Should America be allowed to have nuclear weapons?

[Crazy Eddie]

In light of our collective behavior and our current president, I'm not even sure we should be allowed to have REGULAR weapons.

 

[LordKiran]

]
Without America you would now be speaking Japanese and German!

Gotta love American revisionist history. The truth is that the USA came in late and contributed far less to the war effort against Hitler than many other nations, including ironically Russia.

The relatively little damage taken by the USA is actually one of the biggest reasons the USA became the world's top superpower afterwards.

And the Americans were always a far bigger threat to Japan than the Japanese were to America.

The last truly dire, desperate and brave war fought by the USA was probably the civil war against itself.

To be fair, the world was probably a better place when Americans at large were content to stick to the side lines and quietly sell guns to the highest bidder.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The United States has reduced its stockpile by 84% from a Cold War peak of 31,255 warheads in 1967, to the current stockpile of approximately 4,480 operational and reserved warheads. [17] While France has reduced its arsenal unilaterally, and the United Kingdom announced ambitious reductions to its arsenal in 2010, both states plan to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent for the foreseeable future. [18] In contrast to the unilateral reduction measures taken by the NWS, India and Pakistan are believed to be rapidly expanding their nuclear arsenals. [19]

Well, the number of warheads doesn't really matter that much. it's the number of delivery systems. If you have 3000 warheads, but only enough missiles to put 1% of them on targets, those are the 30 you have to worry about.
That's why the current treaties discuss the number of missiles in tubes. Right now, the Trident subs have only 20 of their 24 possible missiles, with four tubes of permanent ballast installed.

That is fucking stupid. Couldn't they have put in hot dogs or pizza?

 

[whichphilosophy]

Without America you would now be speaking Japanese and German!

What, both at once?

Jermanese?

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Well, the number of warheads doesn't really matter that much. it's the number of delivery systems. If you have 3000 warheads, but only enough missiles to put 1% of them on targets, those are the 30 you have to worry about.
That's why the current treaties discuss the number of missiles in tubes. Right now, the Trident subs have only 20 of their 24 possible missiles, with four tubes of permanent ballast installed.

That is fucking stupid. Couldn't they have put in hot dogs or pizza?

Maybe that's what's really in the North Korean ones.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

After all America has used these weapons on civilians before.

At that point in the war our target was the Japanese cities because their remaining industry was too decentralized to be targeted directly.

The nukes were neither the most deadly attacks (a conventional attack on Tokyo holds the record there), nor the most destroyed cities.

Furthermore, it is virtually certain that the nukes saved lives vs any other sane alternative. (Even an immediate cease fire would have killed more. Many, many more.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How many times do it has to be mentioned that nuclear weapons were not used on a whim? Context is all important.
They ended WW2 more quickly that otherwise.

WW2 could have ended even sooner had the US not demanded the democratization of Japan and the removal of its Emperor.

Therefor, it stands to reason that nukes were used to advance ulterior goals divorced from the war, and not to end the war itself.

Nice case of revisionism.

1) What Japan wanted was not just the Emperor but to retain it's conquests in China. They weren't to the point of giving in on that yet.

2) Suppose they had agreed to give up China in exchange for retaining control of Japan. The death toll would have been far higher. The thing is we had already bombed their rail system to the point they were going to lose much of the 1945 harvest and famine would stalk the land. That would have killed far more than the bombs.

3) Leaving the warmongers in charge would have meant another war.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Has the context they were used in ever been seen again in the world?

What was the big emergency the US faced from the Japanese in WW2? Was there ever a real chance the Japanese would decimate the USA? Were there battles being fought in California, New York, etc? No. Not really. Not to the point of being conquered or decimated with puppet governments installed etc, the way the USA has done to other countries.

But the USA only does it to countries that lack nuclear weapons, hence the definite need for the regimes in power in these countries in order to stay in power. Seriously, North Korea is the "Axis of Evil" country that has nuclear arms... and the one the US hasn't sought to invade.

How about the huge ongoing death toll in China? I'm not finding a breakdown over time but the average rate for the war was 200,000/month. Doesn't take much of that to equal the bombs, does it?

Furthermore, you don't understand the Japanese strategy at that point. They knew they couldn't hope to win. What they were hoping for was to make the final victory so bloody for us that we would give up and leave them be. As such they had a viable strategy and weren't interested in surrender--the "peace" discussions were about how much we would be willing to leave under their control.

The bombs were actually a huge bluff that the Japanese fell for. For us to bomb the cities with any real effectiveness we had to get down low and they were shooting down planes. The atom bomb changed all that--we dropped from high altitude, beyond the range of AA or fighters without oxygen. The strategy of making it bloody went out the window if we could do it without shedding our blood--resistance no longer served any real purpose, they gave in. What they didn't realize is that our production rate was too low to actually enable us to pound them to bits with atomic fire.

 

[laughing dog]

The OP is pointless. No one has the authority to disallow the US from having nuclear weapons - that bell has been rung. The opinion of the rest of the world is irrelevant to the fact the US has nuclear weapons and is going to keep nuclear weapons as long as there are any possible enemies who may have nuclear weapons.

 

[southernhybrid]

Yes, the OP is stupid. The real question we should be asking is this. Should the current US president have access to the nuclear codes?

 

[KeepTalking]

Apparently America is allowed to have them but North Korea is not, so I'm wondering why that is.

Despite not being "allowed" to have them, NK has them. So, what was your point again?

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]
Without America you would now be speaking Japanese and German!

Gotta love American revisionist history.

Take that you Aussie bastard! Our wonderful neighbors to the North won't allow you to go around revising our history like that.

 

[bilby]

Apparently America is allowed to have them but North Korea is not, so I'm wondering why that is.

Despite not being "allowed" to have them, NK has them. So, what was your point again?

I think his point is that it is massively hypocritical for America to express concern about the weapons systems other nations might possess.

And I tend to agree. When you're the most heavily armed nation on the planet, you are really not in any position to criticise other nations for upgrading their weapons systems - at least, not while avoiding accusations of gross hypocrisy.

Even the "well they shouldn't have them because their leader is dangerously unstable" argument was looking shaky as long ago as the Ronnie Ray-gun presidency; and it has gone completely out of the window now.

If your country wants to try to cap nuclear weapons proliferation, then that's a good thing; but let's not pretend that you are not just as terrifying as any of the other nuclear armed states - if a mentally deficient person or a religious fundamentalist ever does start a nuclear war, we all know that it's odds-on that that individual will do so in his capacity as Commender in Chief of the US armed forces.

 

[rousseau]

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
- Oppenheimer

 

[KeepTalking]

Despite not being "allowed" to have them, NK has them. So, what was your point again?

I think his point is that it is massively hypocritical for America to express concern about the weapons systems other nations might possess.

That did not seem to be the point expressed in the OP. He is not talking about anyone expressing concern, but rather about who should be allowed to possess them. The real answer is that any nation that has made them, and has the capacity to continue making them, is allowed to have them, because who is going to stop them? That is exactly the situation with NK. The genie is out of the bottle, and trying to stuff it back in will be a task that can never end well.

If your country wants to try to cap nuclear weapons proliferation, then that's a good thing; but let's not pretend that you are not just as terrifying as any of the other nuclear armed states - if a mentally deficient person or a religious fundamentalist ever does start a nuclear war, we all know that it's odds-on that that individual will do so in his capacity as Commender in Chief of the US armed forces.

I am not trying to make any pretense with regard to my country and our possession of nuclear weapons. I am only saying that there is no "allowing" when it comes to nuclear weapons, except in cases where one country provides them to another. If you can make them, and you have them, well, that's pretty much the end of it and you have joined the club, whether the other members want you there or not.

 

[bilby]

I think his point is that it is massively hypocritical for America to express concern about the weapons systems other nations might possess.

That did not seem to be the point expressed in the OP. He is not talking about anyone expressing concern, but rather about who should be allowed to possess them. The real answer is that any nation that has made them, and has the capacity to continue making them, is allowed to have them, because who is going to stop them? That is exactly the situation with NK. The genie is out of the bottle, and trying to stuff it back in will be a task that can never end well.

If your country wants to try to cap nuclear weapons proliferation, then that's a good thing; but let's not pretend that you are not just as terrifying as any of the other nuclear armed states - if a mentally deficient person or a religious fundamentalist ever does start a nuclear war, we all know that it's odds-on that that individual will do so in his capacity as Commender in Chief of the US armed forces.

I am not trying to make any pretense with regard to my country and our possession of nuclear weapons. I am only saying that there is no "allowing" when it comes to nuclear weapons, except in cases where one country provides them to another. If you can make them, and you have them, well, that's pretty much the end of it and you have joined the club, whether the other members want you there or not.

As a matter of international law, that's not correct; Signatories to the NPT who are not named as nuclear weapons states in that treaty, are not allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.

More countries have adhered to the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, a testament to the treaty's significance. As of August 2016, 191 states have adhered to the treaty, though North Korea, which acceded in 1985 but never came into compliance, announced its withdrawal from the NPT in 2003, following detonation of nuclear devices in violation of core obligations.

Of course, international law is difficult to enforce, but it does exist. The absence of a police cruiser in a stretch of highway does not imply that one is allowed to drive at 150mph, if one has a car capable of that speed.