I had no idea that the assassination of Werner Heisenberg nearly came to pass.
'In November 1944, the OSS learned that Heisenberg planned to visit Switzerland the next month. Former major league baseball catcher and then OSS officer Moe Berg was dispatched to Zurich with orders that “Heisenberg must be rendered hors de combat” (out of action) if Heisenberg gave evidence that the German bomb effort was close to completion. Apparently Berg alone was to decide whether or not to kill Heisenberg.'
I figured Moe Berg sounded like a Jewish name which made me curious so I went and read up on the guy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg I guess anyone likely to have a wikipedia page ,especially from that generation, is likely to have a more interesting life and profile than most people I know.
on edit: curious because Jewish spy, even in Zurich, during WW2, sounds dangerous.
Now that was an interesting read. He seems like quite a character. I wish we could have more insight into his perspective but:
“Berg received many requests to write his memoirs, but turned them down. He almost began work on them in 1960, but he quit after the co-writer assigned to work with him confused him with Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.”
- Leverage in persuading scientists to become sources for foreign intelligence agencies, or to participate in sabotage.
- Delays development.
- Disincentivizes nuclear weapons research as career path.
The US and Russia experienced something on the order of 15 known nuclear weapons accidents despite attempts a command & control designed to prevent such occurrences. This doesn't include the unknown amount of weapons grade materials lost/stolen; or the possibility a few finished weapons may have been sold. How many rolls of the dice, by how many additional actors, before the world's luck runs out? From a risk management perspective, if there must be nuclear weapons (realistically) then not every country is capable of stewardship and possession of such weapons.
One need not take sides between, say, Iran and the US/Israel to make an ethical case for extreme efforts to prevent developing nations from obtaining nuclear weapons. The same ethical argument, however, strongly argues for open-sourcing nuclear stewardship technologies so that gaps in proliferation prevention are bridged.
> The same ethical argument, however, strongly argues for open-sourcing nuclear stewardship technologies so that gaps in proliferation prevention are bridged.
I’ve wondered about this as well. It seems to be me that it would actually be a net benefit to leak what you believe to be solid command and control procedures even to your enemies to avoid an accidental attack.
I disagree with selecting nuclear stewards. In as much as nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent to invasion and regime change, many countries will continue to pursue it and will support my political leaders on such a course myself. It’s either we all give it up or we all have it. Why are some countries better stewards ? Some USA’s elected leaders are close to crazy to us from outside. And they came close to a coup not long ago.
It’s almost the same for climate change. The developed countries knew of the impact of their emissions decades ago but continued to burn fossil fuel. The developing countries don’t have a choice; either burn fossils or they will forever be poor. The alternative are currently too expensive. It’s either nuclear power is democratized or people keep burning fossils.
The benefit of individual nations will always triumph over collective interests, such is the nature of power politics in the 21st century.
Climate change is a good example. It has been established that the rising sea level and bush fires proved to be challenges to many nations, but some developed nations see it as an unique opportunity to turn uninhabitable permafrost covered wasteland into arid soil that could be put to use.
With national interests in mind, I strongly suspect the nuclear stewardship may be susceptible to abuse skin to the UN security Council.
If Iran thinks they are safer with nuclear weapons (and accidents) than without, they have as much right to make that decision as anyone else. The sad truth is that wars of aggression are common, and nuclear weapons accidents are rare.
No they aren't in any conceivable universe. I know US or other powerful countries can be and often are bullies to the weaker if its convenient for them, but even strong countries need good friends. And that's one hell of a stupid short-sighted way to lose them, sometimes for good.
That kind of thinking is exactly why Iran wants nuclear weapons so bad they're willing to sacrifice their economy for a chance at having them. Why would they want to rely on a structure of treaties and international laws for their own protection when the justification for violating those laws and treaties can be as simple as "it seemed like it was worth it?"
International law is a nice idea, but it only applies to countries that agree it applies to them. The only thing I want Iran to rely on is the certain knowledge that they will be prevented, by literally any means necessary, from developing nuclear weapons.
EDIT: I guess there are those who disapprove of Stuxnet because it probably violated some laws. I think it was awesome.
There's definitely no chance of a country agreeing to follow international law or even norms when the other signatories would take "any means necessary" to achieve their policy goals WRT them.
The problem with your plan, even from an amoral realpolitik perspective, is that the Iranian program cannot be prevented forever with 100% certainty. There's a possible future world where they end up with nuclear weapons after 30 years of assassinations, and that's the world where they'd be the most likely to make use of them. There are a lot of ways it could happen - maybe they build two plants and the west only gets one of them, maybe North Korea makes a donation to the cause. Maybe they set up a bunch of innocent scientists in the secret but not secret nuclear theory department and let their enemies waste time clandestinely assassinating their theory group while they manufacture the real weapon based on plans obtained elsewhere. When you're killing civilians, you're in a state of war, and although being in a state of war has had very indirect consequences for the US over the past 50 years, that's not guaranteed to go on forever.
> Iranian program cannot be prevented forever with 100% certainty
Beyond that - all it takes for Russia or China to provide Iran with nuclear weapons would be Israel or US pushing it too far.
Actually, that may already be something past the point - at this point an attack against Iran will be interpreted as an attack or prelude to attack against Russia or China.
We are not talking about negotiable issues like access to shipping lanes. We are talking about preventing nuclear holocaust. Iran has repeatedly expressed its desire to obliterate another sovereign nation. I believe them. This is the opposite of amoral, it elevates moral imperatives over formalities. “Any means necessary” is not confined to assassinating individuals. We can, in fact, ensure that they are incapable of making nuclear bombs. A country with stone-age technology is not going to be enriching nuclear fuel.
>Iran has repeatedly expressed its desire to obliterate another sovereign nation
Do you realize that stating we must use "any means necessary" to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb is expressing the desire to obliterate a sovereign nation? What means are acceptable for preventing your possible aggression?
>We can, in fact, ensure that they are incapable of making nuclear bombs. A country with stone-age technology is not going to be enriching nuclear fuel.
So you're fine killing however many millions of Iranians to prevent them from having the potential to kill a large number of people.
I doubt the parent commenter is really all that bloodthirsty, instead they are likely imagining Iran as a country in the abstract sense, without inhabitants.
Saying such things without imaging how it would affect the inhabitants is bloodthirsty even if unintentional. These kinds of actions have consequences for the population.
I think parent commenter didn't imply what you are saying he did. He meant surgical strikes on sites and continued assassinations to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.
By "literally any means necessary," including sending them back to stone age technology. Your comments give me no reason to expect you'd shy away from any expenditure of Iranian life.
>A country with stone-age technology is not going to be enriching nuclear fuel.
Iran has about 80M innocent civilians living there. Even if you think of the leadership as holding them hostage (not too far from the truth for many countries...), that's a lot of hostages to sacrifice.
Most of whom would be annihilated if Iran got into a nuclear exchange with Israel or another country. And I said nothing about “sacrificing” the population, just crippling the technology. Stuxnet had, I think, one casualty, but severely set back their nuclear program. You’re making a lot of assumptions, not to mention repeatedly editing your comments. Thanks for offering your opinions, but, for these reasons, I don’t think this conversation is going to be productive.
If 'expressing desire to obliterate a sovereign nation' is basis for anything, then US should have been sanctioned a few times over. Because it does not only talk about doing such stuff, it does that stuff.
At one point the US encouraged Iraq under Saddam to develop nuclear weapons and sent him top advisors, while they were at war with Iran. Thats a huge threat to Iran!
Thankfully Israel (illegally) put a stop to that. The Gulf Wars would have been fun with a nuclear-powered Iraq ( even though one can make the case that Iraq with nukes would never end up in the situation that forced them into the first Gulf War).
The Gulf wars were forced by the USA, there were diplomatic options available, that were rejected out of hand and suppressed in the media. But yes highly irresponsible stuff, trying to give Saddam nuclear weapons, taking him off the terror list ...
We're pretty much in the nuclear nightmare scenario right now, with everybody's hands poised over the trigger.
Israel didnt put a stop to anything about Iraq's nuclear program. Iraq never had any program which could even advance into making something that can explode. So dont make up things.
Because Israels government doesn't have any interest in using nuclear weapons on Iran, or the population there. Iran's government states time after time they want to wipe Israel off the map. Whether they would actually do it, I don't know, but it is part of their politics, like other issues are in the USA. Also because Saudi Arabia and Israel, nor any of the other countries we are allied to want them to have nuclear capabilities.
Seems it would do better to "assassinate" nuclear installations (research facilities, reactors, i.e., places where weapons-grade material is accumulated/stored). This would remove undesirable nuclear infrastructure and, if done with tactical nuclear weapons, raise doubts in several entities about the wisdom of pursuing such research.
It's one thing to learn of one's acquaintance being assassinated and quite another to find that, while you were on holiday, your company has had a nuclear accident and neither it nor the half-mile hole around it can be entered for another year, all the people are gone and your paycheck will likely be delayed for months at the very least.
That, or perhaps until there’s an internal regime change; but there are other geopolitical implications for a nuclear Iran. It would allow Iran to operate its proxies (in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Syria and Iraq) with even greater impunity. Beyond that, a publicly nuclear Iran would push the region to a nuclear arms race (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, maybe Turkey).
The article is from 2012 and today in 2021 Iran still has no nuclear weapons. So it did, after all, slow them down.
This tactic has been successful for the Israelis against the Egyptian missile program in the '50s, after significant setbacks.
So I understand why it appears to be a last sort extreme measure. Risky, difficult to get right but sometimes successful.
I personally think that next batches of new weapons - killer drones, biological warfare, etc... could easily get more "effective" than nuclear weapons. So it's not like it's a static world where the atomic bomb is the ultimate one. It's nations fighting to keep an edge over others in a dynamic setting where older weapons will eventually lose their relevance.
I think also somewhat related - i.e. it isn't only enemies who target strategic scientists - after having developed hypersonic missile (Mach 6) in the recent years, Russia put several top scientists and engineers who worked directly either on the project or its key technologies in prison on charges of spying. As the charges are outright bogus - one guy for example was convicted for publishing a scientific article describing results of his unclassified research funded by a European grant (and nobody said a word nor when he received the grant and was doing the work, nor later when the article was making its way through peer-review/publishing/etc. and for quite some time afterward) - it looks to me like they are preventatively making sure that the tech would have no chances to leak by putting those key people in prison once the tech got done in such a wrong way while also sending clear message to the rest.
https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2021/01/06/from-the-archiv...
This article says hundreds of deaths https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/indias-vanishing-nuclear-scien...