Nuclear war
Nuclear weapons seem to present an ethical or conceptual puzzle.
Imagine there was a genuine, immediate threat that North Korea were going to send a bomb into America.
Should America use a pre-emptive Nuclear strike?
What is strange is that if a leader was to order a defensive strike that could cause the death of hundreds of thousand of people in an instant. Could you do that? Should you do that in self defence? What does it say about the value of life and the dilemmas concerning death? Should we allow our self to be killed in a nuclear strike rather than retaliate in kind?
There seems to be a kind of nihilism around this whole area, that we have created a means of instant mass destruction of humans and does that immediately devalue life?
Imagine there was a genuine, immediate threat that North Korea were going to send a bomb into America.
Should America use a pre-emptive Nuclear strike?
What is strange is that if a leader was to order a defensive strike that could cause the death of hundreds of thousand of people in an instant. Could you do that? Should you do that in self defence? What does it say about the value of life and the dilemmas concerning death? Should we allow our self to be killed in a nuclear strike rather than retaliate in kind?
There seems to be a kind of nihilism around this whole area, that we have created a means of instant mass destruction of humans and does that immediately devalue life?
Comments (40)
If that is the only way to deliver an EMP, then I would consider it.
I suppose that is the big issue with nuclear weapons. The (ethically) disproportionate collateral damage.
We will all die eventually so in a sense premature death is not vastly different from our eventual death. If you create people they are on a path to eventaul death. So to what extent can we value life? Does valuing life meaning keeping everyone alive for as long as humanly possible?
It seems with countries like North Korea, the masses don't have the power to unseat a rogue government but maybe they should do everything within their power to topple the government to prevent a foreign attack. There is an element of apathy in the face of what seems like overwhelming forces. War might emerge from a kind of apathy in some cases. But then again with the world wars there were people eagerly embracing war (Freudian death drive?)
Is non intervention in other peoples misery and death a good thing? Are we simply not intervening out of self preservation rather than pacifiism.
It is just a dangerous planet.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I think there might be some small space between the two, a middle ground. Perhaps preemptive food parcels, or a task force of electricians and plumbers to improve the sanitation and power supply. If we did these things in the places that would welcome them first, and then tried to impose them on paranoid and violent states later, our kindness would be more believable, and our leadership more acceptable.
The West provides a lot of aid to poor countries. North Korea recieves a lot of Aid. But the Aid can be exploited and misdirected. Aid Agencies left North Korea because their efforts were being frustrated. There are confounding factors in giving Aid including the politics of the countries being targetted.
In World War Two the axis powers were being so destructive and aggressive that we fought fire with fire. It is a mistake to think the world is a benign place and if we all just held hands and got along..
I am a strong antinatalist and I don't think you can manufature a Utopia. But the capability for destruction now is unprecendented giving us more existential moral dilemmas than previously faced. I am not personally frightened of nuclear war happening, but I do suffer from existential anxiety in general. The world is more complex and confusing place with larger dilemmas.
un, at times you seem to take my/a utopian approach to a reality that just doesn't reflect the current state of affairs. I say this in a loving way because I too wish to have kindness and peace in the world. But un, my mentor, my sage, we the USA have been doing all that you speak of, for those in South Korea and our own soldiers there on the 38th parallel since 1953. How much longer should we try to convince North Korea to try letting us help their nation?
South Korea has what some say is a "Miraculous Democracy" and I would say that is a positive society. But I don't believe that North Korea WANTS it's citizens to know about all the modern ways of life like electricity and plumbers. Because that would encourage FREE thought and FREE will and that does not seem to be their leaders goal. We cannot impose FREE will on another nation that is unwilling to give that back to it's citizens. No one can impose FREE will on another, rather it might be better to take the boot off their necks and just let them breathe.
In relation to the 'defence' budget? I think not. People are dying every day from dirty water and starvation. Perhaps in N. Korea it is difficult, but most places it is really really easy to make a huge difference. Let's do the easy stuff first.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
I'm under no utopian illusions Tiff, rather, I think it is you that has an overly rosy view of what the US has been doing in the far East. The N. Korean regime is truly revolting, and I am by no means ruling out on principle a strong military intervention and regime change. But it has been Korea's misfortune to be a trophy disputed between China, Japan and Russia for a long time, and then to become, like Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria, etc, the site of a proxy war between capitalism and communism. So the US prevented the reunification of the country, not from a great love of Koreans, but to stop the spread of communism. You can call it 'help' if you like, it looks more like Empire building to me. So these guys have been at war with you since 1953, because you have been preventing the unification of the country by your massive invasion and permanent occupation of the south.
You probably object to my characterisation, but that is surely how it looks from the other side, it and goes a long way to explain the level of paranoia. I wonder what would happen if all troops were withdrawn from the border, and N. Korea was allowed to invade the south. It would be messy, but it would totally destroy the propaganda that the North has been using to control its own people. I don't think the regime would survive its own success. But that is certainly utopian, because the US nor the S. Korean government is going to let it happen.
What is "a lot of aid"?
The US spends around $29 billion on foreign aid. This is a very small fraction of a multi-trillion dollar budget--less than 1%. A number of countries donate a larger share of their GDP or central government budget than does the USA.
Americans privately donate about as much to international needs as the Federal Government spends. So the US donates around $55 billion, altogether.
It's not "a lot of aid".
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes, it can be exploited, misdirected, administered inefficiently, applied to problems which the donor agency does not understand sufficiently well, stolen by corrupt employees, or programs fall apart after the agency ceases to support it (which all agencies should eventually).
Wasn't a lot of the aid to NK food and energy aid. and not a lot of assistance for capacity building, health improvement, food production, and the like?
http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0428/c90000-9209096.html
I would hope that the US would not have to resort to nuclear weapons to stop Kim Jong Un unless there were absolutely no alternative. On the one hand, if the regime actually fell, it would lift an enormous pall off the world, but on the other, the political and economic consequences of nuclear arms used in conflicts could just tip the world into economic crisis.
Scary times.
I will assume that on one fine day, a real NK nuclear-tipped missile will be launched at Japan, the US, or Seoul--a city of 25 million people--and maybe all three. An appropriate response is problematic.
If Seoul were to receive a nuclear bomb first, there would be much less of South Korea to protect, and nuclear bombs could be more appropriately applied to NK's remaining conventional weapons (lined up across the DMZ from SK). On the other hand, if Japan or the US were struck first, then it becomes harder to defend using nuclear weapons near Seoul. Pyongyang is the seat of government and around 3.3 million people. Is killing 3 million civilians to get rid of 100,000 (max) government leaders a worthwhile trade off?
Using conventional methods to attack NK's missile and bomb-making facilities seems like it would invite an attack (nuclear or non) on Seoul. We are not in a position to immediately defend Seoul against a concerted attack, conventional or nuclear.
I don't know whether South Korea is capable of successfully defending itself against North Korea. SK has substantial military resources. On it's own SK doesn't have nuclear weapons, and I don't think the US has positioned any of its own nuclear weapons there.
If we want to minimize risk to ourselves, Japan, and South Korea, a preemptive strike on NK's missile and bomb facilities, and possibly Pyongyang would be a possibility.
We might begin intercepting all missile launches from NK--assuming our antimissile technology is good enough to hit most of the NK launches. We could destroy any submarines they have that might be capable of launching a missile. This might demonstrate to NK leaders the futility of attempting a missile attack.
Were NK successful in striking US territory with a nuclear weapon, i'm pretty sure overwhelming retaliation in kind would result. The same would apply for an attack on Japan.
All in all, there are no good possibilities here.
The most vulnerable place is Seoul; Japan is next, and for now the least vulnerable place is the US (assuming NK does not have submarine missile launch capability). The Korean peninsula is not a big place, and nuclear warfare in the north would have consequences for South Korea, Japan, and China. Don't forget China.
Someone said Jewish scientists helped create them because of their fear of the anihilation of theJews. But I pointed out that they were actually used on the Japanese and not the Germans.
It has opened a Pandora's box. Now everyone poses an existential threat to everyone else.
I suppose the problems that led up to Nuclear armaments were constant historical hostilities, genocides and arms races. Maybe Nuclear weapons are the biggest manifestation of something hidden but destructive in the human psyche? To step away from the brink of mutual destruction would probably require global psychotherapy and peace initiatives.
It is all a bit surreal for me.
I don't know if my City in England is a target.
Do you think that this might constitute an anti-semitic slur? Do you know Einstein's theories were deprecated as 'Jewish scientists' by the Nazis?
The invention of the nuclear bomb is actually documented in great detail. It is discussed in many books, for example, Einstein's Universe, a 2008 biography of Einstein by Walter Isaacson.
He relates that a postgraduate student first warned Einstein that his theories could be used to create a weapon of immense power, I think it was in the early 1920's. At the time Einstein thought this student was completely delusional.
Einstein didn't really get involved until the war years, by which time he was in Princeton and had realised that this student had been correct. He co- signed a famous letter to the President warning of the catastrophe that would ensue if Hitler developed the bomb - actually, Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum physics, was an adviser to the Nazis on their atomic bomb research (which is a great tragedy in its own right, because Heisenberg was otherwise a great man.)
Anyway, Einstein's letter led to the formation of the Manhattan Project, which you can read all about in Wikipedia.
Einstein was utterly appalled and depressed by the invention of atomic weapons, it caused him immense anguish. 'World War 4', he said, 'will be fought with bows and arrows'.
They could deliver no aid at all. How much aid do you want them to deliver? It is actual probably fairer trading with these countries that would help them more. But with some countries like North korea, the Aid process is hampered by uncooperative governments and a lack of transparency.
Countries like Iran and Russia Don't need aid but we need to avert conflict with them and deflate Iran's nuclear aspirations. Considering Germany and Japan have had the largest military actions taken against them I don't think gloabal inequality and poverty have much to do with nuclear weapon problems.
The person I was arguing with was trying to defend science and technology from criticism by claiming there was a need to develop the weapons. The topic was Artifical intelligence and I was arguing that we need to closely explore unintended consequences before creating technology and not just have an unchecked free for all of science and innovation. Because the humans who develop these theroies and innovations are part of a psychologically troubled species.
At least where Germans could get their hands on them, Jewish atomic scientists went to the gas chambers along with everybody else.
Prior to WWII (which began in Europe in September, 1939) physics journals received articles from Germans, Italians, English, American, etc. physicists and were published and shared in university libraries all over the industrialized world. It wasn't, at the time, loaded with military value. Around Christmas of 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, Lise Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch (all Germans) reached an understanding: A controlled self-sustaining reaction could make it possible to generate a large amount of energy for heat and power, while an unchecked reaction could create an explosion of huge force. Niels Bohr of Denmark checked over Meitner's and Frisch's calculations on his way to a physics conference in Washington, DC in January 1939.
American physicists recognized the importance of what Bohr communicated, and over the next 2 years year did research into uranium, particularly the two isotopes U235 and U238. Once the US was attacked by Japan, President Roosevelt (as per requested by Vanavar Bush (not related to the presidentish Bush family) authorized what became the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.
The initial intended target of the prospective bomb was Germany. Judging by what they read in the physics journals, the German scientists were in as good a position as anyone else to investigate and build a nuclear weapon. As it turned out (post war findings) the German bomb effort hadn't gotten very far. Hitler had received an atomic bomb proposal and not unlike other people, thought that it might be a wild goose chase. But some research was nonetheless funded. It is possible, some think, that Heisenberg deliberately avoided directing the research along the most fruitful lines.
After the German invasion of Poland, atomic physics journals became much more cautious about what kind of information they published. Once the US entered the war, American atomic physicists were ordered to not publish anything at all about their subject matter.
As it happened, Germany was defeated before Japan, and Japan became the honored recipient of the first two atomic weapons.
Most of the 100,000+ people who worked in the Manhattan Project literally did not know what they were doing. Jobs were segmented and kept opaque so that most workers could not make sense of the tasks they were carrying out. Secrecy rules were in force. (of course, a few workers did figure it out by putting 2+2+2+2...together.) At the highest levels of the Manhattan Project, scientists, of course, were acutely aware of what they were working on, and there were definitely some qualms about the whole thing. But... it was fascinating work, we were at war with a dangerous enemy, victory wasn't guaranteed, and so the job was done expeditiously.
Also very good is The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan. There were many of thousands of women working in this huge plant producing fissionable material. None of them knew what it was they were making. For instance, a large class of workers controlled the huge pieces of equipment that were separating isotopes magnetically. Their job was to "turn knobs to keep dials centered". When the war was over, the workers of Oak Ridge National Laboratory were shocked to learn what it was they had produced.
Also good, and much closer to the present, is Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iverson. Rocky Flats is the now-decommissioned plant near Denver where thousands of atomic bombs were manufactured from plutonium. If the business of making thousands of atomic weapons is unethical, the way the plant was run was just as unethical. The plant was "dirty" - meaning that exposure to plutonium and various noxious chemicals was likely for workers, and during several accidents related to poor maintenance, Denver was showered with quite a bit (pounds, not ounces) of fine plutonium dust. The toxic plant and surroundings was buried and/or covered up with soil and turned into a "nature preserve" (!)
Life was devalued when "they" decided to build devices of mass destruction, be that means an extermination facility (Sobibor, Auschwitz...) chemical/biological weapons, or atomic bombs. Using these devices simply follows the logic of their invention. Life isn't devalued by death, life is devalued by determining that some people have no value at all, or not enough value, and that they may be destroyed.
All atomic powers (USA, Russia, China, UK, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea) have made a life-devaluing decision when they commenced to make atomic bombs.
Self-defense? Self defense between Russia (USSR) and USA is nonsensical. In their offensive and defensive use of atomic weapons (no matter who starts it) these two countries will have devalued the lives of what... 100,000,000 people? A billion? More? A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan of 10 or 20 bombs each (both have a good many more than that) could result in many millions of deaths.
Life is also devalued when systems remain in place which kill people by the scores of thousands year after year. The auto industry is one such. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in automobiles which were never built to be even close to safe.
Nuclear weapons are first and foremost a weapon of deterrence, not something you actively would use as just another weapons system. That kind of thinking died out after the late 1940's. As war is still a continuation of policy (Clausewitz had a point, you know), the idea of using nuclear weapons used in a so called pre-emptive simply goes against political logic.
It is assumed that nuclear weapons come to the picture usually when hostilities have started. Never underestimate the thinking and the doctrines that the militaries that have about the use of the weapons.
Do note that this nuclear arms race isn't about just a few nukes. Pakistan is building them with a rapid pace (and likely India too). It's estimated that Pakistan is building about 15 to 20 nuclear bombs a year and has about 200 of them already.
It's more complicated for North Korea, for instance they "solely" developed Nuclear Weapons for deterrence. They actually agreed with the Clinton Administration to stop their nuclear development if the U.S. would hold back on its military provocation and some other negotiations regarding aid, and it succeeded, but the Bush Administration ripped up that agreement leading to the current situation.
I would generally agree when it comes to the U.S. and the major powers. The stockpiling of nuclear weapons is for greater military aggression, not for safety concerns.
(Also accidentally flagged your comment, sorry about that)
I think there is a difference between individual actions and policies that devalue life and creating a weapon which you know will obliterate thousands of lives.
In someways you might feel safe if you live in a decent country with a nuclear deterence. But it means you accept that one day your government might have to kill lots of other people in another country.
The idea that we might need to use the weapons in the future is a further disturbing thought.
We may or may not use atomic weapons in the future. But atomic weapons are only the most powerful-per-pound weapons. Conventional weapons and good organization coupled with determination can reek enormous havoc on any country that is in somebody else's way. The firebombing of Tokyo, for instance, was about as bad as a nuclear explosion. The Nazis managed to mount an enormously successful war effort without nuclear weapons.
It's unreasonable to expect that in the future we will all be nice to one another, and war, of some sort, won't happen. If we are lucky, we will establish the means to conduct wars without using the nuclear option. (How likely is that? I wouldn't bank everything on it.)
I think the reason is that ANY country pursues nuclear weapons is that it makes it difficult for ANY other country to think that they can take them down with conventional forces and weapons without having to worry about said country retaliating with a nuke or nukes. That may not seem like a logical reason but when you think about how much some countries are willing to spend on their military budget while at the same time letting their own people starve, it may not be as crazy as you think. Like my brother (who use to be a military analysts who had to deal with certain issues involving countries that we are..nervous about) use to say "It is better to rule in hell, that to serve in heaven" or at least for some people.
A lot of people in power got that way through using brinkmanship and letting other people worry about what may happen; kill them all and let God sort them out, so to speak. I don't know if it is crazy to think that since history shows nearly an endless list of psychos ending up in power that it will automatically change in the near future just because someone invented nuclear weapons. Perhaps if more people in the world had some option to pursue a life more in line with what they would like their life to be then maybe fewer crazies would end up in power, but I'm not sure if that is true either.
Lunatics end up in power because sometimes only crazy people can stand to do what it takes to get to the top. If only the psychopaths survive the struggle, that's who will end up ruling. Nazi Germany, for example, favored the promotion of bright, loyal, psychopathic personalities. Heil Hitler himself, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, Frank, Goring, ?Ernst Röhm, etc. etc. etc.
On the other hand, it would appear that quite sane people are in charge of places like Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom and maybe France. At least, "quite normal people" are in charge IF, and only IF, the societies over which Putin, Trump, May, and maybe Le Pen rule are sane.
Erich Fromm (The Sane Society) argues that many societies (possibly yours) are actually insane, and that there is a reverse diagnosis system: People who can get along in a crazy society are deemed sane, and people who can not get along in a crazy system are deemed insane. If not insane, then at least redundant.
Europe and North America do not have a monopoly on crazy societies and crazy leaders. They are all over the place. Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan...
You might be pleasantly surprised to hear that when I explained our two positions to my tribe, the two young Indians were willing to process through our ideas and they both said that your idea had quite a bit of merit.
Their position being; that your position upholds the idea, that they are not as willing to fight on foreign land as their parents and Grands were willing to do. My Indians would not participate in a draft and neither of them fear what the government might do to them if they refuse to go to war.
So they said yes, it would in deed be messy for us to just pull out of the South Korea and the DMZ and my youngest began listing off all of the companies that are located in South Korea and the world wide ramifications if that became unstable.
To which I suggested that it is the fear of losing everything that makes you willing to stand up and fight for what you have and that attitude would flourish in the South and the North would not have that fire in their gut to rise back up for their independence.
Having said that, is it vain for me to be concerned about the shock waves of insecurity, it would send through every military partner the USA has in the world?
Not at all. It's not a serious proposal, really, more of a radical alternative to WW3, that couldn't possibly be worse. It would have been a good idea 60 years ago, but now, some middle road must be found. But how's about we have a little reform and set an age limit of maybe 40 on both politicians and voters? Young people are much more sensible than us old fogeys as a rule, and they have more life at stake.
So we end up with your original question as to why nuclear weapons are built and why would we allow crazy leaders to have access to them when we already know that nuclear weapons fit the paradigm in which man has for as long as there has been history has fought wars and for as long as there has been history we have lived under dictatorships and plutocracies which very often have crazy people in power.
Perhaps if the people in the world got to see the effect of a few more nuclear weapons (as well as how much POWER than have then the one's dropped in Japan at the end of WWII) go off in major metropolitan areas we would do things a little differently but even then I don't know if that would make a difference. Human beings sometimes learn from their mistakes but we are not that good at learning from mistakes we have yet to make, even if they could end the world.
Right now, the only thing keeping things in relative order is int he event of a major nuclear war to top 5% to 1% would have to scrounge and scrap much like the rest of us animals do nowadays in order to survive (where as those of us who already do that DON'T have to worry about having to do that as almost all of us will already be dead, or at least the lucky ones will be). And for those in power, the very thought of having to live like the rest of us do is something worse than that so they are VERY motivated NOT to have a nuclear war. So in the end it may be greed and the desire to maintain existing status quo that keeps us from nuclear war than any real humanity coming from those in charge of such issues. I'm sure that is something pleasant to think about at night before someone goes off to sleep.
"The living will envy the dead." Even a limited nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States, or Pakistan and India, or Iran and Israel--let alone an unlimited nuclear exchange everywhere--would reduce humans to scavenger status. It is difficult to describe just how utterly changed the terms of existence would be.
All of the infrastructure on which we depend for survival (given life as we know it) would collapse. Thanks to EMP, transportation and electronic communication would be gone. Any internal combustion` motor depending on microchips (most of them) would not work. Most electronic equipment would not work, even if one could supply it with electricity. Cities are very dependent on pumps to move water up and move sewage out. These would not be working. Refrigeration and heating would mostly disappear. There would be no lights after sundown. Factories would be silent--including factories that make pharmaceuticals.
Greatness is another word for madness.
Actually, the change would be more a mental issue than physical on the global scale. Of course, the term Limited nuclear war is a bit puzzling.
A Limited war between Israel and Iran or Pakistan and India would have an enormous impact where the bombs were used with a huge loss of life and devastate the countries themselves, but not much of an impact in other places. Israel has perhaps 200-300 nukes. Pakistan maybe 2000 at most. The estimates done during the Cold War when both Superpowers had multiple times more nuclear weapons than now isn't comparable to a limited nuclear war. There's a vast difference of having some thousand warheads or tens of thousands warheads.
The 80's was the age of nuclear weapons:
Just think about it. The US made over 200 atmospheric tests as did Russia. Now the radiation fallout from the +400 tests can be picked up, yet the World hasn't changed. Some Chernobyl accident had a fallout of a Limited nuclear war, basically. The biggest atmospheric test was about 50 MT. Largest Pakistani or Indian nukes are perhaps at the 0,15 MT - 0,5 MT range, hence that one atmospheric test was equivalent of about a hundred plus nuclear weapons being used. The bigger impact would be emotional and psychological. Nuclear war would be a reality, which would have a big impact on the way we look at things and how we look at our times.
Yet no Mad-max outcome would happen. Our way of life wouldn't change so much if India and Pakistan or Iran and Israel chose to kill millions of their own people. Just like we could live quite happily here in Europe in the 1990's when about 140 000 people were killed in Europe.
Granted, wiping Israel, Pakistan, or Iran off the political map -- India might be a bit large for Pakistan to eliminate as a going concern -- might not disrupt your or my daily schedule entirely (there would be megatons of fascinating news coverage to watch). But I think the consequences would be rather larger than several Chernobyls or Fukushimas.
Question about the stockpile graph: Surely stockpiles of warheads in the US and Russia haven't been diminished that much since their peak, have they? I realize an atomic bomb can be decommissioned, taken apart, and rendered into something that isn't a bomb, but there isn't a solution to the many thousands of plutonium cores, for example; they are still around--somewhere--I assume watched over very carefully, but I am not sure about that.
Bitter, nuclear non-proliferation agreements talks did have an effect. It's a thing that people don't realize that especially the nuclear deterrent in the US and Russia diminished in size greatly when the Cold War ended. It gives also perspective how dangerous the Cold War was in the 1980's.
And never heard about the nicest story ever to happen with nuclear weapons, the successfull Megatons to megawatts-project that started in 1993 and ended in 2013? 500 tons of Russian nuclear warheads were converted to nuclear fuel that the US bought.
Hence the warheads that were designed to destroy Americans cities ended up giving electricity to the same cities. Sometimes the politicians get things right.
I don't think there's much, if any, controversy about the US development of the A-bomb. It started early in WW2, when the Allies were aware that Germany was working on it too. If they got an A-bomb before the Allies, the consequences would be horrible. So they had to develop one.
The controversy is over whether, having developed one, it should have been used on the two Japanese cities. It's a very difficult and complex issue.My view on it has changed several times in my life, based on new historical information, and may do so again.
There's an excellent novel by CP Snow about the development of the A-bomb, seen from the British perspective. I can't remember the name. It may have been 'The New Men' or something like that. It was written in the fifties or sixties and gives a good sense of the feeling of urgency about the project. IIRC it also covers the devastation of some of the scientists when the weapon was used.
So you avoid being nuked by nuking 1st, you say? How does that even work?
And yes, I could use a nuclear weapon, where can I get one?