The roads leading to disaster

[KhorneFlakes]

Goddammit I meant to say slobber all over YOUR head! Argh!

[Panzersharkcat]

It's OK. We know what you meant, even if Boatty doesn't.

[Alkaloid]

How about the number of allied innocents at risk of being blow up, should the nuclear weapons actually be used? One important thing also is that Invasion is practically off the table the instant a nation gets a nuclear weapon, and Iran has been a consistant global rogue? Especially when these innocents are being FLAGRANTLY used as hostages by their Government which is deliberately placing nuclear development sites in densely packed civilian office buildings, and city blocks?

That's rich. My largely baseless speculation about the unlikely event of China seeking to annex Taiwan is evidence of my tendency to read Tom Clancy and take it seriously, despite the ample evidence of China actually building the tools it would need for such a task. On the other hand your largely baseless speculation about Iran blowing up innocent allies of the US if they get nuclear weapons is perfectly reasonable, even though there is no evidence to suggest that they are making any realistic progress toward building nuclear weapons at all.

You have two choices:

1. Attack countries that want nukes.

2. Let said countries obtain nukes.

You have to pick one.

There's this new thing. Called diplomacy. Look it up.

[Nephtys]

That's rich. My largely baseless speculation about the unlikely event of China seeking to annex Taiwan is evidence of my tendency to read Tom Clancy and take it seriously, despite the ample evidence of China actually building the tools it would need for such a task. On the other hand your largely baseless speculation about Iran blowing up innocent allies of the US if they get nuclear weapons is perfectly reasonable, even though there is no evidence to suggest that they are making any realistic progress toward building nuclear weapons at all.

If China attempts a military conquest of Taiwan, that will create a state of war between the PRC and the US. That quite frankly, is extremely far-fetched. Why? Because they're a major, stable government that has a vested interest above all other relations of maintaining a good economic with the US! Any gains in taking Taiwan are peanuts compared to economic fallout from the US (and likely some closest US allies) ceasing mutual trade with China. Direct War between great powers simply cannot happen in the forseeable future, because of how NOBODY can win in any sense with the way integrated global economies work. The PRC knows this, and won't go for a lose/lose scenario of starting a war. Because even in complete victory, they've lost.

Iran meanwhile, has a vested interest in building nuclear weapons, has been building centrifuges for enriching uranium in both hardened facilities able to resist almost any reasonable attack, as well as in highly concentrated civilian areas.

There's this new thing. Called diplomacy. Look it up.

Yes. and all diplomatic options have been used. Which is why economic sanctions are in place, which literally is the strongest action possible without involving military forces.

[Stark]

Too bad the 'diplomacy' only created a stronger need for a nuclear weapon program then, I guess. Maybe Americans just don't understand why people respond the way they do to demands like 'serfdom or invasion'. :V

[Stark]

And if you put someone in a situation where the only defence against your remote-control aggression is using human shields, is anyone really surprised that someone you CONSTANTLY PAINT AS EVIL MANIACS use human shields rather than submit to foreign rule? :V

[Alkaloid]

If China attempts a military conquest of Taiwan, that will create a state of war between the PRC and the US. That quite frankly, is extremely far-fetched. Why? Because they're a major, stable government that has a vested interest above all other relations of maintaining a good economic with the US! Any gains in taking Taiwan are peanuts compared to economic fallout from the US (and likely some closest US allies) ceasing mutual trade with China. Direct War between great powers simply cannot happen in the forseeable future, because of how NOBODY can win in any sense with the way integrated global economies work. The PRC knows this, and won't go for a lose/lose scenario of starting a war. Because even in complete victory, they've lost.

Iran meanwhile, has a vested interest in building nuclear weapons, has been building centrifuges for enriching uranium in both hardened facilities able to resist almost any reasonable attack, as well as in highly concentrated civilian areas.

Yes, and even if Iran gets nuclear weapons, it is not any more likely to blow up innocent civilians (as you claimed) than China is to invade Taiwan because then the country will be turned into a nuclear wasteland. This is of course ignoring the fact that when the CIA is asked 'are Iran building nuclear bombs' the answer they give is 'probably not.'

Yes. and all diplomatic options have been used. Which is why economic sanctions are in place, which literally is the strongest action possible without involving military forces.

I'm sorry, what has the US offered Iran if it doesn't build nukes that in any reasonable persons mind could potentially rival the security benefits to the nation of it actually having nuclear weapons? Or even rival the benefits to the US of Iran not having nukes?

[Akhlut]

Except that these days conventional warfare or other violence isn't guaranteed to kill over 80% of humanity within a year. If the nukes start flying, well... :v

For one, 80 percent of humanity is an exaggeration. Just to be clear, there aren't enough operational, deliverable nuclear weapons to do that now, or ever. It'll be really godawful bad, but it's not 80 percent extinction bad.

Because yes, I'm sure that the crippling of the world's oil supplies won't reduce agricultural output for enough years to starve a substantial proportion of the world's population.

To say nothing of the world's regular nuclear power plants, which I'm sure a fair number of which won't meltdown because no one will maintain them. Especially the one's within a nuke's blast radius.

But more seriously, is this new? It's the best things have ever been. EVER, in terms of major nations and their hold on nuclear weapons. Yes, it's said that the US and Russia still operate as they did during the cold war. Except nobody wants or expects war. NATO no longer fears a tank invasion through Germany. The 'USSR' no longer expects invasion either. China doesn't have more than a hundred deliverable weapons, and mostly on crude platforms.

Hey, it's not like there was a glitch with NORAD and that the US didn't bother to use the "red telephone" to confirm a Soviet weapons launch didn't almost destroy modern civilization. Oh, wait...

So, yes, it's still worrisome and any event that might make it easier for the nukes to fly is definitely not good. That would include antagonizing Iran and trying to go to war against them.

So did Wilson, FDR, and Truman; turns out modern warfare's a complete bitch, and maybe we shouldn't elect leaders eager to hop into it, like Castro suggests?

Are you suggesting Wilson, FDR and Truman were eager to hop into warfare?

No, I was suggesting that Wilson, FDR, and Truman all targeted civilians in their warfare and that if we elect a leader, we shouldn't elect one who would happily lead us to warfare (like Santorum).

Or are you suggesting since then, many US Leaders were? Name one US president besides Bush that was 'eager' to hop into a war?

Polk: Mexican-American War
McKinley: Spanish-American War
TR: Panama, Honduras
Taft: occupied Nicaragua with the Marines on multiple occasions
Wilson: bombed Veracruz, Mexico and occupied it; occupied Haiti (and every president continued to do so until 1934!); occupied Dominican Republic; occupied Panama
Coolidge: has the president of Guatemala overthrown for United Fruit; occupied Panama; occupied Nicaragua
Hoover: rushes warships to El Salvador to put down a Communist insurgency
Eisenhower: supported Guatemalan coup d'etat; supported Iranian coup d'etat; tries to overthrow Castro
JFK: Bay of Pigs invasion, Indochinese War/Vietnam
LBJ: Vietnam again; invaded Dominican Republic to prevent a democratically elected government from being put into place
Nixon: expanded from Vietnam into Cambodia and Laos; supported CIA coup for Pinochet in Chile
Reagan: funded Iraq in Iran/Iraq war, funded Iran in Iran/Iraq war, funded central American death squads, invaded Granada and Panama


So, yes, it would seem there have been several modern US presidents who enjoy going to war!

It ends up, part of global politics is having your options on the table, especially against irrational and antagonistic nations.

Perhaps they wouldn't be irrational and antagonistic if we and our allies haven't been trying to systematically turn them into a proxy state for 100 years. Perhaps if we stopped trying to be paternalistic, jingoistic shitheads, maybe they wouldn't feel the need to acquire nuclear arms?

Because civil leaders are not in positions of authority, and have no higher chance of being better than a government leader? See Pre-election Obama vs post-election's track record. An 'MLK' administration or similar would likely fare not much better.

Except Obama is "among the least liberal Democrats", which doesn't sound quite like a full MLK administration probably would.

That's how the world works, buddy. If someone has something, an enemy will want a +1.

Perhaps we should work on nuclear disarmament, then, so as to not provoke potential enemies who have good reason to fear us and want nuclear weapons then, eh?

How about the number of allied innocents at risk of being blow up, should the nuclear weapons actually be used?

That's highly unlikely, for one. The Iranians aren't just going to nuke Israel for shits and giggles (they know the end result is their own destruction, and the Iranians in general would not want to see the end of one of the eldest civilizations on earth). They want nukes to keep Israel and the USA from bombing/invading them (which is a valid concern).

One important thing also is that Invasion is practically off the table the instant a nation gets a nuclear weapon, and Iran has been a consistant global rogue? Especially when these innocents are being FLAGRANTLY used as hostages by their Government which is deliberately placing nuclear development sites in densely packed civilian office buildings, and city blocks?

Perhaps if the US and its allies haven't been consistently antagonizing them since the late 1800s they wouldn't feel the need to do so?

So does England. History of Antagonism stops mattering when you've been exceptionally close allies for 3+ generations.

The UK hasn't bombed a US ship this century, though, or constantly tried to shame the US into giving its full support at all times, regardless of how shitty they've been acting.

How simplistic. FAR more people died in the first Iran-Iraq War than both US Invasions combined. Around 2 million people died, Chemical Weapons were deployed en-masse in the longest (8 years) running conventional war in the last century and then some.

Chemical weapons that were acquired with US aid, with both sides receiving ample weapons and funding from the US, with both leaders having come to power as a direct result of US actions in the region...

The US developed nuclear weapons and employed them to end WW2, then built them up during the Cold War to oppose the USSR, before that ended. Are you saying that having weapons is inherently 'horrific', or perhaps the act of developing them to fight a global war against explicitly and inarguably evil empire builders was the 'horrific' part?

Which side was the inarguably evil empire builder again? The one that supported proxy wars all over the world, spent more money on weapons than on preventing famine, and overthrew dozens of leaders because they were receiving aid from the wrong side?

Oh, wait, that describes the USA perfectly too.

Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons so it can act without accountability and against international sanction still.

Just like Israel does. How eeeeevil!

When exactly does the US 'execute minority groups all the time'?

Black people; they are executed a disproportionate amount of the time due to systemic racism in the judicial system. And, prior to the 1970s, they were often killed in extrajudicial "legal" proceedings in public without any repercussions to the perpetrators (aka, "lynchings").

You're seeing this as some sort of magical 'good and evil' thing. Reality doesn't work like that. Nations look after their self interest, the interest of their allies, the interest of friends/neutrals and everyone else a distant third.

Perhaps we'd do a lot better job of not dealing with horrendous problems like these if we didn't act like colossal dicks all the time and tried to install our own favorite dictators all over the world. If the US didn't have a proven track record of doing exactly that, then Iran would almost certainly be far less willing to try and procure nuclear weapons.

[Akhlut]

I'll never understand how those irrational Iranian fruitcakes can be so antagonistic.

Because they hate our freedoms.

[K. A. Pital]

Depends how many bombs they build. They probably can't build that many in a short space of time, but the proposal is to let them do whatever, so it will happen eventually.

India, Pakistan and China have long established nuclear arsenals; none of them are massive enough to "end all life on earth", so you're deliberately bullshitting. And since this is established, let's carry on from here and discuss how Iran is totally incapable of ending all life on Earth; only the US and Russian arsenals come close to civilization-destroying capacity (but not a complete biocide, anyway).

[Simon_Jester]

Something on the scale of the US arsenal would be impossible for Pakistan anyway- they don't have the money to pay for the bombs and delivery vehicles.

[evilsoup]

Wait wait wait - Iran used chemical weapons during the Iraqi invasion? When did this happen? Did they even have chemical weapons? Now, you could argue that Khomeini's decision to launch a counter-invasion of Iraq was fucking stupid; and you can make a pretty strong argument that doing so (and extending the war) was actually immoral, and the use of human-wave tactics was definitely evil... but was it a sign of craziness?

Is launching a counter-invasion against a regime that invaded your land for pure profit and gassed your citizens really crazy, in itself? It certainly had a much much much better justification than the US+allies invasion of Iraq.

[Simon_Jester]

[checks thread, slaps forehead]

What I said is true, I guess, but I meant to say it about Iran. Iran getting the ability to do a lot of harm to a developed nation, the kind that you'll be several decades rebuilding from, is possible. Iran getting the ability to do the same to the whole world is very unlikely; Iran getting the ability to end all life on Earth is not in the cards unless everyone decides to take up a collection to help them do it.

[Irbis]

Russia relies on Iranian oil...

Is Russia not a net oil exporter?

Russia is, in fact, one of the largest producers/exporters of oil currently. To the point that Reagan's major weapon against USSR was lowering oil prices. Russia is about as reliant on Iran for foreign oil as USA is on UK when it comes to aircraft carrier production.

Depends how many bombs they build. They probably can't build that many in a short space of time, but the proposal is to let them do whatever, so it will happen eventually.

Did you even stopped to think what you say? Warsaw fucking Pact, entity that controlled 1/5 of Earth's landmass and included a true superpower as member was never able to do that in 50 years, how the fuck one small country supposed to do it?

Except that these days conventional warfare or other violence isn't guaranteed to kill over 80% of humanity within a year. If the nukes start flying, well... :v

Also, fun fact - even if for some magical reason someone took every single nuclear warhead left operational on this planet (which is less than 1/20 of what was deployed in Cold War), added Iran's non-existent arsenal, and used that in super-efficient way to kill 80% of humanity, that's still 1.5 billion humans remaining. That was Earth's population in 1914. Less than a century ago.

So, even outright use of MAGIC won't produce anywhere near the extinction of humanity, it won't even set us back 99 years seeing almost all of out technology will survive the process. Boo hoo.

[K. A. Pital]

It will set us back 100 years technologically and 200 to 300 years socially (with the collapse of centralized government and neo-feudalism inevitably following), but that's probably the damage threshold. There's no Doomsday Device waiting to cover the Earth with radioactive cobalt for many years. There's just nukes. Bad enough, but survivable.

Of course, nobody wants them to fly, but trying to present the creation of nukes by a small tertiary power like Iran as the Existential Threat to Civilization, as if they were some sort of V-like aliens or what, is completely misleading and stupid... and also dangerous, since it is a most efficient form of propaganda. When you falsely picture your enemy as an existential threat, you can get absolutely crazy things done.

People in Nazi Germany commited mass suicide because they were told the end of it is the end of existence of the world itself; existential threat. Japanese were ready to kill themselves for the Emperor in waves, since the USA was depicted as an existential threat.

That's absolutely not the kind of mentality you want people to have. Unless you want war on Iran. Then it makes perfect sense.

[Akhlut]

Except that these days conventional warfare or other violence isn't guaranteed to kill over 80% of humanity within a year. If the nukes start flying, well... :v

Also, fun fact - even if for some magical reason someone took every single nuclear warhead left operational on this planet (which is less than 1/20 of what was deployed in Cold War), added Iran's non-existent arsenal, and used that in super-efficient way to kill 80% of humanity, that's still 1.5 billion humans remaining. That was Earth's population in 1914. Less than a century ago.

So, even outright use of MAGIC won't produce anywhere near the extinction of humanity, it won't even set us back 99 years seeing almost all of out technology will survive the process. Boo hoo.

How do you propose on obtaining niobium and tantalum for use in your electronics? International shipping is going to completely fucked over (how many harbors are going to be rendered functionally inoperable for years due nuclear firestorm?).

How are you going to build most of your electronics, since the grand majority of Chinese factories which produce such things are going to be in the blast radius of nukes?

And how are you going to convince people to move all of these things around when their number one concern is going to be acquiring food?

What about the petroleum required to get necessary equipment working, since most refineries are going to also be in the blast radii?

Which also makes us wonder how farms are going to work without functional combines, tractors, fertilizers, sprayers, pesticides, and all that fun stuff. Hunting and fishing? Except, since most major cities are on rivers, lakes, and the coast, there's going to be a lot of radioactive contamination of water and bioaccumulation of radioactive isotopes into the food chain. Which means eating most wild game is going to be a game of Russian roulette to make sure you don't eat something which is contaminated to hell and back. Of course, I'm sure with a bunch of factories being torn apart, there won't be the release of more mundane and pedestrian pollutants which will cause their own fun brands of ecological disaster themselves.

Then there's medicine; most of that sort of thing has a very limited shelf-life, and most of the pharmaceutical factories are going to be destroyed or so contaminated by radioactive waste as to be worthless. Do you know how to grow opium poppies and refine the opium into medicinal-grade morphine? Do you know how to manufacture massive supplies of penicillin to combat the guaranteed jump in infections after a nuclear war (psst, radiation weakens the immune system, making infections much more likely)? And if you require something more exotic than stuff that can be made from easily-cultivated organisms (such as mold or poppies), well, you're fucked. Taxol? Good luck finding enough Pacific Yew or the specialized facilities to produce Taxol after a nuclear war. Especially since cancer rates might go up slightly after a nuclear war.

And so on. This isn't just "oh, we'll still have everything we had prior to the war!" No, we're being thrown back to the Middle Ages, except almost none of us has the skills of our peasant forefathers who at least knew how to farm with technology that doesn't require being able to rely on quasi-slave labor in Africa and Asia so we can do our jobs.

Sure, humanity might survive a nuclear holocaust, but there'd be so much damage that our survival would legitimately be in question for a while, and things won't be the same as before it.

[Uraniun235]

HMS Conquerer, Julhelm said he was cool with using nuclear bunker-busters to take out an Iranian nuclear weapons program, if that's what it ultimately took to deny Iran a nuclear arsenal. Would you support that?

[Uraniun235]

double post (quote ≠ edit)