Anti-nuclear weapons group ICAN wins Nobel Peace Prize

Corporate media.

I'm not convinced that nowadays the launch of a nuke by a rogue party will lead to a chain reaction.

My uneducated guess would be because of the long-term effects of nuclear weapons compared to traditional weapons.

Nuclear/biological/chemical weapons have the distinct ability to have lasting effects on the area/population they are used on. "Conventional" weapons have their immediate effect (death, destruction) and then that's it.

The fact that some of us are able to at least try to limit their use is great considering humanity's track record...

Of course this is all generally speaking, as each class of weapons have effects that last shorter or longer than others within even the same class. e.g. nuclear air-burst has less fallout than a ground-burst. Some chemical weapons break down fairly quickly and become inert, while others linger, etc.

Then you have to consider cluster munitions and land mines, which while apparently conventional, are quite indiscriminate and also can linger for decades. These devices have also been more successfully restricted than other conventional weapons.

Are there "conventional" weapons capable of leveling cities/regions, buildings and all ?

Conventional weapons cannot destroy every population center in a large country in 30 minutes.

You're right that WWII conventional bombing campaigns visited total destruction on cities to an extent that sometimes rivaled or surpassed what happened in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But there are two key differences.

One is that those campaigns required hundreds of bombers and a near total effort from the Allied air forces to destroy one city. With nuclear weapons, that turns into hundreds of cities destroyed at once.

The other is that nuclear weapons have become much smaller and much more powerful. A conventional bombing raid could match the devastation of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but could never come close to the devastation something like a W88 would cause to a major city. The bombs used on Japan barely fit in the largest bomber of the era, but a modern bomb can fit a dozen on a single missile.

A single Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine carries nearly 200 bombs. It could create an order of magnitude more destruction than all bombing raids of WWII combined (including the nuclear ones) less than an hour after being given the order. The US Navy operates 14 of them, and that's just one weapons system operated by one country.

Conventional weapons cannot do the things nuclear weapons do, not even close.

If they follow the example of previous laureates Obama or Aung San Suu Kyi they'll be enriching their own uranium within the year

I'm torn. The post-WWII era has been amazingly peaceful, but at what risk?

If nuclear weapons mean we avoid large-scale total war in exchange for, say, a one-in-a-million chance per year of annihilation, that might be worthwhile.

If they mean we avoid large-scale total war in exchange for a 1% chance per year of annihilation, that's so very much not worthwhile.

What are the actual chances? It's impossible to tell. I suspect it's closer to 1% than one-in-a-million but that's really just a guess.

Based on the Nobel Peace Prize's track record, that alone would have clinched it.

Honoring an anti-nuclear group at least seems to be in the proper spirit, compared to some of the more ridiculous awards in recent decades.

Without nuclear weapons, I think there's a better than even chance the Red Army storms through the Fulda Gap at some point 1945-1960. If for no other reason than that all of the resources devoted to atomic weapons, and the requisite delivery platforms for them (submarines, ballistic missiles, intercontinental bombers, etc) would have been diverted elsewhere.

Or Obama :)

... or Barack Obama.

Or Aung San Suu Kyi, though she was awarded before she became complicit in an ongoing genocide.

Things must be said, even when there are no immediate consequences.

It's the same with the torture performed by the US during the Bush administration: The torturers got away with it (for now), should we not even shame them?

The nuclear weapons states have failed to act. The international community is using shame (which has worked in the past for other treaties) and reaffirming their commitments to non-proliferation. Would you rather they do nothing?

It's unlikely the US military was the part of the government that endorsed it. The US government is so big, so bureaucratic, that it's less a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, and more like the right 300 hands are working in direct opposition to the other 400 left ones.

I think you've misunderstood something...

Actually, it seems incredibly appropriate to award this organization the award to emphasize that we need anti-nuclear organizations to be supported and funded now more than ever. If all this prize accomplish is provide publicity for them then it's doing something positive given how grave the threat of nuclear war is.

When it comes to Obama, you can say that it was a prize that was given to encourage the president of the most influential country in the world to do the right things.

It was given early in his presidential term and may have influenced his decisions later on small and big things.

Obama didnt create war, he infact de-escalated one potential and many other smaller matters where the US was already engaged.

Personally I think it was fine.

Can you point to specific failures on the part of ICAN? They’re not the world police. They can only work within the mandate and resourcing available.

In other words, do you think the situation would be better without ICAN? The Iran agreement is not perfect, but surely it’s better than no reins.

Don’t forget about the countries that have voluntarily ended their nuclear programs or stopped expanding them. Successes in this field are by nature much less visible than the failures.