Is the nuclear deterrent worth it?

[TheVat]

On 4/23/2023 at 9:17 PM, MigL said:

Drone strikes, proxy wars, and other means of sanitizing war are counter-productive.
It is the horror of millions of people losing their lives that helps prevent it from happening.

( yes, I've learned many life lessons from Star Trek )

Well said.  I thought of that episode earlier as I followed this thread.  The "casualties" had to go into a suicide booth didn't they?  Viewing themselves as already dead.  

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Yes, but we'd have to trust, them... 

Yep.  As @zapatos mentioned, it would be a kind of Catch-22: if foes trust each other enough to know their five warheads won't be attacked, then they wouldn't need the warheads in the first place.

Powerful arms tend to lead to arms races and insane buildup of stockpiles.

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, npts2020 said:

I feel much safer when no weapons are around.

Unfortunately, while you may be able to find such an environment at the local level, at  the global level there is never a time when there are no weapons around. Hence the reason nations tend not to disarm.

[Moontanman]

5 hours ago, npts2020 said:

I feel much safer when no weapons are around.

So you've never had the shit kicked out of you by an unarmed man? 

[npts2020]

11 hours ago, zapatos said:

Unfortunately, while you may be able to find such an environment at the local level, at  the global level there is never a time when there are no weapons around. Hence the reason nations tend not to disarm.

Even more unfortunately, it isn't because it couldn't be done. Locally would be harder, IMO.

 

8 hours ago, Moontanman said:

So you've never had the shit kicked out of you by an unarmed man? 

No, even though I have been in some supposedly tough neighborhoods all over the world and been threatened on more than one occasion (although it has been a while). Apparently, I am pretty good at convincing a potential adversary that there will be no benefit for being so.

[zapatos]

5 minutes ago, npts2020 said:

Even more unfortunately, it isn't because it couldn't be done. 

 

In theory or in practice? If in practice, what do you propose for a breakthrough given that no nuclear power (AFAIK) seems willing to give up their nuclear weapons? Or even willing to talk about giving up their nuclear weapons.

[npts2020]

38 minutes ago, zapatos said:

In theory or in practice? If in practice, what do you propose for a breakthrough given that no nuclear power (AFAIK) seems willing to give up their nuclear weapons? Or even willing to talk about giving up their nuclear weapons.

Well, in a world where "might makes right" and there always seems to be a military ready to invade a neighbor or even some country far away it seems unlikely in practice before humans become extinct. It seems to me it would require adopting a universal set of rules for all nations and all peoples, something I don't see the ruling class in most places ever allowing to happen.

[dimreepr]

20 hours ago, zapatos said:

Unfortunately, while you may be able to find such an environment at the local level, at  the global level there is never a time when there are no weapons around. Hence the reason nations tend not to disarm.

Yet it has been done, as per my examples in the OP, so it is possible with the right conditions; we can but hope that the emergence of China as the other superpower, will provide them. 🤞🙏

22 hours ago, TheVat said:

Yep.  As @zapatos mentioned, it would be a kind of Catch-22: if foes trust each other enough to know their five warheads won't be attacked, then they wouldn't need the warheads in the first place.

Then I'm with Yossarian, when he said IIRC "me, happy happy... dead: you, worry worry worry... dead".

[MonDie]

On 4/25/2023 at 2:12 PM, TheVat said:

Yep.  As @zapatos mentioned, it would be a kind of Catch-22: if foes trust each other enough to know their five warheads won't be attacked, then they wouldn't need the warheads in the first place.

Powerful arms tend to lead to arms races and insane buildup of stockpiles.

Of course diplomacy will involve reconciling differences of perspective and distrust of a purported perspective.  It seems like the perspective, for these purposes, would have three main components: the perspective on what is, the ideals about where to, and the power dynamics of how, or with what means/by what means.  Of course, a person who privileges his own ideals or own purposes might utilize deceptive means that misrepresent any of these, so we try to embed aspects of our ideals into the power dynamic itself, such as ideals against misrepresentation or deceit.

It is like agreeing to the rules of a game.  In diplomatic frameworks, players agree to certain rules.  Perhaps, like how two checkers players agree to the rules of checkers.  Of course, the checkers teams legitimately might prefer checkers to mahjong, or agree to the rules for the sake of fairness and honest cooperation.  That would be diplomacy.  Moreover, if some guys are playing mahjong, you might then point a weapon at the people who don't play checkers or don't play according to the rules of checkers, viewing them as unpredictable, incomprehensible, or mischievous for playing by their own rules which weren't yours. In that case, genuine idealism, or perhaps correct trust in what really is genuine idealism, where the idealism regards the rules of how the game is played, seems to be the way out of this unstable dynamic.  We can of course look at history through other lenses with other values.  If you value human life, then you're against genocide, and you probably don't want a leader like Maoist Polpot, capitalist Pinoche, or fascist Hitler or Mussolini.