Why use the atomic bomb on Japan?

[MigL]

4 hours ago, MSC said:

Why wouldn't you have the stomach for it, if it's the right thing to do? Hume would have potentially argued that the sentiment in your statement should perhaps tell you something about your true moral inclinations on the matter.

What can I say ?
I'm a complicated person.

You mention Israel dropping a nuke on Iran, yet Israel has had nuclear weapons for about 30 years.
They haven't used them yet.
Would you be so confident that the same would hold true if Iran had them ?

[MSC]

@J.C.MacSwell I apologise if it felt like that was an outburst directed at you. It genuinely wasn't. I'm just frustrated with RL at the moment and not being taken seriously there. It's also late, my back hurts like hell and I've done nothing but mulch raspberry bushes all day. My frustrations are with humanity in general, not anybody here personally and I make these arguments here because this is the only group I trust to follow and understand.

1 minute ago, MigL said:

You mention Israel dropping a nuke on Iran

I actually didn't. I said drop a nuke on Raffah, which I mispelled, its Rafah and it's the city in southern Gaza the Palestinians are being funneled into.

3 minutes ago, MigL said:

What can I say ?
I'm a complicated person.

You and me both brother, you and me both. 

4 minutes ago, MigL said:

Would you be so confident that the same would hold true if Iran had them ?

I don't have confidence in any country that has them. I don't want Iran, Israel, Russia, China, the USA or any country to have them. 90 seconds to midnight and not because Iran has nuclear weapons is too close for any comfort or confidence tbh.

[MigL]

10 minutes ago, MSC said:

I don't have confidence in any country that has them.

The genie is out of the bottle, and it's too late for wishful thinking.

The states that do have such weapons have a history of being provoked to the brink, and haven't used them since 1945. Even new nuclear powers like India, Pakistan and Israel.
They are an almost known quantity.
It's the unknown quantities like Iran and N Korea that make the equation hard to calculate.

[MSC]

1 minute ago, MigL said:

The genie is out of the bottle, and it's too late for wishful thinking.

If you start to believe the possible to be impossible, you'll never take steps to achieve what may be achievable. 

Quote

With all the caveats and conditions, is a nuclear-disarmament treaty worth the trouble? Yes, because of the danger posed by nuclear weapons, on the one hand, and the positive power of ideas and ideals in international politics on the other. These weapons are so heinously destructive as to be illegitimate; they are fundamentally indiscriminate killers, and on top of that, they have proved to be far harder to safely build and handle than many understand. They have no proper role even as visible deterrents in the normal interactions of states, and we should aspire to a world in which they would no longer have such an active, operational role.

- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-a-world-without-nuclear-weapons-really-possible/

That's me all done with this topic for today. Need sleep. Goodnight MigL.

[dimreepr]

22 hours ago, MSC said:

Not to mention this stick is just as likely to burn the hand that wields it as it is to burn the person being hit with it.

The 'only time' it was an effective weapon was in Japan; now, it's just a weapon of revenge, whomsoever pulled the trigger first; it's built into the contract, no one can afford to be seen too flinch.

7 hours ago, MSC said:

If you start to believe the possible to be impossible, you'll never take steps to achieve what may be achievable. 

- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-a-world-without-nuclear-weapons-really-possible/

That's me all done with this topic for today. Need sleep. Goodnight MigL.

If you're facing who you think is a psycho, would you put down your gun?

The best we can achieve is for all side's to take out one bullet at a time, the entropy of collateral damage, we'll just be left with one (probably a secret 10) each.

[TheVat]

7 hours ago, MSC said:

If you start to believe the possible to be impossible, you'll never take steps to achieve what may be achievable. 

Also an advocate for Global Zero here.  The Brookings paper makes some strong arguments for continuing to work on this - the  mountain seems steeper now, alas, with Putin rekindling the Cold War and saber rattling crazily.  I hugely appreciate your passion on this - the world needs to be aware of that Damoclean sword over its head and agitating for its removal.

Quote

...the motivation for nuclear-weapons abolition is not utopian or futuristic. It is the very pragmatic, immediate need to deny extremist countries the excuse of getting the bomb because others already have it. 

Bingo.

8 hours ago, MigL said:

It's the unknown quantities like Iran and N Korea that make the equation hard to calculate.

Yep.  And that's part of why Global Zero is, however distant, a pragmatic approach to global security and species survival.  When the stakes are this high, gambling on continued good luck is a bad idea.   

 

[dimreepr]

40 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Also an advocate for Global Zero here.  The Brookings paper makes some strong arguments for continuing to work on this - the  mountain seems steeper now, alas, with Putin rekindling the Cold War and saber rattling crazily.  I hugely appreciate your passion on this - the world needs to be aware of that Damoclean sword over its head and agitating for its removal.

Bingo.

Yep.  And that's part of why Global Zero is, however distant, a pragmatic approach to global security and species survival.  When the stakes are this high, gambling on continued good luck is a bad idea.   

 

Utopia is the clue here, sure take steps towards zero but who cares, as long as it's not the final countdown, bc tomorrow we'll be faced with an even bigger stick and it doesn't matter who wields it, good or evil it's all the same in the end... 😉

For instance, are you sure Utopia is a good guy with a perfect defence system?

Edited April 23 by dimreepr

[MigL]

You guys are too old to be that naive; well intentioned, but naive.

You ban handguns, yet criminals still get them.
You ban nuclear weapons, yet rogue states still get them.

Some people just don't abide by laws, that's why we call them criminals.
Is V Putin abiding by international laws ? 
How about N Korea and Iran ?
( even Israel, Pakistan and India; not actually criminal, simply not signing on to any nuke banning treaty )

At best, you propose a system which ensures continued extortion/blackmail to keep them from developing nuclear weapons ( all the while continuing their development ).

[J.C.MacSwell]

Ukraine did the right thing...and now has to beg for support it would not have needed.

That support is in a large part limited by the fact Russia has a lot of them (nuclear weapons).

With states like Russia, who would be foolish enough to put their guard down?

[MSC]

6 hours ago, TheVat said:

Also an advocate for Global Zero here.  The Brookings paper makes some strong arguments for continuing to work on this - the  mountain seems steeper now, alas, with Putin rekindling the Cold War and saber rattling crazily.  I hugely appreciate your passion on this - the world needs to be aware of that Damoclean sword over its head and agitating for its removal.

Well I appreciate you and your passion also. Ehrfucht vom der leben! I've just never been one to ignore the elephant in the room, hence my profile pic!

You should have a read of Schwietzers declaration of conscience too, you'd appreciate it. There is also an article called Blacklisting Schweitzer by Laurence S Wittner that details a lot of what was being done collaboratively in the late 1950s and early 60s to sway public opinion against nuclear testing that I think would interest you, if you've not already read it of course!

Global zero will probably never happen in our lifetimes but the groundwork has been laid and if people don't pick up the torch, then and only then is it an impossible goal. 

1 hour ago, MigL said:

You guys are too old to be that naive; well intentioned, but naive.

I'm 30! I've still got a few good years of naivete left in me I think.

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Some people just don't abide by laws, that's why we call them criminals.
Is V Putin abiding by international laws ? 
How about N Korea and Iran ?

Regimes rise and fall, Putin, Kim and Khamenei are all mortal men with an expiration date, opinions and policies change. You are old enough to know that the world does in fact change as you've lived through more of those changes than I have. 

But hey, I'm more than happy to steelman your points. Let's say for the sake of argument, that the dismantling of the global nuclear deterrence apparatus is impossible. I don't think it is but for the sake of argument I'll run with it for a tick.  Without people actively fighting against it, it could be argued that our very presence as global zero advocates tempers humanities worst inclinations and decelerates the approach to midnight, while actively accelerating the technogical advancement of defensive technologies. Big stick meets big shield. 

1 hour ago, MigL said:

At best, you propose a system which ensures continued extortion/blackmail to keep them from developing nuclear weapons ( all the while continuing their development ).

Mass murder of non-combatants by nuclear weapon = Morally acceptable?

Extortion and blackmail of criminals and psychopaths to stave off a nuclear apocalypse = Morally reprehensible? 

How is the latter not the lesser of two evils in your mind?

MigL I respect you as a person I really do but your arguments aren't very strong or convincing to be honest, at least not to me. The reason being that I've read so much on this subject that you're not going to be able to dismantle it all and convince me otherwise with just a few paragraphs. It isn't even my arguments you need to dismantle but the arguments made by people who have been making these arguments decades before I was even born. Like it or not it's the truth. Same goes for @swansont and the arguments he's made, they just aren't very strong or convincing and that isn't on me but on you guys. I'm not the type to listen to what amounts to "because I said so.", I'm sorry but that's just not going to happen. 

23 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

With states like Russia, who would be foolish enough to put their guard down?

Nobody is suggesting that anyone should let their guard down. 

7 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Utopia is the clue here, sure take steps towards zero but who cares, as long as it's not the final countdown

Great so now that songs gonna be stuck in my head for a week. Thanks Dim. 

[swansont]

18 minutes ago, MSC said:

Regimes rise and fall, Putin, Kim and Khamenei are all mortal men with an expiration date, opinions and policies change. You are old enough to know that the world does in fact change as you've lived through more of those changes than I have. 

But one thing you notice is that such leaders are always around. Before this it was Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Pinochet, Idi Amin, Khaddafi, and more, and that’s only going back ~50 years

 

18 minutes ago, MSC said:

Same goes for @swansont and the arguments he's made, they just aren't very strong or convincing and that isn't on me but on you guys. I'm not the type to listen to what amounts to "because I said so.", I'm sorry but that's just not going to happen. 

I don’t think I was saying BISS, or really making an argument (or advocating a position) as much as I was poking holes in what you were presenting.

[MSC]

9 minutes ago, swansont said:

don’t think I was saying BISS, or really making an argument (or advocating a position) as much as I was poking holes in what you were presenting.

Then what is your position? I am genuinely interested to know. You did poke a few holes for sure and I appreciated it because it does help me figure out how to improve my position and you absolutely provided a lot of good prompting for research, as has MigL. Sorry I can get caught up in the spirit of debate quite a bit but hey, at least I don't get as heated or assholish as I used to get when I first came onto this forum.

[J.C.MacSwell]

1 hour ago, MSC said:

 

Nobody is suggesting that anyone should let their guard down. 

Nuclear weapons are the deterrent to nuclear weapons. Eliminating your nuclear weapons is putting your guard down.

Russia would not be in Ukraine if Ukraine had them.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, MSC said:

Then what is your position?

On what, specifically?

[TheVat]

2 hours ago, MSC said:

Well I appreciate you and your passion also. Ehrfucht vom der leben! I've just never been one to ignore the elephant in the room, hence my profile pic!

You should have a read of Schwietzers declaration of conscience too, you'd appreciate it. There is also an article called Blacklisting Schweitzer by Laurence S Wittner that details a lot of what was being done collaboratively in the late 1950s and early 60s to sway public opinion against nuclear testing that I think would interest you, if you've not already read it of course!

Global zero will probably never happen in our lifetimes but the groundwork has been laid and if people don't pick up the torch, then and only then is it an impossible goal. 

Ehrfurcht vor dem leben (3 genders, 4 cases, how do Germans do it?).I hope folks here won't conflate that desire to lay groundwork for global zero with a naive sensibility.  We all know how far away a true START agreement is, let alone global zero.  As that Brookings fellow pointed out, the latter goal is pragmatic WRT to a longterm winding down of proliferation.  Why would all those dictators abandon nuke ambitions so long as the big boys have them?   Nothing really happens until Cold War (and hot war) issues are resolved with the big three, and that would require regime change in Russia and liberalization in China to even get parties to the arms reduction table.

50 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Nuclear weapons are the deterrent to nuclear weapons. Eliminating your nuclear weapons is putting your guard down.

Well that has been the standard assumption.  I think maybe we should test that against the current reality, maybe a thought experiment.  What would happen if, right now, one of the big three dismantled all its nukes, fed the fissile material into power plant reactors, and said hey we're done.  And then, one assumes, put some of the billions saved into more conventional weapons.  (maintaining a large nuclear arsenal is expensive)

Edited April 23 by TheVat
my own personal I dunno

[J.C.MacSwell]

19 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Ehrfurcht vor dem leben (3 genders, 4 cases, how do Germans do it?).I hope folks here won't conflate that desire to lay groundwork for global zero with a naive sensibility.  We all know how far away a true START agreement is, let alone global zero.  As that Brookings fellow pointed out, the latter goal is pragmatic WRT to a longterm winding down of proliferation.  Why would all those dictators abandon nuke ambitions so long as the big boys have them?   Nothing really happens until Cold War (and hot war) issues are resolved with the big three, and that would require regime change in Russia and liberalization in China to even get parties to the arms reduction table.

Well that has been the standard assumption.  I think maybe we should test that against the current reality, maybe a thought experiment.  What would happen if, right now, one of the big three dismantled all its nukes, fed the fissile material into power plant reactors, and said hey we're done.  And then, one assumes, put some of the billions saved into more conventional weapons.  (maintaining a large nuclear arsenal is expensive)

Obviously Russia doing that and confirming it would end the war in Ukraine pretty quickly and leave them vulnerable to China in their East.

China (are they even big three nuclear?) doing it might not change overly vs threats (so Chinese in defense) from the US and Russia but would change their posture with India.(their "nothing more than sticks and rocks" agreement might break down). Their offensiveness in the South Pacific would certainly need rethinking, as would any hope of ultimately claiming Taiwan. 

US doing it would be throwing the dice. 

[TheVat]

It would be interesting to imagine what other facts would come to light, as far as the conventional militaries and their future capabilities are concerned.  I don't know if the Ukraine war would end or not - it's being fought with conventional weapons.  And the military budget would effectively increase for Russia, absent the cost of maintaining and manning a nuclear strike force.  I've even wondered if all the nuke talk lately from Putin is just hot air, and they stopped taking care of their missiles some time ago.  Could there be Potemkin silos, filled with rusting equipment and non launchable rockets?  How good is our intelligence in the West?  This is all a bit out there, but I try to remember that Russians are excellent chess players.

 

[dimreepr]

14 hours ago, MSC said:

Well I appreciate you and your passion also. Ehrfucht vom der leben! I've just never been one to ignore the elephant in the room, hence my profile pic!

You should have a read of Schwietzers declaration of conscience too, you'd appreciate it. There is also an article called Blacklisting Schweitzer by Laurence S Wittner that details a lot of what was being done collaboratively in the late 1950s and early 60s to sway public opinion against nuclear testing that I think would interest you, if you've not already read it of course!

Global zero will probably never happen in our lifetimes but the groundwork has been laid and if people don't pick up the torch, then and only then is it an impossible goal. 

I'm 30! I've still got a few good years of naivete left in me I think.

Regimes rise and fall, Putin, Kim and Khamenei are all mortal men with an expiration date, opinions and policies change. You are old enough to know that the world does in fact change as you've lived through more of those changes than I have. 

But hey, I'm more than happy to steelman your points. Let's say for the sake of argument, that the dismantling of the global nuclear deterrence apparatus is impossible. I don't think it is but for the sake of argument I'll run with it for a tick.  Without people actively fighting against it, it could be argued that our very presence as global zero advocates tempers humanities worst inclinations and decelerates the approach to midnight, while actively accelerating the technogical advancement of defensive technologies. Big stick meets big shield. 

Mass murder of non-combatants by nuclear weapon = Morally acceptable?

Extortion and blackmail of criminals and psychopaths to stave off a nuclear apocalypse = Morally reprehensible? 

How is the latter not the lesser of two evils in your mind?

MigL I respect you as a person I really do but your arguments aren't very strong or convincing to be honest, at least not to me. The reason being that I've read so much on this subject that you're not going to be able to dismantle it all and convince me otherwise with just a few paragraphs. It isn't even my arguments you need to dismantle but the arguments made by people who have been making these arguments decades before I was even born. Like it or not it's the truth. Same goes for @swansont and the arguments he's made, they just aren't very strong or convincing and that isn't on me but on you guys. I'm not the type to listen to what amounts to "because I said so.", I'm sorry but that's just not going to happen. 

Nobody is suggesting that anyone should let their guard down. 

Great so now that songs gonna be stuck in my head for a week. Thanks Dim. 

TBH, I'm indifferent to the issue, it doesn't even crack my top 20 of thing's to give a shit about; why would I waste my emotional energy, spending my daily chip allowance needs deeper problem's to warrant a reasonable return on my investments. 

[MigL]

There are different kinds of nuclear weapons; strategic, in the form of ICBMs and SLBMs, and tactical battlefield weapons of much smaller ( or single warhead ) yield.
But all are weapons ( of a possible much larger scale ), so you may as well ask what would happen if say, NATO gave up its weapons ?
I think V Putin's armies  would be at the Atlantic European coast in a year ( assuming they can get their logistics in order ).
If Taiwan dismantled their defenses, and the US wasn't willing to provide military support, China would start building a land bridge to Taiwan, to make them part of the mainland.
How  long would  Israel last as if they discarded their weapons and relied on the good will of Syria, Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas ?

Because that is what you are proposing.
And arguing that you don't mean conventional weapons, just nukes, is pointless.
An army ( including tanks ) of 100 000 can be wiped out by a single hi-yield battlefield nuke, if your rogue opponent chooses to disregard the 'treaty' and keep their nukes.

@MSC You may have misunderstood ( must be ADD at such a young age 😄 )
It is not that we are extorting and blackmailing these rogue states like N Korea and Iran not to develop nukes, rather, they are extorting/blackmailing ( usually ) the US, and demanding economic support as a condition of not developing nukes ( which they do anyway ).

The reality is, in a 'perfect' world there are no bad actors, people who covet other's possessions/property/land, or people who crave wealth/power, and that is the only place where unilateral disarmament would work.
That is not the world we live in.

I wonder, if your child is being bullied at school, do you tell him/her " just go ahead and give the bully your lunch money, he/she will learn from your selfless act, and become a 'good' person too".
How do you think that would work out, considering we now have punitive laws against bullying?

[TheVat]

43 minutes ago, MigL said:

I wonder, if your child is being bullied at school, do you tell him/her " just go ahead and give the bully your lunch money, he/she will learn from your selfless act, and become a 'good' person too".
How do you think that would work out, considering we now have punitive laws against bullying?

It's worth considering that playground social dynamics are not the best road map for nuclear geopolitics.

46 minutes ago, MigL said:

Because that is what you are proposing.

I thought I had made clear that was a thought experiment, or an intuition pump (to borrow a phrase from the late great Daniel Dennett) to consider if a nation that retained nukes could actually use them.  And also, if nations with large conventional militaries can benefit from reduction or elimination of WMDs.  I wasn't suggesting only one answer could exist.  Sorry if I gave that impression.  This earlier comment was to indicate awareness that any future is uncertain:

14 hours ago, TheVat said:

We all know how far away a true START agreement is, let alone global zero.

 

[J.C.MacSwell]

13 hours ago, TheVat said:

  I don't know if the Ukraine war would end or not - it's being fought with conventional weapons.  And the military budget would effectively increase for Russia, absent the cost of maintaining and manning a nuclear strike force. 

The limitations on Ukraines use of supplied conventional weapons would disappear. Why would the West continue to tell Ukraine not to use them on Russia proper when they are being attacked from there? The West's concern with Russia's nuclear threats are the only thing stopping them from allowing that and likely more.

Russia can't match the West economically, even if they saved the costs of nuclear weapons maintenance and improvements. Their war factories would suffer from conventional means. How would anyone justify allowing them to continue to produce weapons considering how they use them, if they had ready means to stop them?

China might take a liking to Putin's current way of thinking and view the eastern parts of Russia that are closer to Beijing than Moscow as "historically" their own, or at least decide they better "save" them from the West.

[MigL]

12 hours ago, TheVat said:

It's worth considering that playground social dynamics are not the best road map for nuclear geopolitics.

Really ?
Sometimes they seem very appropriate for any geopolitics.

[toucana]

I came upon a passage  the other day which reminded me of an issue now mostly forgotten, but one which was very important to Allied military planners back in 1945 as WW2 entered its endgame - and that was the fate of allied POWs and incarcerated civilians who were in the hands of the Japanese throughout the Far East.

http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/liberation_photos.html

Over 190,000 British and Commonwealth troops were taken prisoner by the Japanese during WW2 - many of them when Malaya, Singapore, and Burma were overrun, and some 32,000 Allied POWs were subsequently repatriated directly from Japan itself after the end of the war.

The majority of these prisoners were kept in appalling conditions on starvation diets and and many were worked to death in slave labour camps, like those working on the Thai-Burma Railway at Kanu Camp Thailand, where 60,000 British, Commonwealth and Dutch prisoners worked on the railway, and 16,000 of them perished doing so.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-life-was-like-for-pows-in-the-far-east-during-the-second-world-war

There is some vivid testimony from two such prisoners who later became very well-known novelists. One was the Australian born James Clavell who wrote the screenplay for The Great Escape (1963) and later wrote the first of his ‘Asian trilogy’ novels Shogun (1975) partially around his war-time experiences at Changi prison in Singapore. The other was the British writer J.G. Ballard whose family was interned in the Lunghua internment camp near Shanghai in China, and based his autobiographical novel Empire of The Sun (1984) on childhood memories of life there.

J.G. Ballard incidentally claims that he and other occupants of the Lunghua camp actually saw the flash of the second atomic bomb when it detonated over Nagasaki 500 miles away across the East China Sea on the morning of August 9 1945.

Both of these writers make the point that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 probably saved their own lives and those of countless other POWs and internees, because many of them simply could not have survived the effects of chronic malnutrition they were experiencing at the hands of the Japanese for much longer. They might well have been dead if the war had ended 6 months later.

James Clavell who was living on 110 grams of rice per day, one egg per week and occasional vegetables in Changi prison camp was unable to talk about his wartime experience for 15 years, but later disclosed that for quite some time after, he kept a can of sardines in his pocket at all times, and had to fight the urge to forage for food in rubbish bins.

Edited April 25 by toucana
fixed typo 'of' in final para.

[MSC]

On 4/24/2024 at 10:29 PM, MigL said:

Really ?
Sometimes they seem very appropriate for any geopolitics.

Do you want the list of why it really isn't or can you think of that list yourself? 

 

On 4/24/2024 at 9:17 AM, MigL said:

wonder, if your child is being bullied at school, do you tell him/her " just go ahead and give the bully your lunch money, he/she will learn from your selfless act, and become a 'good' person too".
How do you think that would work out, considering we now have punitive laws against bullying?

No, I don't and it's a complete false equivalency and my views on nuclear weapons shouldn't be used to infer what my moral inclinations are in completely different subjects. I'm not a pacifist, I don't suffer bullies, I believe violence in defence isn't just permissable it is a categorical imperative and all the strawmen about how I must view other subjects and debates just because you know my stance on this one is a waste of all of our time. Honestly I haven't been able to dignify this with a response for two days because.... well I mean look at it. @swansont why don't you poke holes in this one? Why do I even have to explain why a bully taking lunch money is different from countries threatening each other with nukes or setting them off? That's a bottom of the barrel argument right there.

On 4/23/2024 at 6:45 PM, swansont said:

On what, specifically?

On A) Whether or not the bombing of Japan was needed to end the war and B) Whether or not the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons is justified and morally permissable. 

[dimreepr]

17 minutes ago, MSC said:

I don't suffer bullies

If I don't want to suffer, am I devoid of a moral compass?

The world is full of bullies, most people just pay up and go home; heroes are few and far between, mostly bc they're bigger than the bullies and they tend to avoid that sort of problem...