Fifteen years ago I might have shared Obama's "vision of a world without nukes".

[redgreenandblue]

Today I am less optimistic about it. Sure, for the empires to reduce their stockpiles and severely limit their tests would be a good thing. But aside from that, it seems to me that a "world without nukes" only means more conventional warfare. In particular for smaller countries the last decades has more than amply demonstrated that being nuclear armed is the only real way to permanently avoid being invaded. Thoughts?

[saras]

1. There's plenty of things equally effective, and less harmful long-term

Chemical weapons don't have to leave toxic traces for tens of thousands of years, but can as effectively remove an entire population. For sheer doomsday "fuck with us and EVERYONE dies" madness, biological weapon are cheap, easy, and impossible to police, because they can be made to be indistinguishable from other industrial production. This, unfortunately, costs more, so is often skipped, and regular bomb-making apparatus is used, which is more easily visible to inspectors, even if you don't let them into the country.

In some cases it might even be possible to genetically target your attackers and hence put the wider population at less risk from an all-out defense. Of course, the attackers can do this too, and usually the attackers have the best tech and the worst morals.

No one has developed this yet, but if you're not talking enormous distances, slow cheap drones can be made in enormous quantities. What if every landmine in one of those huge landmine dumps was individually targeted with a tiny rocket? They already have guided BULLETS, for chrissakes. Go ahead and nuke us, but while the nuke is in the air, we will launch tiny missiles targeting every single member of your population. Far too many to shoot down, flying low, dodging obstacles, not even terribly intelligent, just out hunting.

You can make doomsday targets, installations which, if nuked, would poison whole continents with radiation. Nuke Iran? No Mideast oil for anybody, ever again. Right now. You think the world would let Israel threaten to nuke Iran if they had a dozen of these?


If the world WANTED to remove this fear, it could, in a number of different ways. It seems to prefer this way of running things much as the Right prefers fear as a way of running things here in this country.

[Major Hogwash]

2. Didn't you see Rachel Maddow's program last Wednesday?

When she told about how the U.S. went and got all of the fissile material out of Mexico.
It was an exclusive story.

And it was pretty damn cool.

[redgreenandblue]

3. No, but I would like too.

Got a link?

[NNN0LHI]

4. Imagine having a rapture ready republican as president during the Cuban Missile Crisis

How do you think that would have turned out with any of the current republican candidates as our president during that event?

Think we would be sitting here right now discussing this?

Don

[redgreenandblue]

5. I think the empires should do what they can to reduce their stockpiles.

But after the Bush regime I can no longer blame any small African, South American or Middle Eastern for wanting nukes. Sure, Obama is a nice guy and not very likely to invade Venezuela. But who guarantees there will not be another Bush?