[lit-ideas] Re: Worst Case Scenarios
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 03:52:03 -0700 (PDT)
--- Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Forget about the number of warheads, think number of
> buttons. There are the five permanent security
> council
> states, but we'll treat NATO as one bloc and say
> there
> are three big buttons. Fifty years of work has gone
> into making it almost certain that these buttons
> will
> not be pushed. Three small buttons have been added,
> India, Israel and Pakistan. These small buttons are
> the biggest risks now, which needs to be mitigated
> somehow.
*I disagree. The only countries that have recently
talked about the use of nuclear weapons are the US,
Britain and France. Again, I cannot help but note the
inconsistency in your position. Just a few posts ago,
you were predicting a nuclear attack by the US on
Iran.
There may be a fourth small button, North
> Korea, but we don't really know that for sure.
*There is or will be in near future.
> That gives us six buttons, and 3*5=15 potential
> conflicts. Let's say the chance of a conflict
> actualizing is on average one in five hundred,
> meaning
> 3:100 (3%) chance of nuclear weapons being used.
> Double the amount of buttons (Iran, North Korea,
> Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey,
> Kuwait, Egypt... take your pick.) We've got 6*11=66,
> or 33:250 (13.2%) probability of nuclear war at some
> scale. Take the proliferation to its logical
> conclusion, about 50 nuclear states, and the numbers
> are 25*49=1225, 49:20 (245%).
>
> And I've completely ignored the chance that nuclear
> weapons could be used against non-nuclear states,
> which makes the above calculation much worse.
*Indeed you have. This shows that the probability of
*use of nuclear weapons* (as distinct from conflict,
which takes two sides presumably) does not necessarily
rise in proportion to the number of buttons. May I
remind you that the only time in history the nuclear
weapons were actually used was when there was only one
button around.
> > But it doesn't follow that
> > having huge arsenals of nuclear weapons
> concentrated
> > in the hands of several states makes it safer.
>
> Yes it does. See above.
*No, it doesn't. Further, nations are not mathematical
figures and surely they have the right to think about
their own self-preservation first. By introducing the
so-called 'small nukes,' the Bush administration has
signalled an intention to use nuclear weapons in a way
that could be made palatable to the public opinion.
(Anyway it seems that almost everything is.) Iran has
been already named as a member of 'axis of evil.' If a
tugh is toying a gun around my head I'll want to have
one too, whether or not this will make the
neighbourhood safer statistically.
> Deterrence I can understand, self-defense not. If
> the
> deterrence doesn't work, nukes are useless for
> self-preservation.
*Okay then, make it deterrence.
O.K.
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