"It constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing"
The norm is toothless though. If a country wants nukes, they just have to suffer through the economic sanctions by a few countries.
NK government has every incentive to continue with the research and development. They don't give a damn about their starving population, and they get the ultimate terror card that they can milk for decades.
We really need to develop anti-ICBM tech to save the humanity.
Nah, we have anti-ICBM technology but it's hilariously inadequate, as in, rate of successful interception is very low. And when you have nukes attached to the ICBMs, your can't tolerate even a single one going through.
And then US and Russia both have MIRV systems which carry 15-20 warheads on one rocket, so if you don't intercept it in the first stage of flight it's game over anyway. And Russia recently finished developing the System-6 nuclear torpedo which can destroy possibly more land than large megaton warheads anyway, since it creates a 500m tsunami wave which travels hundreds of miles in-land destroying everything in its path. And if it's salted with cobalt then that land becomes unusable for decades.
You say we can't tolerate even a single one getting through, but… what would a war look like between Russia and the USA if there were no nukes?
Sure, a conventional war would never be as bad as 7,000 nukes, but one? Seven? Seven hundred? I expect conventional munitions would likely be better targeted, simply out of necessity, so the difference would be smaller than the ratio of TNT-equivalents.
The fact that most military projects are secret/top secret is not convincing argument?
Everyone knows that what's "on display" is basically 10 years behind what military such as USA keeps in secret to use it as a last-resort type of response.
"We really need to develop anti-ICBM tech to save the humanity."
Maybe, but this is a very strange assessment of the NK situation.
The obvious explanation is that the, in my opinion disgusting, NK regime is a rational actor that try to perpetuate itself in time. The only way to ensure that it's to avoid external interference. The only way to avoid external interference (Iraq style) is to have nuclear weapons.
From this follow that they are not more eager to start a war that other nations. Probably less.
They have two goals, not one. The first is obviously self perpetuation, but the second is to flourish. The nukes give them the ability to blackmail their neighbours for everything they want and need, like food, money, weapons etc. I imagine Kim Jong Un will get a real kick out of getting South Korea and Japan to pay for all of his bills, even the concentration camps.
Suppose they ask for something to South Korea and they say "no way". What happens then? A war is suicide and they know it.
I suppose you could extract a few sweets from things like "I will stop creating nuclear weapons" or something like this, but not serious blackmail is possible.
It's just the old MAD (1) doctrine. We (the world) have a lot experience with that. As an European I'm used to the idea that my life is in the hands of some crazy guy in the Kremlin or the White House.
MAD long term requires a world without accidents. I don't think the past 70 years and the number of near misses we've had should give anyone confidence that it will work long term.
That's my conclusion, and I really hope that if and when something does go wrong it will not lead to a chain reaction before the accident is recognized as such.
They may still have the ultimate goal of reuniting the Korean Peninsula under their rule. It sounds crazy to us, but I'm not sure they've gotten the memo about war for territory being obsolete. Put yourself in the Pyongyang frame of mind, and at least the dream of taking "back" the south almost has to be alive.
Edit: This dream of course might be second (or third) after regime survival.
On land they de facto already control since 1967, they also haven't expanded settlements outside of Area C (they demolish "illegal" settlements in Area B all the time), which according to the Oslo accords is under Israeli control.
The hard reality is what's changing. My problem with the "they just want deterrence for regime survival" story is that they already have fantastic deterrence, the ability to wipe out Seoul at will. Therefore, the nuclear program is harder to see as some purely defensive measure, especially considering its cost and various opportunity costs. What, they'll do all this for... some _extra_ deterrence?
Seems possible to me that they seek to neutralize the U.S. by holding it nuclear hostage. Then someday maybe take the South. They've even been talking about EMP blasts, a very useful offensive strategy for them.
NK has rightly concluded that treaties are meaningless without the global cohesion required to enforce them and that being part of the Nuclear Club is one way to get people to look the other way when it comes to violating human rights and other despicable behavior.
The CTBTO is obviously well within their rights to write press releases which amount mostly to hand wringing at this point in time, in the longer term every tin pot dictator without nukes is going to look to NK as the example of how to stay alive.
FWIW I have always considered the test ban treaty itself as a means by the nuclear powers to attempt to kick the door closed behind them (because they can use numerical simulation instead of real world tests) rather than an honest attempt at reducing proliferation.
So, now we have crazy people with hydrogen bombs. It is a new chapter and one that could have a pretty bad ending.
I agree with everything except the last sentence, at least insofar as it applies to Kim Jong-un. As you allude to yourself, he is behaving rationally if speculatively.
I'm curious as to what you think the right course of action would be in dealing with these types? Honest question, although I realise it's a minefield.
It is a super difficult question and people far smarter than me have banged their heads against it for a long time.
The most clear example of a possible solution was Albert Einstein's proposal for a United Nations 'with teeth'.
The majority of the worlds super powers were not happy about this because of course it would mean they too would have to play ball and give up their toys 'or else'. What didn't work on a global scale most likely would work on a smaller scale if the superpowers that remain could agree on any of this but so far even Kim and his bomb seem to not be enough to tip the scales.
Trump being regarded as unstable and untrustworthy by the vast majority of the rest of the world doesn't help either, there is an outside chance that with some cooler heads in the White House that a deal could have been made. As it is just about every other government / head of state has been insulted in one way or another and Kim seems to be mainly aiming his aggression at the United States so for the time being this is a stale-mate. And I really hope it will continue to be a stale mate.
All the other options (assassination of the Dear Leader, limited war) other than sanctions seem to be off the table for now, and even the sanctions might be rolled back for simple humanitarian reasons and because they are not achieving what they are meant to achieve.
The very long term future has only two possible outcomes as far as I can see: either we will have a world government, for good or for bad, or we will end up destroying a good chunk of the planet in World War III triggered by some idiot because nuclear weapons will become more and more available until even the most unstable regimes have them. And NK, even if it is pretty bad and obviously led by a megalomaniac, is not as bad as it gets. Pakistan and India are another potential area of trouble.
The nuclear genie will not go back into the bottle, our only option is to try to contain it in a way that strikes large and small countries equally, anything less will not do and will only result in carnage down the road.
The people that point at the mutual destruction guarantee as the thing that kept the world 'safe' for the last 70 years miss the point that 70 years is absolutely nothing on the timescale of the human race, it is a single human life-span and there is absolutely no way that you can extrapolate from that 70 years to the 1000's of years that this would have to hold true for it to really work. Too many 'close calls' for comfort during those 70 years, every single one of those could easily have led to a huge disaster.
So until China, America, Russia, France, the UK, Israel, Pakistan and India are ready to give up their toys you can expect the small fry to continue to want to have theirs too.
Cool it Mr.Doomsday. Kim is just negotiating here so he doesn't end up like Gadaffi. Everything else is bullshit to sell some ads and prop up superficial journalism.
I don't understand what it is about a world government that some find unpalatable. The world is facing a series of problems that defy the boundaries of traditional nation-states and innovation in the governance and state building space seems to have ground to a halt with the Treaty of Westphalia.
Listen to how Californians talk about how their tax dollars are used to support Southerners and Midwesterners. Take that cultural/political/ethnic disconnect and cube it. Then you might approach the level of drama that we'd see if a world government with actual teeth was proposed and implemented.
I can only begin to imagine the scale and scope of the issue. Humanity is not nearly close enough culturally where such an organization can realistically be suggested.
Sorry if this is naïvety and I can't speak for anyone other than myself but at least for me there's an irrational "love" element that I cannot silent. We fight for political control but my "tribe" is the entire country, not my region. Personally, the day I start talking about how it is economically beneficial to stay in the union is the day I start preparing for the union to dissolve.
We already have the global free flow of capital, goods, information and pollutants in the oceans and atmosphere. At what point do we accept that we already have some aspects of world government and take steps to formalize it. I don't think cultural homogeneity is necessary or even desirable.
I quite like Neal Stephenson's idea in Diamond Age of some sort of enforceable world economic protocol.
Imagine how socially liberal European atheists would feel about voters living in middle eastern theocracies being able shape the laws about how their daughters could dress. Now imagine the reverse.
Why would anybody be happy letting people with such fundamentally different belief systems make their rules?
That's an excellent point, which is why I think that the transition if it ever comes will be a gradual one somewhat comparable to the enlightenment for Europe.
Of course this has the potential for conflict as well.
In the mean time we seem to be on a regressive path and for now further unification is over the horizon. The cause - at least, in my opinion - was that the unification attempts that were made were made in bad faith, for short term economic reasons rather than for long term stability reasons.
For example, the US was instrumental in enacting the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, so a government that I don't get to vote for had a direct influence on the laws of my country (UK).
There is some distance between the US and the UK but it's still comparatively modest compared to the world as a whole.
If, for example, Asian and Middle Eastern countries influenced the law of this hypothetical world government in proportion to their population, then the UK might be compelled to execute violators of the drug laws you refer to.
Ultimately, while the NK situation is unlikely to do anything in that direction, in the long term I don't see any sane counterargument to the notion that either we're going to have some form of a world government with an (enforced) monopoly over nuclear weapons or nuclear war. It's not going to happen any time soon and I think it's likely we're going to have to go (or, rather, try to survive through) another world war to get there, but the usual anti-globalist arguments seem to completely ignore the extent to which the technological developments of the 20th century have irreversibly changed the world.
Nukes will never be given up. World peace, at the macro level, has definitely benefited from their existence. If everyone gave up their nukes, might is right would be the order of the day and we'd be seeing many more major regional wars.
We do need better technology for preventing close calls - institutional technology, communications, information gathering, to prevent misunderstanding. It's the best approach for the world we live in, since we will never live again in a world without nukes.
But if you're right then, inevitably, they will end up being used.
> World peace, at the macro level, has definitely benefited from their existence.
Yes, for the time being, and you really need to qualify that statement. 70 years is an eyeblink.
> If everyone gave up their nukes, might is right would be the order of the day and we'd be seeing many more major regional wars.
Not necessarily, for instance, none of the countries in Latin America have nukes and I doubt if having them would lead to less war in the region.
The major reason why war breaks out is resources.
> We do need better technology for preventing close calls - institutional technology, communications, information gathering, to prevent misunderstanding.
I think this is contradictory with nuclear proliferation. The more countries and eventually organizations with access to nukes the bigger the chance of an accident, even with technological gizmos to prevent 'mis use' (as if there is any good use...).
> It's the best approach for the world we live in, since we will never live again in a world without nukes.
This may be true, but it does not have to be true. If there is one thing that history has taught us it is that we do not deal in absolutes. Nuclear stockpiles are already down from their high points, which is a trend worth appreciating, at the same time the number of countries with nukes is up. The two will sooner or later lead to either a nuclear confrontation at some level with - hopefully - limited effect (a few billion dead perhaps?) which might teach the remainder that these weapons have no place in a sane world. Depending on where the victims will be and whether or not they were members of a society that believed strongly in having nuclear weapons we might come to our collective senses or we might conclude that having nuclear weapons is the way to go.
People will not stop trying to establish domination over one another. If history has taught us anything, it's that. Status-seeking is built in to the human genome, and what counts as status changes with fashion - one day it's empire building, another day it's moral crusades, yet another it's extermination of the Other.
You're right that 70 years is an eyeblink. Without nukes, I would expect bloodier wars than WWII every 50 to 100 years. We may still see it yet with autonomous drones, and we'll definitely see it if a realistic, reliable defence to ballistic missiles is established.
I don't see a way out beyond altering the psychological utility function of humans at the genetic level, but no such technology could be created and deployed without it being used for tyranny. We might slowly breed it out of the population, but we'd need a different economic structure that doesn't rely so heavily on competition, and that's not going to happen any time soon.
> People will not stop trying to establish domination over one another.
That depends on where in the world you are looking. There are plenty of places where people are not trying establish domination over neighboring countries. That something is in our nature does not mean automatically that as a society we can not transcend those elements. In fact, almost all of society is an effort at transcending those elements.
We've come a long way in terms of organizing ourselves, we recognize that war is a 'means of last resort' and there are plenty of people who would not support wars of aggression.
This is a really interesting analysis; thanks for sharing. I asked a general question, and you gave a general answer, so I'm not trying to pick holes in your statement. That said, I think the picture you paint is more negative than is necessitated when one considers all the evidence.
I think North Korea is a special case because of its relationship to China, which precludes a stronger response. While many would-be dictators will be looking at Kim Jong-un as a blueprint for how to succeed at the "asshole" game, few of them can expect the the protection of the worlds (soon-to-be) greatest superpower.
If we analyse the situation from the Chinese point of view, we can see several objectives. The most important objective of the Chinese, IMHO, is not to rock the boat. China absolutely does not want a revolution in North Korea. One that would almost certainly result in millions of refugees entering China; one that would very likely result in the USA extending its military tentacles into a region adjacent to it; one that may well give the people of Hong Kong ideas the Chinese don't want them having (any more than they already do). China is quite happy to kick the proverbial can down the road. That's not to say that they're not irritated by NK, but as long as Kim Jong-Un doesn't push things too far -- as long as he doesn't do something so egregious that he forces "the west's" hands militarily, he will likely be given a pass by his Chinese patrons.
On the other hand, the west, and specifically the USA, is mired in internal conflict. For some of the reasons you named, but IMO also more importantly for structural reasons having to do with the US's long history of prosperity, it no longer has the will to enter anything other than token military conflicts. The same is even more true of Europe, who have essentially ceased to be players on the world stage. (Russia has, of course, recognised this reality and that is why, IMO, Putin's strategy is to essentially revert to history and become a mercenary country. Partly to as a method of retaining importance; in no small part to ensure China doesn't, with its growing power, get any ideas. The strategy makes sense, though I'm not sure it will work.)
Just to finish off the goals game: what should the US want? Most obviously, they want for NK to stop developing nuclear weapons; that much is obvious. As just mentioned, they don't want a military conflict, since it might lead to a confrontation with China which they are likely to lose badly. (It's about will, not about supposed technical superiority.) What else does the US want?
Well, a revolution in North Korea wouldn't be a terrible outcome, for the same reason that China doesn't want it. Ironically, one of the best strategies for doing that is to do nothing -- after all, Kim Song-un is playing this game for a reason: Trump is absolutely correct in pointing out that what he wants is extortion money. So: do nothing. For once, the constant bickering in western countries actually helps!
The big picture, IMO, is one of Chinese ascent and one of US -- and by extension, European -- decline. There's not much that can stop this from happening, as I see it. It is as inevitable as the ascent of America was in the 19th century. This period will be punctuated by heightened risks, as allegiances are realigned in light of the new hegemon. Kim Jong-un, to my mind, has inserted himself into this uncertainty with the goal of hanging on to power without effecting the reforms that would almost certainly see him thrown from power. By the way, we should consider the contribution of western "humanitarian" democracies to this logic. In addition to the conclusions you list for the worlds aspiring dictators, another lesson they will have learned from studying Libya and Egypt is that there's no point in currying favour, in trying to make deals, with western democracies. If there's a revolution, they will align, knee-jerk, behind the...
NK hasn't signed a treaty preventing them from testing. If the test ban treaty had teeth, it still wouldn't apply to NK.
Of course NK is acting perfectly rationally, having seen what the US does to countries elsewhere that don't do what the US tells them to. But it's not clear to me why the US needs to control NK. It's the desire for control that drove NK to get nukes.
I'm not apologizing for NK, I think the regime should be toppled tomorrow from a moral perspective; but I don't think an invasion even in the absence of nukes would lead to a good outcome, as we've seen elsewhere good outcomes from moral invasions are scarce on the ground these days.
> NK hasn't signed a treaty preventing them from testing.
Obviously, and the countries that plan on developing nuclear weapons the old fashioned way (not through computer simulations) are the ones that the treaty would affect the most.
> Of course NK is acting perfectly rationally, having seen what the US does to countries elsewhere that don't do what the US tells them to.
This is definitely part of the problem. Another part is simply prestige.
> But it's not clear to me why the US needs to control NK.
The US doesn't. But the world does and the world needs to exercise such control equally across all countries that do not wish to play nice. Unfortunately that is exactly where the problem lies, we simply do not have a power structure in place that exceeds the largest sovereign nations in power because they provide that power.
And so we're stuck in a pretty hard place.
> It's the desire for control that drove NK to get nukes.
Yes, the fear of every tin pot dictator (I certainly consider Kim Jong-Un to be one of those) is to be deposed by an external power.
> I think the regime should be toppled tomorrow from a moral perspective;
And that is what got us here in the first place.
> but I don't think an invasion even in the absence of nukes would lead to a good outcome, as we've seen elsewhere good outcomes from moral invasions are scarce on the ground these days.
Even if the outcome would be a good one, I find it hard to make the case. Personally I feel NATO should be used as a ratchet only: enforce the status quo unless a country wishes to make a move in a 'good' (subjective, I know) direction. Any kind of border excursions to be ruthlessly dealt with.
In the longer term that might work even if in the shorter term it would lead to some uncomfortable decisions.
Of course NK is acting perfectly rationally, having seen what the US does to countries elsewhere that don't do what the US tells them to.
Or perhaps having seen what happens to countries that do what the US tells them to. Iraq decommissioned its WMDs; got invaded. The lesson learned by many countries is that doing what the US tells you to vis-a-vis weapons makes you vulnerable; not safe.
If Iraq had had nuclear weapons and were ready to use them upon being invaded, bringing nuclear devastation upon the US and various others in a world-ending catastrophe of mutual destruction, do you think that invasion would have still happened?
I suggest no. I suggest that having nuclear weapons, and ideally global reach with those weapons, is a way to massively reduce the chances of being invaded by the US or anyone else.
> do you think that invasion would have still happened?
Most likely not.
But the WMD's that Iraq supposedly did have were used as a fig-leaf to invade anyway.
My reasoning at the time was that the fact that they were invaded more or less proved that they didn't have any and dr. David Kelly's assessment for UNSCOM pretty much proved that.
> I suggest that having nuclear weapons, and ideally global reach with those weapons, is a way to massively reduce the chances of being invaded by the US or anyone else.
I agree that "Iraq was invaded for its oil" has no compelling evidence (although they certainly were not above using that as a nice plus once in the place), but God are the two sources you provided bad. scottmanning.com: it does not matter how much "Iraqi oil" gets into the US, oil is oil not fine wine. What matters is that the oil fields are managed by US-aligned companies, and a lot of them are. Foreign Policy: ouch, that is like a motherlode of bad faith put into article form to justify the invasion, so basically because they found (after the facts) some documents relating wishful thinking about future coordination with Al-Qaeda, that justifies the patently off-based and oversold WDM claims, and makes all the sick 9/11 dog whistles "not lies"? Wow.
The US needs to control everyone to maintain the empire's dominance, but in this case it's probably less about NK and more about the China Containment Policy. China support NK to avoid an enemy on their border
> So, now we have crazy people with hydrogen bombs. It is a new chapter and one that could have a pretty bad ending.
I agree with the rest of your statement, but I don't agree with this part in the way it is written - the statement is as true as it was 5 years ago. I think NK is trying to get into the nuke club as insurance. I wouldn't base my foreign policy on this, but I fail to see how a nuclear war would be [an advantage for NK's leadership (1)]. I'd assume quite the opposite.
> I wouldn't base my foreign policy on this, but I fail to see how a nuclear war would play to NK's advantage.
It's a matter of numbers. With every party entering the nuclear club the chances of accidents and other use outside of the chain of command goes up.
A non-zero chance multiplied by a larger number implies a larger risk. Given enough time that risk will materialize, whether it is North Korea, Pakistan or Israel doesn't matter.
I don't understand how that addresses the NK's advantage point.
Also, if risk is an actual issue, how do 10 nukes in NK justify this extend of worry, in contrast to the weapons Russia and the US have? (For some reason I'm reminded of John Oliver's piece on Nuclear Weapons safety in the US [1]). If humanity is to be worried about NK having them, why shouldn't we be equally worried about Russia, China, France, the US, etc.?
Minute physics also have a nice video about this [0]
> If humanity is to be worried about NK having them, why shouldn't we be equally worried about Russia, China, France, the US, etc.?
I'd say that we should also be worried, but there are different risks. Adding a new country to the mix with 10 nukes is different to adding 10 nukes to existing countries.
The Minute Physics video made me worry more about Russia's & US' ability to cause a nuclear winter rather than worry about NK.
Yes, there's additional risk if another country has them, but that argument is independent from country. Arguing NK shouldn't have nukes because it increases a risk is equally applicable to the US.
Actually, the US pose a much greater risk because they have bombers, silos and subs with way more nuclear weapons, multiplying the risk for accidents. Following the risk argument I feel the US are a larger problem than NK.
> Yes, there's additional risk if another country has them, but that argument is independent from country.
I don't think that's quite true. The stability of a country, and the current alliances & conflicts all influence the chance of a deliberate attack. The funding and security of a country influence the safety and chance of an accidental one.
If the USA would launch a pre-emptive strike anywhere in the world it would instantly become a pariah in international relations. DJT has done a lot of damage to the image of the United States already that will likely take decades to repair but such a thing would put this on an entirely different level.
Usually one assumes that in a nuclear war nobody wins. The US might have the capability to glass NK, but millions of innocent people live there. If a Korean H-Bomb reaches Tokyo or the US the results won't be pretty either.
I should have been more specific (will edit in a sec), the question was aimed at the benefit for the decision makers. NK leadership is going down if they launch a nuclear strike, independent of how the counterstrike is done (so their show of strength etc. is of limited importance). But SK/US leadership has to consider nuclear retaliation if they attack NK, in which case it becomes a bad decision in the eyes of their voters, even if they ultimately remove NK leadership.
[edit] tl;dr: Having the weapons is an advantage for NK's leaders. Using them is their end.
>FWIW I have always considered the test ban treaty itself as a means by the nuclear powers to attempt to kick the door closed behind them (because they can use numerical simulation instead of real world tests) rather than an honest attempt at reducing proliferation.
That's not a bad thing. A world in which the great powers are nuclear and the minor powers aren't is a far safer one than what we would have with a nuclear free for all. And given that the great powers were going to get nukes regardless, the current system is probably our least bad option.
NK is a massive challenge to that system. I hope this can be resolved with a minimum of bloodshed. I desperately wish the world had a more capable person leading the effort.
I love you like a brother, agree with what you're saying...
Isn't the root cause for the NK situation is that we don't have a peace treaty? Meaning that we (USA, SK) are technically still at war with NK. I can't imagine CTBTO being on the table until hostilities formally cease.
As a US citizen, I don't understand why this peace treaty thing hasn't been resolved. I don't forgive or condone the NK regimes. But my side baffles me too. Is this about saving face? Appeasing our own hardliners? War profits? Some weird proxy squabble with China? I assume Kissinger is somehow complicit, so why don't we just blame him and move on?
I know the history, situation is complicated. But I expect my side to act like the grown ups and just fix this.
> Isn't the root cause for the NK situation is that we don't have a peace treaty?
That plus the fact that China has been enabling NK long enough that now there is an actual problem without a clear or easy solution. Buffer states are useful because they allow for proxy wars rather than outright wars and as such NK served a useful purpose for China. But now the buffer state has become a big problem and this in turn may cause China to wish they had moved when they could have.
The peace treaty that could have come to pass between North and South Korea had a good chance of succeeding around the year 2000, GWB then totally killed any chance of that happening because of a perceived need for 'Evil' to be defined so there was a tangible enemy.
We all know how that ended up and today the chances of a peace between the two Korea's are about where they were in 1953, except that now the stakes are much, much higher.
If one studies history, even casually, one might note that nearly all wars in history have not started as a result of rational actors making optimal decisions in accordance with game theory.
Why, then, do we continue to believe this fallacy -- the fallacy that peace is guaranteed because nobody would be irrational enough to actually start a war?
Wars start through miscommunication, human error, the whims of (usually despotic) leadership, internal crises, and unforeseen Black Swan events that escape our (Gaussian) models. This can be summarized thus: wars frequently start for no real reason at all.
We should be more pragmatic, and look at history instead of borrowing a theory from the dismal science of economics to reassure ourselves, as there are now millions of very real lives at stake. North Korea has become a problem worthy of more rigorous analysis than the pithy comments about MAD.
The only reason wars are stopped is because people rose up and took the reigns out of the hands of those who would wage indiscriminate war, forever.
The point is: if you don't want war, stop fobbing off the responsibilities of sovereignty onto your politicians, and start taking more responsibility for the actions of your own state. Alas, Americans are not quite prepared for this - rather preferring to squabble among themselves over whose 'ism' is the rightest - but in the meantime, the Generals and CEO's who will profit from this warfare are all left, un-checked, hidden behind the curtains and mirrors and smoke that blinds us all ..
Wars are stopped because they burn out or because peace is negotiated (if there is a clear victor, which definitely isn't always the case).
What is interesting - in a very morbid way, admitted - is that if you look at how much energy goes into war how little it usually achieves. The only wars that tend to change things in a meaningful way (for better or worse) are civil wars.
Game theory backs heavily on self-interest though. Self-interest runs the world and everything, including you.
If you can solve the self interest for most of the people, things usually work out. If you attack others self interest, then yes, random things can happen when self interest is compromised or when a player loses self interest in favor of extremism or some flavor of "fuck the world, fuck everyone". The solution to that is economics and comfort, people don't go extreme when they have those.
>Self-interest runs the world and everything, including you.
It doesn't run everyone. Or at least what is defined as optimal self-interest does not correctly model people who have been subjected to propaganda, religion, etc (e.g. see suicide bombers).
I'd prefer not to gamble millions of lives on the theory that people or states (especially states that are effectively just one person) are going to act completely rationally.
Here's one example where "rational self interest" doesn't seem to have worked out:
- Kim Jong Un could rationally (in both his and his countrymen's self interest) live the rest of his days in a gloriously well appointed Chinese estate, albeit in exile, perhaps as part of a transition negotation that sees his dynasty exchange their power in Korea for both their own safety and the good of the country.
- If rational action by people and states are as close to a physical law as is so frequently assumed, why has this not happened? Why does he not act rationally, and why do we imagine that he will act rationally in the future?
Here's the fundamental problem with the MAD / game theory / self interest / rational actor tack: the model implies that there's a 0% chance of nuclear weapons ever being used (because it wouldn't be in the self interest of the state), and therefore, the appropriate policy response is effectively to ignore continued accumulation of greater and greater stockpiles of nuclear arms, as no conflict can ever be possible. The MAD theory leads to a political calculus that promotes the proliferation of ever more nuclear weapons, and as we're seeing, ever more nuclear weapons in the hands of ever more unstable actors.
The MAD theory is unsound and fundamentally dangerous. Clearly, the chance of nuclear war is not 0% (a truly absurd idea), and so the policy response that MAD implies (perpetual deadlock) leads us down an even more dangerous road: perpetual stockpiling and proliferation, without any measured guarantees to stability.
We're placing very, very large bets (right now our civilization, soon the human race, one day the entire planet, even the rocks and stones) on an idea that we can't falsify and have never tested.
> nearly all wars in history have not started as a result of rational actors making optimal decisions
Is this true? I see them often as the conflict between local / global goals where the real problem is that each step in the escalation from peace to war is tragically rational - each decision is a lose-lose choice where one path is a guaranteed small loss but escalation offers a chance to win despite the possible apocalyptic outcome. The whole matter is so bad because peace-time power-plays build up an unstable system containing things like interlocking mutual defence treaties deliberately designed to escalate the stakes of minor disputes.
My understanding of game theory may be weak because I don't see how things like the prisoners dilemma have an "optimal solution" instead they just illustrate choices whose desirability match different risk appetites. Your risk-appetite is like a value-judgement, taste or personality - judgements of what risks are rational is personal and relative instead of a mathematical absolute. Even on seemingly simple probabilistic problems where you can calculate expected-value seem fallacious when you only play the game once and you'll be dead within 40 years no matter the outcome. Can game theory prove "Live free or die" is irrational?
> I see them often as the conflict between local / global goals where the real problem is that each step in the escalation from peace to war is tragically rational - each decision is a lose-lose choice where one path is a guaranteed small loss but escalation offers a chance to win despite the possible apocalyptic outcome.
This sounds a lot like the dollar auction game [1], which is used to study the disconnect between individual actions being rational and a clearly undesirable outcome. Basically, the game is a variation of an all-pay auction in which only the top 2 bidders pay. A dollar is auctioned off in bids of some fixed increment. At each turn, winning the dollar is a preferable outcome to losing your previous bid. Even after the price goes over $1, winning the dollar represents a smaller loss. In that sense, the rational thing to do is bid indefinitely high. It's supposedly a common outcome with human bidders that the winning bid is over $2.
> It constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by all countries but one since 1996.
But
> The Treaty will enter into force once signed and ratified by the remaining eight nuclear technology holder countries: China, Egypt, the DPRK, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States.
So, somehow, the US wants North Korea to respect a treaty that it is, itself, not accepting (though it has "respected" it).
This is exactly what is wrong with our world: The US is playing the police but not the "model". In fact, they are playing a bad model while playing the police in the same time.
Why, the DPRK, (a sovereign country) has to respect this treaty or any other treaty? They are a sovereign country and they have the right to develop whatever technology they please.
Give me a break and grow up. If the US behaved like pacifist Japan we would all be at Kim's mercy right now.
Pointing out hypocrisy and doing something about something about hypocrisy are two different things.
There are an awful lot of people in the world who believe that they should stop trying to pacify the US, and start fighting back against an imperialist country with an out-of-control military hell-bent on projecting its force around the world, demanding that sovereign societies do its bidding - "or else".
Those people should stop being pacifists and start fighting back, "because pacifism just allows tyranny to run rampant around the world"?
BTW, a lot of those people have been branded 'terrorists', which is about as close to 'non-pacifistic' a label as you can get, amiright?
You should check out 'Pacificst Japan's' ability to do more than they are doing and and why before you compare them to the US. Hint: World War II did not exactly end the way 'Pacifist Japan' wanted.
Because other than diplomatic talk and the political conversation on this subject would have you believe this is not about the ethics of nuclear proliferation but about power and saving face.
The US is a country full of shit, they've got a shitty healthcare system, good universities which only the very riches can afford, TRUMP and is a country with its history written in blood etc. They've always managed to succeed in history by those moves. Today it'll be no different. Recap:
WW1: they've joined to make money, then imposed HUGE debts on who lost it
WW2: they've caused it, they've fucked with Europe with the debt from WW2 so much, then outright lied to find a reason to fight. Then finally at least brought some peace to the world for a while(?).
Cold war: just wanna display that they are the fucking best, ofc.
Vietnam: they've done with the people there the same thing hitler used to do with their enemies in WW2, and still lost so badly... No soldier wanted to fight there, but the politicians wanted. So sad.
Iraq 1990: omg, so much failure
Afghanistan: shame, no words
Iraq second try: so much failure, the country nowadays is a mess, tons of people died, congratulations USA.
If the UN or whoever is responsible for peace for diplomacy actually worked by themselves and weren't just the USA, they wouldn't allow the USA to fight almost every decade huge wars for causes which is never their own problem, but their money-making machine.
Note that I don't support this crazy north korean dictator, he definitely doesn't give a fuck about his people, but he's no different than other leaders we've got globally, it's just that his country was already in a bad position. I hope he goes away soon.
> WW1: they've joined to make money, then imposed HUGE debts on who lost it
> WW2: they've caused it, they've fucked with Europe with the debt from WW2 so much, then outright lied to find a reason to fight.
What a simplistic worldview and lack of knowledge. What an embarrassment. And I'm someone who thinks every president since Kennedy should have been tried for war crime and (presumably) hanged[1]. Please educate yourself on these subjects before spouting any more nonsense.
[1] Just kidding America. You don't hang a president, that would be most inappropriate. You execute them by firing squad.
Presumably it's related to the first point, imposing debts on Germany. I guess he thinks that WWII was caused indirectly by the reparations Germany was supposed to pay. It's a fairly common viewpoint.
Of course, as might be clear from his polemic tone, he is being facetious. The US shouldn't be blamed for the reparations. And the view that the reparations caused WWII is simplistic and misguided.
Cost of US university educations: I got my Master's and Ph.D. in a STEM field from one of the world's best research universities and paid $0.00 to the university. And I got free health care. Same for my wife except her field was in the social sciences. Same for my brother. In my department, the word was that they were awash in tuition scholarships and other financial support but were really short on qualified applications.
WWI: My college history course didn't cover that well, and I haven't studied it much since then so can't comment much. But there was something about a prince who got shot and a lot of European countries who had said "if you fight, then we will fight," and somehow soon the rivers of Europe were running red with blood. Somehow the war spread from "Flanders fields" to Russia, destabilized the Tsar, and let the Communist revolution take over. IIRC the US came in near the end, ended a stalemate in the trenches of Belgium or wherever, and walked away. There was the Treaty of Versailles, supposedly really tough on Germany, but I don't know the details. US President Wilson had 14 points or some such, but they never got "traction".
WWII: The US stock market crash of late 1929 ruined the US financial system and threw the US into the Great Depression. Then the US was not buying from industrialized, foreign trading partners, e.g., Germany, and they went into the Great Depression. Germany was already sick from the Treaty of Versailles and the massive inflation they had had in the 1920s. Then, presto, bingo, they got a guy, A. Hitler. He took steps quickly, e.g., used the power he had to improve his position with the citizens, quickly called for another election, got more power, ..., and called for special powers for 4 years to fix the economy. Basically that worked -- he ran a command economy and got Germany out of its Great Depression. Then he called for another 4 years of special powers and, in a word, overreached. His goal appeared to be to get oil from the Mideast, Romania, or in and around Baku. For the Mideast, he had Rommel charging east across North Africa trying to take the Suez Canal (weaken England) and on to the Mideast oil. Then he invaded Russia and tried to get to the Baku oil, came close, but didn't make it. His invasion of Russia was a step too far -- supply lines were too long and the front was too long. Russia was able to fall back to the east since Russia is across 11 time zones. From England, the Allies bombed Germany's war making capacity, invaded at Normandy, and charged east across France. Meanwhile Russia fell back, built tanks and artillery, attacked with 6 million men, won at the big battle of Kursk, and charged west to Berlin. Taking Berlin was to be bloody, and Ike deliberately let Russia do that.
That little description is short, concentrates on the main military points, and omits the nearly worst ever moral record of Hitler's Germany.
The US came out of WWII afraid of, to borrow from a comedy, the Inspector Clouseau "old take over the world ploy", appropriate enough, from the Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Russia came out of WWII determined to have a big "buffer" in the west, to take over the countries of central and eastern Europe, put a big boot on their necks, and make darned sure any instabilities in Europe would not cause Russia to be invaded -- in WWII, supposedly something over 20 million Russians died. Also to keep Russia from moving farther west and to keep Europe stable, the US did a lot to build NATO. NATO has worked -- since the end of WWII has apparently been the longest period of peace in Europe since ..., maybe ancient Rome. The world should thank the US, actually including especially Russia, for what it has contributed to NATO. Russia? NATO made sure Russia would not get invaded again from the west.
Viet Nam: Ho Chi Minh, a dishwasher from Paris, called himself "Communist" and occasionally got a ...
> It constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by all countries but one since 1996.
I'm chronically heartbroken that I was born too late to attend a nuclear test explosion. No knowledge about the deleterious effects of nuclear testing erases the existential depression that it's a phenomenon I'll never witness.
If I was the boy King I would do the same. Nothing gives you security like nukes. Of course now that USA and the big countries have them they are against new nuclear club members, but that's self-serving.
I am also certain they will negotiate--but after showing their perfected arsenal, and from a different position. Ships with grains will be just the cherry on the cake.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadThe norm is toothless though. If a country wants nukes, they just have to suffer through the economic sanctions by a few countries.
NK government has every incentive to continue with the research and development. They don't give a damn about their starving population, and they get the ultimate terror card that they can milk for decades.
We really need to develop anti-ICBM tech to save the humanity.
If I'm not mistaken, to some extend, both the Russian and the US already have this tech operational.
Though, this would not protect with the obvious "first blood" intent of NK, in which case, Kim better pray for cover (rightfully so).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanyon
Sure, a conventional war would never be as bad as 7,000 nukes, but one? Seven? Seven hundred? I expect conventional munitions would likely be better targeted, simply out of necessity, so the difference would be smaller than the ratio of TNT-equivalents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile#Current...
I'm sure there is tons of technology we regular civilians have no idea of, and its actually a good strategy.
From 2 months ago:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-missile-defense-test-fails-...
Everyone knows that what's "on display" is basically 10 years behind what military such as USA keeps in secret to use it as a last-resort type of response.
Maybe, but this is a very strange assessment of the NK situation.
The obvious explanation is that the, in my opinion disgusting, NK regime is a rational actor that try to perpetuate itself in time. The only way to ensure that it's to avoid external interference. The only way to avoid external interference (Iraq style) is to have nuclear weapons.
From this follow that they are not more eager to start a war that other nations. Probably less.
Suppose they ask for something to South Korea and they say "no way". What happens then? A war is suicide and they know it.
I suppose you could extract a few sweets from things like "I will stop creating nuclear weapons" or something like this, but not serious blackmail is possible.
It's just the old MAD (1) doctrine. We (the world) have a lot experience with that. As an European I'm used to the idea that my life is in the hands of some crazy guy in the Kremlin or the White House.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
Edit: This dream of course might be second (or third) after regime survival.
People might not like it but Russia wasn't about to give up its only warm water port. Georgia wasn't a clear cut case either.
Israel hasn't annexed any land since 1967.
Except for the settlements, which are annexations in all but name.
We all have dreams, but what counts is the hard reality.
I didn't get that memo neither, by the way ;-). I can't think a war that it's not, in its root causes, about territory.
Seems possible to me that they seek to neutralize the U.S. by holding it nuclear hostage. Then someday maybe take the South. They've even been talking about EMP blasts, a very useful offensive strategy for them.
The CTBTO is obviously well within their rights to write press releases which amount mostly to hand wringing at this point in time, in the longer term every tin pot dictator without nukes is going to look to NK as the example of how to stay alive.
FWIW I have always considered the test ban treaty itself as a means by the nuclear powers to attempt to kick the door closed behind them (because they can use numerical simulation instead of real world tests) rather than an honest attempt at reducing proliferation.
So, now we have crazy people with hydrogen bombs. It is a new chapter and one that could have a pretty bad ending.
I'm curious as to what you think the right course of action would be in dealing with these types? Honest question, although I realise it's a minefield.
The most clear example of a possible solution was Albert Einstein's proposal for a United Nations 'with teeth'.
The majority of the worlds super powers were not happy about this because of course it would mean they too would have to play ball and give up their toys 'or else'. What didn't work on a global scale most likely would work on a smaller scale if the superpowers that remain could agree on any of this but so far even Kim and his bomb seem to not be enough to tip the scales.
Trump being regarded as unstable and untrustworthy by the vast majority of the rest of the world doesn't help either, there is an outside chance that with some cooler heads in the White House that a deal could have been made. As it is just about every other government / head of state has been insulted in one way or another and Kim seems to be mainly aiming his aggression at the United States so for the time being this is a stale-mate. And I really hope it will continue to be a stale mate.
All the other options (assassination of the Dear Leader, limited war) other than sanctions seem to be off the table for now, and even the sanctions might be rolled back for simple humanitarian reasons and because they are not achieving what they are meant to achieve.
The very long term future has only two possible outcomes as far as I can see: either we will have a world government, for good or for bad, or we will end up destroying a good chunk of the planet in World War III triggered by some idiot because nuclear weapons will become more and more available until even the most unstable regimes have them. And NK, even if it is pretty bad and obviously led by a megalomaniac, is not as bad as it gets. Pakistan and India are another potential area of trouble.
The nuclear genie will not go back into the bottle, our only option is to try to contain it in a way that strikes large and small countries equally, anything less will not do and will only result in carnage down the road.
The people that point at the mutual destruction guarantee as the thing that kept the world 'safe' for the last 70 years miss the point that 70 years is absolutely nothing on the timescale of the human race, it is a single human life-span and there is absolutely no way that you can extrapolate from that 70 years to the 1000's of years that this would have to hold true for it to really work. Too many 'close calls' for comfort during those 70 years, every single one of those could easily have led to a huge disaster.
So until China, America, Russia, France, the UK, Israel, Pakistan and India are ready to give up their toys you can expect the small fry to continue to want to have theirs too.
I can only begin to imagine the scale and scope of the issue. Humanity is not nearly close enough culturally where such an organization can realistically be suggested.
Sorry if this is naïvety and I can't speak for anyone other than myself but at least for me there's an irrational "love" element that I cannot silent. We fight for political control but my "tribe" is the entire country, not my region. Personally, the day I start talking about how it is economically beneficial to stay in the union is the day I start preparing for the union to dissolve.
I quite like Neal Stephenson's idea in Diamond Age of some sort of enforceable world economic protocol.
Why would anybody be happy letting people with such fundamentally different belief systems make their rules?
Of course this has the potential for conflict as well.
In the mean time we seem to be on a regressive path and for now further unification is over the horizon. The cause - at least, in my opinion - was that the unification attempts that were made were made in bad faith, for short term economic reasons rather than for long term stability reasons.
For example, the US was instrumental in enacting the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, so a government that I don't get to vote for had a direct influence on the laws of my country (UK).
If, for example, Asian and Middle Eastern countries influenced the law of this hypothetical world government in proportion to their population, then the UK might be compelled to execute violators of the drug laws you refer to.
We do need better technology for preventing close calls - institutional technology, communications, information gathering, to prevent misunderstanding. It's the best approach for the world we live in, since we will never live again in a world without nukes.
South Africa had them and gave them up.
But if you're right then, inevitably, they will end up being used.
> World peace, at the macro level, has definitely benefited from their existence.
Yes, for the time being, and you really need to qualify that statement. 70 years is an eyeblink.
> If everyone gave up their nukes, might is right would be the order of the day and we'd be seeing many more major regional wars.
Not necessarily, for instance, none of the countries in Latin America have nukes and I doubt if having them would lead to less war in the region.
The major reason why war breaks out is resources.
> We do need better technology for preventing close calls - institutional technology, communications, information gathering, to prevent misunderstanding.
I think this is contradictory with nuclear proliferation. The more countries and eventually organizations with access to nukes the bigger the chance of an accident, even with technological gizmos to prevent 'mis use' (as if there is any good use...).
> It's the best approach for the world we live in, since we will never live again in a world without nukes.
This may be true, but it does not have to be true. If there is one thing that history has taught us it is that we do not deal in absolutes. Nuclear stockpiles are already down from their high points, which is a trend worth appreciating, at the same time the number of countries with nukes is up. The two will sooner or later lead to either a nuclear confrontation at some level with - hopefully - limited effect (a few billion dead perhaps?) which might teach the remainder that these weapons have no place in a sane world. Depending on where the victims will be and whether or not they were members of a society that believed strongly in having nuclear weapons we might come to our collective senses or we might conclude that having nuclear weapons is the way to go.
You're right that 70 years is an eyeblink. Without nukes, I would expect bloodier wars than WWII every 50 to 100 years. We may still see it yet with autonomous drones, and we'll definitely see it if a realistic, reliable defence to ballistic missiles is established.
I don't see a way out beyond altering the psychological utility function of humans at the genetic level, but no such technology could be created and deployed without it being used for tyranny. We might slowly breed it out of the population, but we'd need a different economic structure that doesn't rely so heavily on competition, and that's not going to happen any time soon.
That depends on where in the world you are looking. There are plenty of places where people are not trying establish domination over neighboring countries. That something is in our nature does not mean automatically that as a society we can not transcend those elements. In fact, almost all of society is an effort at transcending those elements.
We've come a long way in terms of organizing ourselves, we recognize that war is a 'means of last resort' and there are plenty of people who would not support wars of aggression.
https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...
I think North Korea is a special case because of its relationship to China, which precludes a stronger response. While many would-be dictators will be looking at Kim Jong-un as a blueprint for how to succeed at the "asshole" game, few of them can expect the the protection of the worlds (soon-to-be) greatest superpower.
If we analyse the situation from the Chinese point of view, we can see several objectives. The most important objective of the Chinese, IMHO, is not to rock the boat. China absolutely does not want a revolution in North Korea. One that would almost certainly result in millions of refugees entering China; one that would very likely result in the USA extending its military tentacles into a region adjacent to it; one that may well give the people of Hong Kong ideas the Chinese don't want them having (any more than they already do). China is quite happy to kick the proverbial can down the road. That's not to say that they're not irritated by NK, but as long as Kim Jong-Un doesn't push things too far -- as long as he doesn't do something so egregious that he forces "the west's" hands militarily, he will likely be given a pass by his Chinese patrons.
On the other hand, the west, and specifically the USA, is mired in internal conflict. For some of the reasons you named, but IMO also more importantly for structural reasons having to do with the US's long history of prosperity, it no longer has the will to enter anything other than token military conflicts. The same is even more true of Europe, who have essentially ceased to be players on the world stage. (Russia has, of course, recognised this reality and that is why, IMO, Putin's strategy is to essentially revert to history and become a mercenary country. Partly to as a method of retaining importance; in no small part to ensure China doesn't, with its growing power, get any ideas. The strategy makes sense, though I'm not sure it will work.)
Just to finish off the goals game: what should the US want? Most obviously, they want for NK to stop developing nuclear weapons; that much is obvious. As just mentioned, they don't want a military conflict, since it might lead to a confrontation with China which they are likely to lose badly. (It's about will, not about supposed technical superiority.) What else does the US want? Well, a revolution in North Korea wouldn't be a terrible outcome, for the same reason that China doesn't want it. Ironically, one of the best strategies for doing that is to do nothing -- after all, Kim Song-un is playing this game for a reason: Trump is absolutely correct in pointing out that what he wants is extortion money. So: do nothing. For once, the constant bickering in western countries actually helps!
The big picture, IMO, is one of Chinese ascent and one of US -- and by extension, European -- decline. There's not much that can stop this from happening, as I see it. It is as inevitable as the ascent of America was in the 19th century. This period will be punctuated by heightened risks, as allegiances are realigned in light of the new hegemon. Kim Jong-un, to my mind, has inserted himself into this uncertainty with the goal of hanging on to power without effecting the reforms that would almost certainly see him thrown from power. By the way, we should consider the contribution of western "humanitarian" democracies to this logic. In addition to the conclusions you list for the worlds aspiring dictators, another lesson they will have learned from studying Libya and Egypt is that there's no point in currying favour, in trying to make deals, with western democracies. If there's a revolution, they will align, knee-jerk, behind the...
Of course NK is acting perfectly rationally, having seen what the US does to countries elsewhere that don't do what the US tells them to. But it's not clear to me why the US needs to control NK. It's the desire for control that drove NK to get nukes.
I'm not apologizing for NK, I think the regime should be toppled tomorrow from a moral perspective; but I don't think an invasion even in the absence of nukes would lead to a good outcome, as we've seen elsewhere good outcomes from moral invasions are scarce on the ground these days.
Obviously, and the countries that plan on developing nuclear weapons the old fashioned way (not through computer simulations) are the ones that the treaty would affect the most.
> Of course NK is acting perfectly rationally, having seen what the US does to countries elsewhere that don't do what the US tells them to.
This is definitely part of the problem. Another part is simply prestige.
> But it's not clear to me why the US needs to control NK.
The US doesn't. But the world does and the world needs to exercise such control equally across all countries that do not wish to play nice. Unfortunately that is exactly where the problem lies, we simply do not have a power structure in place that exceeds the largest sovereign nations in power because they provide that power.
And so we're stuck in a pretty hard place.
> It's the desire for control that drove NK to get nukes.
Yes, the fear of every tin pot dictator (I certainly consider Kim Jong-Un to be one of those) is to be deposed by an external power.
> I think the regime should be toppled tomorrow from a moral perspective;
And that is what got us here in the first place.
> but I don't think an invasion even in the absence of nukes would lead to a good outcome, as we've seen elsewhere good outcomes from moral invasions are scarce on the ground these days.
Even if the outcome would be a good one, I find it hard to make the case. Personally I feel NATO should be used as a ratchet only: enforce the status quo unless a country wishes to make a move in a 'good' (subjective, I know) direction. Any kind of border excursions to be ruthlessly dealt with.
In the longer term that might work even if in the shorter term it would lead to some uncomfortable decisions.
Or perhaps having seen what happens to countries that do what the US tells them to. Iraq decommissioned its WMDs; got invaded. The lesson learned by many countries is that doing what the US tells you to vis-a-vis weapons makes you vulnerable; not safe.
If Iraq had had nuclear weapons and were ready to use them upon being invaded, bringing nuclear devastation upon the US and various others in a world-ending catastrophe of mutual destruction, do you think that invasion would have still happened?
I suggest no. I suggest that having nuclear weapons, and ideally global reach with those weapons, is a way to massively reduce the chances of being invaded by the US or anyone else.
Most likely not.
But the WMD's that Iraq supposedly did have were used as a fig-leaf to invade anyway.
My reasoning at the time was that the fact that they were invaded more or less proved that they didn't have any and dr. David Kelly's assessment for UNSCOM pretty much proved that.
> I suggest that having nuclear weapons, and ideally global reach with those weapons, is a way to massively reduce the chances of being invaded by the US or anyone else.
Definitely, it's a poison pill.
http://www.scottmanning.com/archives/howmuchoilfromiraq.php
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/17/a-decade-later-and-the-i...
It was a bad argument then and still a bad argument now.
Not in this thread, perhaps.
I agree with the rest of your statement, but I don't agree with this part in the way it is written - the statement is as true as it was 5 years ago. I think NK is trying to get into the nuke club as insurance. I wouldn't base my foreign policy on this, but I fail to see how a nuclear war would be [an advantage for NK's leadership (1)]. I'd assume quite the opposite.
(1) Small edit, see comment below
It's a matter of numbers. With every party entering the nuclear club the chances of accidents and other use outside of the chain of command goes up.
A non-zero chance multiplied by a larger number implies a larger risk. Given enough time that risk will materialize, whether it is North Korea, Pakistan or Israel doesn't matter.
Also, if risk is an actual issue, how do 10 nukes in NK justify this extend of worry, in contrast to the weapons Russia and the US have? (For some reason I'm reminded of John Oliver's piece on Nuclear Weapons safety in the US [1]). If humanity is to be worried about NK having them, why shouldn't we be equally worried about Russia, China, France, the US, etc.?
[1] https://youtu.be/1Y1ya-yF35g
> If humanity is to be worried about NK having them, why shouldn't we be equally worried about Russia, China, France, the US, etc.?
I'd say that we should also be worried, but there are different risks. Adding a new country to the mix with 10 nukes is different to adding 10 nukes to existing countries.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRnU0bqsyq0
Yes, there's additional risk if another country has them, but that argument is independent from country. Arguing NK shouldn't have nukes because it increases a risk is equally applicable to the US.
Actually, the US pose a much greater risk because they have bombers, silos and subs with way more nuclear weapons, multiplying the risk for accidents. Following the risk argument I feel the US are a larger problem than NK.
I don't think that's quite true. The stability of a country, and the current alliances & conflicts all influence the chance of a deliberate attack. The funding and security of a country influence the safety and chance of an accidental one.
Better add the USA into that list, as somebody looking in from the outside...
[edit] tl;dr: Having the weapons is an advantage for NK's leaders. Using them is their end.
That's not a bad thing. A world in which the great powers are nuclear and the minor powers aren't is a far safer one than what we would have with a nuclear free for all. And given that the great powers were going to get nukes regardless, the current system is probably our least bad option.
NK is a massive challenge to that system. I hope this can be resolved with a minimum of bloodshed. I desperately wish the world had a more capable person leading the effort.
Isn't the root cause for the NK situation is that we don't have a peace treaty? Meaning that we (USA, SK) are technically still at war with NK. I can't imagine CTBTO being on the table until hostilities formally cease.
As a US citizen, I don't understand why this peace treaty thing hasn't been resolved. I don't forgive or condone the NK regimes. But my side baffles me too. Is this about saving face? Appeasing our own hardliners? War profits? Some weird proxy squabble with China? I assume Kissinger is somehow complicit, so why don't we just blame him and move on?
I know the history, situation is complicated. But I expect my side to act like the grown ups and just fix this.
That plus the fact that China has been enabling NK long enough that now there is an actual problem without a clear or easy solution. Buffer states are useful because they allow for proxy wars rather than outright wars and as such NK served a useful purpose for China. But now the buffer state has become a big problem and this in turn may cause China to wish they had moved when they could have.
The peace treaty that could have come to pass between North and South Korea had a good chance of succeeding around the year 2000, GWB then totally killed any chance of that happening because of a perceived need for 'Evil' to be defined so there was a tangible enemy.
We all know how that ended up and today the chances of a peace between the two Korea's are about where they were in 1953, except that now the stakes are much, much higher.
Why, then, do we continue to believe this fallacy -- the fallacy that peace is guaranteed because nobody would be irrational enough to actually start a war?
Wars start through miscommunication, human error, the whims of (usually despotic) leadership, internal crises, and unforeseen Black Swan events that escape our (Gaussian) models. This can be summarized thus: wars frequently start for no real reason at all.
We should be more pragmatic, and look at history instead of borrowing a theory from the dismal science of economics to reassure ourselves, as there are now millions of very real lives at stake. North Korea has become a problem worthy of more rigorous analysis than the pithy comments about MAD.
The point is: if you don't want war, stop fobbing off the responsibilities of sovereignty onto your politicians, and start taking more responsibility for the actions of your own state. Alas, Americans are not quite prepared for this - rather preferring to squabble among themselves over whose 'ism' is the rightest - but in the meantime, the Generals and CEO's who will profit from this warfare are all left, un-checked, hidden behind the curtains and mirrors and smoke that blinds us all ..
What is interesting - in a very morbid way, admitted - is that if you look at how much energy goes into war how little it usually achieves. The only wars that tend to change things in a meaningful way (for better or worse) are civil wars.
If you can solve the self interest for most of the people, things usually work out. If you attack others self interest, then yes, random things can happen when self interest is compromised or when a player loses self interest in favor of extremism or some flavor of "fuck the world, fuck everyone". The solution to that is economics and comfort, people don't go extreme when they have those.
It doesn't run everyone. Or at least what is defined as optimal self-interest does not correctly model people who have been subjected to propaganda, religion, etc (e.g. see suicide bombers).
Here's one example where "rational self interest" doesn't seem to have worked out:
- Kim Jong Un could rationally (in both his and his countrymen's self interest) live the rest of his days in a gloriously well appointed Chinese estate, albeit in exile, perhaps as part of a transition negotation that sees his dynasty exchange their power in Korea for both their own safety and the good of the country.
- If rational action by people and states are as close to a physical law as is so frequently assumed, why has this not happened? Why does he not act rationally, and why do we imagine that he will act rationally in the future?
Here's the fundamental problem with the MAD / game theory / self interest / rational actor tack: the model implies that there's a 0% chance of nuclear weapons ever being used (because it wouldn't be in the self interest of the state), and therefore, the appropriate policy response is effectively to ignore continued accumulation of greater and greater stockpiles of nuclear arms, as no conflict can ever be possible. The MAD theory leads to a political calculus that promotes the proliferation of ever more nuclear weapons, and as we're seeing, ever more nuclear weapons in the hands of ever more unstable actors.
The MAD theory is unsound and fundamentally dangerous. Clearly, the chance of nuclear war is not 0% (a truly absurd idea), and so the policy response that MAD implies (perpetual deadlock) leads us down an even more dangerous road: perpetual stockpiling and proliferation, without any measured guarantees to stability.
We're placing very, very large bets (right now our civilization, soon the human race, one day the entire planet, even the rocks and stones) on an idea that we can't falsify and have never tested.
Is this true? I see them often as the conflict between local / global goals where the real problem is that each step in the escalation from peace to war is tragically rational - each decision is a lose-lose choice where one path is a guaranteed small loss but escalation offers a chance to win despite the possible apocalyptic outcome. The whole matter is so bad because peace-time power-plays build up an unstable system containing things like interlocking mutual defence treaties deliberately designed to escalate the stakes of minor disputes.
My understanding of game theory may be weak because I don't see how things like the prisoners dilemma have an "optimal solution" instead they just illustrate choices whose desirability match different risk appetites. Your risk-appetite is like a value-judgement, taste or personality - judgements of what risks are rational is personal and relative instead of a mathematical absolute. Even on seemingly simple probabilistic problems where you can calculate expected-value seem fallacious when you only play the game once and you'll be dead within 40 years no matter the outcome. Can game theory prove "Live free or die" is irrational?
This sounds a lot like the dollar auction game [1], which is used to study the disconnect between individual actions being rational and a clearly undesirable outcome. Basically, the game is a variation of an all-pay auction in which only the top 2 bidders pay. A dollar is auctioned off in bids of some fixed increment. At each turn, winning the dollar is a preferable outcome to losing your previous bid. Even after the price goes over $1, winning the dollar represents a smaller loss. In that sense, the rational thing to do is bid indefinitely high. It's supposedly a common outcome with human bidders that the winning bid is over $2.
[1] (PDF) http://www.math.toronto.edu/mpugh/Teaching/Sci199_03/dollar_...
> It constitutes yet another breach of the universally accepted norm against nuclear testing; a norm that has been respected by all countries but one since 1996.
But
> The Treaty will enter into force once signed and ratified by the remaining eight nuclear technology holder countries: China, Egypt, the DPRK, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and the United States.
So, somehow, the US wants North Korea to respect a treaty that it is, itself, not accepting (though it has "respected" it).
This is exactly what is wrong with our world: The US is playing the police but not the "model". In fact, they are playing a bad model while playing the police in the same time.
Why, the DPRK, (a sovereign country) has to respect this treaty or any other treaty? They are a sovereign country and they have the right to develop whatever technology they please.
Those people should stop being pacifists and start fighting back, "because pacifism just allows tyranny to run rampant around the world"?
BTW, a lot of those people have been branded 'terrorists', which is about as close to 'non-pacifistic' a label as you can get, amiright?
WW1: they've joined to make money, then imposed HUGE debts on who lost it
WW2: they've caused it, they've fucked with Europe with the debt from WW2 so much, then outright lied to find a reason to fight. Then finally at least brought some peace to the world for a while(?).
Cold war: just wanna display that they are the fucking best, ofc.
Vietnam: they've done with the people there the same thing hitler used to do with their enemies in WW2, and still lost so badly... No soldier wanted to fight there, but the politicians wanted. So sad.
Iraq 1990: omg, so much failure
Afghanistan: shame, no words
Iraq second try: so much failure, the country nowadays is a mess, tons of people died, congratulations USA.
If the UN or whoever is responsible for peace for diplomacy actually worked by themselves and weren't just the USA, they wouldn't allow the USA to fight almost every decade huge wars for causes which is never their own problem, but their money-making machine.
Note that I don't support this crazy north korean dictator, he definitely doesn't give a fuck about his people, but he's no different than other leaders we've got globally, it's just that his country was already in a bad position. I hope he goes away soon.
They told us when we were young that it should be working on another way. The same way they told us that a god exists.
A god doesn't exist. And countries are constantly fighting for supremacy. Let nature evolves.
> WW2: they've caused it, they've fucked with Europe with the debt from WW2 so much, then outright lied to find a reason to fight.
What a simplistic worldview and lack of knowledge. What an embarrassment. And I'm someone who thinks every president since Kennedy should have been tried for war crime and (presumably) hanged[1]. Please educate yourself on these subjects before spouting any more nonsense.
[1] Just kidding America. You don't hang a president, that would be most inappropriate. You execute them by firing squad.
Of course, as might be clear from his polemic tone, he is being facetious. The US shouldn't be blamed for the reparations. And the view that the reparations caused WWII is simplistic and misguided.
WWI: My college history course didn't cover that well, and I haven't studied it much since then so can't comment much. But there was something about a prince who got shot and a lot of European countries who had said "if you fight, then we will fight," and somehow soon the rivers of Europe were running red with blood. Somehow the war spread from "Flanders fields" to Russia, destabilized the Tsar, and let the Communist revolution take over. IIRC the US came in near the end, ended a stalemate in the trenches of Belgium or wherever, and walked away. There was the Treaty of Versailles, supposedly really tough on Germany, but I don't know the details. US President Wilson had 14 points or some such, but they never got "traction".
WWII: The US stock market crash of late 1929 ruined the US financial system and threw the US into the Great Depression. Then the US was not buying from industrialized, foreign trading partners, e.g., Germany, and they went into the Great Depression. Germany was already sick from the Treaty of Versailles and the massive inflation they had had in the 1920s. Then, presto, bingo, they got a guy, A. Hitler. He took steps quickly, e.g., used the power he had to improve his position with the citizens, quickly called for another election, got more power, ..., and called for special powers for 4 years to fix the economy. Basically that worked -- he ran a command economy and got Germany out of its Great Depression. Then he called for another 4 years of special powers and, in a word, overreached. His goal appeared to be to get oil from the Mideast, Romania, or in and around Baku. For the Mideast, he had Rommel charging east across North Africa trying to take the Suez Canal (weaken England) and on to the Mideast oil. Then he invaded Russia and tried to get to the Baku oil, came close, but didn't make it. His invasion of Russia was a step too far -- supply lines were too long and the front was too long. Russia was able to fall back to the east since Russia is across 11 time zones. From England, the Allies bombed Germany's war making capacity, invaded at Normandy, and charged east across France. Meanwhile Russia fell back, built tanks and artillery, attacked with 6 million men, won at the big battle of Kursk, and charged west to Berlin. Taking Berlin was to be bloody, and Ike deliberately let Russia do that.
That little description is short, concentrates on the main military points, and omits the nearly worst ever moral record of Hitler's Germany.
The US came out of WWII afraid of, to borrow from a comedy, the Inspector Clouseau "old take over the world ploy", appropriate enough, from the Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Russia came out of WWII determined to have a big "buffer" in the west, to take over the countries of central and eastern Europe, put a big boot on their necks, and make darned sure any instabilities in Europe would not cause Russia to be invaded -- in WWII, supposedly something over 20 million Russians died. Also to keep Russia from moving farther west and to keep Europe stable, the US did a lot to build NATO. NATO has worked -- since the end of WWII has apparently been the longest period of peace in Europe since ..., maybe ancient Rome. The world should thank the US, actually including especially Russia, for what it has contributed to NATO. Russia? NATO made sure Russia would not get invaded again from the west.
Viet Nam: Ho Chi Minh, a dishwasher from Paris, called himself "Communist" and occasionally got a ...
I'm chronically heartbroken that I was born too late to attend a nuclear test explosion. No knowledge about the deleterious effects of nuclear testing erases the existential depression that it's a phenomenon I'll never witness.
I am also certain they will negotiate--but after showing their perfected arsenal, and from a different position. Ships with grains will be just the cherry on the cake.