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Admiral
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of the peace and coexistance movement
Feb 2001
time: 00:27
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As far as I can see, the only case wherein bunker-busting nukes could be used without violating international law and making those associated with their use war criminals would be to bust a bunker that is being used to launch a nuclear attack.
(The passage, from the world court, states, "However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a state would be at stake.")
However, and I am just speculating here so correct me if I'm wrong, but any bunker being used as a silo would be close enough to the surface that special bunker-busting weapons probably would not be necessary.
The broader point, for me, is that almost any use of nukes, even in a retaliatory fashion, is completely immoral. I mean, I don't think we can really imagine the results of a nuclear strike. Hence, I don't really like the idea that the US is building weapons that they cannot use in a moral and legal fashion. Maybe that makes me a hippy, but if it does, it is an epithet that I can live with.
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Admiral
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of the peace and coexistance movement
Feb 2001
time: 00:27
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The deterence factor is essentially meaningless. It is ironic, in fact. We finally developed a weapon that is so terrible, it cannot be used. Therefore, it doesn't matter, and various people still went and were expansionist. Think about it, if nuclear weapons actually were effective as deterents, China would not have intervened in Korea (though, admittedly, there was talk of using nuclear weapons in Korea, so perhaps this doesn't fit the pattern), the North Vietnamese wouldn't have continued operations in the South, Russia wouldn't have invaded Afghanistan, etc. The Cuban Missile Crisis doesn't apply, as the Soviets could have, at that point, wiped out most of America, using ICBMs, and so the decisive factor was the capability of the US fleet in home-ish waters. I mean, you can argue that nuclear deterrence prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, but I singularly doubt that, certainly after Stalin's death, they would have tried it under any circumstances (Stalin was just insane enough to have attempted it). As to China, China didn't try to take Taiwan, but I do not believe that we were offering a nuclear umbrella, but that the Chinese were (and really still are) capable of mounting an amphibious attack against a modern and well defended island fortress. As to the Spratly's, the US navy would pwn China any day, preventing China from expanding in that direction. And overland, China had its complications with the USSR, but both had powerful land forces, and neither saw potential. And in the South, there were natural boundries preventing expansion into India, and Russia was preventing China (I believe) from expanding through Indochina.
The point of all of the above, is that nuclear deterence didn't really seem to deter anything. The only thing it could do would be to prevent a nuclear first strike, and since my position is not a unilateral de-nuclearization, that is essentially a non-argument.
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child of Thor
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At one point i may have had bigger objections to these issues. But i dont think it really matters now. The people running the USA seem determined to self-destruct her in the eyes of pretty much the rest of the world.
I expect the damage already done will come home to roost in the not to distant future, probably via the economy.
If the same people continue being in charge in the US, which seems likely with the successful fear card they are playing, then they may well even be able to persude their own people that they need to use all these types of weapons.
Its not an exact or equal comparison, but it was amazing the sort of mass-phycosis that sort of swept through the german people during WW2 and what that government was able to get away with in the eyes of its own people.
It had to end of course, as all these things do thankgod.
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02-02-2005 21:45
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