Originally Posted by Tommycat
The US, wanted to stop the proliferation of nuclear arms after they had developed them, and in fact used them in war time. Then wants no other country to posess them(in 1947)... On top of that they ended up being one of two countries with enough nuclear weaponry to destroy Jupiter. I find that just a tad hypocritical.
I actually don't know the answer to the second part. I remember reading something about Canada getting rid of theirs, but lets face it, they didn't need them as a MAD deterrent. But I would like to know the right answer. BTW It was India, Pakistan, and Israel that didn't sign on(If I remember correctly. Been forever since I was interested in nukes).
Tommy, in 1947 when they went to the UN, it wasn't regarding non proliferation; the US called for a total ban, and not just a paper 'we won't make or use them. We suggested wholesale arrests of scientists and theorists everywhere
Remember the old saw about a weapon being so horrible it ends war? American observers who went to Hiroshima and Nagasakii after the war were appalled by the devastation, and Truman knew just from the theoretical designs put forward by the military, that the more powerful bomb (Hiroshima) was a firecracker in comparison to what would come.
The actual treaty was suggested by us in 1968. By then there were six nations known to have them, with three more coming up fast. But as I stated in a previous post, every time a new nation joined that exclusive circle, tensions arose. When it was only the US, the Russians believed that we'd repeat our actions of 1918. So they needed those nukes to 'protect themselves'.
And if you honestly believe Joseph Stalin thought only of defending his country, you should be on medication.
He believed, that the US dropped two bombs for only one reason; to prove the fist bomb's results weren't a fluke
and I can understand why he might. But that meant they had to develop their own
England and France developed them for their own reasons, England because they understood that they couldn't guarantee we'd start throwing them at the Soviets if they promised not to use them in a NATO conflict. France was still under De Gaulle, and he didn't like not having the newest toys.
Each caused problems. Russia had to rethink a European conflict not once but three times. Actions already in the works by them in Eastern Europe came to a screeching halt when the odds that France might be threatened by say, trying to support Greek Communists for example. They stopped supporting 'armed struggle' throughout Europe until the Terrorist years.
When China showed off their first bomb, tensions arose again. They had already occupied Tibet, were (and still are) claiming that Taiwan is a 'breakaway province' they have a legal right to occupy), Had fought a small but very nasty battle over Quemoy and Matsu, and were supplying 'armies of liberation' in Malaya, the Phillipines, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. That caused India
to develop them to stop the Chinese from just wandering south and taking them over as well.
Add to this the fact that before 1968, while both the US and Russians had developed ICBMs, they had not been tested sufficiently to guarantee their survival or accuracy. That is why the Russians tried to slip them into Cuba secretly. which put the entire Northern hemisphere at danger. You would have nuclear weapons in the hands of a nation that totally hated us, and no definite way to assure that Castro would not just push the button himself
At ten (My age during the Cuban Missile Crisis) I was already reading at Junior College level, but I wasn't the only kid that age asking the local libraries about ballistic missiles, and why Russia had to deploy them there. But for me to ask for adult publications (As in reading level, not content) like Janes at that age would be like a kid that age today asking the local library for the most recent issue of Playboy Magazine.
I think our movement toward suggesting world nonproliferation came from a comment made by Robert MacNamara, the Secretary of Defense. Decades after the fact, a then top secret meeting was reported. MacNamara had gone to the Joint Chiefs, and was dusting off the war plans in the event Russia actually launched at us.When he asked what we would do if a single missile came out of Cuba or the Soviet Bloc? Answer: Fire everything back at them.
His reply? "Gentlemen, that isn't a war plan, it's a spasm".
That crisis caused the installation of the Hotline so we'd never come that close again.
The problem, as I mentioned above, was summed up quite concisely by David Weber in The Short Victorious War. When the war warning is issued, the main character thinks;' Admiral Caparelli had just formally put the trigger to the war every RMN officer had feared for decades in the hands of some junior grade captain commanding a light cruiser flotilla picketing some nameless star system in the back of beyond'. The peace of the world is in the hands of the least stable leader with nukes, as it has been since 1950.
That was why the US was upset that a nation with the capability to make nukes was willing to attack a smaller neighbor, which caused the Gulf War,and because of Saddam's stubbornness, and whoever suggested to the Shrub that he might try it again led to the present mess in Iraq.It's why we are upset with both Iran and North Korea now.
Look at the three Regimes from the viewpoint of stability, meaning policies and what is known about their leaders:
Iraq under Saddam: A man who pretty much guaranteed there'd be no coup by eliminating anyone with any capability at all. The decade long Iran-Iraq war was fought because, in our intelligence estimates, Saddam was hoping to become the next Caliph. To be Caliph. you must hold the Cities of Qom (Iran) Mecca and Medina (Saudi Arabia) and Jerusalem ( I don't need to tell you). When that war failed, he then turned around and attacked Kuwait because he didn't want to pay back the money lent to him by that government, claiming it was actually 'Province 52', because the British had administered the two countries from Baghdad.
When the Coalition began Operation Desert Shield (The air war portion of Desert Storm) Saddam launched SCUDs at of all people Israel
. Again, intelligence believed he did this because a third of the Coalition forces or backers were Arabs, and if Israel retaliated, they'd fight on his side for that reason alone.
When the ceasefire was declared, part of the Agreement was that UN inspectors would be allowed to verify that all of the chemical, biological and nuclear projects the Iraqis were known to have were dismantled. Saddam instead spent five years running them around, refusing them direct access to facilities unless they came when he
said they could, and finally, kicking them out of the Country. When Clinton after a very nasty diatribe when the UN was denied access to the Presidential Palaces across the country suggested that maybe we should bomb those facilities to destroy anything hidden there, Saddam had thousands of Iraqi civilians trucked into the compounds, then in front of the Media, dared us to do just that.
To quote my ex-wife, Saddam was a spoiled brat asking for a spanking.
Now let's look at North Korea: A nation laboring under poverty and deprivation caused directly by three generations of the Kim family. Sung was only put in power because he was the acceptable leader to the Russians who occupied the North, just as Rhee was the best of a bad lot in the South. But while the US actually limited Rhee's army from getting anything that would allow him to attack North, Russia equipped them with second hand weapons making the NK as well armed as the Soviet Army of 1944.
It would be like say the French Genderamie of today armed with assault rifles and submachine guns (which they are) as the sole defense force of France versus the German army of 1940 that beat the French in less than 60 days. The only real deterrent we (The US) had offered was the 30,000 men stationed in Korea, who were almost as poorly armed, and ill-trained thanks to budget cuts. (See my posting above where I commented on the First Korean War, also called the 'Great Patriotic War by the NKs).
Sung failed because he didn't expect that the UN and US would actually get involved, and the only reason there is not a unified Democratic
Korea today is because China intervened openly, but Truman wasn't willing to take the war to the next level by using Nukes against China. Looking back, especially at the Air defenses of both the US and Russia during that war, and the horrendous losses suffered by bombers rather than fighters, neither side could have fought a serious nuclear war then. Russia could obliterate Western Europe, but could't reach much of the US with nukes without suicide missions, and you'd have to send full wings (72 bombers per wing) with every plane carrying a nuke to guarantee hitting anything more than 400 miles inside the other guy's country.
Not cost effective. Not at about five million
dollars for one bomb per aircraft alone.
After that war, we have a man who wanted to be a movie producer (again refer to previous posts by me) and one thing I have learned from the few producers I have met, reality is not part of their lexicon of virtues. If they think they can pull off a movie with even the most ridiculous premise, they'll fund it. Look at House Calls, where the main character is played by a man fifteen years older than the Script called for, just because he liked the man's work. To quote his daughter, if her father had bought the rights to the book Roots, he would have chosen Robert Redford to play Kunta Kinte.
Picture this guy in charge of a country
. This is the man who first developed the nuclear technology, then when he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, first denied it, then repudiated the NPT.
Now we have that man's son in charge, and his supporters are trying to make him look tough, so he can't speak mildly, he has to threaten first the US, then, when analysts world wide commented he didn't have the reach to carry out much of that threat, his neighbors with his new nuclear hammer.
Iran I left for last, because it is the most worrying to me. There is an old bad joke in Middle Eastern politics that the further you are away from Israel, the more vehement the rhetoric against them. This is because their close neighbors have been clubbed over the head by the IDF too often to be willing to accept another drubbing. After the Israeli attack that leveled the Ostirak nuclear power plant in the 80s, Iraq had backed off on the 'Death to Israel' cant because they had just proven quite capable of taking them on even at that range.
Iran is led by a man that has A: claimed the entire Holocaust history was fabricated by the US just to make the Jews look like underdogs. He is also a firmly religious man who reminds me of some of the crazier fundamentalists here. I knew a guy in Texas who firmly believed that if a nuclear war happened 'God' would assure that his branch of lunacy survived to repopulate the country.
Picture a guy who honestly believes that 'God' would intervene to save his one small group, and let everyone else die. Do you want him
in charge of a button? That's what we have in Iran.
Back in the 60s, everyone with nukes could already see where it was going. By my own research in the early 80s at the time the NPT was originally signed there were more than 30 nations in what I all the second tier, nations with either the capability to develop the weapons on their own, or the money to buy that capability.
The primary reason the US offered to buy up the smaller nukes the Russians had after the Berlin wall fell wasn't because we needed them, even to study. It was because there were nations out there that would have paid for them, and I'm not talking chump change. Libya for an example had offered a couple of billion
dollars for a tacnuke, something small enough to put in a Cessna.
Last, your suggestion was wrong. Canada never developed the bomb (Though they are in that second tier) because unless relations between them and the US went to hell, they have no one they need to threaten with it. Japan (also in the second tier) has never tried to develop them; the public outcry there against even peaceful
use of nuclear technology stopped them from using it in their navy, and stymied power plants until well into the 80s.
No, that one shining example is of all places, South Africa. According to our intelligence (And my own research confirmed it,) the South Africans were a Nuclear power starting in the late 60s. When the Apartheid regime was finally ready to accept majority rule, they approached Mandela, who was a shoe in for the presidency of the new South Africa, and when he discovered they actually had the bomb, he ordered that the production was to stop, all existing nukes were to be dismantled and destroyed, and promised the earlier government that they would never even think of using nules again.