US, Russia Reach Nuclear Arsenal Agreement 413
Peace Corps Library writes "The United States and Russia, seeking to move forward on one of the most significant arms control treaties since the end of the cold war, announced that they had reached a preliminary agreement on cutting each country's stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons, effectively setting the stage for a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), a cold war-era pact that expires in December. Under the framework, negotiators are to be instructed to craft a treaty that would cut strategic warheads for each side to between 1,500 and 1,675, down from the limit of 2,200 slated to take effect in 2012 under the Treaty of Moscow (PDF) signed by President George W. Bush. The limit on delivery vehicles would be cut to between 500 and 1,100 from the 1,600 currently allowed under Start. Perhaps more important than the specific limits would be a revised and extended verification system that otherwise would expire with Start in December. The United States currently has 1,198 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based missiles and bombers, which together are capable of delivering 5,576 warheads, according to its most recent Start report in January, while Russia reported that it has 816 delivery vehicles capable of delivering 3,909 warheads. 'We have a mutual interest in protecting both of our populations from the kinds of danger that weapons proliferation is presenting today,' said President Obama."
Fallout (Score:5, Funny)
boooo, there goes my hopes of one day having a child that would roam the wastelands and be the savior of all humanity.
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Don't worry...there are still plenty of ways to create wastelands. The trinity of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical is still around. You can add robot and grey goo to the mix in a few decades/centuries.
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Re:Fallout (Score:5, Interesting)
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China is also reducing its arsenal
Citation needed. China has not been very open or forthcoming at all with regards to their weapons programs, nuclear or conventional. In fact they are currently in the process of building new ballistic missile submarines and deploying road mobile ICBMs. How is this compatible with "reducing" their arsenal?
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The DOD table followed a fact sheet published by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in April 2004, which stated: "Among the nuclear-weapon states, China...possesses the smallest nuclear arsenal." Since Britain has declared that it has less than 200 operationally available warheads, and the United States, Russia, and France have more, the Chinese statement could be interpreted to mean that Chinaâ(TM)s nuclear arsenal is smaller than Britainâ(TM)s.
Link [fas.org]
Re:Fallout (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't speak to the buildup of their conventional capacity, but China's nuclear intentions are about as honest as you're going to get from a nuclear power.
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This really doesn't prove anything. China is upgrading everything, their weapons tech is still behind that of Russia, let alone NATO. They still don't have a locally produced 4th generation fighter when Europe and the US have their 5th gen fighters flying and Russia's is nearing completion.
Re:Afro-American Racism Against Whites and Asians (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't governments job to "pull them out of their bad position" its their own individual job.
No, but it is the government's job to stop the majority from actively keeping them in a bad position. Jim Crowe was only a few years ago.
but this is 2009 not 1950
Try the late 60s, which weren't so long ago. Many people who still hold a lot of sway were either part of the problem or are directly descended from those people. I'm white and I hear what other whites aren't afraid to say about blacks when there aren't any blacks around. To imply that racism is dead among whites is very disingenuous.
Asians make more on average than whites, shouldn't whites get special treatment now?
No. Asians tend to make more in the US because they tend to come here as well-educated people who bear well-educated children. This is not an injustice, just a statistical anomaly, and a direct result of our immigration policy. Visit Asia sometime if you think that Asians can't be poor and ignorant. Blacks come from a history of being ACTIVELY held down, and it's going to be a while before this nation recovers from that. Having blacks in powerful positions helps their cause, and they know that and vote accordingly.
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Re:Afro-American Racism Against Whites and Asians (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a white equivalent of the NAACP?
No, why would there be? Was there a white equivalent of slavery in the US?
Our histories are parallel and intertwined, but not equal. Without injustice, the NAACP would not be necessary. The NAACP was started in the early 1900s, when blacks often couldn't vote or stay in the same hotel or use the same drinking fountain. The NAACP is a demonstration of exactly what I'm talking about - we still haven't healed.
Face it - in the US it is still a tremendous advantage to be a white man.
At a certain point, the effects of ancient history have dwindled to nothing. I'd say that point is already past.
The numbers disagree with you. Blacks are still disadvantaged. If you, as a white guy, don't see racism on a day-to-day basis then I'd say you aren't paying much attention, or you are very lucky and live in a place which I would love to move to.
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Actually, most of the slavery was carried out by the Africans. In fact, Africa is the only continent that still has legal slavery to this day. And the so called Anglo Saxons consisted or Portuguese ans Spanish who purchased the slaves from African tribes and sold them to settlements under the British crown.
As for reparations, they have already been paid in both the loss of life in gaining the freedoms of the slaves and in the welfare and housing benefits given to minorities and the special treatment they go
Robert Strange McNamara 1916 - 2009 (Score:5, Interesting)
The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations. - Robert S. McNamara
Slightly offtopic but in high school I read a few books by Robert S McNamara who died yesterday [nytimes.com]. It's too bad he didn't get to see this agreement between old enemies. He was Secretary of Defense from 1961-1968. Although I did not agree with a lot of his views he shaped a lot of the nuclear buildup during the cold war. I believe he was responsible for abandoning Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation in the event of a nuclear war. He was first tasked by Kennedy of explaining nuclear fallout [wikipedia.org]. McNamara favored non-nuclear power and one of the books I read "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" shed a lot of light on the Vietnam war for me.
If you haven't seen Erol Morris' "The Fog of War [wikipedia.org]" you should.
Rest in peace Robert Strange McNamara. You revealed to me the horrors that leadership must face during war.
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Don't feel too bad. He did get to see the far more important breakthrough agreements negotiated and signed by Presidents Reagan and Bush 41.
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It's too bad he didn't get to see this agreement between old enemies.
Srlsy? It's not like this is the first [wikipedia.org] such [wikipedia.org] agreement [wikipedia.org].
Re:Robert Strange McNamara 1916 - 2009 (Score:5, Insightful)
I've really got to love our society. A more than slightly crazy musician and probable child molester dies and it's all the news can talk about for three weeks as people cry in the streets and memorial concerts are held all over the country. A man who was partially responsible for guiding the world through the cold war without destroying modern civilization dies and no one even knows who he is.
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A more than slightly crazy musician and probable child molester dies and it's all the news can talk about for three weeks as people cry in the streets and memorial concerts are held all over the country. A man who was partially responsible for guiding the world through the cold war without destroying modern civilization dies and no one even knows who he is.
You forgot the part where the crazy probable child molester pushed the coverage of the struggle in Iran off the front pages.......
Fourth estate indeed.
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Okay.
1. I am not and have never really been a fan of MJ but that fact that you must thrust him even into this shows you are part of the problem of which you speak. He is dead and I feel sorry for his family.
2. McNamara sucked. No really he was a walking talking disaster area. The complete re writing of history around JFK drives me nuts. McNamara and JFK over saw the largest increase in the nuclear stock pile in history. He made no agreements involving arms control except the Nuclear Test Band Treaty which
Re:Robert Strange McNamara 1916 - 2009 (Score:4, Insightful)
In case you did not know, the massive nuclear buildup by the US in the 1950's and 1960's was largely based on incomplete intelligence and a great deal of incompetence by the Eisenhower and (much less so) the Kennedy administrations. Although McNamara recognized that the US had a large advantage in both nuclear warheads and delivery systems, he still continued the massive buildup in nuclear weapons started by Eisenhower and pushed the idea of mutually assured destruction. It led to the greatest period of nuclear tension we ever had, and almost led us to nuclear war.
In the 1950's the US thought the Soviets were greatly increasing their nuclear arsenal in order to gain first strike capabilities. This was false and not supported by strong intelligence, and many in the Eisenhower administration did not take proper precautions to ensure this was correct. The US initiated a period of nuclear proliferation that was understandably viewed by the Soviets as an attempt to gain first strike capability, and they quickly followed suit with their own nuclear buildup.
Mr. McNamara did not abandon the idea of massive retaliation, he actually advanced it. He said himself said (paraphrasing) that it was pure luck that we did not end up in a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. He also continued the ludicrous notion of the domino theory [wikipedia.org] which led to the escalation of the Vietnam War under his command.
Also, (taken from the NY Times book review [nytimes.com] of his autobiography) he realized relatively early in the Vietnam war that it could not be won by military force, but did not fight for his opinion and didn't take a public stance on that position until the 1990's. He and the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon administrations destroyed the common trust and confidence in our government, which still has far-reaching consequences today. He oversaw one of the largest expansions of the US military in history, which can be directly traced to our ridiculous defense policy and budget today.
Mr. McNamara was a brilliant man, but he is a symbol of how arrogance and loyalty to authority dragged our country to the brink of destruction. Combined with his (and the rest of the government's) mismanagement of the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara is certainly not a politician that will be missed by me.
This is good news for science... (Score:2)
This could mean even more cheap launch vehicles for satellites, since launching missiles is a good way of reducing their numbers...
Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Insightful)
BBC radio is reporting this will bring the USA and Russia down to owning a mere 95% of the world's nuclear weapons. Go USA! Go Russia!
Seriously, good work both countries for making a step in the right direction. But keep going, you've got a long way to go before you can start preaching to countries with a dozen or nuclear weapons about the need for restraint.
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear weapons are powerful, extremely so by the standards of just about anything else(short of real sci-fi stuff, or fuel air bombs representing a week of the western world's refinery output); but they are hardly powerful enough that a dozen and a thousand are the same.
Even if we overestimated and supposed that, for ease of calculation, a single nuclear strike could completely eliminate a city, all but the very smallest countries have substantially more than 12 cities, and a fair amount of hinterland. Not to mention the fact that unpleasant side effects like nuclear winter and social chaos, which would presumably do most of the killing after the first couple of days, would be far more severe with more warheads rather than fewer.
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Interesting)
As one of the Rand Corporation's stone cold game theorists said, those would be "tragic, but distinguishable, outcomes".
General Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got 20 million people killed, and the other where you got a 150 million people killed.
President Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!
General Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Forget game theory. Consider the consequences of agency theory - a 5% reduction in arms is a 5% budget cut to the department responsible for the nukes. It benefits nations to reduce arms significantly (through multilateral treaties) to the point where they are only left with a reasonable deterrent, and enough ground troops to respond to disasters. But no defense department would recommend it, or push for the treaties.
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Since, as you say, doing serious damage to thinks like roads, rails, and heavier buildings is extremely difficult, that pretty much leaves the humans that operate them as the logical weak link.
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Putin, after all, prefers to use proxy countries for that.
Sure he does. Does it mean that the US don't?
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Assuming more robustly built structures in a modern city, I would still suspect that a 10 megaton bomb, releasing 50 times more energy would be much more destructive than 200-300 meters.
No, not really. Even at the most optimistic level, you need to take a cube root to go go between radius and volume... cube root of 50 is about 3.7. So, at the most optimistic, 50 times more volume of destruction equals about 3 something larger radius. Round down for improved building codes and improved technology. Round down for realistic blast effects (shading from bigger buildings, lots of the extra "power" just makes the fireball go upwards even faster).
Secondly, radiative damage would be devastating, as that becomes an increasing factor with bomb strength.
Nope, nada, zactly precisely totally the oppos
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Interesting)
(See The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, and also "The Pentomic Army" for sources on this)
The 200-300m quoted distance is the "100% probability of kill" range, I believe. Double that range, and the probability halves.
You also have to remember that Hiroshima was almost perfectly designed to be obliterated in a nuclear blast. The topography is that of a bowl, so overpressure actually wraps around rather than just releasing in an outwards pattern. Also, a lot of the buildings were made of very weak materials - residences had a lot of paper and wood, which a) burned really well, and b) did little to absorb the blast overpressure on the way through.
Nagasaki actually fared quite a bit better, as have various test ranges around the world.
In a modern concrete and steel city, the reflective/absorbitive properties of building materials considerably reduce the spread of blast overpressure on a lateral trajectory. Additionally, few cities are built inside a bowl (New Orleans excepted!) - so most of the time, the overpressure only hits you once.
There really are only four lethal mechanisms that accompany a nuclear blast inside the atmosphere: prompt radiation, fireball, blast overpressure (and sometimes a secondary overpressure from air rushing in to fill the resultant vacuum), and residual radiation.
Prompt radiation travels in a straight line, and is blocked quite effectively by earth, heavy metals and some types of clay. At larger distances, even curtains can help with the flash. If you are in direct line of sight to the flash, within lethal range - you are dead. If not, you're probably ok - and the radiation types released in the flash typically don't stick around.
The fireball is typically not very large, but will incinerate whatever it comes into contact with. Most modern designs try to air-burst, and the fireball often won't ever touch the ground.
Blast overpressure hits just like a conventional explosive: a sphere of rapidly moving blast pressure, reducing in power over distance, and also losing energy as it hits things. The same protections against prompt radiation help here: a good wall of dirt does wonders for stopping overpressure, whether it's from regular artillery or a nuclear explosion. Note that studies have shown that blast overpressure is the primary kill mechanism for regular nuclear bombs, just like any other bomb.
Finally, you get residual radiation. This can be avoided almost completely with a carefully designed airburst - most "fallout" and residual radiation occurs when dirt is sucked into the fireball and irradiated there. Burst high enough to not have the fireball encompass a lot of dirt, and you don't have very much long-term radiation. It's largely unknown what the long-term effects of residual radiation are; the area around Chernobyl didn't behave at all like the models we had!
Then there are different bomb designs to consider. A really small nuclear bomb behaves a lot like a really large conventional charge: you could set it off in a football stadium, and probably not worry too much about damage to buildings a few hundred yards away; man-portable nukes were designed on that assumption, as were things like the horribly-design Davey Crockett round.
"Neutron bombs", which really should be called "reduced blast bombs" focus on enhancing prompt-radiation release at the expense of a MUCH smaller blast/fireball (and consequently very little residual radiation). Why would you want to do that? a) It greatly reduces long-term contamination of your target area (meaning you might get to go there!), but more importantly b) it's FAR more effective at taking out tanks and similar. Tanks are really, very, very good at withstanding blast overpressure (it's pretty much their primary defensive purpose - survive artillery and shells while they move forward). It's not at all practical to burst enough regular nuclear weapons to reliably take out a distributed, dug-in tank force. However, they are almost entirely made of metal - and prompt radiation does a "wonder
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, one thing you Westerners should keep in mind.
In my school days in Russia (which were late 90s, far more liberal and pro-Western than it is today), we still studied things such as an effect of an urban nuclear explosion, complete with a diagram of the bombed city with affected areas, and a simulated aerial photo. We were taught how to behave to maximize the chances of survival during the initial blast, how to find proper shelters and secure them (and what kinds of shelters are good enough at various distances), and so on. I think that's still being taught.
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Um... the largest bomb ever built was 50-100 megatons. No bombs of that size were ever built in a deployable system (tsar bomba was too damned big to hit another country with it easily).
You can destroy roads and railroads easily with conventional bombs (which are really good at taking out everything in a straight line when dropped en mass).
At 1 megaton, you can destroy an office building 2.8 miles away reliably (the 10 PSI mark, few buildings will not stand up to 10 PSI of overpressure). Many building wou
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There are very few 1MT-plus nukes left in anyone's arsenal. Accurate aiming and the need to shrink the physical size of the weapons to provide MIRV capability in sub-based missiles and smaller silo-based launchers meant a move away from the older higher-yield devices. Typical maximum yield from the latest generation of weapons is about 500-600kT. The WE177 freefall bomb deployed by the RAF had a dial on the side that allowed the yield to be adjusted from about 200 to 500kTonnes.
Radius of effectiveness a
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:4, Insightful)
Cite some examples, I think most of your numbers are hog-wash and made up on the spot.
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Interesting)
You are really underestimating the power of nuclear weapons, or you're using a different definition of complete destruction than everyone else. If by complete, you mean "vaporized," then you may be correct. However, according to this site [pbs.org], a one-megaton surface blast would leave a crater 200 feet deep and a thousand feet across, and everything within about 3200 feet of of the detonation would be gone except for some foundations. Out to 1.7 miles, only heavily reinforced building still have some remnants. Out to 2.7 miles, some multi-story buildings would still have their skeletons standing, and significant damage to structures would extend out to about 4.7 miles.
This doesn't get anywhere close to the documented blast of Tsar Bomba [wikipedia.org], which was a 50MT bomb that had a 4.6km fireball, caused damage at significant distances (with atmospheric lensing causing damage hundreds of miles away), and would have caused third-degree burns to creatures 60 miles away. It was detonated on the island of Novaya Zemlya, and it broke windows in Finland and Sweden.
I don't think that either nation could ever have blanketed the entire planetary surface with nuclear weapons; blast effects and areas just don't match up. But to suggest that nuclear weapons are little more effective than conventional weapons -- which is essentially what your post says -- is dead wrong.
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:4, Insightful)
You underestimate the shock and the logistics (Score:2)
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I recognize your argument concerning modern societies' dependence on logistics and organization, but modern societies are also interdependent. If the US would be hit in a way which would kill of the know-how of how to run things, competence from other countries would likely compensate to an extent.
Take for example your issue with spare parts for cars. For many cars on US roads, spare parts are produced and stored in Japan and Europe. The companies with the logistical capacity are multinational and the exper
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What? No "killah cockroaches"?! This post-nuclear-holocaust world is sounding less and less appealing every day.
Besides, I'm not so sure a dozen nukes wouldn't cripple the U.S. Those flatworms in Congress and the White House are doing their best to cripple to U.S. over global warming, the bad economy or the fact that a small percentage of the country doesn't have proper health coverage.
p.s. Apologies to flatworms.
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What? No "killah cockroaches"?! This post-nuclear-holocaust world is sounding less and less appealing every day.
cockroaches surviving radiation is bullshit anyway.
I tested the theory in a microwave and it died pretty good.
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Any nuclear strike on a decent
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Depends on which cities you hit I suspect:
Washington DC (mostly because that'd take out the politicians)
New York
Los Angeles
Chicago
Houston
Philadelphia
Phoenix
San Antonio
San Diego
Dallas
San Jose
Detroit
These are the 11 largest cities in the US [infoplease.com] plus DC. If that killed everyone in those cities (unlikely) it'd cost 26.4 million lives in the US.
The economic outcome would be horrible, but taking out New York takes out all the Wall Street brokers and most of the bankers, so it'll probably come out as a wash
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In addition to the factors others have mentioned there is this - when the number of warheads is reduced, each remaining one becomes proportionally more valuable.
The practical effect of this is that it increases the pressure on the 'trigger'. Back during the Cold War, losing a single SSBN
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Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Insightful)
But keep going, you've got a long way to go before you can start preaching to countries with a dozen or nuclear weapons about the need for restraint.
I don't buy that. One madman with a nuke is worse than a peaceful leader with a thousand nukes.
It's not our number of nukes that allows us to preach to Iran and N. Korea, it's the fact that our leaders are held to certain standards. Our presidents get in trouble for misspeaking or forgetting to bow or not dispensing enough foreign aid; the leaders of the aforementioned countries give speeches advocating genocide... to thunderous applause.
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"Our presidents get in trouble..."
haha.
good one.
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:4, Insightful)
One madman with a nuke is worse than a peaceful leader with a thousand nukes.
One nuke in American hands justifies the arsenal of every madman out there. As long as America holds a single nuke, any dictator can point to it and argue that he has a sovereign right to self-defense against American aggression. Do as I say, not as I do never works. It's far more dangerous to have these things than to not have them. We need a clear, unambiguous policy that nukes are absolutely forbidden for every state with no double standards. Only then will anyone take disarmament seriously.
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:5, Insightful)
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They don't think about the need to defend against American nukes because they know that the US refrains from using nukes except when attacked by nukes.
The US has a clear nuclear first-strike policy. Nuclear weapons (specifically bunker-busters) were definitely considered for both Afghanistan and Iraq, but they were (fortunately, IMHO) ultimately not used.
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We need a clear, unambiguous policy that nukes are absolutely forbidden for every state with no double standards.
Oh, well, that's ok because the US has tons of double-standards. (Or maybe I parsed that sentence wrong...)
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"We need a clear, unambiguous policy that alcohol is absolutely forbidden for every state with no double standards. Only then will anyone take Prohibition seriously."
Or substitute marijuana, tobacco, fast food, etc.
Cat's out of the bag, friend. Pretending that it's possible to simply ban nuclear weapons by fiat is catastrophically naive. Deal with the world as it is, not how you would pretend it to be.
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Invading the fuck out of a sovereign nation that posed no threat at all, direct or indirect, to the USA, not so much trouble.
Right, nobody called out Bush on the invading of Iraq.
Seriously, his party lost practically all power in every branch of government.
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So in other words it's ok for your leaders to have as many as they want, just not anyone else?
Yes, because my nation provides aid and comfort to anyone, regardless of race, color, or creed. My leaders do not refer to entire races of people as "dogs" and call for their immediate extermination.
Bitterness is understandable, especially in consideration of the fact that the US effectively allows Israel free rein with regards to its nuclear production.
It is understandable, yes. It does not mean I agree with it or condone it. A guy murdering his cheating wife is "understandable," but that does not mean I agree with it.
On a side note I find it embarrassing that the American media constantly implies Israel will be immediately obliterated if Iran is allowed to develop a primitive first nuke, while making no mention of the fact that Israel reportedly has hundreds of nukes with modern delivery vectors. Sigh, what ever happened to logic or reason?
And yet Israel has not used any of these nukes. Nor do their leaders deny scientific facts like the holocaust and refer to all Iranians as greed
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You're selling them short. In two and a half decades, the two nations have dismantled most of the world's entire nuclear stockpile. Compared to the Cold War era it's some kind of miracle. There's a hell of a lot left to do - if the US would ratify the CTBT* it would be an even bigger step in preventing nuclear warfare - but there's a hell of a lot that's been done.
* (They're the most prominent annex II state that has not yet ratified the CTBT, and conversely their ratifying the treaty would be a big politic
Quick agreements are often bad agreements. (Score:2, Interesting)
A member of the bipartisan Congressional Strategic Posture Commission -- headed by former secretaries of defense William J. Perry and James R. Schlesinger -- warns that the preliminary agreement signed by Barack Obama guts part of the American nuclear arsenal but does not demand significant gutting of the Russian nuclear arsenal. Two points of serious note are (1) nuclear launchers and (2) tactical nuclear weap
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you've got a long way to go before you can start preaching to countries with a dozen or nuclear weapons about the need for restraint.
If we have little or no nukes left, why would the listen?
I find it odd that people have a problem with the United States having weapons of mass destruction. Given that we have been in the Korean war, the Vietnam War, two Gulf wars and countless military operations without using them.
The fact that we were willing to settle on a stalemate in Korea and actually lost Vietnam, yet had enough restraint to not use our arsenal demonstrates we have control and restraint (Hence we have earned the right to pre
Russia and the US have already done this before... (Score:5, Informative)
Basically the United States gave Russia a billion or so and tactical/technical/administrative support every year to reduce their weapons stock pile.
So even when Bush and Putin had their panties bunched up, great work was being done cooperatively by both sides. [nytimes.com] The program considered pretty successful by government standards.
I know, I know, the idea of good news from government is a scary one!
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The program considered pretty successful by government standards.
Meaning what, a lot of rich fucks got richer, and almost nothing actually got done?
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Well yeah. Anyone ever here of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_Treaty/ [wikipedia.org]? Let me quote the Wikipedia article: START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80% of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. Proposed by United States' President Ronald Reagan, it was renamed START I after negotiations began on the second START treaty, which bec
Would any country ever give up ALL their nukes? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think not! These weapons are with us for good.
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You just have to invent a smaller, cheaper, more mobile weapon which is capable of wider-scale destruction to replace those nukes. Do your part for nuclear disarmament, study physics.
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There are two historical examples.
The first is Ukraine, which inherited some fraction of the Soviet stockpile, which they turned over to Russia in exchange
(IIRC) for Russia assuming Ukraine's portion of the Soviet Union's international debt and various treaty obligations.
The second is much more interesting, and less widely known -- South Africa. The Apartheid South African government developed a nuclear capability in the 1970s, primarily as a deterrent (they only ever had a few bombs), and made it known th
It's just MAD not to assure mutual destruction (Score:2)
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Still plenty. (Score:2)
The new limit works out to roughly one warhead per seventeen thousand square miles of the Earth's land-mass. That's an area a bit larger than the Netherlands. While I'm glad that we'll be spending less in the long run on maintaining and securing the decommissioned armaments, this doesn't really change the picture should the shit really hit the fan someday.
Really?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
But John R. Bolton, who was ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, said Mr. Obama was going too far. "The number they are proposing for delivery vehicles is shockingly low," he said.
Really? They're aiming for 500 launch vehicles. Are there even that many targets to nuke or does Bolton just want us to do it a few times over for the refried beans effect? Also, this is 500 launch vehicles and 1,500 warheads so I assume there are some MIRVs in there. I was under the impression that the whole defense aspect of nukes was to make retaliation too expensive for the other side to shoot first. If that's the case, 500 launch vehicles and 1,500 warheads would be enough to make anyone regret it. France, China, and the UK seem to be pretty secure with even less.
Re:Really?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
'Launch vehicles' also includes aircraft. B-1, B-2, B-52, and F-16. All of these can also be used with conventional munitions. So bringing down the total number of 'launch vehicles' to 500 will, of necessity, bring the numbers of these aircraft down to some very low, possibly unsustainable, number.
I'd fully agree with bringing down the number of actual warheads. But when you include aircraft that can also be used for other functions, we may be getting into a place where the conventional forces are too small to do anything.
The argument could be made that this is a good thing, but that's a discussion for another day.
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Although this treaty does seem to limit launch vehicles, reducing them may not be as detrimental as you fear to conventional vehicles. For the F-16 for example, can launch a nuke but it's main purpose was as an air-superiority fighter. The new F-22 and F-35 does not have launch capability as far as I know. So the F-22 and F-35 probably do not count towards the 500 vehicle total.
Also bear in mind, the aircraft you listed are being replaced anyway with newer aircraft/weaponry. B-2 is replacing the B-1.
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I really doubt they meant that in this context. START-I, START-II, and the Treaty of Moscow define launch vehicles as ICBM missiles, SLBM subs, and nuclear bombers. Each of these has a particular limit under those treaties. Currently, less than 100 bombers are permitted, and the Treaty of Moscow would make that even less, so it obviously can't be including F-16s. The current number of B-52s, B-1s, and B-2s only just barely makes it under there. A total limit of 500 wouldn't be very strict either: the Treaty
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Those limits numbers are probably off by the way, I'm trying to remember them. I may have confused them with figures for the actual deployed hardware, which is probably close to the limits anyway.
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So...we reduce the overall number of launch vehicles to 500. Once you include sub and ICBM vehicles, the aircraft component could come down to some very low number.
It will be interesting to see exactly what this treaty says.
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Sort of. That figure does include MIRVs, but those are also trying to be reduce/removed as well. Launch vehicles means missiles, but missile is not the only method by which to deliver a nuclear device. Remember in the 1950s when we have B-50s with nukes on board flying in the air for hours, periodically being refueled? Aside from being a show of force, it was a nuclear arsenal that couldn't be touched by a Soviet nuclear strike. Anyway, we still have aircraft delivered nuclear warheads, and the plane that c
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Under START I & II, aircraft did count as launch vehicles. Verifiable destruction to include slicing the wings off B-52's, and leaving the carcass outside long enough to be photographed by a Russian satellite. Also, onsite inspections at various air bases and missile launch facilities on both sides.
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Aircraft do not count as launch vehicles. A launch vehicle is a rocket based delivery system. Both missiles and aircraft count as delivery vehicles. The devil is in the details, unless they're using some abnormal definition of launch vehicle. STARTI had separate provisions regarding the number of aircraft each side could deploy.
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Th
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Also, this is 500 launch vehicles and 1,500 warheads so I assume there are some MIRVs in there.
A few are probably armed with Death's Heads too.
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Really? They're aiming for 500 launch vehicles. Are there even that many targets to nuke or does Bolton just want us to do it a few times over for the refried beans effect?
Start w/ 500 theoretical vehicles. 25% are non operational due to regular scheduled maintenance, waiting on spare parts, reconstruction/rebuilding, waiting on trained personnel to do a simple repair, paperwork screwed up, whatever.
Of the remaining 375, we could attack with, we'd like to split into four distinct missions. Immediate counterattack/attack. Delayed counterattack, as in stop this foolishness or we pound you just as hard in a half hour. Deterrence against other "enemies" (so, we're fighting th
So does this mean... (Score:2)
Anyone know (Score:2)
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Exactly what the difference between 1500 and 2200 nukes is?
Seven hundred nukes.
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700 each. If you can't see that 1400 fewer 100kT+ nuclear weapons is a significant reduction, then you're being blinded by something and need to think about it a bit more. You'd be naive to think that the number will ever go to 0. It's not going to happen. You're also not going to get a single massive reduction to a small (100's) number. It's going to happen in steps, like this.
We've dropped from a peak of > 21,000 nuclear weapons, nearly evenly distributed between the U.S. and the old U.S.S.R. K
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If you can't see that 1400 fewer 100kT+ nuclear weapons is a significant reduction, then you're being blinded by something and need to think about it a bit more
I don't think he's being blinded by anything. Without knowing how much damage each nuke can cause, or how many nukes it would take to wipe out the earth's population, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that 700 nukes may not be a "significant" reduction. It's a step in a good direction, sure, but I think the OP wanted details about how much destru
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I'm blown away that this entirely inaccurate screed got modded informative.
Said President's term wasn't up until January and as much as he wanted to extend his term limit he wasn't likely to succeed. It also wasn't likely that had he succeeded in extending his term limit he would have been reelected anyhow since his approval ratings were at an all time low.
I also need to point out that an ally of Chavez he wasn't an American ally by any stretch of the imagination.
Proper democracies work by voting lame duck
Re:Anyone know (Score:4, Informative)
Let's get some facts straight here...
The Honduran President's term was not up. It's not up until January. He was trying to organize a vote on a constitutional referendum to allow him to run for a second term, which would likely have failed anyway. Yes, he was doing something illegal. But so was Nixon, and I don't remember the army ousting him.
To single out President Obama for his condemning of the coup is pretty disingenuous, considering pretty much every country in the region, and the UN, said the same thing.
Keeping Count (Score:5, Informative)
START requires only that the weapons be deactivated, not destroyed. The US currently has over 4,000 "deactivated" nuclear weapons. Believe someone who used to shove them up a Buff's (B-52) belly, they can be reactivated in short order.
Also, START is 'Strategic' Arms Reduction Treaty. It says nothing about tacticals, either battlefield or ship based weapons, or EMP devices.
Getting rid of obsolete weapons (Score:3, Interesting)
Both sides are developing SDI/anti-missile defenses. This makes many of these weapons obsolete, as they no longer have a guaranteed first-strike capability.
The old arms race was big missiles and bombers; the new arms race is drones and micro-cruise missiles.
But it was a nice press opportunity for both men to come out smelling like roses while they quietly plan each other's destruction.
The inevitable tiring from the indefensible (Score:3, Informative)
DAVID LANGE, Oxford Union debate, 1985 [publicaddress.net]
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Didn't we learn ANYTHING from the 80's? (Score:3, Interesting)
The only winning move is not to play
How about a nice game of chess?
For more about NonProliferation (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the many things I learned from this book was the difference between nonproliferation and denuclearization. Kazakhstan didn't simply agree to store away the warheads like the U.S. and Russia have agreed to do, they dismantled them and shipped them entirely out of the country (basically to Russia and the U.S.). Then they dismantled the accompanying infrastructure, reseach facilities, education facilities, etc so that hopefully, nuclear arms would never again be deployed in Kazakhstan.
It's an interesting story.
Question! (Score:4, Interesting)
Would they be able to use up the dismantled nuclear materials to make another reactor with without having to pay for mining of the stuff...(plutonium, uranium, etc..), or is the materials wasted in the making of the warhead to begin with?
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Apologies for being a troll