It's da bomb
Nov. 2nd, 2005 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyMany years ago now, my 6th form debating society (of which I was a particularly gobby member) took part in a political awareness raising event organised by the United Nations. As a part of this we were involved in a Role-play exercise in which we were all given members of various national governments and the UN to play with objectives and various political crises to deal with.
In a moment of unforgivable stupidity which I doubt would be repeated by anyone who actually knew me, I was given the part of the British Minister of Defense. This was at the height of the Thatcher Era* and so I have no idea why they decided to make my character a complete and utter Jessie in terms of foreign policy, but one of my objectives was to do away with Britain’s Nuclear Deterrent.
Anyway, to cut a long story short – and to demonstrate that I’ve always been a disruptive influenc and it isn’t just a recent development – three hours later I had successfully ‘got rid’ of the Nukes and I hope that nobody important was in Paris or Buenos Aires at the time.
The next year, our Sixth form were not invited back to the event. I can’t help but wonder if this was coincidence.
I was reminded of this jolly story of precocious political awareness on my part by the news in the papers recently that Tony Blair is planning to spend the better part of £20,000,000,000 on building some bigger and better Nukes in order to keep the foreigner at bay. There’s actually been some well-informed debate on the subject lately. Is building atom bombs which we’ll almost certainly never actually need worthwhile expenditure when Gordon Brown has already drilled a hole in the National finances so deep it will take a decade to fill it in again?
Leaving aside the comedic irony of an ax-CND activist proposing to spend twenty billion quid on new, improved atom bombs, there’s a serious point to be made here too. Most theories of modern warfare stress that the rise in guerrilla-led insurgency wars and the decline of old-fashioned two-armies-slugging-it-out wars are a direct consequence of the availability of nuclear weapons. After all, if you’ve raised your army and invaded, say, France, it takes a lot of the fun out of the proceedings to suddenly find your capital city is a rapidly expanding cloud of radioactive dust and you’re sitting in a bunker eating orange rats. Enemies without access to nuclear weapons have worked out that not having large, easily identifiable resource points means that they cannot be struck easily and so now a small number of people can make insurgency warfare a cost-effective drain upon the enemy. Even so, the lack of army-based warfare in the last century is largely applicable to atom bombs – and it is undeniable that untold lives have been saved by this.
Moreover, there have been cries of hypocisy at UK and US led attampts to prevent the Iranians developing atom bobs of their own - although the people shouting 'hypocrites!' often gloss over the fact that the Iranians have gone of record as saying that should they get their hands on nukes they will use them on Israel, and a promise to use an atom bomb just as soon as you get one is not one to be taken lightly.
That said, twenty billion quid is a heck of a lot of money and could be spent on many other things; like me, or having David Blunkett tarred and feathered, but sadly the reality is that an injection of that sort of money into the economy probably wouldn’t result in an appreciable rise in the standard of living for anyone involved.
It’s an interesting question – and so I’ve decided to answer it in the time-honoured was of a politically biased, misleading and above all comical* Livejournal poll. The results of this poll will be considered binding by the Government.
[Poll #603366]
*Or “The Golden Age” as many historians call it.
**Stressed for the benefit of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jonnyargles, who usually misses it.
In a moment of unforgivable stupidity which I doubt would be repeated by anyone who actually knew me, I was given the part of the British Minister of Defense. This was at the height of the Thatcher Era* and so I have no idea why they decided to make my character a complete and utter Jessie in terms of foreign policy, but one of my objectives was to do away with Britain’s Nuclear Deterrent.
Anyway, to cut a long story short – and to demonstrate that I’ve always been a disruptive influenc and it isn’t just a recent development – three hours later I had successfully ‘got rid’ of the Nukes and I hope that nobody important was in Paris or Buenos Aires at the time.
The next year, our Sixth form were not invited back to the event. I can’t help but wonder if this was coincidence.
I was reminded of this jolly story of precocious political awareness on my part by the news in the papers recently that Tony Blair is planning to spend the better part of £20,000,000,000 on building some bigger and better Nukes in order to keep the foreigner at bay. There’s actually been some well-informed debate on the subject lately. Is building atom bombs which we’ll almost certainly never actually need worthwhile expenditure when Gordon Brown has already drilled a hole in the National finances so deep it will take a decade to fill it in again?
Leaving aside the comedic irony of an ax-CND activist proposing to spend twenty billion quid on new, improved atom bombs, there’s a serious point to be made here too. Most theories of modern warfare stress that the rise in guerrilla-led insurgency wars and the decline of old-fashioned two-armies-slugging-it-out wars are a direct consequence of the availability of nuclear weapons. After all, if you’ve raised your army and invaded, say, France, it takes a lot of the fun out of the proceedings to suddenly find your capital city is a rapidly expanding cloud of radioactive dust and you’re sitting in a bunker eating orange rats. Enemies without access to nuclear weapons have worked out that not having large, easily identifiable resource points means that they cannot be struck easily and so now a small number of people can make insurgency warfare a cost-effective drain upon the enemy. Even so, the lack of army-based warfare in the last century is largely applicable to atom bombs – and it is undeniable that untold lives have been saved by this.
Moreover, there have been cries of hypocisy at UK and US led attampts to prevent the Iranians developing atom bobs of their own - although the people shouting 'hypocrites!' often gloss over the fact that the Iranians have gone of record as saying that should they get their hands on nukes they will use them on Israel, and a promise to use an atom bomb just as soon as you get one is not one to be taken lightly.
That said, twenty billion quid is a heck of a lot of money and could be spent on many other things; like me, or having David Blunkett tarred and feathered, but sadly the reality is that an injection of that sort of money into the economy probably wouldn’t result in an appreciable rise in the standard of living for anyone involved.
It’s an interesting question – and so I’ve decided to answer it in the time-honoured was of a politically biased, misleading and above all comical* Livejournal poll. The results of this poll will be considered binding by the Government.
[Poll #603366]
*Or “The Golden Age” as many historians call it.
**Stressed for the benefit of
jonnyargles, who usually misses it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 09:33 am (UTC)http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article323505.ece
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 09:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 05:27 pm (UTC)Love it! ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 09:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 09:38 am (UTC)I bet the people who voted Labour are feeling so proud right now.
I'm looking at you,
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 09:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 09:43 am (UTC)I thnk it's more teh delivery systems - the old sysems are now not good enought o deal with modern anti-missile defenses and so they'd be shot down long before they reached their targets.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 05:37 pm (UTC)Not true.
The 'going stale' bit is related to the following:
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 10:11 am (UTC)How mean of them! Bobs are great and atomic Bobs are even greater! Next they'll be getting rid of atomic Daves :-(
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 11:57 am (UTC)I like me nuclear core and really don't wantot be buried in concrete!
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 02:51 pm (UTC)NPT
Date: 2005-11-03 12:56 pm (UTC)The Nuclear Proliferation Treaty has two sides to the equation. You don't develop nukes, and we'll cut the number we have. Part of the treaty was we won't build new and improved versions once our old ones degraded.
We're about to be in breach of that treaty, which makes it rather hard to beat Iran over the head with it.
Course that doesn't stop Bush & Blair beating them over the head with superior Airpower...
Re: NPT
Date: 2005-11-03 04:17 pm (UTC)In an ideal world, nuclear weapons would be decommissioned and we'd all be hugging. Of course4, in an ideal world, the Americans wouldn't have elected Dubya and we wouldn't have forgotten Tony's a lying scumbag. Just my tuppence.
Comments
Date: 2005-11-02 05:20 pm (UTC)Interesting. I have to say, I utterly fail to comprehend why Britain so has to play second string in harmony with US foreign policy. I mean, c'mon, you don't have to be so blatant a ho. ;-) This seems to follow directly the course Bush has charted for American atomic research. I would argue there is some validity in researching the best methods of maintaining a low-hazard valid-threat stockpile, if one is going to keep a stockpile of many thousands of warheads, as the US is doing ... but makes significantly less sense for the UK, when your submarine Polaris missiles work just fine. Alas, this policy course would make a whole lot more sense if it was matched with larger threat-reductions measures, including reducing the overall volume of weapons both at-station and in-stock.
2. Most theories of modern warfare stress that the rise in guerrilla-led insurgency wars and the decline of old-fashioned two-armies-slugging-it-out wars are a direct consequence of the availability of nuclear weapons.
I have trouble with this theory, because it is appears to be merely one more iteration of the 'nuclear umbrella' martial philosophy the US has been espoucing since 1945.
Clearly nuclear weapons are a direct consequence of two-armies-slugging-it-out as you put it, but to then argue this directly leads to insurgency, I'm not so sure. After all, in Vietnam, the US committed the bulk of its armed forces to combat the insurgency there, operating within the so-called nuclear umbrella, wrecking calculable havoc equal to any pre-nuclear two-armies-slugging-it-out. Moreover, arguably, the US expended so much effort against that insurgency, that even after that insurgency effectively broke after Tet '68, the rather substantial conventional North Vietnamese Army defeated the spent conventional US army (& Marines) for the next 4 years...even as it appeared as so much two-armies-slugging-it-out.
Therefore, I'd argue all nuclear weapons have accomplished is the end of direct invasions (e.g. Pyongyang is still standing without an occupation army there) and massive political prestige for the nuclear-enabled nation(e.g. consider India, Pakistan today versus 10 years ago). In effect, deterrence works, but not in eliminating the two-armies-slugging-it-out behaviour, it just puts a kind of cap on that escalation.
In fact, they probably rate the most useless weapons around. If you use them against a (nuclear) capable enemy, then you will likely incur massive domestic loss. If you use them against an incapable enemy, you lose nearly all the prestige associated with those weapons (unless one wants to be a Nuclear Genghis Khan), and force rough divisions in the world - which certainly doesn't serve the interests of the US or Europe or China or Russia, and probably not India, or even Pakistan, for that matter. Israel, with their probable-200 warheads, is another matter.
Personally, I also buy the argument that low-yield nukes in a 'bunker buster' or other role are not necessary, and do escalate the nuclear threat.
Re: Comments
Date: 2005-11-02 05:52 pm (UTC)Vietnam was very much on the cusp of old style/new style war. The NVA was sort-of a proper army, but its tactics were not those of conventional warfare up until that point. Perhaps I would ahve ben better adding "Since the 1960's' to my original point, as the 'nam really was the last big clash of fairly evenly matched conventional armies.
Re: Comments
Date: 2005-11-02 06:14 pm (UTC)The NVA was sort-of a proper army, but its tactics were not those of conventional warfare up until that point.
I dunno, their 1970-74 offensives were quite conventional, with tanks, artillery, and even aircraft, iirc.
'nam really was the last big clash of fairly evenly matched conventional armies.
Interesting, I always thought the Falklands rated highly as another 'cusp' conflict. The Argentinians were more numerous, and had several significant threat weapons...even their old ships would have been effective against the right British targets. As such was a fairly even match, though in the event, British forces-integration and will-to-win proved decisive.
Consider this
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/nuclear.htm
Frankly, I think we can permanently disarmed the crated bunch and reduce the operational stockpile by a whole order of magnitude and still have sufficient nuclear deterrence and response options.
Even with the Iraq debacle, the US showed that it can still employ considerable alliance powers to its causes (though we'll need a serious validation of that hypothetical power in another war in the next 10 years, preferably 5), so needn't have arms to take on *all* possible enemies arrayed in an alliance against it ... taking on one or two is quite sufficient. And there is more than enough conventional capability to obviate a nuclear response need in most cases.
---
As for the UK:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/uk/index.html
Does the UK really need more than approximately 20 city-destroyers and 40 facility-destroyer range of nuclear weapons in its arsenal? The UK does seem to have a sufficient mix of launch platform types, yields, and an absence of clear land-based vulnerabilities.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 09:33 pm (UTC)But when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was first created, it maintained that we were all going to get rid of our toys eventually. Now, that may have been (probably was) a lie, a spoonful of sugar to help the medecine down, but I think it's time to consider making it a reality. No, no one is ever going to trust anyone else to be telling the truth about their nuclear holdings, but with a stringent enough inspection regime, we could could be reasonably confident that we knew what each coutnry had, and if we moved away fromt he concept of deterrence generally (whihc makes one *want* to have nuclear weapons, so as to threaten other people into not using their own), it would become moot.
But that's just my crackpot opinion. :-)
My tuppence
Date: 2005-11-02 11:29 pm (UTC)We (the US) and others (UK, France, Israel) have spent billions on weapons that, while they may have deterred the Soviet Union are unlikely to deter our current enemies (international radical Isalmic terrorism in all its various forms).
I would suggest a perhaps controversial view that nuclear weapons and radical international Islamic terrorism are in parallel, but don't actually interact much. Yes, much is made of the 'suitcase bomb' getting into terrorist hands, but the real question is whether more death will actually do much more than kill people. I side with London on this matter. With regards to deterrence though, I agree a city-ruining missile isn't much deterrence to a suicide bomber.
I also don't think that they will deter Iran if and when that country obtains nuclear weapons.
Again, quite oddly, I'm not sure I understand this worldview of threat from Iran. Yes, they had their Revolution, and have been piling up the international conspiracies, but what I find most of all with the Iranian regime is a desire to be taken seriously on the international stage, to end their pariah status, but on their terms. Meanwhile, there's a whole generation of young Iranians who find the Revolution so much ancient history, have no particular interest in warring with 'the Great Satan' (TM), but are mostly nationally proud. Not exactly a radical firestorm waiting to spring upon the world. They need blue-jeans and cosmetics, not nuclear threats - too bad their leaders don't understand that.
They may have some effect on North Korea,
True, but not much. I think the most North Korea can do militarily is be a potent spoiler to regional affairs, and devastate Seoul in the opening artillery barrage...even if half their rusting cannons crush themselves at the first shot. North Korea is in such a state that most they can do outside of madly well-choreographed dance is sell Japanese narcotics, prostitutes, and counterfeit real currency. A war would only ruin what little they've achieved.
and they probably have some role to play in keeping China from simply overrunning Taiwan.
Nukes or no nukes, if China wants Taiwan, they are going to have it. Full stop. But I think too much is made of the cross-straits bluster. One of the largest investors in China's special economic zones are Taiwanese businesses, and 100-years-war-styled sabre-rattling serves mainly to protect the vested military & conservative interests on both sides, and has precious little to do with how everyone else wants to get on.
After all, if China really felt so threatened by Taiwanese independence and is just iching to invade ... then why would they involve themselves with Taiwan's internal politics to support their alleged enemy-of-old, the KMT? That friends, is a sign of a lot of money changing hands.
They may even have some deterrent value in future (hopefully nonmilitary conflicts) with Russia.
I think future conflicts in Russia are going to fall along lines of energy supply, disease, and labour migration ... and these will mostly be a European issue at first.
Re: My tuppence
Date: 2005-11-02 11:50 pm (UTC)This younger generation exists but they don't run the country and are apparently becoming disinterested and disillusioned in the political process. And I worry that the Western press tells us a lot about an urban group (elite? minority? majority? it's unclear) of young Iranians who don't see eye to eye with the more conservative ruling generation and in the process seems to create the impression that this is what all young Iranians are like. Are they? Or are these just the peopel that Western reporters identify with and like to report on because they are "edgy" and challenge the general image of Iran as a conservative, religious country. I'm more inclined (based on nothign more than a little reading and some hunches, admittedly) to think that these young people are maybe a jeunesse doree, the "bad boys" (and girls) whoa re "daring" and "radical" because they aren't entirely happy with social conservativism and are willing to act out about it (a little). Does this mean most young Iranians are like this? I tend to dount it.
Ths is a country, after all, which just elected a very popular, very conservative leader, whose two main first acts on the international stage were to (re)state, very firmly, Iran's belief that it is free to do whatever it likes in the nuclear arena and to very baldly and unsubltly declare his belief that the state of Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Not condemn Israel, not call on it to give back Palestinian land, but urge all the nations of the world to rub it off the globe. I don't take that to be empty rhetoric, and I also don't think that someone who talks that way is going to be dissuaded by the possibility of massive Iranian casualties in the event of his trying to carry out this idea.
As far as North Korea goes, I'm only afraid of the small-percentage (but horrifically deadly) possibility that a Dr Strangelove-y type scenario will play itself out there as the last fragments of control and social order begin to slip from the hands of the geriatric military elite. "We can't stop our world falling apart, but we can strike one final blow that makes sure lots of you won't live to enjoy our demise."
Nukes or no nukes, if China wants Taiwan, they are going to have it. Full stop.
True, but I think the PRC plays the long game (the Chinese usually do). Why run the risk of getting in a war with the US that would result in parts of China turning into glassy desert if they can just wait us out and eventually cajole, threaten, and bribe Taiwan back into the fold? It worked with Hong Kong, after all. But I do think that there are times over the last 50 years that the PRC might have tried to invade Taiwan and seize it by force if the US, and the consequent threat of US nuclear forces, had not been part of the equation.
Re: My tuppence
Date: 2005-11-03 12:53 am (UTC)Fair point, and about media bias/no stats backup. But I think what can be taken is that a significant portion of the population (27% are younger than 14, perhaps growing to near-40 under-30s) are not motivated by radical hatred against US/UK. A wretched war of attrition probably would radicalize them, but keeping things on their current path should see a significant thaw over time.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ir.html
Also, the ones who are willing to talk with foreign reporters may be relatively daring, but from what I can garner from Iranian collegues in my office who have returned to see family/friends, there is a significant return to a kind of normalcy. There is no 'war footing' in the economy or society, for example.
very popular, very conservative leader
Agreed, but also importantly, not a religious leader. Something of a break with Revolutionary tradition in that regard.
(re)state, very firmly, Iran's belief that it is free to do whatever it likes in the nuclear arena and to very baldly and unsubltly declare his belief that the state of Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth.
Free hand to act, well any new leader would say that, as in fact Bush did shortly after taking office in 2001. As for 'wiping out Israel' ... genuine policy or red meat for the crowd? Hard to say.
Even if a hardline Iranian leader wanted war, I think they'd have very few options, even with a nuke. Deterrence will work, especially if the existing population doesn't match such a leader's ambition*. I dunno, the guy just doesn't strike me as a suicide bomber, which nuking Israel would most certainly be. Interestingly, Syria & the Lebanese bombings make for an interesting case study: wherein a top secret assassination plan, technically successful, nevertheless led too easily back to Damascus.
*Also, taken to its racist extreme, wiping out Israel will take more than a few bombs, and will require taking out New Jersey, much of Manhattan, and Florida. :-/
last fragments of control and social order begin to slip from the hands of the geriatric military elite.
I think once the Jong-Il dynasty is properly dead (such as no surprise Sweet Leader bastard-child is unveiled upon the Dear Leader's death), a lot of the power vacuum/scramble can be mitigated with properly buying off the remaining leadership through Chinese intermediaries. There will be transition shock, including hungry refugees, political prisoners, and revealed horrors ... but this is the least violent outcome that I think everyone in the region would prefer.
but I think the PRC plays the long game
True, but the Hong Kong result has been beneficial regionally and globally. Interestingly, it also presents a case study of the difficulties China found in swallowing such an independent-minded population...as well as how well it's done by it. As for the past 50 years, I think the reign of Deng Xiao Ping was a very good thing...Mao really was quite insane. If accountability really starts taking root in the Communist Party, if for no other reason that it will be the only way to maintain economic growth (and the rapacious wealth to feed the greed), then the whole military scenario is even further sidelined.
The China-Taiwan conversation should grow at such a pace that the US will eventually have no place at the table and nothing to do with it ... in much the way Britain bowed out of Hong Kong with a smile and a thank you.
Re: My tuppence
Date: 2005-11-03 02:28 am (UTC)But at this stage there doesn't really need to be. As Bush has demonstrated, it's much more effective to have a "virtual" war, in which you don't actually ask the civilian population to make any sacrifices (in fact, assure them that all is well and popping along normally) while beating the rhetorical drums for war.
As for 'wiping out Israel' ... genuine policy or red meat for the crowd? Hard to say.
I work from the assumption that he is a smart man who has good info on what the reactions of other governments would be. Making the statement he did was totally out of bounds, even for the Muslim world (lookat the number of governments that condemned or criticized him--almost unheard of, especially in these days, when Muslim governments have to work hard to make sure they are not too closely identified with the West in the eyes of their citizens). It was ectreme, and is going to produce extreme results in terms of international isolation of Iran at a time when they weren't in the best position to begin with. I have to assume that he wouldn't put himself in that position just to win points with a population that already thinks he's good stuff.
Agreed, but also importantly, not a religious leader. Something of a break with Revolutionary tradition in that regard.
Not all post-Revolutionary leaders have been clerics. And my understanding is that he has very strong ties to the religious conservatives.
*Also, taken to its racist extreme, wiping out Israel will take more than a few bombs,
I'm not sure. I think a multipoint strike, once Iran has acquired dependable IRBMs and nukes to go on them, would make Israel uninhabitable. It would also make Palestine, such as it is, uninhabibitable, but Iran even less than other Muslim states (whihc is saying something) seems to be untroubled by that prospect. I think the main aim of the hardliners is to wipe out the Jewish state, not to find a just resolution to the Palestine problem.
If accountability really starts taking root in the Communist Party...
"There'll be pork in the treetops come morning!" ;-) This is just not going to happen, IMO. The CCP is a corrupt oligarchy that exists to distribute economic favours as a result of political influence. Politics drive money in China, IMO, not the other way around.
...then the whole military scenario is even further sidelined.
Oh, I agree that the military option is always an unlikely one...unless some hothead in Taiwan gets elected and makes *serious* noises about independence, whihc IMO is more and more likely as ethinc Taiwanese take over from the old KMT hierachy. The PRC is hoping to make this less and less attractive by bionding Taiwan to China with chains of economic cross-fertilization; I think that will probably be efective in time as democratic impulses in Taiwan are corrupted by greed, but the "loose cannon" scenario is always out there.
Re: My tuppence
Date: 2005-11-03 03:24 am (UTC)Iran's $30bn oil surplus notwithstanding, is that really something Iran can afford to do, whilst also experiencing all the strains of a growing population?
while beating the rhetorical drums for war
Perhaps, but with regards to a nuclear strike? I just am not hearing it ... though that may be my own deafness. ;-)
have to assume that he wouldn't put himself in that position just to win points with a population that already thinks he's good stuff.
A question of which part of the population he may have needed to convince.
This is just not going to happen, IMO
Oh, I'm not saying it will ever be 100% clean, but the worst rural abuses will be condemned (with the guilty parties executed), and the Party will learn to do more of its corruption Taiwan-style. ;-)
but the "loose cannon" scenario is always out there
Sure, and that guy will probably end up in a Legislative punch up first. ;-)
Re: My tuppence
Date: 2005-11-03 03:52 am (UTC)Well, he seems to have the rural, conservative, religious population well in hand already. Did his declaration that Israel should be erased from the world win him friends and influence in the young, pro-Western, politically frustrated left? I just don't see Israel being a big issue for them.
Re: My tuppence
Date: 2005-11-03 07:16 pm (UTC)This reminds me a bit of how the Czechs tried to rapidly market state-run industries after the Velvet Revolution, though the Iranian version involves actual investor funding. I can't help seeing this as more of a transfer of liability than assets. Still, where it might not help the poor Iranians much, it may help the government by divesting itself of inefficient state industries.
Re: My tuppence
Date: 2005-11-04 11:40 pm (UTC)http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5115248