Nation state governments are responsible for the vast majority of deaths attributable to violence historically. Willingly entrusting them with a potentially world ending technology that they’re 100% certain to abuse is a moronic idea.
The Suez Crisis was basically ended by Khruschchev threatening to nuke Britain, France, and Israel. Not a single of those countries could meaningfully retaliate at that point, of course. He bragged about it in his memoirs. [1]
The USSR almost fired a nuclear torpedo in the Cuban crisis. Clearly they had rules of engagement for when to start throwing nukes around, without even requiring direct orders or even a confirmation of war. [2]
Historian Petr Lunak in 2007 found a 17-page Warsaw Pact plan in Prague's archives for basically unrestricted nuclear war against all of Western Europe. Drafted 1964, in use until 1986, possibly nearly executed during 1983 NATO exercises. [3][4] French diplomat Therese Delpech reports the same from seeing Warsaw Pact documents in Germany, notwithstanding Brezhnev's conspicuous 1982 "No First Use" declaration. [5] Vaporize Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, then conquer all the way into France. [6]
Ah. Kruschchev's famous 1956 "We will bury you" may have been a mistranslation. [7] But it is hard to see how his similar 1957 words could have been anything other than a thinly veiled nuclear death threat: "General Norstad will not be able to rush to Turkey’s aid and will not be able to be present in time for Turkey’s funeral". [8]
I'm sure there are others. The Cold War was crazy, and the Rocket Forces were (and are) held in some veneration. You don't spend an appreciable percentage of your GNP building and maintaining over 40,000 nuclear warheads plus delivery systems without "contemplating" using them.
> The whole Cuban missile crisis thing was over the unhinged US government placing its nukes in Turkey, right next to USSRs heartland
NAID:84786142 [9] in the US National Archives is a declassified CIA map showing the USSR didn't just have thousands of nuclear weapons and delivery systems "right next to" the heartlands of multiple countries like Germany, France, Finland, and Italy (which, again, they fully had prepared plans to nuke).
They also had thousands of nukes directly on the territory of multiple occupied hostile countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, and Poland.
Apparently the Czechs/Slovakians still don't even know how many warheads the USSR saw fit to store in their homeland. [10]
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And frankly, it's also rather imperialistic that you're just completely ignoring the sovereignty of Turkey and Cuba in that crisis: [11][12]
> …several consecutive Turkish governments, both before and after the coup of 1960, were eager to receive these weapons…
> …Turkey’s citizens regarded the Jupiter missiles as a symbol of the alliance’s determination to use atomic weapons in the case of a Soviet attack on Turkey.
> …Turkish authorities stated on more than one occasion that Jupiter missiles based on Turkish soil represented ‘firm proof of the U.S.’s commitment to Turkey’s security’…
> …aware of their limited defensive value, the missiles continued to be viewed as a symbol of Turkey’s importance within the Western security system, and also as a source of prestige.
> …placing Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, despite the misgivings of the Soviet Ambassador in Havana, Alexandr Ivanovich Alexeyev, who argued that Castro would not accept the deployment of the missiles.
> …Castro did not want the missiles, but Khrushchev pressured Castro to accept them.
> …Castro objected to the missiles' deployment as making him look like a Soviet puppet, but he was persuaded…
And:
> Throughout the crisis, Turkey had repeatedly stated that it would be upset if the Jupiter missiles were removed.
> …when the missiles were withdrawn, Castro was more angry with Khrushchev than with Kennedy because Khrushchev had not consulted Castro…
You know, cooperating with consent, instead of threatening, invading, and coercing both friend and foe alike when they try to tell you "no", then calling your opponent "unhinged" after jointly bringing the world to the brink of annihilation.
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1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#Aftermath
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
3: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563692/Soviet-plan-...
4: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/lory1.ethz.ch/collections/coll_wa...
5: https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/npr/102f...
6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine
7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you
8: https://psi204.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Seydi%2C%20Turki...
9: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/84786142
10: https://english.radio.cz/soviet-nuclear-arsenal-czechoslovak...
11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
12: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0026320100366603...
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Operation_K...)
It is easy to judge the actions of our grandparents and great grandparents with the information and technology we have now and 80 years distance. Were we in their place I am not sure we would have made a different decision given the information and technology of the time. Further given the difference in death toll predicted with the alternative and the death toll attributed to the bombing, while the results are heart rending and horrifying I am not convinced it was ultimately the wrong decision.
I’m not asking if you think this outcome is right, or if you have some post-hoc justification now, I’m asking if you know what justification the US made to themselves in 1940’s to enter total war with Japan, that led them to kill 200,000+ civilians with 2 Nuclear Bombs, and a Tokyo Fire Raid to force Japan to surrender. The past if you really try to understand it was a different country, in our past the Life Magazine of 1944 wrote a story of a soldiers girlfriend receiving a Japanese Skull as a gift with incredible quotes like : “This is a good Jap—a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach.” Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo.” (Link: https://time.com/3880997/young-woman-with-jap-skull-portrait...)
The typical response to this from present folk is that “But the Japanese did the Rape of Nanking, and other atrocities”, which almost implies (though the astute never explicitly make this implication), that the US fought the Japanese to right all the atrocities that the Japanese were doing in Pacific region. No one who studies history will ever claim this, if you do study history, it’s hard to not see US as a deceitful bully with lunatic tendencies. One reading of our history that I find may not be the whole truth but certainly has a lot of truth to it, is that Japan was a pawn used by the US Government to drum up support for US to enter WW2, something most of the intelligentsia in US desperately wanted to do, but were always hampered by lack of public appetite to involve itself in this bloody conflict on the other side of the world. Unfortunately a side effect of playing this role for Japan was getting bombed into oblivion when you refused to surrender your sovereignty to the allied powers.
Easy the attack at Pearl Harbor.
you try to brush away all of the atrocities at not being the reason for the US entry into the war, but the US was placing sanctions and trade embargo on japan because of the thing like the Rape of Nanjing prior to the war. The Japanese in response attacked the US at Pearl Harbor without declaration of war. Then proceeded to commit more atrocities against captured US troops, thing like unit 731 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#Human_expe...) rival the horror done Mengele. As for your conspiracy theory that Japan was a pawn of some American deep state and it was being used as an excuse to enter ww2, the US wouldn't have even gone into Europe after pearl harbor had Hitler not declared war on the US in a act of solidarity with Japan.
Damn, they really should have told someone.
I promise we are just morally superior and better people in my unbiased opinion."