Treaty banning nuclear weapons approved at UN | Hacker News Reader

Treaty banning nuclear weapons approved at UN

theguardian.com

57 pointsbahjoite65 comments

> All of the countries that bear nuclear arms and many others that either come under their protection or host weapons on their soil boycotted the negotiations.

Completely meaningless posturing to pass this treaty. Par for the course at the UN.

> Previous UN treaties have been effective even when key nations have failed to sign up to them. The US did not sign up to the landmines treaty, but has completely aligned its landmines policy to comply nonetheless.

Idk - it might be a step toward eventual disarmament, even if far in the future.

> "The US did not sign up to the landmines treaty, but has completely aligned its landmines policy to comply nonetheless."

Actually there is a department in the US called "wildlife services" that places poison gas landmines all around the country to try controlling coyote populations. Apparently they just show up and place them near peoples property without alerting anyone or putting up warning signs. Every now and then one of them goes off and poisons a person or dog.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/29/521917387/...

https://www.predatordefense.org/m44s.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSV8pRLkdKI

Those are awful enough, but they are not landmines.

I saw an interesting talk by one of the guys responsible for nuclear weapons policy under Obama. He focused on a game-theoretic analysis of whether or not "nuclear zero" (total global disarmament) was really possible.

The analysis he gave suggested a scheme where countries could simultaneously disarm down to very low levels (maybe a couple hundred worldwide) while maintaining a credible mutual deterrent, but going below that was exceedingly difficult. Basically one of the major nuclear powers would have to be willing to take a "leap of faith" to get to total disarmament, which is hard to swallow politically.

It's all hypothetical analysis now though as it seems like we are currently on track to maintain the status quo or even start another buildup. I hope not, it's a waste of money and effort for negligible tangible benefit over what we have now.

South Africa did disarm.

Yeah they did, but under different circumstances. Arguably South Africa never had any intention of keeping their weapons and intended them as a bargaining chip. South Africa never really had a significant arsenal either.

This talk was about total global disarmament, which is a different scenario. Moreover, he was interested in disarmament schemes that maintained the balance of power that deters the actual use of weapons, ideally right up to the moment that there are none.

Did the analysis include a buildup of defensive weapons? There was a school of thought that building up that stuff was a necessary prerequisite for eliminating nuclear weapons and I think it was because it ameliorated the risks involved with the "leap of faith." (and replaced it with risks of its own)

Not exactly. The whole idea was predicated on the obsolescence of nuclear weapons in modern conflicts, so in a sense it was partially predicated on improving non-nuclear defensive capabilities.

His suggested "pitch" to countries to get them started was the massive cost of maintaining weapons that are not intended to actually be used- they just sit around and act menacing. He posited that this was a pretty juicy incentive and if you could conceive a scheme where countries could all disarm simultaneously while maintaining a balance of power (and thus the disincentive against the use of weapons) that it might actually work.

This is obvious of course and pretty standard thought. His real focus was on the importance of ways for the weapons states to mutually verify the disarmament of the other states in a technically rigorous manner but all of it was interesting.

My concern with what my Causes and Prevention of War professor called the Mankind Absolutely Rejects Nuclear Explosives scenario is that after you've eliminated existing stocks of nuclear weapons, you have not eliminated the capacity to produce nuclear weapons during the course of a major-power war. If there is another direct major-power war and a nation has a choice between an invasion they project to cause 500,000 casualties and dropping a nuclear bomb, which would they choose?

I'm curious: fid your professor tell you why he decided on the acronym MARNE? A comparison to the Battle of Marne in WW1 seems likely but rather slim, doesn't it?

The article lies. The US still uses and reserves the right to use land mines in the Koreas.

Short-term, yes, but long-term? Who knows.

The first advocates for abolishing slavery probably weren't slave owners, most of the first to fight for women's suffrage didn't have the right to vote, nor are the first to fight against DRM the ones on the power side of that debate.

Not really. Today, any reasonably industrialized country could develop nuclear weapons if they wanted to. The technology is over 70 years old, and there are few secrets left below the H-bomb level. It takes far less infrastructure than it used to. Here's a modern centrifuge enrichment plant in the US [1]. Here's a typical WalMart distribution center.[2] They're about the same size. The plants needed used to be huge; Oak Ridge had one building that was a mile long, and they were using most of the power from a TVA dam.

Opting out of that decision makes sense for most countries. Having nuclear weapons puts you on a lot of target lists.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/LMHS58VtRR22 [2] https://goo.gl/maps/Sxg6FDc5bwP2

Next up: mice vote to bell cat.

With enough mice, it might just work.

Not if the cats are the ones who already have nuclear weapons.

It is more about economic power. UN could make Iran to give up on nuclear weapon using economic sanctions, but in this situation cats are much stronger economically.

That most conflicts are internal and not between major nation states shiws that the UN has been successful in its mission.

An alternative reading is that every country that has possessed nuclear weapons has acknowledged that their destructive capabilities make them a virtual suicide pact that would be fulfilled in the case of war between major powers.

I wouldn't be so quick to credit the UN with this. I would say it's more likely that between mutually assured destruction upon major powers, and the United States' role as global peacekeeper and Don't Do Something Crazy or We Will Bomb You mantra we've reached a state of world peace. Not because of the UN.

It's more like "play by our rules and do what we tell you or we will bomb you". The US isn't the global peacekeeper, the US is the main instigator for wars. Planting and supporting dictators and authoritarian regimes who are then painted as "the enemy" when they no longer want to be the pets of the US.

History is written by the winners, I guess, and all that pro-US propaganda that's so proliferate in the entire western world seems to be working really good.

Did you know that the US supported Hitler at first and big US corporations (I.T.T., General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil Co., and the Chase National Bank) all continued trading with Germany during the war because there was money in it and the US politicians didn't want to give those big corporations a big sad?

The US is the "global peacekeeper" only when the target country they're invading doesn't want to go along with whatever the US wants. The UN is a whole lot more global peacekeeper than the US will ever be.

Believe what you want, but the Pax Americana is real and is empirically the most peaceful time in world history. It is partly due to nuclear deterrents and partly due to the US maintaining a massive military presence in hot spots (Korea, South China Sea, Taiwan, Persian/Arab Gulf, Eastern Europe).

Yes, it is often coercive and we have certainly supported unsavory regimes. It is worth considering what the alternatives to those regimes are. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, the House of Saud is actually a moderating force keeping the Wahhabist mullahs from taking over completely. Liberal democracy will not work everywhere today, as our horribly misguided experiment in Iraq has demonstrated. I recommend Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom for a discussion of the problem, but a very short summary is that you cannot have a functioning democracy without substantial economic development (natural resource money does NOT count for many reasons) and a middle class that feels highly invested in stability, growth, and trade.

The US government never supported Hitler. America is a free country so of course there were many private individuals and companies who did. No different than how Western academia was extremely fond of the Soviets until the 1950s. The US actually provided massive aid to the allies before entering the war, through the lend lease program among others. The fact is that it wasn't clear at the time that it was in the United State's interests to oppose Hitler. It was a far away problem, there was a strong isolationist mood in the US, and even the Brits were trying their hand at coexisting with him.

Fine and dandy, if you live and work in the US.

If you live just about anywhere. If you could pick a time to be a human but not know where you'd be born, the Pax Americana is your best choice by far.

Whenever I way variations of this meme (I wouldn't call it a thought) I weigh it and find it way too light.

For starters you're comparing different times, which is not even wrong, as they say. But actually the alternative to behaving as an aggressor is to behave "more decently" according to various standards, certainly differently; and that would not deter from any actual peacekeeping intentions and actions, to the contrary.

Compare to the hypothetical present times without sociopaths in power and conformists making excuses for them. And explain how "Pax Americana" and the foolhardy meddling in the Middle East go together. More like "peaceful munching sounds made by the wallets of some peeps, called FELLOW AMERICANS!!1 when convenient or cute, as an extraction device, not one one of them ever considering themselves as such".

There is no peace. There are people holding their ears, and there are people who will not unsee, ever. There's people who made their beds but pretend they will never have to sleep in them. But we cannot hide our own crimes behind those of others, ignorance does not protect from the consequences, lack of empathy does not protect from punishment. There is not a single history that is being written, what is swept under the rug today will be uncovered tomorrow, if there's ever going to be a day deserving the name.

> you're comparing different times

> Compare to the hypothetical

It's invalid to compare the present with the past, but valid to compare the present with a present that never was?

The past isn't a possible present (it is still fine to compare if there are enough analogs).

If I just said "it would be better to behave more honestly", what would the response be? More often than not, something along the lines of "I know why it would seem that way, of course honesty should be used whenever possible, but diplomacy being so complicated and humans so mean, what actually would happen when you're too honest (or don't have double standards, etc.) is blah blah blah".

If you disagree, make an argument against it without any such invalid comparisons [It doesn't matter if you say the word "compare", if you don't want to see the woods for all the trees you'll always find excuses anyway and I for one don't need to hear them] because otherwise, there isn't even anything there I need to argue against, and anything beyond pointing that out is just a bonus for someone who doesn't get or doesn't like the point to get hung up on, if you will. On HN it's usually silence or responses like that, bleh, look for the least generous reading, squirt out a one liner. Oh well, you do you.

So you'd be happier with an empire honest about its behavior than one which seeks to dissemble about it? I mean I'm having kind of a hard time figuring out what you're getting at here, is what I'm trying to say. Can you explain it in a way that involves less vague inveighing against ill-characterized malfeasance, and a more coherent statement of what you're actually about?

Iran? East Timor?

> The US government never supported Hitler.

Breckinridge Long is the very first name to prove that wrong. He was the US Secretary of State at the time Hitler was in power and gave Henry Ford permission to buy Nazi tanks while purposely preventing Jewish refugees from entering the US. He and Roosevelt also gave permission to the US companies I mentioned above to continue trading with Nazi Germany during war times.

For them, it wasn't so much about liberty and human rights as it was about business. That's still the case today. The US #1 trade partner is China, who happens to have a pathetic human rights record and is also still occupying Tibet. But opposing them in any way would be bad for business, so it gets shoved under the rug.

Out of sight, out of mind.

The US was neutral and did business with both allied and axis powers at that point. We nevertheless tipped the scales strongly in favor of the allies with the lend lease act, for example. And the historical record is pretty clear that from the beginning of the war, Roosevelt was itching for a reason to jump in on the allied side. Your anti-American historical revisionism is contrary to the facts.

The idea that the US should stop doing business with China is ridiculous. As a major nuclear power with an economy that within in a decade or two could surpass ours in total output, America is in no position to do anything about China's internal affairs. Ending trade with China would cause extreme economic damage and internal unrest in the United States. It would be a phenomenally stupid sword for America to fall on.

You're right in general though. America's main interest after the security of ourselves and our allies is open and peaceful commerce between nations.

You stated that the US government never supported Hitler and I disproved that by mentioning but a single name.

You got me with Roosevelt, though. I merely mentioned him for completeness sake, not to single him out. That was badly worded on my part.

As I'm currently in hospital as the result of a cat bite I feel obliged to side with the mice on this one...

Did it get infected or something? What happened?

You should always seek medical attention for a cat bite because the odds of a severe infection are high.

Yes - I stupidly didn't think it looked that bad. I was borderline for my arm being operated on to clean out the infection - which was a bit alarming when I didn't expect to be admitted.

The impact of the antibiotics was incredible - visible improvement within a couple of hours. Scary to think what could have happened if we didn't have access to working antibiotics!

A dog attacked one of our cats and when iredcued him he was do scared he bit by arm and wouldn't let go - took 5 mins to get him off.

I didn't think it was that bad, but after nearly two days my arm was very red and I was feeling a bit ill. Popped to nearest NHS hospital expecting to. E told I was overreacting, but I was immediately admitted and put on IV antiobiotics (6 doses a day).

Fortunately all fine and I'm going home today!

Seriously, it doesn't look like either USA or Russia are enthusiastic to sign that kind of deal in the current climate and if they don't then who even cares?

Putin on nukes, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo

Nukes make large scale warfare between superpowers much less likely.

Nukes can also diescalate any situation between superpowers before it blows into a full out war.

I'm not entirely sure that complete disarmament would actually benefit the world as a whole.

Also at thisn point disarmament is pointless you can't disarm physics and knowledge any nuclear capable country would be able to rebuild a tactically significant arsenal within a span of 2 years or even at a much shorter period if they poses either large stockpiles of nuclear fuel or have sufficiently large production capabilities.

This is nothing more than posturing.

Seems like a good occasion to go back and read Eisenhower's farewell address - probably one of the 100 best speeches in the history of the English language IMO.

> Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

It was also Ike who coined the term "military-industrial complex".

I think the only hope is missile defense systems which could yield these missiles useless. Only then would they provide no value as a deterrent.

It is presumably always possible to smuggle some into a capital or other large city and set them of. Makes for an interesting attempt to figure out who put them there too.

I doubt nuclear defense systems are viable anymore, modern ICBMs travel too fast to intercept. Newsweek covered Russia's latest ICBM developments, and they don't look good. http://www.newsweek.com/us-russia-nuclear-arms-race-over-and...

>The RS-28 ICBM, scheduled to become operational in 2018, assures Russia the ability to annihilate the United States in retaliation for any American first strike, while providing Russia a silo-killing first-strike capability of its own.

>The RS-28 is itself a wonder of modern technology, capable of flying in excess of five times the speed of sound, altering its trajectory to confuse anti-missile radars, and delivering 15 independently targetable nuclear warheads (each one 10 times as powerful as the bombs the United States dropped on Japan at the end of World War II) or three “Object 4202” hypersonic warheads, which destroy their targets through kinetic energy (i.e., through impact).

>A nuclear warhead-armed RS-28 would take about 30 minutes to reach the United States from a silo in central Russia; its warheads would be capable of destroying an area about the size of Texas. [When] armed with the “Object 4202” hypersonic warheads, each of which is capable of destroying an American missile silo, the time would be cut down to 12 minutes or less.

Isn't having nuclear weapons around actually a deterrent to war because of mutually assured destruction?

It certainly does not deter the USA or Russia or China from invading Panama or Latvia or Burma.

But it deters the USA from invading Russia or China

I don't believe that Soviet era military doctrine recognized mutually assured destruction.

Surprising display of sanity and logic.

> All of the countries that bear nuclear arms and many others that either come under their protection or host weapons on their soil boycotted the negotiations.

Why is it surprising that the countries without nukes want to disarm the countries with nukes?

Nuclear disarmament by the established nuclear powers is a horrible idea. This is how we return to the era of great power wars that came to a close with World War 2. Do you really want to see warfare between America, China, and Russia? Or how about a return to European wars?

People seem to magically think that the era of great power wars has ended because of economic interdependence or good will between nations. Europeans thought the same thing at the turn of the 20th century and again during the 1920s. What keeps the peace is knowing that even in defeat your enemy can make you pay a price you are not willing to pay.

The risk of conventional war is insignificant compared to the very real risk of destroying our only habitat.

There are nowhere near enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world. In fact, there aren't even enough to wipe out mankind. This is even more true since we've reduced the size of nuclear stockpiles significantly.

LOL

You've been posting a lot of unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you please stop doing that? We're hoping for a higher standard of discussion here.

about as effective as the banning of chemical weapons. not that is not a great idea but the NPT is better acted on. a treaty such as this ban requires rational actors and we have one fully irrational country (NK) and a few other suspect ones that might even employ proxies to use the weapons.

the real question about such a treaty is, say you could get China, Russia, and the US, to agree. How do you disarm nations that won't. You could try trade sanctions but that is likely to cause the irrational to use their weapons.

I do like the idea of signatory nations not allowing such weapons on their territory but giving the current theory on their usage what does that gain?

I saw this same headline on Reddit World News and it made me pretty angry. The headline was something along the lines of "World votes to abolish nuclear weapons, 9 nuclear powers including US vote no".

Why "including the US" ? This is just clearly pushing an agenda. Why not "including France" ? What does this little snippet add to the journalism other than to press a little bit on anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment?

Really annoying.

The US being in board or not makes the difference between this being a joke, or actually having some kind of force or influence. France signing this agreement or not matters fuck all. There's that little difference. It's very relevant whether the USA signed it or not. Nothing to do with anti-US sentiment so no need to burst an artery just yet.

No it's not. Because without France, UK, Russia, China as well then no treaty on nukes matters.

The headline is relevant because the US is the most powerful military force in the world, and also involved in more conflicts than any other nation. The US position is more relevant than any other nation's.

Reddit is an us-based media, so this is not surprising that articles are targeted for this audience. If you believe Reddit is an universal and unbiased media, you're wrong.

> Why not "including France" ? What does this little snippet add to the journalism other than to press a little bit on anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment?

Changing "including US" to "including France" would not reduce the anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment because France is part of Europe.

edit: remove pointless comment.

I don't believe it to be unbiased.

>How does changing "including US" to "including France" would help reducing the anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment? I'm afraid I understand what's going on.

What do you think is going on? I don't think either title is good. I just wanted to illustrate the point.

Because it’s probably posted by an American, for American audiences, of course you would highlight the detail which matters to yourself.

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