
Treaty banning nuclear weapons approved at UN - bahjoite
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/07/treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons-approved-un
======
monochromatic
> All of the countries that bear nuclear arms and many others that either come
> under their protection or host weapons on their soil boycotted the
> negotiations.

Completely meaningless posturing to pass this treaty. Par for the course at
the UN.

~~~
tomdell
> Previous UN treaties have been effective even when key nations have failed
> to sign up to them. The US did not sign up to the landmines treaty, but has
> completely aligned its landmines policy to comply nonetheless.

Idk - it might be a step toward eventual disarmament, even if far in the
future.

~~~
gh02t
I saw an interesting talk by one of the guys responsible for nuclear weapons
policy under Obama. He focused on a game-theoretic analysis of whether or not
"nuclear zero" (total global disarmament) was really possible.

The analysis he gave suggested a scheme where countries could simultaneously
disarm down to very low levels (maybe a couple hundred worldwide) while
maintaining a credible mutual deterrent, but going below that was exceedingly
difficult. Basically one of the major nuclear powers would have to be willing
to take a "leap of faith" to get to total disarmament, which is hard to
swallow politically.

It's all hypothetical analysis now though as it seems like we are currently on
track to maintain the status quo or even start another buildup. I hope not,
it's a waste of money and effort for negligible tangible benefit over what we
have now.

~~~
afarrell
My concern with what my Causes and Prevention of War professor called the
Mankind Absolutely Rejects Nuclear Explosives scenario is that after you've
eliminated existing stocks of nuclear weapons, you have not eliminated the
capacity to produce nuclear weapons during the course of a major-power war. If
there is another direct major-power war and a nation has a choice between an
invasion they project to cause 500,000 casualties and dropping a nuclear bomb,
which would they choose?

~~~
ttepasse
I'm curious: fid your professor tell you why he decided on the acronym MARNE?
A comparison to the Battle of Marne in WW1 seems likely but rather slim,
doesn't it?

------
Turing_Machine
Next up: mice vote to bell cat.

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
That most conflicts are internal and not between major nation states shiws
that the UN has been successful in its mission.

~~~
muninn_
I wouldn't be so quick to credit the UN with this. I would say it's more
likely that between mutually assured destruction upon major powers, and the
United States' role as global peacekeeper and Don't Do Something Crazy or We
Will Bomb You mantra we've reached a state of world peace. Not because of the
UN.

~~~
thg
It's more like "play by our rules and do what we tell you or we will bomb
you". The US isn't the global peacekeeper, the US is the main instigator for
wars. Planting and supporting dictators and authoritarian regimes who are then
painted as "the enemy" when they no longer want to be the pets of the US.

History is written by the winners, I guess, and all that pro-US propaganda
that's so proliferate in the entire western world seems to be working really
good.

Did you know that the US supported Hitler at first and big US corporations
(I.T.T., General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil Co.,
and the Chase National Bank) all continued trading with Germany during the war
because there was money in it and the US politicians didn't want to give those
big corporations a big sad?

The US is the "global peacekeeper" only when the target country they're
invading doesn't want to go along with whatever the US wants. The UN is a
whole lot more global peacekeeper than the US will ever be.

~~~
marcoperaza
Believe what you want, but the Pax Americana is real and is empirically the
most peaceful time in world history. It is partly due to nuclear deterrents
and partly due to the US maintaining a massive military presence in hot spots
(Korea, South China Sea, Taiwan, Persian/Arab Gulf, Eastern Europe).

Yes, it is often coercive and we have certainly supported unsavory regimes. It
is worth considering what the alternatives to those regimes are. In Saudi
Arabia, for instance, the House of Saud is actually a moderating force keeping
the Wahhabist mullahs from taking over completely. Liberal democracy will not
work everywhere today, as our horribly misguided experiment in Iraq has
demonstrated. I recommend Fareed Zakaria's _The Future of Freedom_ for a
discussion of the problem, but a very short summary is that you cannot have a
functioning democracy without substantial economic development (natural
resource money does NOT count for many reasons) and a middle class that feels
highly invested in stability, growth, and trade.

The US government never supported Hitler. America is a free country so of
course there were many private individuals and companies who did. No different
than how Western academia was extremely fond of the Soviets until the 1950s.
The US actually provided massive aid to the allies before entering the war,
through the lend lease program among others. The fact is that it wasn't clear
at the time that it was in the United State's interests to _oppose_ Hitler. It
was a far away problem, there was a strong isolationist mood in the US, and
even the Brits were trying their hand at coexisting with him.

~~~
thg
> _The US government never supported Hitler._

Breckinridge Long is the very first name to prove that wrong. He was the US
Secretary of State at the time Hitler was in power and gave Henry Ford
permission to buy Nazi tanks while purposely preventing Jewish refugees from
entering the US. He and Roosevelt also gave permission to the US companies I
mentioned above to continue trading with Nazi Germany _during war times_.

For them, it wasn't so much about liberty and human rights as it was about
business. That's still the case today. The US #1 trade partner is China, who
happens to have a pathetic human rights record and is also _still_ occupying
Tibet. But opposing them in any way would be bad for business, so it gets
shoved under the rug.

Out of sight, out of mind.

~~~
marcoperaza
The US was neutral and did business with both allied and axis powers at that
point. We nevertheless tipped the scales strongly in favor of the allies with
the lend lease act, for example. And the historical record is pretty clear
that from the beginning of the war, Roosevelt was itching for a reason to jump
in on the allied side. Your anti-American historical revisionism is contrary
to the facts.

The idea that the US should stop doing business with China is ridiculous. As a
major nuclear power with an economy that within in a decade or two could
surpass ours in total output, America is in no position to do anything about
China's internal affairs. Ending trade with China would cause extreme economic
damage and internal unrest in the United States. It would be a phenomenally
stupid sword for America to fall on.

You're right in general though. America's main interest after the security of
ourselves and our allies is open and peaceful commerce between nations.

~~~
thg
You stated that the US government never supported Hitler and I disproved that
by mentioning but a single name.

You got me with Roosevelt, though. I merely mentioned him for completeness
sake, not to single him out. That was badly worded on my part.

------
dogma1138
Nukes make large scale warfare between superpowers much less likely.

Nukes can also diescalate any situation between superpowers before it blows
into a full out war.

I'm not entirely sure that complete disarmament would actually benefit the
world as a whole.

Also at thisn point disarmament is pointless you can't disarm physics and
knowledge any nuclear capable country would be able to rebuild a tactically
significant arsenal within a span of 2 years or even at a much shorter period
if they poses either large stockpiles of nuclear fuel or have sufficiently
large production capabilities.

This is nothing more than posturing.

------
jMyles
Seems like a good occasion to go back and read Eisenhower's farewell address -
probably one of the 100 best speeches in the history of the English language
IMO.

> Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
> Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with
> intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I
> confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a
> definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and
> the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could
> utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully
> built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting
> peace is in sight.

~~~
DrScump
It was also Ike who coined the term "military-industrial complex".

------
spo81rty
I think the only hope is missile defense systems which could yield these
missiles useless. Only then would they provide no value as a deterrent.

~~~
tristanj
I doubt nuclear defense systems are viable anymore, modern ICBMs travel too
fast to intercept. Newsweek covered Russia's latest ICBM developments, and
they don't look good. [http://www.newsweek.com/us-russia-nuclear-arms-race-
over-and...](http://www.newsweek.com/us-russia-nuclear-arms-race-over-and-
russia-has-won-581704)

> _The RS-28 ICBM, scheduled to become operational in 2018, assures Russia the
> ability to annihilate the United States in retaliation for any American
> first strike, while providing Russia a silo-killing first-strike capability
> of its own._

> _The RS-28 is itself a wonder of modern technology, capable of flying in
> excess of five times the speed of sound, altering its trajectory to confuse
> anti-missile radars, and delivering 15 independently targetable nuclear
> warheads (each one 10 times as powerful as the bombs the United States
> dropped on Japan at the end of World War II) or three “Object 4202”
> hypersonic warheads, which destroy their targets through kinetic energy
> (i.e., through impact)._

> _A nuclear warhead-armed RS-28 would take about 30 minutes to reach the
> United States from a silo in central Russia; its warheads would be capable
> of destroying an area about the size of Texas. [When] armed with the “Object
> 4202” hypersonic warheads, each of which is capable of destroying an
> American missile silo, the time would be cut down to 12 minutes or less._

------
ahallock
Isn't having nuclear weapons around actually a deterrent to war because of
mutually assured destruction?

~~~
mac01021
It certainly does not deter the USA or Russia or China from invading Panama or
Latvia or Burma.

~~~
GhostVII
But it deters the USA from invading Russia or China

------
ioquatix
Surprising display of sanity and logic.

~~~
monochromatic
> All of the countries that bear nuclear arms and many others that either come
> under their protection or host weapons on their soil boycotted the
> negotiations.

Why is it surprising that the countries without nukes want to disarm the
countries with nukes?

------
marcoperaza
Nuclear disarmament by the established nuclear powers is a horrible idea. This
is how we return to the era of great power wars that came to a close with
World War 2. Do you really want to see warfare between America, China, and
Russia? Or how about a return to European wars?

People seem to magically think that the era of great power wars has ended
because of economic interdependence or good will between nations. Europeans
thought the same thing at the turn of the 20th century and again during the
1920s. What keeps the peace is knowing that even in defeat your enemy can make
you pay a price you are not willing to pay.

~~~
gilrain
The risk of conventional war is insignificant compared to the very real risk
of destroying our only habitat.

~~~
marcoperaza
There are nowhere near enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world. In fact,
there aren't even enough to wipe out mankind. This is even more true since
we've reduced the size of nuclear stockpiles significantly.

------
laretluval
LOL

~~~
dang
You've been posting a lot of unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you please
stop doing that? We're hoping for a higher standard of discussion here.

------
Shivetya
about as effective as the banning of chemical weapons. not that is not a great
idea but the NPT is better acted on. a treaty such as this ban requires
rational actors and we have one fully irrational country (NK) and a few other
suspect ones that might even employ proxies to use the weapons.

the real question about such a treaty is, say you could get China, Russia, and
the US, to agree. How do you disarm nations that won't. You could try trade
sanctions but that is likely to cause the irrational to use their weapons.

I do like the idea of signatory nations not allowing such weapons on their
territory but giving the current theory on their usage what does that gain?

------
muninn_
I saw this same headline on Reddit World News and it made me pretty angry. The
headline was something along the lines of "World votes to abolish nuclear
weapons, 9 nuclear powers including US vote no".

Why "including the US" ? This is just clearly pushing an agenda. Why not
"including France" ? What does this little snippet add to the journalism other
than to press a little bit on anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment?

Really annoying.

~~~
bnegreve
Reddit is an us-based media, so this is not surprising that articles are
targeted for this audience. If you believe Reddit is an universal and unbiased
media, you're wrong.

> Why not "including France" ? What does this little snippet add to the
> journalism other than to press a little bit on anti-Europe/anti-Us
> sentiment?

Changing "including US" to "including France" would not reduce the anti-
Europe/anti-Us sentiment because France is part of Europe.

edit: remove pointless comment.

~~~
muninn_
I don't believe it to be unbiased.

>How does changing "including US" to "including France" would help reducing
the anti-Europe/anti-Us sentiment? I'm afraid I understand what's going on.

What do you think is going on? I don't think either title is good. I just
wanted to illustrate the point.

