Nueclear Weapons

[Serb]

No more US-bashing?

[GeneralTacticus]

You're welcome to continue if you like.

[Serb]

Who? Me? I would never dared to do such horrible thing.

[Jack_www]

Yes can we plz get back on topic. Like can nukes deter wars, not what US will do with nukes they have and the rest.

[GeneralTacticus]

So: yes, nukes can deter wars, but only because of their second effect on wars: they make them far more destructive, to the extent that many nations will not dare to fight. However, when they DO fight, the consequences are far more catastrophic than would otherwise be the case.

[Serb]

I have nothing to add to your words.
Is this case closed?

[Jack_www]

Well the question is would any nation ever have the guts to go to war with a nuclear power (assume each side has nukes that can destroy the other power)? Baring any insane leaders and the like. Would the countries use them in limited way?
Besides there are a lot more people here at poly that could say something about this.

[Ned]

There is no question that nuclear weapons prevented a war between Russia and the US. It also kept all wars in the cold war era limited. MacArthur wanted to invade China. Truman said no - because he did not want to risk a war with a nuclear Soviet Uniion. Later Johnson did not want to invade North Vietnam for the same reason.

On the other hand, the Soviets could not win in Afghanistan without taking out Pakistan. But they couldn't do that because Pakistan was a US ally.

Cuba was the closest both side came to nuclear war. Cuba was caused by Kennedy's weakness in the Bay of Pigs invasion. This caused the Soviets to miscalculate that Kennedy would not respond to nukes in Cuba.

Kennedy responded. Had not the Soviets blinked - Kaboom!

Recently, nukes prevented a major war between Pakistan and India.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Jack_www
Well the question is would any nation ever have the guts to go to war with a nuclear power (assume each side has nukes that can destroy the other power)? Baring any insane leaders and the like. Would the countries use them in limited way?
Besides there are a lot more people here at poly that could say something about this.

A problem occurs if a would be conqueror obtains nuclear weapons. He could then conquer all the weaker non nuclear countries around him because the US would not try to stop him.

If Saddam gets nukes, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria would be in grave jeopardy. The US would simply stand aside and let it happen.

Ditto NK vs. SK and Japan.

[Zkribbler]

Hiroshima was necessary because it gave the Japanese the excuse they needed to face up to the reality they had been defeated.

The proposed invasion of the home islands was then estimated to result in 1,000,000 American casualties and 500,000 British. Since the end of the war, it's been learned the Japanese had figured out where the Allied landing had been planned, so casualties would have been much higher.

The attack on Nagasaki was unnecessary.

[Ned]

The Japanese were going to kill 300,000 American POWs if we invaded.

I think this weighed heavily on Truman's mind as well.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Serb


I still prefer if they would never be invented. It's like genie in the bottle, you can't hold it there forever. Sooner or later it will break out and will ends human civilization.

The potential to develop nuclear weapons was already present. In the 1940s five nations, the US, the USSR, Germany, Great Britain, and Japan were already trying to develop them. If the US hadn't completed the development of the bomb the Soviet Union, Britain, or some other country would have. If the bomb had not been used at the very end of WWII would any nation have truely understood its destructive potential? If it had been used at the beginning of WWIII would its use have stopped at merely two weapons detonated?

There is good evidence that the Japanese attempted to surrender in the weeks before the dropping of the bomb. They made the mistake of using the embassy of the USSR to relay the messages, not knowing about the secret agreement between the US and the USSR pertaining to the plan for the USSR to declare war on Japan in late 1945. The USSR had already planned to use their invasion of Japanese controlled China to give aid to Mao Tse Tung, so they did not pass on Japan's peace feelers to the US since to do so would have hampered their plans. This puts a good deal of onus for Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the Soviet Union, i.e., Russia.

[GeneralTacticus]

Serb didn't say he wished the US had never devleoped them, he said he wished they had never been invented, period. Personally, I agree with him; even if they have prevented WWIII so far, if a nuclear war ever does break out, it will mean the end of humanity.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The attack on Nagasaki was unnecessary.

It was pretty .

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
Serb didn't say he wished the US had never devleoped them, he said he wished they had never been invented, period. Personally, I agree with him; even if they have prevented WWIII so far, if a nuclear war ever does break out, it will mean the end of humanity.

The technology needed to invent them was already here so they were going to be invented ready or not. Gee, imagine if some middle eastern state had been the first to invent them.

You could wish that it was impossible to invent them, but the changes in the laws of physics might be pretty catastrophic.