From: geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: Twain was right!
Date: 14 Apr 92 19:43:25 GMT
Followup-To: alt.peeves
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Menlo Park, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: purplehaze.corp.sun.com



In article <1992Apr14.164914.29106@igor.tamri.com> donb@tamri.com 
(Don Baldwin) writes:

>I think that the level of restraint for ANY armed intervention should
>be a whole lot higher than it has been here, over the past 12 years.

That's a valid opinion, but as I see it, it's really irrelevant to the
question of nuclear weapons, since nukes have become weapons of last resort
almost by definition.  The major powers aren't going to use them against
smaller powers because of the practicalities of world opinion, and they're
not going to use them against each other because doing so would very likely
precipitate a war far more total than what anyone would prefer.  

------

>>I'd much rather see nuclear weapons in the possession of countries like the
>>US, the UK and the former USSR than in the possession of someone like Kad-
>>dhafi or Assad or Kim Il Sung or Saddam Hussein or Khomeini.  (Yes, Al, I
>>know Khomeini's dead.)  Wouldn't you?  

>Hmmm, I honestly don't know.  

Well, *I* certainly do!  Jesus!  How could anyone be the slightest bit
ambivalent about that?  Ideally, I'd prefer that *nobody* have the things,
of course, but failing that, I'll settle for just the larger powers having
them.  For one thing, the smaller the number of nuclear countries there
are, the less the chance of any nukes being used.  But in addition, I'm
inclined to believe that the traditional nuclear powers would be a lot
more likely to exercise restraint in their use.

------

>I go back and forth between thinking that anybody who can acquire nuclear 
>weapons should be able to and thinking that there should be some kind of 
>Nuclear Club that you have to earn membership in.  IMO, the argument for 
>the "anyone-can" approach is the that nukes would make great equalizers; 
>with them, smaller nations would be less likely to be bullied by larger
>nations.  

But it's not that simple.  Because of the difficulty and expense involved
in fabricating the things, not to mention simply obtaining or refining the
fissionable materials, smaller nations wouldn't be able to accumulate
very many.  The superpowers have thousands.  That means that any smaller
nuclear nations would be severly outgunned, in a nuclear as well as a 
conventional sense.  So in a nutshell, smaller nations can't win against
the larger powers.  And I'm not at all convinced that that's a bad thing.

Then, of course, there's the matter of delivery systems.  Smaller nations
generally lack the expertise, wealth and technology needed to design and 
build long-range missilies like ICBMs, or long-range bombers and tankers,
or SLBM-capable submarines, and the larger powers aren't about to sell them
what they'd need.  I suppose it's conceivable that a small nation could 
modify an airliner to carry a free-fall nuclear weapon (after they'd gone 
through the aforementioned trouble and expense of building one) and try to
sneak it into someone's airspace, but their chances of success aren't even
on the scale.  After all, air defense identification zones exist for a 
reason, and speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that they're
taken very seriously.  For example (not from personal experience but quite
relevant), Israel shot down a Libyan Arab Airlines 727 full of passengers 
several years ago when it strayed into Israeli airspace.

Ergo, the "anyone can" approach is an extremely unlikely scenario, and
therefore a waste of intellectual time.

I think that many liberals would change their tune about such things if they
knew more about military technology.  In that sense at least, I can see
a lot more value in reading Tom Clancy or Harold Coyle than in reading Isaac
Asimov or Robert Heinlein, or in reading Proceedings and AvLeak instead of 
Omni and Mother Jones.  It would tend to improve one's insight into things 
as they really are rather than as they'd be in somebody's pipe dream.

------

>Of course, I'd also arm the UN with nukes and give them the authority to 
>turn any country abusing its weapons into a glass bowl.

That's an unrealistic scenario as well.  Do you honestly think that any
nation would ever be willing to cede its nuclear capability to *any*
other power, including the UN?  This isn't the United Federation Of
Planets we're talking about.

------

>>IMO, if people learned to think critically, rather than automatically
>>oppose the position and actions of the government, we'd be a whole lot
>>better off as a nation.

>However, you have to realize that any two intelligent people can look at
>the same problem and come up with radically different opinions about it.

Oh, I do, and all kidding aside, I don't doubt your intelligence.  (And if
quoted, I'll deny ever saying that. :)  But intelligence isn't the whole
story -- it's simply one's capacity to use knowledge.  And if one's knowledge
is incomplete, the conclusions one draws will be flawed.  GIGO, right?

------

>Personally, I also hold the view that the government needs to be
>subservient to the people and not vice versa...that people should have
>some voice in the decision about whether a situation warrants the use
>of military force.  

True. And you'll recall that a majority of Americans favored our involvement
in Desert Storm.  They weren't the noisiest faction, perhaps, but they were 
definitely the majority.  Continuing with that example, do you think Bush 
would have gone ahead with the war if that hadn't been the case?  Democracy
in action.

------

>Another friend of mine, who still carries around Russion shrapnel from 
>the time she left Hungary, agrees with me.  She's had FIRST HAND 
>experience with war, sees it as a bloody waste and not some sort of chess
>game.

Yes, war is terrible, and it's not something that should be entered into
casually.  But that's not to say that it should never happen, under any 
conditions of temperature and pressure.

Your friend's compatriots seem to have felt that they had a cause worth 
fighting (and quite possibly dying) for back in `56, right?  Weigh *that,* 
my friend.

------

>I don't have any problem with the realistic notion of governments acting
>in their own interests; who could expect anything else?  I start having
>a problem when we are too willing to blast away and justify our actions
>with reasoning that we'd reject, if another country were to use it.

That's the nature of politics, and I don't foresee a change anytime soon.
The best thing that any country could do, politically, is to accept that
reality and learn to play the game well within that framework.



Geoff


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Geoff Miller                    + + + + + + + +        Sun Microsystems
geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM  + + + + + + + +     Menlo Park, California
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Newsgroups: alt.peeves