Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000

> But none of the nine known nuclear powers in the world - including the UK and the US - endorsed it.

Proving that this group is completely ineffective and their peace prize is a joke. Just a bunch of bureaucrats who sit around saying "oh yes, nuclear weapons bad, pass the caviar please".

View on HN

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?

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.

The U.S. representative was hanging out in the hall with a few of our supporters denouncing the working group while the treaty was being discussed. We know exactly what we're doing and it would be comical if it weren't so deadly serious.

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?

The countries in question have plenty of shame already, this is a speck of dust on their mountains of shame.

Nuclear weapons are different. Everybody has to deactivate them at the exact same time, otherwise you end up with power imbalances, which end with more proliferation.

This group is like a shrieking woman in a room with 6 other people all pointing guns at each other - completely ineffective, just adding more noise to an already tense situation.

There are pathways to risk reduction and disarmament if we have the political will to take them. For instance, in the United States, we could push congress to pass S.200 "Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons" https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/200 We can also push towards minimal deterrence first and then organize a multilateral disarmament.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com