Nukes Are "The Only Peacekeeping Weapons the World Has Ever Known," Says Waltz 707
An anonymous reader writes "Famed academic Kenneth Waltz for years has argued that more nukes around the world create peace. Why? Because the more nukes are around, the more people are afraid to start a war with a nuclear-armed state. Peace seems assured with a gun to the world's head. In a recent interview, he argues that Iran gaining nuclear weapons would be a good thing. He points out that 'President Obama and a number of others have advocated the abolition of nuclear weapons and many have accepted this as both a desirable and a realistic goal. Even entertaining the goal and contemplating the end seems rather strange. On one hand the world has known war since time immemorial, right through August 1945. Since then, there have been no wars among the major states of the world. War has been relegated to peripheral states (and, of course, wars within them). Nuclear weapons are the only peacekeeping weapons that the world has ever known. It would be strange for me to advocate for their abolition, as they have made wars all but impossible.'"
Re:One small caveat (Score:4, Interesting)
His assumption requires that all the wielders of nuclear weapons are sane.
Even when they are, war still finds a way.
Re:One small caveat (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the assumption is that, despite the religious fanaticism and/or grandiose visions of world conquest of some leaders, those in possession of nuclear weapons are actually motivated by self-interest and self-preservation.
Ozzy thought of that decades ago (Score:4, Interesting)
Ponder This (Score:5, Interesting)
In May, 1945 as Germany collapsed completely, the Soviets had over six million troops in Eastern Europe. War planners in Britain and the US had already been planning for WWIII. To my mind, one of things that stopped the Red Army in its tracks and ended any possibility of trying to take advantage of the numerical superiority in that theater was the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The unconditional surrender of the Japanese to the Americans after those attacks also meant that the Soviets only managed to grab the Kuril Islands, and never made it as far as the Japanese main islands (there are some who theorize one of the reasons that Truman gave the go ahead was to convince the Japanese to surrender quickly before the Soviets could start moving south from the Kurils).
Yes and no (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear weapons have eliminated wars between major powers, yes. But this does not mean they are peacekeeping weapons. Instead what they do is effectively put a ceiling on the scale and intensity of a conflict. The US doesn't want to get in a major set-piece battle with Russia, because everyone knows if that happens, there won't be a US, Russia, or probably a Europe either. Most wars these days are very low-intensity, and many of them involve proxies of some sort or another: Vietnam, Afghanistan(1980s), Iraq (2003). In all 3 of these cases you have major military powers fighting an enemy that is not as well equipped or armed, but has external backing of another major power to one extent or another. In Vietnam you had the Soviets arming, training, and in some cases fighting for the North Vietnamese; Afghanistan has mujaheddin funded and armed by US money and weapons, and in Iraq you had Syria and Iran assisting the insurgents. Here's an analogy: if you dislike a guy, but you know he carries a gun with him, you aren't going to walk up to him and punch him in the face: you're going to get shot. But you can get at him by paying a kid $20 to go slash the guy's tires while he's sitting in a bar or something. You two are not exactly "at war", but you are also not at all at peace. So what nuclear weapons do is basically force you, as a leader, to draw the line at how far you are willing to take a conflict, and who you're willing to fight against. But hostile action is, and mostly likely always will be, a major and vital part of statecraft. And this would be true even if every state had nuclear weapons.
That being said, I have read Waltz numerous times, and I know I've cited him him several times while in grad school. And he is right that we still need to keep nukes around, because even a bunch of low-intensity conflicts are "better" (ie, not as costly in terms of human life and money) than just one major conflict between large nations like the US and Russia (partly because any conflict of this magnitude would certainly draw in other states, while a low intensity conflict is more likely to stay isolated).
Re:Inevitably... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nukes are easy for YOU to get rid of.
Making sure everyone ELSE gets rid of THEIRS is the hard part.
Huge logical hole. First prove your premise (Score:5, Interesting)
I am horrified that the smart people of slashdot are simply accepting the premise that nukes have exclusively created peace in the world. Misunderstanding this point can cause that it is trying to avoid. Mr Waltz's thesis is that since the end of WWII there hasn't been a major war between Nuclear powers. He asserts that the major change has been the existence of nukes, therefore nukes are what are keeping the peace. That logic is flawed horribly. This is confusing correlation with causation. Other things have changed also. For example:
I can assert that since 1945 the United Nations has existed. Therefor the UN has prevented a major war;
World War II is the most heavily documented event in human history. Since we cannot ignore the mountains of history we are able to avoid repeating it. Santayana is proved, not Waltz;
After WWII education and communications have boomed. Since smart people anywhere on Earth who can commentate in written English can exchange ideas freely on Slashdot the conditions for war are ameliorated. Therefor Slashdot and the internet and mass communication have prevented war.
As a corollary: To be correct Waltz would have to rephrase his comments to: Nukes can't keep the peace, they are objects. It is knowledge of what will happen if the Nukes are used that keeps the peace. The confounding of Nukes and knowledge is troubling.
This also ignores two facts: First, that except for a tiny part all of the damage of WWII was done with conventional weapons. When we look at image after image of different blasted cities, only two were nuked. If we hid the few important landmarks could anyone here tell the difference. Horror and death are horror and death -- how they are achieved may not be important. Second, India and Pakistan are still well within the average, 17.3 years, between wars. We have no proof that Nukes have done anything to maintain peace between them.
It is most important to realize that none of these are exclusive. It can easily be argued that it is some combination of the factors I have laid out that keeps the peace.
Re:More data needed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not likely to happen that way.
The most likely scenario for a thermonuclear war is between one or two smaller states with long running hatred
and religious fanatical governments.
The big players are likely to stay out of it. It will be far from a global event, and won't even fully destroy the
states involved.
Lets say Pakistan and India have a go, or Iran and Israel: I don't see any other state too interested
to jump into that mix on any of the sides. The participants get stung hard, exhaust their arsenals
and beg for humanitarian aid.
Contrary to popular belief a few tens of warheads going off is not going to affect life on earth
that much from a biological stand point.
Re:One small caveat (Score:4, Interesting)
According to this map [wikipedia.org] from the article you cited I think you man Iraq and not Iran.
If you actually followed some of the links from the article you cited you would fined this [wikipedia.org]. The idea that Zionist want parts of Iraq in a conspiracy theory.
growing fanatical religious movement that have strong power base within the country
Care to cite something that supports this statement. All I can fined is a reference to a political party [wikipedia.org] that merged with a larger one on 1976. By the way, a single professor, Hillel Weiss, does not make a "strong power base".
I know Israel is widely suspected of already having them
There is quit a but of evidence [wikipedia.org] that takes the possibility of Israel having nuclear weapons far beyond "suspected". It is generally accepted that they have them but have not officially admitted to it because they do not want to open the conversation as to what they want them for.
The only connection between Israel and Iran is Iran's desire to "remove Israel from the pages of history". Israel has no desire to Iranian lands.
Re:Inevitably... (Score:2, Interesting)
Value human life?
USA == Drone Warfare, Phosphorus Bombardment of Civilian Populations, Depleted Uranium, Prevetor of Land Mine Ban, Napalm Villages, Only Use of Atom Bomb, Moro Massacre, etc.
Al Qaeda? A useful instrument of CIA operations.
Obama? Best president the CIA ever placed - better than Bush Sr.
Re:Inevitably... (Score:5, Interesting)
You should read a bit of history, not even that far back, about how international relations worked in the 19th century. Or, in general, at any time between the start of the dark ages in the 8-9th century to into the 20th century.
Why do people feel the need to invade other countries ? Simple, historically the first and foremost reason has been because the invader believes they can win and do whatever they want, from annexing a tiny stroke of land to "this is what we do, this is how we live" mongol armies, to muslims massacring entire populations. More often than not, they were right that they could attack without consequences. Tactically speaking, wars are most often over before they even begin, since one thing is for absolutely sure : when it comes to war, nobody's interested in a fair fight.
But that's not why the west wages wars, at least not in the last 50-60 years. The west makes war to protect trade relations. Those wars are comparatively tiny, and the invader retreats without replacing the current population as most historical wars did.
Oh and by far the scariest weapon is not an atom bomb, which is really kind of pathetic, barely matching the death toll of a single bombing run, but the simple and humble knife. Several muslim empires have killed more then 200 million people each using only the simple and humble knife, and a quite dull badly made brittle knife at that. No other state or weapon has come anywhere close to those piles of corpses.
The real problem politicians have with an atom bomb is that it's near unstoppable : your hopes of protecting any location from an atomic bomb are small at best, and so you cannot protect your own ass. If you have a nuke, which is the size of a large woman's purse and the weight of 5 bricks of orange juice, it is trivial to kill, say Obama or whoever follows him, or Kim Il Sung for that matter. Just bring it near any public appearance of the guy and ...
They will have the same problems with automated sniper robots, for example.