Is this the time for the world to rid itself of nukes?

[Gatekeeper]

A crater more than a mile across and 250 feet deep?! Ye GODS!

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Dissident
genie is out of the bottle

Sad but true.
Sadly we don´t have the Nano-Disassembler of CtP 2
which renders all nuclear weapons on earth harmless.

[Dracon II]

Are you kidding?? Nukes were one of the reasons we the cold war was cold and not hot.

Knowing that war will have the consequence of inconceivable destruction whether or not it is won or lost is a good thing in my opinion. It rules out the option for all but the suicidal and insane. All that we have to do is make sure that suicidal and insane people don't attain political power (could be difficult).

[Lul Thyme]

There is still no denying that nukes in much smaller number, specially from US and Russia, would still serve their actual purpose just as well, wheter that be deterrence or whatever....

[DeathByTheSword]

All that we have to do is make sure that suicidal and insane people don't attain political power (could be difficult).

to late

[Patroklos]

The NATO callsign for that Soviet super bomb was "Satan." Seems appropriate.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi


I thought it was a complete lack of any sense of morality!?

Same thing.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Zkribbler

Argentina was headed in that direction before the Brits attacked their reactor in the Falklands War.

What ?

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Frankychan
I think Russia wins. Didn't they make that bomb that cracked the Earth's crust? I know the Russians made the biggest nuke ever...but I can't remember the name of the bomb. Remember reading about it and saying how the shockwaves from the blast went on for MILES.

It was called "Tsar Bomba"

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Frankychan
I think Russia wins. Didn't they make that bomb that cracked the Earth's crust? I know the Russians made the biggest nuke ever...but I can't remember the name of the bomb. Remember reading about it and saying how the shockwaves from the blast went on for MILES.

Bit of an understatement.

Highest - yield nuclear bomb ever developed. Designer: Andrey Sakharov, Victor Adamskii, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trunev, and Yuri Smirnov; developed and constructed in only 14 weeks; maximum yield 100 Mt; delivery method: modified Tu-95 strategic bomber, parachute; tested on Oct. 30, 1961 over Novaya Zemlya, USSR. Dropped in 50 Mt configuration from 10,500 m with a parachute by a Tu-95 piloted by Maj. Andrey Durnovtsev; detonated at 4,000 m; shock wave circled the globe three times; resulted in 1-hour radio communications blackout; mushroom cloud rose to 64 km into the atmosphere; radioactively cleanest thermonuclear bomb ever tested with 97% of energy coming from nuclear fusion;

[Lorizael]

Come on people, look at those pictures; nukes are cool.

[Admiral]

Actually, it seems that we are more in danger of nuclear conflict now than we were in during the cold war. At that point, nukes were essentially only the property of a binary system, both sides of which recognized that nuclear conflict was unacceptable. Bear in mind that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, both Kennedy and Khrushchev were more concerned with giving their allies the appearance of readiness for nuclear conflict that they were of giving each other that appearance.

But now, with the fall of that system, we can no longer have the easiest form of nuclear deterrence. When you have three or more powers confronting each other with said weapons, it might suddenly be in the best interest of one state to provoke a nuclear war between other states, etc, and the chance of the weapons being used goes up considerably. Also, to make sure that deterrence worked during the cold war, both sides maintained a launch on warning policy. Given that nuclear strikes would assuredly wipe out the ability to retaliate, this made sure that the advantage of the first strike was negated. Now, however, that is impossible. If we use the example of India/Pakistan, neither state would have the time to react to a strike before it hit, and the first strike becomes a much more acceptable option. And finally, the proliferation of nuclear weapons makes it easier for terrorists to acquire them. Given that terrorists are stateless entities, they cannot be stopped by deterrence, and if a terrorist acquires a nuclear weapon, that weapon will be used.

So, the idea that nuclear deterrence currently keeping the piece no longer really makes sense. As has been said, the genie is out of the bottle, but the genie isn't the bomb itself, but the knowledge of the bomb. In addition to the nine current nuclear powers, basically every industrial nation has the capacity to built the bomb, they have just chosen to abstain, for whatever reason. If all the nations of the world got rid of their nuclear weapons, they couldn't get rid of the knowledge of them, with the result that effectively, nuclear deterrence is still in effect. This would both prevent the war system from the 19th and early 20th centuries from continuing now, with the maximization of violence, and it would serve as a deterent for any nation that keeps nuclear weapons and tries to use them. Nuclear weapons could always be rebuilt, they just don't have to be.

Really, this system would be calling the proponents of deterrence's bluff. If we assume that the goal of deterrerence is peace, this system would only make it more effective. Deterrence is based upon both the tradition of non-use, and also the threatening to use. And if we reframe the threatening to use in the sense of, if anyone uses nuclear weapons, we will launch all of ours, and obliterate the world, then instead of an aggressive system, we promote a system where people accept that the use of nuclear weapons is annihilation. In essence, we could see this as an extraction of violence from the twentieth century, and putting it all into one world-destroying device.

The only problem with this is that threat of complete annihilation. By getting rid of the weapons themselves, and just keeping the knowledge, we continue to limit interstate violence (at least among the developed powers), but we lessen the threat of elimination of the human species.

And in this context, the idea of nuclear monopoly doesn't lead to the global hegemony that many consider it to lead to. Between 1945 and 1949, the US had a nuclear monopoly, and we still suffered major setbacks. Eastern Europe was incorporated into the comintern, Berlin was blockaded, China fell to the communists, etc. In various other circumstances, nuclear power was also ineffective. During the Suez crisis, nuclear weapons did not help Britain and France. During Korea and Vietnam, nuclear weapons didn't help the US. Nuclear weapons also didn't help the USSR in Afghanistan nor China in Vietnam. In this context, thinking that one nuclear power could act with impunity is foolish. And given both the numbers of the non-nuclear powers and the emnity towards nuclear weapons that would arise from this system, the inevitable result of a unilateral seizure of nuclear weapons would be the fall of that state, or at least the rapid decline in power of that state.

And finally, this is really the time to build such a system. There are no nuclear standoffs at the moment complicating the situation. India and Pakistan almost went to war over Kashmir anyways, so nuclear deterrence isn't necessarily that effective there. China, while possessing nuclear weapons, is not the great ideological rival the USSR was, given that China is too busy repressing its peasants to be actively imperialist (and if Taiwan hasn't already surrendered in the face nuclear weapons, its unlikely that it will do so in the future).

[Lancer]

Admiral

I don't think anything will be done to rid the world of nukes until a major world population center gets nuked and all the carnage gets on the tube, but one can hope. They never put up a traffic light until a horrible accident occurs...