All of the fearmongering about the dire consequences of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons sounds very familiar to me. Back in the 1960’s the same thing was said about India and then Pakistan, or how a nuclear war between those two countries would be inevitable if they obtained them. I think someone would have noticed if that had actually happened.
It didn’t, of course, any more than Stalin’s Soviet Union obtaining The Bomb resulted in a nuclear war with the United States, or Mao’s China getting it lead into a war with either the West or Russia or India, all of which were rivals to China in one way or the other.
More recently, for many years, the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations all thundered about the disaster which would ensue if North Korea successfully developed an atomic bomb. Well, the North Koreans did, and what happened? Essentially nothing, that’s what, except maybe a little more stability in the region, not less. For one thing, all of the American blustering about the possibility of doing something to accomplish “regime change” in North Korea suddenly stopped.
It’s an accepted fact that Israel somehow obtained nuclear weapons, possibly as early as 1973, and it’s also common knowledge in the global military community that Israel has one or two ballistic missile submarines floating around somewhere. The Israelis have used these weapons exactly as many times as Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have used them: Zero. The only nation with the dubious distinction of ever actually using the gods-damned things remains the United States, and even the Americans have never dared to use them again. Why?
The answer is as glaring as a nuclear explosion: Mutually Assured Destruction(MAD). Perhaps the most appropriate acronym ever created in the English language, MAD is the doctrine that one can never dare risk using nuclear weapons against another nuclear power or its non-nuclear allies because if one does, then one will be destroyed as surely as one’s enemy. In short, it’s madness to use the things.
It seems that what happens whenever a nation acquires nuclear weapons is that all of the others say, “Welcome to the Nuclear Club. There’s only one rule–you can never use your new weapons. If you do, you will die. Got it?”
Nuclear-armed rivals have another mutual benefit: They become very reluctant to even use conventional weapons against each other out of fear that any real war between them could escalate to the nuclear level, either through accident or design. This is why Pakistan and India have not engaged in a full-scale war since they both got nukes, and why the Americans and Russians never turned the Cold War into a hot one with their own non-nuclear forces on any kind of large scale. Even after the Soviet Union broke up, not once has any of its nukes have actually been used by anyone.
MAD works. We are all alive today because it does work.
So what would happen if Iran did successfully test an atomic bomb, and how would this affect the Middle East? First, Iran would join the Nuclear Club and have the one rule explained to its government, though I’m damned sure the Iranians are already well aware of it. Second, no one, not the United States, not Israel, would dare mount an all out conventional attack on Iran, or even try to hard too overthrow its government by other means. They would simply have to learn to live with it.
As the Iranian government would simply have to learn to live with Israel. By the same token, Iran’s allies in the region would become less tempting targets to attack, and the Iranians themselves would act to restrain the former from escalating conflicts too much out of the very reasonable fear that any war in the region could escalate into someone using The Weapon Which Cannot Be Used.
So what’s all the fuss really about? I think it’s because America and Israel know that a nuclear-armed Iran would be able to successfully blunt their imperial ambitions in the region, and that Iran will probably get them sooner or later(after all, if the North Koreans did it, the Iranians can certainly do it), so they’re doing everything they can to get as much as they can before Iran actually joins the Nuclear Club, with all of the consequences I listed above.
It’s not really fear of the Iranians actually using nuclear weapons that is driving American and Israeli fearmongering, it’s the knowledge that American and Israeli options in the region will be much more limited after Iran acquires The Weapon That Cannot Be Used that is doing so.
I do find it interesting, however, that the Obama Administration has toned down its anti-nuclear rhetoric of late while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has increased his to frothing-at-the-mouth proportions in the middle of an Israeli election where the number one issues are the increasing costs of housing and growing inequality of wealth within Israel. Iran is barely on the radar in domestic Israeli political debate.
Maybe Obama’s been told by people who really do know that Iran will get nuclear weapons sooner or later, what it won’t do with them, and to just get over it. Pity those same people haven’t told our Congresscritters the same thing, or maybe they have and many of the latter are just too stupid to get it.
Anyway, my point is that a nuclear-armed Iran is NOT something to fear. If anything, it will bring more stability to the Middle East, not less, and surely more stability in that messed-up part of the world should be welcomed, not demagogued. There’s no need to panic here.
So I will finish here, listen to the returning cardinals and chickadees in northeastern Ohio, watch the snow continue to melt, and plan my first bar-b-que of the season tomorrow. Spring is coming.
And have a nice day.
welshterrier2 said:
Well, hello Barbarian. How grand it is to see you’ve created your own little niche here on the intertubes. I look forward to reading more of your splendid insights and sharing my own ideas. And my very, very best to the elegant Lady DIE.
So, let’s jump right in on this Mutually Assured Destruction business.
If one studies the history, and certainly you have, the scorecard looks pretty good. These guys didn’t nuke those guys; these other guys didn’t nuke those other guys. Almost seventy years now and ain’t nobody dropped nothing. Of course, while history may be instructive, it sadly is not always the best teacher contrary to popular cliche.
Let’s look at a few other scorecards.
Did you ever see one of those teenage movies where a couple of “punks” get their hot rods and drive toward each other at top speed until one of them veers off to avoid a head on crash and is called the loser. The thing is, in real life, sometimes they crash. I suppose one could argue this is different than MAD because there’s a chance of survival if the other guy gives up. In MAD, everyone dies.
Well, everyone except the uber ubers who get to go live in the special shelter. Is it just possible some uber uber head of government might believe he could survive an all out nuclear war? Yup, it’s possible. You may have noticed that one or two of these characters are not anchored to what we might call rational thought.
I’m also not comfortable with the similarity to the gun nuts’ argument of let’s arm everybody. If the bad guys know everyone is armed, they’ll be much more at risk and much less likely to act. Yeah, sure. More guns means more deaths from guns.
And then we come to the martyrs. God will reward all of us in the next life for standing up to the devil in this life. How many examples have we seen of these one-oar rowboaters doing themselves in? Think about that Jim Jones lunatic who poisoned everyone in his community to get the last laugh on the US. Could anyone really be comfortable with his finger on the little pink button?
If the case is to be made that we shouldn’t see a given national leader, say our friends in N. Korea or in Iran, as Jim Jones lunatics, fair enough. Surely the credibility of the US Government or the US press is, well, not credible. But can we safely extend from that understanding a belief that all leaders, both today’s and those in the future, can be trusted to fear the consequences of engaging in nuclear madness?
There was a great line in an Arlo Guthrie song about Watergate:
You’re the one we voted for
So you must take the blame
For handing out authority
To men who are insane.
Consider this very brief video clip from Noam Chomsky. Since I couldn’t figure out how to embed a link on Word Press, I’ll just post it as text. Copy and paste the following URL into your browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG_PjJoy6KY&t=1m20s.
To conclude, MAD has a perfect track record … so far. We need to rid the world of these monsters and the monsters who build them and the monsters who hold human life so cheaply. The only path to the future lies with de-escalation; not escalation. If balanced power protects us, let us seek a de-escalated balance.
Good luck with the new site, my friend.
– welshTerrier2
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ohiobarbarian said:
Just as expected from you, a cogent and coherent counterpoint to my little argument there. Yes, taken to its logical extreme, my argument implies that if every nation on the planet has nuclear weapons, then there can be no more war.
Of course, I don’t believe that for a second. OTOH, I’m not sure that totally eliminating them, if that can even ever be done, which I doubt, is necessarily a good idea. World Wars I and II were fought without nuclear weapons(until the very end), devastated entire countries and massacred entire populations. You agree with me that so far—MAD has indeed worked.
I suppose I should narrow my point to say that in the specific case of Iran obtaining The Bomb, I think that that would at least somewhat stabilize the situation in the Middle East and blunt American imperial reach in the region.
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Chris Maukonen said:
Made this very point myself on another blog a while ago. Precisely.
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Bruce said:
Nukes Are INSANE; whether weaponized or “utilities” and there is nothing as “a little insane” either, particularly to those who are poisoned or perish, whether by ‘minimal’ (e.g., reactor) dosage (there Is NO Safe minimum dose), intentional sub-atomicbombing (i.e. depleted uranium projectiles, deadly for Over 4 BILLION Years) or the relatively short and ‘more’ “merciful’ incineration or “swiftly” lethal dose of multi-ton nuclear bomb explosions upon ourselves! Their banishment is our only alternative to self-extinction.
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ohiobarbarian said:
Of course they are insane; that’s the only reason MAD has worked, but I don’t think their banishment is our only alternative to self-destruction. The fact that I can write this, going on 53 years after my first clear world event memory, the Cuban Missile Crisis, proves that.
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welshterrier2 said:
First, let me say that I agree 100% with your comment.
But total banishment of all things nuclear is an easy position. Tougher is asking whether, given the current status of nuclear weapons, unilateral disarmament is a sound path? If one side to a conflict disarms, does that reduce or increase the overall risk of nuclear weapons use?
Should the US destroy its entire nuclear arsenal without a similar commitment from other nuclear nations? Should Paklstan “trust” India? Should Iran stop pursuing weapons and “trust” Israel? If the argument is that all should disarm, I agree. Unilateral is tougher though.
The only value to mutually assured destruction is that it seeks to balance power between antagonistic nations. Without balance, we get empire, exploitation and extermination. The folly of mutually assured destruction is that we are, sooner or later, going to assure our destruction.
Those who argue that “nuclear balance” ensures peace fail to consider the human condition.
Look at the one-man-in-the-cockpit disaster we just witnessed. Look at the heavily armed cop shooting an unarmed man. Look at that group of cops strangling a defenseless man struggling for his last breath. Look at the bombs and chemical weapons the US has dropped on civilian populations. These “officials” were specially trained, certified to do their jobs and sometimes even duly elected and yet millions died as a direct result of their bigotry, their depression, their greed, their lust for power and their madness.
What is the real lesson of mutually assured destruction when we witness a pilot intentionally fly an airplane filled with so many innocent people into the side of a mountain? That pilot knew his own death was “assured”. He knew the deaths of those who trusted him were “assured”. The real lesson is that mutually assured destruction doesn’t work because humans are not perfect beings and when the stakes are raised to the nuclear annihilation level, there is too much on the line to trust one finger on one button.
If one “side” has nuclear weapons, is it wise to provide nuclear weapons to their adversaries to create balanced power? The answer is no. To argue that Iran should be “allowed” to acquire nukes isn’t right. It leans, quite correctly, on US exploitation in the Middle East. But, it increases the overall catastrophic risk. Arming Iran may be more “fair and balanced” but a post-nuclear world would be as well.
These weapons can destroy everything … the people of the earth, the animals, the food, the water … everything. Call for balanced disarmament … not balanced armament. Imperfect beings must never be trusted with doomsday weapons.
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ohiobarbarian said:
I’m all for getting rid of all of the damned things. I just don’t think that will ever happen until we, as a species, become more mature.
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juliania2 said:
This is wonderful, OhioBarbarian – kudos to you for the effort! I have to say, having Los Alamos on my kitchen horizon, that I shudder at any nuclear proliferation, and I’m still proud of New Zealand for going nuclear free, though a lot of other matters down there are far less than desirable – not cricket though – we play the Aussies in the final of the World Cup tonight!
Kitty litter has closed the Waste Isolation Project and put southern New Mexico very much in harms way for eons to come – and that’s the only disposal area this country had for the stuff. So, the state is suing I hear, and good luck to them on that front. We just loves our privitizations, don’t we?
Congrats – have fun with this! And come over to wendye’s for some chitchat on her post as well. Multipolarity – I love it!
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ohiobarbarian said:
Thank you, Juliana! I didn’t know you were in New Mexico, land of marvelous green chile, which is abominably hard to find in Ohio.
What’s “kitty litter?”
And please accept my condolences on New Zealand’s loss in the cricket World Cup(I used the google, heh! heh! heh!)
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juliania2 said:
Oh, I’m glad you asked, (and thank you, we kiwis are in mourning today 😦 but that was the first time we have ever got into the final, played in vast and scary Melbourne Cricket Ground – we prefer our own smaller habitat. At least we had beaten the Aussies on home turf in the preliminary round, so our beaks are not permanently bent – not more bent than usual, anyway.)
Kitty litter. Los Alamos in its infinite wisdom packed its drums of nuclear waste with kitty litter before sending to the Waste Isolation storage area – someone got the bright idea that organic kitty litter could be used – so umpteen numbers of the stuff got packed with that and one has exploded underground and leaked, because organic isn’t chemically stable as the previous batches apparently were.
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