extremists.



*Yes, I know America is the only country to have launch Nuclear weapons and detonated them in war, but I am not sure I count them as sane.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

The real art would be the ability to successfully conceal the 'smoking gun'.
Well how else is the balance going to be restored ? Acts of nature, yet another holocaust or 2, mass riots and anarchy ?

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

It has a lovely nostalgic ring about it, like 'we had to destroy the village to save it'. Dr. Strangelove lives.

NitroNutter has it in a nutshell - if you have more than two proper nuclear powers/groupings then deterrent is useless*, as country C can nuke country A if they can find a good way of getting country B blamed for it (Pakistan nukes India and blames China? As Indian PM, how sure do you have to be before you launch back? Play eeny-meeny-miney-mo?).

The original quote is from NATO commanders, and should be worrying for everybody, since it's pretty commonly accepted that if you're in a position where you have to use nuclear weapons you've already lost. Imagine the head of the Iranian Republican Guard or some mirrored sunglasses secretly pro-Taliban Pakistani General saying it. Or Putin, but I suspect he doesn't need to bother announcing it.

There are only two NATO nuclear powers, anyway, us and the US. The French aren't in NATO, so what they're saying is that Britain should have a first use doctrine on nuclear weapons. This doesn't make me feel safer.

* Or if, say, your enemy is a loosely connected disparate pan-national group like al-Qaeda. You don't use a flamethrower to clean behind the cooker.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Does anyone remember a particularly scary episode of "the Cook Report" in the late '80s?

He (Cook) went to Russia and got contacts to purchase Uranium and Plutonium.
He used that to build a small nuclear weapon in a business style briefcase.

He took that (with dumb metal instead of nuclear active material for obvious reasons) to Mi5 to see what they had to say.

Needless to say, the guy behind the desk at MI5 looked more than a little glum when he opened the case and saw so blatantly just how easy it could be.

My point is, if you have the money, you can go buy weapons grade materials on the black market today, just as you could in the 80's.

[soap box]
The biggest terrorist acts are usually the responsibility of the government.... along with those terrible acts which force a country to become involved in a massive war... best examples being Vietnam, Pearl Harbour, 911, the Lucitania, Messopotamia and the press.
[/soap box]

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Last time I checked France were in NATO..........

Not that it matters as long as we have nukes. We should never give up our Nuclear capability.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

I thought the phrase was Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Nah, they're members of OTAN, it's the dyslexic version of NATO ;)

Being cheese eating surrender monkeys, they only deal with the political side of NATO rather than the dangerous bits.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

I thought that had been mythbusted? Just because a Russian says he'll sell you something doesn't mean he's telling the truth. Plenty of conmen came out of the Cold War.

The French *were* in NATO and obviously engage in exercises with NATO countries, since most of their neighbours are in it, even Luxembourg. They did, however, pull out of the full on military aspect many years ago in a cloud of Gallic hauteur. The main consequence of this is that they don't let NATO troops deploy to their soil or supply troops for NATO missions, plus their completely independent nuclear deterrent.

However, one of the five military bigwigs/warlords who made this rather alarming statement is French (the others are a Yank, Boche, Cloggie and Rosbif), which implies it's a political rather than military statement. Mr. Sarkozy, on the other hand, is currently flying round the world giving people nuclear reactors.

OTAN of course is NATO in French, but the Belgians count as French speaking, as do the Canadians. NATO's SHAPE HQ is in Belgium, of course, moving there after the French withdrawal so you can actually guard it with NATO troops, which the French of course wouldn't allow on their soil.

The other surprising omission from NATO is Austria, which is after all buying Eurofighters. Perhaps they're a little reluctant after the last time one of their boys tried to show a bit of military leadership.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

The plutonium and uranium actually purchased was passed on to British Nuclear Fuels who tested & disposed of it, confirming it to be usable in a weapon of this type, but more likely to detonate as a 'dirty' bomb than a big flash. This means, if they had made the real thing, it would most likely have caused a small (ish) explosion and released radiation comparable to Hiroshima / Nagasaki.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

And dirty bombs, as we know, aren't really that scary*. The 'suitcase nuke', in the sense of a suitcase-sized city-destroyer, are the myth.

* i.e. would you have a doctrine of first-use nuclear strike to be used if a country is suspected of supplying a dirty bomb?

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Depends on who it was... if it was France you'd have to argue long and hard to convince me against it :)

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Can't do that - they'd turn off the electricity supply!

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

I cant even begin to comment on how scary dirty bombs are.... ask anyone from Chernobyl!

As for suitcase sized bombs, ask yourself a couple of questions....

1: What is the fourth protocol about? (to save you googling, it's an agreement not to sneak small nukes in to citys and detonate them)
2: Uranium less than half the size of a dime was used in Nagasaki.

Simple fact is, you CAN build small nuclear devices if you really want to.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Uranium was used in Hiroshima, plutonium in Nagasaki.

Also, to achieve critical mass, a grapefruit-sized lump would be nearer the mark. Of course, this might have cost a dime back then.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Nuclear devices are small anyway.

It's just the big rocket they're sat on that makes them look big.

Anyway, I'm struggling to see where this thread is going, what are people saying here that we should, or shouldn't have them.

I'm firmly in the should camp.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

I think people are making the point that there are hazards associated with keeping a nuclear arsenal in addition to those associated with their use as military weapons.

I'm with Pierre, now that we have them we can't get rid of them. Until everyone else does, of course.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Yup, my bad.... not much difference in effect from the point of view of the local residents though.

Critical mass.... grapefruit.... nonsence.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Not especially, unless you like holding lumps of raw plutonium. It's the bits round them that counts.

The question the pro-nuke guys need to answer is why it's so good to have them? If you have to use them, it's too late, if you don't have them to use the effect is the same anyway, absent deterrent, which doesn't work the way it used to. Is the cost worth it when you consider what else you could do with the money and effort? Put it into nuclear decommissioning talks with the other nuclear powers, like in the 80s? Why did that go out of fashion anyway? Rather a good idea, you can tell because the neo-cons *hated* it.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Or make it look like one shoot ones' own gun @ ones' self, or as close to that as one can get, and which is far more likely to be the way it goes.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

I think I covered France's situation with:
:D

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

It's a show of strength.

Whilst I agree that, at the moment, the prospect of any nuclear attack from another state is small, and most likely would come from a terrorist organisation (possibly backed by a rogue state).

That does not mean this would always be the case. I would not fancy surrendering our nuclear capability just as the likes of Iran are set about acquiring it.

Also any rogue state the sponsered a nuclear attack could do so knowing that we could not respond in a similar manner. At least if we suffered a terrorist attack and discovered it sponsored by a rogue state we could retaliate.

Having nuclear capability will always make otheres think twice.

In a time when our Army is at it lowest level of numbers, our Navy is on its knees and our most advanced plane is actually 30years out of date. I'm happy to have it.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Yes. If country A gives up their nuclear deterrent unilaterally, then what is to stop country B holding them to ransom? "Agree to our demands, or we will flatten your capital city in 45 minutes." No thanks.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Or, to put it another way, get nukes and you're safe. Seems to be a recipe for proliferation. Iran, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Indai and Iraq (who only pretended to after 1991) seem to be acting perfectly logically, particularly given that, from their point of view, they're dealing with unstable, irrational people armed with WMDs and apparently now the desire to use them.

Oh, and that report from the NATO Generals? Neoconservative stooges, it turns out. There's some small print that says:

Murray wrote something called 'Neoconservatism - Why We Need It', which rather gives the game away. The thing about neocons is that they're always hysterical about some Great Threat and always wrong about it. File under WPB.

There's more:

Kerching. Another tick in the neo-con box. Bilski, as it turns out, is another Dutchman who has previous for smearing Islam, the current neocon Great Threat. I think I spot a pattern here.

I therefore conclude that it's a propaganda front designed to con people into
accepting a NATO that's pro-actively imperialist and designed to wage the kind of Great War For Civilisation that the neocons have been having wet dreams about for years (full of all sorts of usual neocon rubbish about 'lack of public will' and 'resolve'). They did have the US Army earmarked for the job, but that appears to be broken, so they want ours as well, and if we give it to them they'll break it too.

Get stuffed, I say, the reason there's a lack of public will is that the only time the neocons got to run policy unchecked was in Iraq, where it's so startlingly successful that the US is having to do deals with nationalist Islamic parties full of ex-Baathists in order to prop up the central government run by parties set up in Iran to export the 1979 theocratic revolution to Iraq. Not a great track record, really.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Neocon? Is that like "PC Brigade" and "Tree hugging liberal" where it's actually all in someone's mind, and they grab at events to try and back it up?
NATO operations in Iraq? Don't recall any. NATO operations in Afghanistan? Are the Germans and a few of the other NATO members actually actively fighting or are they in relatively safe areas out of harms way?

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Yes, but what is the alternative? Unilateral disarmament, then cross-fingers and hope that Iran doesn't build a thermonuclear device?

Once you have "learned" the technology, you cannot "unlearn" it (unless a better, more advanced technology overtakes it).

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Short answer: No.

Long answer: The existence of something called 'Neoconservatism - Why We Need It' is the giveaway, unless you can point me to someone somewhere at some point writing 'PC-Gone-Mad-Woolly-Liberalism - A Really Good Idea', in which case my birthday's coming up and I could do with a good laugh. Neoconservatism is a movement with leaders, philosophers, strategic aims and a solid footprint on the planet you can go and look at (it's the smoking one full of wreckage where Iraq used to be). It's also an ideology that, like all ideologies, prizes loyalty, fanaticism and obedience above rationalism, evidence-based decision making and independence of thought (any display of the inverse characteristics is grounds for expulsion and denunciation).

Ideologies are *always* dangerous - liberalism, being defined as the absence of ideology, is the only sensible choice if you like the idea of individual freedom. Ideologies also like the idea of nice, clean Year Zeros where you can start from scratch, so giving them nuclear weapons and carte blanche to use them first is therefore like giving Amy Winehouse the keys to the crack den. Just Say No.

Neoconservatism comes out of things like the American Enterprise Institute, rags like the Weekly Standard and the Free Republic, and of course Fox News, is perfectly blatant and up-front about its aims and desires and has adherents and advisors at high levels in Europe, America, Australia and the Middle East (well, Israel, anyway), in both main UK parties (and a lot of ex-Trots, proving that you can't trust an ideologue anywhere), the British press (hi, Rupert), plus has a nice line in supplying oxygen thieves like John Bolton who crop up *everywhere* (such as Simon Mayo's show on Radio Five Live a few months back) advocating Bombing Iran Now Or Preferably Yesterday.

It's not a conspiracy theory if you can *see* it (and its effects), which is why I keep asking people to prove the 'PC Brigade' exist. No one has yet produced any compelling evidence*, although my door is always open.

So, are you intimating that neoconservatism doesn't exist, despite the obvious evidence of people describing themselves as neoconservatives acting in public in ways commensurate with a neoconservative political position? That sounds dangerously like a conspiracy theory to me ('just because you saw them blast off, film the trip to the Moon and come back with some moon rock doesn't mean it wasn't filmed on a soundstage in Hollywood').

* I'd accept any evidence of powerful, well-funded, organised groups ruthlessly dedicated to banning inoffensive pastimes like conkers or songs about pigs, or Christmas. Sounds a bit silly expressed like that, doesn't it? If you had a brigade, surely you'd do something a bit more challenging with it? Or alternatively, you'd want a bit more tangible success at the banning, since none of those have been banned.

Re: Nuclear Logic?
 

Well the thing is, there are indeed people who are part of the PC brigade.
There is no denying that a group of Becta judges stated that they could not recommend a modernisation of Three Little Pigs to the Muslim community or builders for fear of offending them, it's not an invented story (the banning of said book is the invention), those judges who through oversensitivity, misunderstanding and just plain stupidity became part of the very real PC brigade. Similarly a supermarket's manager's decision to remove pictures of pigs from their receipt rolls (advertising their saving scheme) for fear of offending Muslims was very real (the suggestion that it was taken after Muslims complained was invented), and he too became a member of the PC brigade.
You do not need a powerful, well-funded, organised groups, just individuals with similar views on life, acting alone, but all in the same direction.
Like dark sinister liberals, self serving socialists or fluffy cuddly conservatives, you don't need to be a member of a powerful, well funded, organised group to be one.
Liberalism unfortunately leads to quite discriminatory illiberalism, as demonstrated on this very forum through some of the responses towards people who hold different views to so called "liberals"