Thank you! And, no, the base was not set up. Only Poland and Romania went ahead with the interceptor bases. To this day, they provide no viable military capability. A waste of billions of dollar.
I am trying out a longer form of analysis with this post. It might be too much. I realized that I was involved, one way or another, with Obama's ambitious nuclear policy efforts from the time he was a Senator until after he left office. I wrote a whole book about them. I would like to try to present the core lessons from his efforts, including what worked and what didn't. Unless you stop me, I'm going to do installments of this analysis for the rest of the year. The purpose will be to guide future policy initiatives, particularly in a second Biden term.
We currently have no credible plan for getting rid of nuclear weapons. We only just barely have any interest the subject. Just watch in the upcoming U.S. presidential campaign where we will be selecting a single human being to have sole authority over the use of these weapons. The subject will only barely be mentioned, even though both candidates will likely be quite controversial with half the voters.
This isn't fatalism. It's realism. Some form of nuclear weapons use is coming. There's no rational reason to believe that we can maintain expanding stockpiles of these weapons and they will never be used. That's just not how human history works.
The question is not whether the next detonation will happen. The question is, will the event be big enough to wake us up out of denial disease, and yet small enough to allow for learning and change?
A nuclear weapons accident in the United States would be ideal, as that wouldn't result in another war. Yes, "ideal" because no nuclear detonation ever is not an option.
The second best option would be a low yield terror strike on a single city. As best I can tell, the most likely target would be Washington DC, given that America has many enemies, and Washington remains an incredibly rich target 20 years after 9/11. All those crucial federal agencies all bunched up together, just waiting to be beheaded.
Once the next detonation occurs, then anything can happen, both for the better and the worse.
Until then, we're almost certainly going to keep doing the same things that haven't worked for 75 years over and over again, while expecting different results. If there were to be any hope other than the next detonation, it would be in every security expert publicly admitting that everything they have suggested since the beginning has failed, because it's only when that failure is faced squarely that there will be hope of any fresh thinking emerging.
That's a lot to respond to, but let me just say that I agree with your basic point: You have to be a real optimist to believe that we can keep thousands of nuclear weapons in fallible human hands indefinitely and something terrible won't happen. That is why the only practical policy to prevent nuclear catastrophe is to eliminate the weapons. Anything short of that makes it inevitable that they will be used.
Hi Joe, many thanks for your reply. My thinking on nukes is evolving....
Of course getting rid of nukes would be great. But as I now see it, doing so wouldn't really solve the problem. People like Putin would then just shift their attention to other means of mass destruction. The knowledge explosion will be handing such psychopaths ever more, ever larger powers at an accelerating rate. And so before too long we'd essentially be right back where we are now in some manner or another. Thus, the question that most interests me at this point is...
Is the marriage between violent men and an accelerating knowledge explosion sustainable?
So, were the installations set up in the Czech Republic? Great read, we need this consistent history reminder.
Thank you! And, no, the base was not set up. Only Poland and Romania went ahead with the interceptor bases. To this day, they provide no viable military capability. A waste of billions of dollar.
I am trying out a longer form of analysis with this post. It might be too much. I realized that I was involved, one way or another, with Obama's ambitious nuclear policy efforts from the time he was a Senator until after he left office. I wrote a whole book about them. I would like to try to present the core lessons from his efforts, including what worked and what didn't. Unless you stop me, I'm going to do installments of this analysis for the rest of the year. The purpose will be to guide future policy initiatives, particularly in a second Biden term.
Except that....
The use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.
We currently have no credible plan for getting rid of nuclear weapons. We only just barely have any interest the subject. Just watch in the upcoming U.S. presidential campaign where we will be selecting a single human being to have sole authority over the use of these weapons. The subject will only barely be mentioned, even though both candidates will likely be quite controversial with half the voters.
This isn't fatalism. It's realism. Some form of nuclear weapons use is coming. There's no rational reason to believe that we can maintain expanding stockpiles of these weapons and they will never be used. That's just not how human history works.
The question is not whether the next detonation will happen. The question is, will the event be big enough to wake us up out of denial disease, and yet small enough to allow for learning and change?
A nuclear weapons accident in the United States would be ideal, as that wouldn't result in another war. Yes, "ideal" because no nuclear detonation ever is not an option.
The second best option would be a low yield terror strike on a single city. As best I can tell, the most likely target would be Washington DC, given that America has many enemies, and Washington remains an incredibly rich target 20 years after 9/11. All those crucial federal agencies all bunched up together, just waiting to be beheaded.
Once the next detonation occurs, then anything can happen, both for the better and the worse.
Until then, we're almost certainly going to keep doing the same things that haven't worked for 75 years over and over again, while expecting different results. If there were to be any hope other than the next detonation, it would be in every security expert publicly admitting that everything they have suggested since the beginning has failed, because it's only when that failure is faced squarely that there will be hope of any fresh thinking emerging.
That's a lot to respond to, but let me just say that I agree with your basic point: You have to be a real optimist to believe that we can keep thousands of nuclear weapons in fallible human hands indefinitely and something terrible won't happen. That is why the only practical policy to prevent nuclear catastrophe is to eliminate the weapons. Anything short of that makes it inevitable that they will be used.
Hi Joe, many thanks for your reply. My thinking on nukes is evolving....
Of course getting rid of nukes would be great. But as I now see it, doing so wouldn't really solve the problem. People like Putin would then just shift their attention to other means of mass destruction. The knowledge explosion will be handing such psychopaths ever more, ever larger powers at an accelerating rate. And so before too long we'd essentially be right back where we are now in some manner or another. Thus, the question that most interests me at this point is...
Is the marriage between violent men and an accelerating knowledge explosion sustainable?