Red_Dave

FT.com / Home UK / UK - Good news: you are unlikely to be nuked any time soon Im not sure i agree with this article but it puts forth some strong arguments so its well worth a read. It ignores the crucial flaw in the Mutually Assured Destruction theory is that it assumes those involved will behave rationally. Given the fact alot of the nuclear states are countrys where its possibile to come to power unelected i doubt this will always be the case.

mikhail

I dont think its ballistic missiles we have to worry about its nuclear material getting into the hands of a small group of extremists who are capable of building a dirty bomb in a major city.

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The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

Volker

They had this scenario in TV here about taking out the City of London. What was needed was a team of five to ten people, who rent a house with two floors and a basement. Even if they don't hurry, it will take them not more than 14 days to insert a pipe of about 5 m length vertically into the house, fill it with nuclear material and add a fuse. Then they can go far away, like to Australia and start the explosion by mobile phone or so. They calculated the costs, it was like 200,000 Euro or 200,000 British pound, I don't remember the currency, and there are extra costs for the nuclear material and the fuse, because they are not easily available on the market. The explosion would be big enough to make it impossible to go to the City of London without special equipment for many years.

In my opinion, because of the destruction and the number of people who come to London every day, it would be difficult to find out, who did it and who gave them the order and so.

mikhail

Ironically im just leaving for london now hope it doesent happen while im down

Volker

It is not very likely, someone actually does this, I wouldn't worry too much, so have a nice trip

Gardener

I remember a conversation I had with a political science professor when I was17. Back then, Kissinger dominated political discourse on college campuses much like the Chomsky style does now, and the question I posed was exactly that which you do -- what if the participants were not as rational as Mr. Kissinger? I received much in the way of dogmatic recitation of the doctrine, but little that actually addressed the fact that people do not always act rationally. About the only response from him that even attempted to allay concerns as to rationality was some mumbo jumbo as to how the modern nation state acted to select for rational leaders.

Needless to say, when I broached the subject that the doctrine also presumed that people operated from the framework of a nation state, I was reminded of my positionin the world vis a vis his.

The Iranians have turned Mad on its ear. People focus on Ahmadinejad, but it was Rafsanjani who spelled it out. When he envisioned the use of nuclear weapons he was not speaking for Iran, a nation state with defined borders, but rather for the ummah, a notion that transcended borders and nation states. From that vantage point, there is no mutually assured destruction, and so his fantasies about nuking Israel operate from the position that a near total genocide of one people would result in only damages to the other. After all, there are well over a billion Muslims in the world and only several million jews.


Essentially, he has advocated a position that is logically consistant from their point of view and which does debunk MAD. There is no mutual destruction involved. AS to whether this position is rational is subject to debate. I might argue that the genocidal hatred that burns in these things is not rational to begin with, since it is the product of indoctrination. I see it as a cultural psychosis, myself, based upon the propagation of a meme that acts much as as a virus.

In the case of the Iranians, whether rational or irrational, I really don't want to find out what they planondoing with their nuclear arsenal. Not when they have already articulated the flaws in the MAD doctrine.

DivineComedy

MAD only works if the other side is warned.


http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/jfk-cuban.htm

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“[59.14] They will not fight against you in a body save in fortified towns or from behind walls; their fighting between them is severe, you may think them as one body, and their hearts are disunited; that is because they are a people who have no sense.”

Yeah, a wall and a border patrol will protect us. {sound of laughter}

Volker

Ok, Kennedy was a terrorist leader, he sometimes acted irrational and he had nukes.

He did not use them.

It does not work as a proof of what other people do, but maybe it is good for some optimism.

Bergslagstroll

In todays isn't it almost like USA and the western world doesn't need any nukes? Because USA has sutch superority today that they could destroy most part or atleast almost all vitale parts of cities, milityarbases etc. with conventional weapons. And I think they would also respond if say the UK was atacked. If people still are scared isn't today nuclear subs strong enoungh? That they are very hard to track and destroy. So if you had say five of them with ten nucelear missiles on eatch it would be enough to scare of any leader with some sens.

Therfor it seems really stupid that USA but also Russia has so many nukes that they have today. It seems just to be to a way to guarantee that if something goes wrong it goes extremly wrong.

cascadian

Yes, MAD does and has worked. The question is whether or not it will continue to work. I hate to admit it, because I despise nuclear weapons, but I can't think of why else no one besides the US has used them.

MAD doesn't seem very promising when dealing with terrorists. Luckily an actual nuclear bomb really isn't that likely to get in their hands any time soon. "Dirty" bombs are slightly more likely and something that I wouldn't be wholly surprised to see. But in the long run, I'm more likely to die in a car accident.

When it comes to inherently amoral and self-interested institutions like nation states, it's one of the few tools they have to avoid conflict.

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"Fear is the mind killer."
~Bene Gesserit