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[martinuzz]

Prime Minister Abe of Japan has decreed early elections, in the hopes of gaining a stronger electoral mandate to further his wishes to establish a stronger Japanese military, in response to the North Korean threats.

On the 22nd of october, the Japanese population will vote.

[MorleyDev]

Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, called and said "Don't do it! You'll lose your majority to some socialist who looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi and makes his own jam!".

Meanwhile: North Korea accuses US of declaring war, reserves the right to shoot down US bombers.

[Quarque]

Total disarmament is a horrible idea. It creates the incentive to develop the weapons in secret and hold the world hostage with them.

Limited proliferation is the only viable option.

What sort of proliferation do you mean by 'limited'? Which countries should have nuclear weapons, then, and how many of them should they have?

At the moment, the US and Russia each have about 7.000 nukes.

[Culise]

Prime Minister Abe of Japan has decreed early elections, in the hopes of gaining a stronger electoral mandate to further his wishes to establish a stronger Japanese military, in response to the North Korean threats.

On the 22nd of october, the Japanese population will vote.

I suspect strongly that the fact that the opposition is in complete, but temporary disarray at the moment also played a significant role.  The DP, SDP, and LP were all in preliminary talks to form a joint parliamentary group that could pose a significant challenge to the LDP, but the announcement of early elections essentially cut them off at the pass as they all scramble to secure their own seats.  With the mayor of Tokyo forming her own new party to challenge all comers, it looks like there could be potential for an interesting election.

That said, somehow, "defeat from the jaws of victory" seems to come to mind.  The LDP and Komeito combined already control enough of the Diet to pass constitutional reforms, after all. 

[Antioch]

Total disarmament is a horrible idea. It creates the incentive to develop the weapons in secret and hold the world hostage with them.

Limited proliferation is the only viable option.

What sort of proliferation do you mean by 'limited'? Which countries should have nuclear weapons, then, and how many of them should they have?

At the moment, the US and Russia each have about 7.000 nukes.

The countries of the original non proliferation treaty. And unfortunately the countries that we can't realistically let give up their nukes like India and Pakistan. I don't think the number of warheads per country is that interesting necessarily.

[Madman198237]

Complete nuclear disarmament is cute. That's all it is. It's a cute and incredibly naïve and unrealistic goal. Ultimately, until and unless the laws of physics change and make nuclear weapons unworkable (As in, fission no longer functions in a bomb setting), the best thing for the world is for a relatively stable and large world power, or rather a set of such powers in opposition, to possess said weapons.

Basically, the nuclear standoff between the US and Russia is perhaps the biggest reason why we've not seen another nuclear strike since Nagasaki. Because now, if you're willing to destroy your neighbor(s), you've got to remember that there are two bigger nations willing to cooperate to kill you off.

There's a variety of reasons, but MAD is a MUCH safer policy that "Oh yeah just don't anybody make them, OK?". It's not "safe" according to most peoples' rules, but the rules are a *bit* different when you change scales like that.

[MorleyDev]

As I understand it, the argument for why maintaining large stockpiles of nukes is not necessarily required for defence is that nukes are not good weaponry for actually invading a place. They're a weapon for a decapitating strike, and would need to be coupled with a land invasion to actually finish the war and force a surrender.

So if any rogue nation nukes another nation, the entire rest of the world is going to come down on that nation and destroy them via conventional means, the actual risk from a nuke is fairly low so long as traditional military alliances are maintained between the super-powers without the 'super blocks' forming that led to WW1. Basically, this allows there to still be Assured Destruction without Mutually Assured Destruction.

That said, somehow, "defeat from the jaws of victory" seems to come to mind.  The LDP and Komeito combined already control enough of the Diet to pass constitutional reforms, after all.

Seriously, were they not paying attention to when another G7 government tried this tactic mere months ago? History usually takes *time* to repeat itself, right?

[Madman198237]

Morley, you're attempting to force logic on politics.

There's a law of thermodynamics against that somewhere, I'm sure.




((And the funny part is that if you make one or two loose assumptions you can claim that the second law of thermodynamics is the reason that there is no such thing as a perfectly good government))

[wierd]

The problem with mutually assured destruction (as opposed to MAD, as it directly implies conventional war) is that it has been proven to be capable of failing, and failing spectacularly.

See for instance, WWI.  The reason there even WAS a WWI, was BECAUSE of such mutual defense, mutual aggression agreements.  It is what turned an angry (and stupid) decision by a single monarchy, into a conflict that brought the world to its knees.

[Madman198237]

MAD is mutually assured destruction, and I refer to it in its present, nuclear-weapons-based form.

What you are discussing is NOT a form of MAD. There was NO threat of complete annihilation (That is not how European wars worked) but instead a deterrent of strength---everyone was trying to get enough allies to make attacking them a thoroughly uninviting prospect. And so when the powder trail got lit, the whole keg went off.

MAD has never, as I have ever heard it, been a term applied to conventional warfare, because barring good ol' fashioned Roman salt-the-earth tactics, no means of waging war in all of human history has involved such total and immediate destruction without care for collateral damage, and no tactic has ever resulted in a BYPRODUCT of poisoning the area for decades.

[MorleyDev]

As I understand it, and again I could be misinformed here, the "decapitating strike" is a lot more the expected usage of Nuclear Weaponry in a war nowadays, and the insane MAD policies of the Cold War aren't quiiiite as prominent. At least when you aren't dealing with the USA and Russia.

(Give Trump and Kim some time though, I'm sure they'll fix that).

Also, is it just me or are the DPRK and Ameripol threads merging into one being?

[Madman198237]

Well, the issue is that ANY release of nuclear weapons by the major powers (Against each other or any of the nations with a defend-me! treaty) is going to result in complete destruction of a lot of the planet, if not the crippling of human culture as it exists today.

Why? Defense networks and saturation attacks. If you fire off more missiles that they can stop, you...um....technically we call this winning, but since you're nothing more than a pile of radioactive ash you can't celebrate the fact that you condemned another billion people to varying degrees of agonizing death.

So, in short, MAD is very much still a thing simply because of the strategies of nuclear war.


So don't shoot the dumb things off, please. I understand that we do, in fact, have plenty of elite spec-ops who should be very capable of taking out problematic leaders.


I mean, seriously. It's not like it's THAT big of a diplomatic issue if you slip some spec-ops guys in through the NK-China border and have them kill a lot of NK officials, is it?

[Paxiecrunchle]

Total disarmament is a horrible idea. It creates the incentive to develop the weapons in secret and hold the world hostage with them.

Limited proliferation is the only viable option.

What sort of proliferation do you mean by 'limited'? Which countries should have nuclear weapons, then, and how many of them should they have?

At the moment, the US and Russia each have about 7.000 nukes.

Perhaps every country should have about 400 or so? That should be just enough that everyone can equally destroy the world.

[Egan_BW]

One nuke for each and every human, gifted to them at birth. Each person still has to work out the delivery method themselves, though. Giving your nuke to some other person or authority is an offence punishable by nuking.

[smjjames]

The problem with mutually assured destruction (as opposed to MAD, as it directly implies conventional war) is that it has been proven to be capable of failing, and failing spectacularly.

See for instance, WWI.  The reason there even WAS a WWI, was BECAUSE of such mutual defense, mutual aggression agreements.  It is what turned an angry (and stupid) decision by a single monarchy, into a conflict that brought the world to its knees.

Um, no, the conventional war MAD would be a much stronger power curbstomping something very weak, and even then, the much weaker power can just change to guerrilla tactics, which have historically proven to be extremely effective against something that would otherwise curbstomp them. Such tactics go back to prehistory.

The difference between conventional warfare MAD and nuclear MAD is that conventional warfare is a whole lot of tactics and strategies while nuclear warfare is just variants of "shoot nuke at x location".

Besides, all of the major players in WWI were more or less evenly matched.

Also, is it just me or are the DPRK and Ameripol threads merging into one being?

It happens sometimes with MidEast politics when American politics gets intertwined.

Well, the issue is that ANY release of nuclear weapons by the major powers (Against each other or any of the nations with a defend-me! treaty) is going to result in complete destruction of a lot of the planet, if not the crippling of human culture as it exists today.

Why? Defense networks and saturation attacks. If you fire off more missiles that they can stop, you...um....technically we call this winning, but since you're nothing more than a pile of radioactive ash you can't celebrate the fact that you condemned another billion people to varying degrees of agonizing death.

So, in short, MAD is very much still a thing simply because of the strategies of nuclear war.


So don't shoot the dumb things off, please. I understand that we do, in fact, have plenty of elite spec-ops who should be very capable of taking out problematic leaders.


I mean, seriously. It's not like it's THAT big of a diplomatic issue if you slip some spec-ops guys in through the NK-China border and have them kill a lot of NK officials, is it?

You're SERIOUSLY underestimating how much of a suicide mission that would be, and there are a billion ways for things to go wrong. Besides, we have a policy of not assassinating leaders of other countries via spec ops. If anybody was going to actually try to do that, it should be the South Koreans as they're claiming to have a specialized unit just for assassinating the leader of NK.