"Global Zero" Jordan's Queen Noor: We are approaching a nuclear tipping point

Queen Noor: We are approaching a nuclear tipping point, CNN interview 5 July. Do you agree with the ideas behind this woman's speech?

 

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Voted yes, & I believe that Queen Noor's efforts will increase the pressure on governments not to waste peoples' resources on developing, and maintaining, and safeguarding ever more nuclear weapons. Of course, nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented or entirely eliminated (I'm sure that She understands that) but the most logical place to aim, in a fair way for equitable global nuclear weapons reductions is at the clearly-understandable bulls-eye of total elimination: It's the focal point that will do the most good for the future.

She's right, but don't underestimate the depth of understanding behind unpretentious messages and messengers. Queen Noor does a lot of good for her country and for the world, without the widespread impression that she's an out-of-touch do-gooder trying to make a personal legacy. It's not easy being Queen, but I think she loves her life and has it admirably together.

 

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Why the attention on America, Russia and China are both major nuclear powers, the blame America attitude first is tiresome.

The better poll question would have been;

Do you agree with Queen Noor's view point?
Yes - she sounds like a very intelligent woman to me

No - nuclear weapons are essential for defense.

Don't know.....

Or;

Do you agree with Queen Noor's view point?
Yes - she sounds like a very intelligent woman to me

No - nuclear weapons are essential for the power balance in the world.

Don't know


The interesting thing is that it appears that the MAD Policy did work, it maintained a balance of power across the Globe and kept a peace that didn't lead to another world wide war.

The soviet Union and WARSAW Pact had enough conventional forces to have overrun Europe in a conventional war, but the NATO forces had the ability with nukes to ruin the Soviet Union Eastern Europe, and make any victory a pryic victory.

The problem as we face it today is regimes and theocracies that have personal agendas such as Iran and the Mahadi, ushering in the chaos to bring about the apocalypse and the final judgement, or North Korea with it's cult of personality leadership, and unstable leaders that decide to start a war because of some perceived personal insult.

 

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And if every nation instead of just 5 had had a nuke then or now, then there would have been/would be no war at all.

Fuck Yeah!

No, I had you at MAD: Back the trucks up to the UN building, and issue 1 nuclear weapon to each ambassador. Even one for the USA too. Everyone go home each with your own nuclear bombs now, and think for a while about how it finally happened so simply that War Is Over (cool). Adjourned.

 

I like the idea the same way I like the lyrics to "Imagine".

 

Aw, man I can't believe you even forgot the lyrics to Imagine, too. :bawl:

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It is nice to imagne a world where a bulk of the combat power isn't controlled by only a handful of nations, and the rest of the world is likewise affected by their decisions. That would be the "problem", if you want to call it one. Nuclear weapons are just an effect.

She seems well spoken. I agree with most of what she says, in principle, and I'm sure she does wonderful things for her organization. I just don't ever see this "global zero" thing happening. The gigantic arsenals of the Cold War, which are (or were) a huge potential threat to many more nations than just their operators, have already been decimated and are continuing to go away. That in itself is a very good thing. To what extent this will continue, I have no idea, but let's not kid ourselves into believing "global zero" has a snowball's chance in hell of happening.

Princess Di campaigned against landmines. Queen Noor campaigns for nuclear disarmament. Good for them.

edit: The poll is worded poorly

 

Fair point about the weighted poll option but even president Obama acknowledges that America is the only country to have ever used them!

 

And?

 

The point is US nuclear attacks were irresponsible and immoral: We introduced nuclear terrorism to the world, and that will always compromise our credibility and authority as world cop, especially on the subject of nuclear weapons.

 

Nicely put. It's just one of a number of uncomfortable truthes the American people have to come to accept imo.

 

Now you've done it.

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Possession of a single nuclear weapon per country is not even close to sufficient to establish a global MAD scenario. You need a lot more weapons than that, and also methods to deliver them to targets, defend against incoming nuclear attack, etc. At an absolute minimum, every country would have to have hundreds of nuclear warheads and various advanced global delivery systems and supporting infrastructure - which is far beyond the means of the vast majority of states.

Nor is a global MAD scenario desirable in the first place: it'll only work until one country somewhere makes a tiny miscalculation (which won't take long in a world of 190+ nuclear powers, many of which are not particularly stable or functional states), at which point human civilization gets destroyed.

 

We've never been mad enough to push the button, even in extreme crisis. Even when there were many trumped-up cold-war fears of annihilation without retaliation (as during the Turkey Missile Crisis). The many nuclear-armed nations of the world are not mad enough to follow a future nuclear strike by launching everything available. Nothing is fool-proof, but mastering complex and expensive technologies also entails an examination of the responsibilities and consequences associated.

It's very much the same when we buy vehicles, guns, or other potentially lethal devices as individuals: We are inescapably subject to similar laws of consequences in their use, as are national leaders acquiring WMD stockpiles. Just because many more people today can kill others by many various technological means does not mean it's happening more frequently. Our species is learning restraint as our powers increase, because it is ever more clear to us that restraint has become a matter of survival. I believe that in the distant future we will be controlling energies greater than presently packaged in nuclear weapons, and I think we will be able (narrowly, because survival is always our keenest motivator, and focal point of collective thought) to handle ourselves and the ancient responsibilities of life and death as our technological powers and responsibilities grow.

Small but belligerent and nuclear-armed states understand clearly that nuclear weapons do not provide a viable offensive capability: The global response to such action would be counterproductive for the initiator of nuclear-weapons hostilities to say the least.

Nuclear weapons have become popular as an excellent deterrent from attack, and nuclear-weapons proliferation will continue to be a stabilizing factor in the global military balance. Because of defensive WMD deterrents, military conquest and attack will continue to recede from the "final option" decision-making slot, and into to the realm off the ridiculous in international disputes. WMD deterrent works. Leaders are compelled to move beyond considerations of initiating open warfare, to pursue more sensible means of resolving heated international disputes.

I still support a reduction in the world's most ridiculous stockpiles of nuclear overkill. As a US citizen, I am concerned with the cost-benefit of maintaining oversized and outdated arsenals. I fully support an international initiative to reduce nuclear weapons to zero, but I also know that along the way, most developed nations are going to wind up with at least one ostensibly-operational WMD deterrent. That's why I only half-jokingly mention passing them around to every government, to relieve their populations of the tremendous financial burden of building the modern equivalent of the Totem Pole. It is not reasonable for present nuclear powers to expect others not to stand up their own don't-fuck-with-me symbols.

Until state warfare is definitively over, prudent people will continue to construct the best deterrents to outside aggression possible, and it's been clear in the nuclear age that nuclear weapons are highly effective deterrents. Now that the world's borders are settling, nuclear attacks as a means of advancing a state's power are already completely beyond reason, and the chances of us all going up in smoke because of an isolated misunderstanding are no greater than everyone in a city running each other down with their cars, all because the news says that a pedestrian was hit in a crosswalk- by accident or in anger.

 

Hypewaders, I have to ask; do you feel the conventional incendiary bomb attacks on the cities of Japan during WW-2 were irresponsible and immoral?

 

We all most had Nuclear war in 1995, never say the red button won't be pushed.

 

We pushed said button twice in the 1940's, and the world has yet to face any crisis even approaching the same order of magnitude as that one.

Sure they are. It's exactly a stated determination to do such which prevents said nuclear strikes from occurring in the first place. That's how the MAD theory of deterrence, which you are advocating, works.

No it doesn't. Mastering any technology is simply a question of paying a sufficient number of qualified scientists and engineers for a sufficiently long time. That doesn't entail any corresponding effort (let alone, success) on the parts of political and military planners, as such.

And the way that said "responsibilities and consequences" are "examined" is, at least when it comes to new, potentially disruptive technologies, by going ahead and using them. That's the only way to really know. I don't know of any example in history of any power developing a qualitatively new military technology and not then going on to use it.

And lets note that the presence of these laws of consequences is insufficient to prevent large numbers of people from being killed with said various lethal devices. In many cases, the profusion of increasingly-lethal devices leads to an increase in violence, and not the opposite. In many cases, the outcome of the new calculus is simply the acceptance of the bad outcomes - to presume sufficient maturity, responsibility and will is silly. We are not a race of philosopher-kings.

Nuclear arsenals indisputably provide a viable offensive capability, particularly when it comes to small, belligerent states. It's just that said capability doesn't consist of launching the nuclear weapons. Instead, one leverages the threat of nuclear escalation to create space for conventional offensive attacks. That's why MAD didn't prevent any of the myriad proxy wars and invasions during the Cold War, for one example.

And the corollary to that fact is that any nuclear proliferation up till the point of successfully demonstrating a viable nuclear deterrent constitutes an extreme provocation to attack. Which ought to be obvious, given the history of attacks on states with incipient WMD capabilities.

Well, no. As mentioned above, the proliferation itself is very strongly destabilizing. It's the presence of an established, fixed MAD state that (supposedly) provides stability - the process of getting there is fraught with instability. Global MAD is something of a Utopia, in that sense.

Nor is it easily maintained. These are enormously costly systems we're talking about, and the failure to maintain considerable investment in them results in a qualitative disadvantage (and so, destabilization of any MAD status) in fairly short order.

Except when it doesn't. Saddam's considerable arsenal of chemical and biological weapons didn't prevent Iran from invading his country, nor the subsequent coalition invasion. Nor did the proliferation of chemical weapons in Europe and Japan prevent either of the World Wars.

Except when they aren't. Again, large-scale proliferation of chemical weapons of mass destruction didn't compell anyone to avoid either of the World Wars.

How do you square that with the rest of your post, where you insist that nuclear weapons proliferation is a force for stability and peace? If that stuff is true, then wouldn't getting rid of all nuclear weapons imply a corresponding increase in instability, aggression, open warfare, etc.? If so, why would you "fully support" such a goal? If not, then what's left of your suppositions above?

Although I note that you immediately go on to qualify your support as rather less than "full."

Not without promises to stand down their own symbols, you mean. That being the entire basis of the existing non-proliferation regime.

I don't think the historical record on that count is either long enough, or provides sufficient testing of the various scenarios, to be particularly confident. There's only been a handful of serious political conflicts involving nuclear-armed states, and they've come rather close to erupting into nuclear warfare on a number of occasions (and there has been no particular absence of conventional warfare involving them). The most we can really say is that NATO and the USSR managed to go a few decades without destroying one another, and that India and Pakistan have managed to go a bit over a single decade without nuclear warfare. And, again, there was no shortage of conventional warfare involving those parties throughout the periods in question.

I dispute the premise there, but more to the point, actual nuclear attack was never the primary way that nuclear weapons are used to advance state power (after their initial disruptive entry onto the scene, that is). They increase the military leverage that a state possesses, and that is just as useful for offensive purposes as for defensive.

Moreover, there really isn't any such thing as a "purely defensive" or "deterrent" capability: to the extent that your defense capabilities are improved, you are more willing and able to risk offensive moves. They are simply two sides of the same coin, and it is a grave mistake to imagine that certain forms of military power are only "defensive" and so unobjectionable. I mean, we're talking about bombs here, after all.

That's a preposterous comparison.

 

IMO nukes are nothing compared with biowarfare. Which is becoming unimaginably easy.

That aside, a guy I sometimes work with is 100% CT. It's like this guy lives, eats, breaths and shits Conspiracy Theory's day in and day out. I was talking about the new guitar coming out for Band Hero and he almost choked. Did I see not see that this is exactly what "The Parasite" wants me to do - waste my time with Band Hero while my country is taken over from the inside.

I just said get a life.

Anyway, typical of these sorts, he MAY be on to something, but, is probably so enveloped in CT as to make that something almost unintelligible. So, where am I going and how is it connected to this thread. Well, we made a bet, I won't drink any beer for a month (and I love beer) -versus- he has to come out one Friday with us and have 2 pints (as well as buy a round, he doesn't drink at all).

Here's the bet he made:
Israel will launch a major strike on Iran (within the next 6 months - on a nuclear facility) this eventuates to all an all-out War with the USA. The conclusion is regime' change in Iran and the eventual election of a US puppet as their President.


I think I'm having me a free point of Guinness in December

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What are the odds of THAT happening? Like 1 in ???

 

Yes, we dropped atomic bombs on two cities in the finale of a global orgy of blood, the likes of which I don't expect we'll ever see again. Not many people had comprehended the meaning of such weapons at the time. But now, we have. The many nuclear-armed nations of the world are not mad enough to follow a future nuclear strike, or terrorist attack, or accident, by launching everything available at whomever seems immediately to blame, because that could be a Mistake.

I’m talking about deterrence, and you are talking about Total War and Total Destruction. I don't advocate the patently-insane MAD doctrine. You think we’re capable of it, but I disagree. Call me crazy, but we're not.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the chance to have a confidential and frank conversation with people who have controlled nuclear weapons before. Before I got to know several people who could have been ordered to retaliate for an apparent nuclear attack, I had assumed that there was some sort of intense brainwashing in effect during the Cold War, to ensure that if things got crazy we wouldn’t hold back on MAD revenge. Well, I was wrong. If the US and Soviet leadership had gone completely bonkers, there were a lot of people with keys and buttons who would have delayed following orders to see what life had in store. It turns out that in spite of the propaganda, military training has never quite been able to over-ride the human soul. Nothing is fool-proof, but mastering complex and expensive technologies also entails an examination of the responsibilities and consequences associated.

Have you ever pointed a weapon at another human being, and had some time to think about the future? There's serious mental effort involved. There have been many military studies conducted, concerning why most soldiers hesitate to kill, and many fake the attempt- especially their first time out. Some progress has been made in conditioning soldiers not to think, but with "doomsday" weapons, it's a tall order.

Reagan's Star Wars (OK that was just a money-laundering scheme) but clever suitcase bombs (N, B, or C) sent by commercial freight are guaranteed, like UPS says "The World. On Time".

It's not a question of heredity or philosohy, but scientific observation: The world is full of many more lethal devices than ever before, yet people are killing each other in inverse proportion to their proliferation. I share in your dismay at present violence, but I don't share your resignation to it. It's not just our weapons that are more lethal today- higher technology means higher lethality, and as technology proliferates we are all constantly being careful not to kill each other, like we've never done before. Because killing other people has increasingly negative consequences. Welcome to the future.

I'm not arguing that nuclear weapons did not deter the USA and Soviets from coming to more direct blows. On the other hand, I don't know how either would have justified even a conventional attack on either homeland in the absence of nuclear weapons. I think that the cold war rivalry was really only worth getting "other people" killed wholesale over, in the minds of the US and Soviet leaders- regardless of what weapons they had. Now that the cold war is over and we're left hoarding more nukes in the USA than all other nations combined, we've discovered that our vast arsenal is completely useless in any war we can conceivably commence. We've wasted our money on all but a small nuclear deterrent, or appearance of such. It would snuff out the legitimacy of any US decision-makers to escalate any conflict into WMDs. Personally, it's academic whether our WMDs can snuff out millions of lives by trauma, burning, or sickness. The defining aspect, and the primary thing that our investments in WMDs has shown is that we are a nation more obsessed with military power than any other. Anyway, after the long Mexican Standoff of the Cold War, nuclear first-strike got such a bad name that it's strategically worthless, and we're left holding our big bag of useless nukes.

Israel? India? Pakistan? I think the history of such attacks is very inconsistent and unconvincing. What is obvious in the case of belligerent states like the USA and Israel is that they get very uppity whenever a nation that disagrees with them appears to be on the cusp of installing their own nuclear deterrent to invasion and attack. Nuclear weapons proliferation has been and will continue to be a stabilizing factor in the global military balance.

No.

Good. Let's just drop the MAD ruse, shall we? WMD deterrent works without any assumption necessary that if somebody starts a fight, then the responsible thing to do is nuke them with enough to kill everyone multiple times, and render continents (or more) uninhabitable. Going berserk is not responsible national policy- not in theory, and not in threat.

Saddam's WMD arsenal was a fiction that Saddam collaborated in maintaining, because he wasn't only afraid of the USA- he was afraid of his neighbors and own people, and the UN inspections were exposing his fake deterrent, as such inspections would do in many places in the USA. We've got to find a better deterrent than the threat of doing things more evil than any nation has done in history.

Chemical weapons those days were strictly tactical, and their tactical utility was highly questionable when winds weren't favorable. Now that strategic WMDs and efficient commercial and military means of delivery have proliferated, leaders are compelled to move beyond considerations of initiating open warfare, to pursue more sensible means of resolving heated international disputes.

We didn't have WMDs at the present scale at the outset of the World Wars. Technology has changed much since then, and so has human contemplation of Total War.

It's a bargain that can only be struck between peers. Any developing nations so desirous will have to be allowed into the club before voting to disband it. Developed nations that have already opted out are way ahead of the rest of us in many ways, and when the last nuclear weapons are converted to fuel, it will be because we'll have put our MAD fears to rest everywhere, and realized that (surprise!) we live in an inter-dependent world in all respects including security.

No, the implied deterrent of nuclear weapons is real today, but overblown tomorrow. Many nations are already coexisting without any need for a nuclear arsenal. It won't be good for the WMD manufacturers that their goods are losing popularity and value, but that's what's going to happen.

False dichotomy. I fully support an international initiative to reduce nuclear weapons to zero. I don't think we can get there directly from here, with the USA riding herd on a lot of nations that don't respect us for having an obscene stockpile of WMDs.

No, I agree with the goal. In my understanding a monopoly on nuclear weapons by a threatening minority of nations is not conducive to NW elimination. At present, stockpile reductions are important on the part of present hoarders, but at the same time a final settlement will require a more equitable global agreement, and that will happen when all nations so desiring have gone nuclear.

The present message from the USA is that we consider ourselves better and more responsible than other nations, and if anybody gets out of line we're going to start killing people. The trouble is, the world can call our bluff, and bankrupt us while we try to do intimidate within the margins of a positive national self-image. Our obscenely overdone nuclear deterrent is useless for keeping other nations down. It does deter 20th-Century style land invasions between superpowers, but so does the rapidly-integrating world economy.

Obviously you and I differ in our study habits.

In Southeast Asia the USA foolishly sacrificed over 50,000 of our young men, and multiple millions of inhabitants in a showdown with the Soviet Union and China. We expended more weaponry there than we had in Europe throughout WWII. We had tense moments in the Cold War, but in the aftermath of each incident both superpowers enacted new safeguards and lines of communication to prevent mistakes, and eliminate the actual need for such exhorbitant arsenals. We are capable of years of all sorts of insanity like this, but we didn't push the Button, because it's just no use.

Indian and Pakistani leaders have the same reality to face as the USA and USSR did, and they are not the inferiors of the old duet in what they contemplate. Most (I hope all) nuclear weapons (real and fake) will be disassembled peacefully, because they will have all outserved their quiet purpose.

Yes, nuclear weapons provide a deterrent against military retaliation. That is why I believe that WMD proliferation will accompany a global realization that there are forces (chiefly economic) more powerful, deployable, and usable than WMD stockpiles.

Sure there is: If someone comes into my house in a threatening and uninvited way, I'm likely to do something violent- but it will be justifiable. However, I won't blow anyone's head off in the street (for one reason, that would be illegal outside my house, where I live). I maintain a purely defensive deterrent in my house, with no intention of raiding the neighbors with it. I maintain that deterrent in proportion to the risk of intrusion. As the risk subsides between houses and nations, so will all our stockpiles. As it becomes obvious that nations must play by certain rules, the illusion that overbuilt WMD stockpiles increase national security will be laid to rest. Ultimately, I think we'll lose interest in nuclear totems to the extent that the last examples will be demilitarized and placed in museums with all the other weaponry that has become strategically obsolete. I hope that happens in Queen Noor's lifetime, and I greatly respect her for advancing the notion, which is the most important factor in making it all possible.

We're talking here about what happens after the smoke clears, and we're talking about being rational imagining The Day After. People enamored of war often worship insanity as a powerful force, but it isn't. Reason is eclipsing aggressive impulse in human evolution. The chances of us all going up in smoke because of an isolated misunderstanding are no greater than everyone in a city running each other down with their cars, all because the news says that a pedestrian was hit in a crosswalk- by accident or in anger.

The world is not on board with anyone's plan to cut loose with everything we've got on each other and ourselves if ______________ (fill in the blank). The onus is on you to produce evidence here of the world's unanimous suicide pact. I don't see it.

Thanks for your post, sorry I went so long replying.