Let’s steelman VoiceOfRa’s argument and choose the nuking of Japan as an example of the U.S. using sufficient brutality. While it is true that the threat of the Japanese Empire was successfully ended, it inevitably spawned a dozen other problems in other scenarios. Most notably, it paved the way for the Cold War. The madness that was the latter half of the 20th century could have been avoided if neither part had felt scared enough to engage in a spiraling arms race by building up their nuclear arsenals.
The same logic has been repeated elsewhere: Pakistan only started developing nuclear weapons because India did, and India only did so because they were afraid of China, and China only developed nukes because they were afraid the Americans would defend Taiwan with their own bombs. As soon as you use “sufficient brutality” and prove yourself to be dangerous, you will prompt everyone else to become more dangerous. It’s the same stupid logic by which everyone buys a big, fuel-thirsty car because they’re afraid to be crushed by all the other big, fuel-thirsty cars already in the streets.
In the case of ISIS, let’s say the U.S. gets fed up with the situation and drops nukes on strategic Iraqi and Syrian cities. ISIS is wiped off the map. Good! Next thing you know, Iran will panic and get its own nukes, the Saudis will respond by getting their own, Russia will defend the Assad regime with everything they’ve got, and who knows what the remaining jihadi groups will do. It’s just not worth it.
Edited to add: Moreover, as soon as Iran and Saudi Arabia openly display their new nuclear capability, Israel is bound to do something very stupid.
While it is true that the threat of the Japanese Empire was successfully ended, it inevitably spawned a dozen other problems in other scenarios.
By these standards, pretty much everything one does of any consequence in international relations spawns a dozen other problems.
As soon as you use “sufficient brutality” and prove yourself to be dangerous, you will prompt everyone else to become more dangerous.
Everyone else is quite capable and willing to become more dangerous without any prompting from us. Becoming dangerous is useful for its own sake, not just as a response to others being dangerous.
While it is true that the threat of the Japanese Empire was successfully ended, it inevitably spawned a dozen other problems in other scenarios. Most notably, it paved the way for the Cold War.
In the sense that Communism and the Free World wound up crashing once the common enemy was removed, yes. Your argument about nuclear weapons seems to boil down to arguing that if the US hadn’t developed them, no one else would have. I’ll let you clarify in case it’s something not quite this silly.
let’s say the U.S. gets fed up with the situation and drops nukes on strategic Iraqi and Syrian cities.
You don’t have to go that far. How about having the government not treat rumors that an interrogator may have flushed a Koran down the toilet as a moral crisis.
Next thing you know, Iran will panic and get its own nukes,
Um, Iran is already developing nukes as fast as it can, despite the US not being very brutal.
I admit we were too lucky that the Nazi nuclear program didn’t succeed. But the fact that the “good guys” were the first to get the bomb is no more reassurance than the “good guy with a gun” cliché.
If the Koran-in-the-toilet remark is meant as an argument for enhanced interrogation, we live in separate moral universes.
When the Iranians say they’re not currently developing nukes, I find them believable. Experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency whose job it is to get their nose in places and ask questions and get paid to get this answer right and who understand that the future of the world depends on their findings agree with me on this.
I admit we were too lucky that the Nazi nuclear program didn’t succeed. But the fact that the “good guys” were the first to get the bomb is no more reassurance than the “good guy with a gun” cliché.
So your argument is that therefore good guys shouldn’t develop atomic weapons or carry guns?
If the Koran-in-the-toilet remark is meant as an argument for enhanced interrogation, we live in separate moral universes.
I was making factual (not moral) claims about the effects of various levels of brutality on the chances of retaliation. We can talk about moral claims once we’ve established what the effects of various policies are likely to be. Also, if you can’t imagine there being valid arguments for policies you disagree with, you’re going to have a very hard time being rational about policy.
Experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency whose job it is to get their nose in places and ask questions
The most obvious example of US willingness to be sufficiently brutal seems like Vietnam
Um, no. The US was actually extremely soft in Vietnam. However, photographs from the war were presented in a misleading manner to domestic US audiences to make the US seem brutal (e.g., the infamous Vietnam execution photo was a guy killing a Viet Cong assassin who had just killed his family). Thus, the US lost its will for even that level of brutality and promptly lost a war it had been tactically winning.
The execution in the “infamous Vietnam execution photo” wasn’t even being carried out by a US person; it was not the sort of thing I had in mind. I was thinking more of, e.g., the My Lai massacre.
Is that what you consider “extremely soft”?
The idea that the US had been “tactically winning” the Vietnam war is, so far as I can tell, far from universally held. Can you explain to me why I should believe your description rather than anyone else’s?
Um, no. The US was actually extremely soft in Vietnam.
Um, no. The US actually dropped “one million tons of ordnance” on North Vietnam (where US air strikes killed “approximately 52,000 civilians”) and “some four million tons of bombs” on South Vietnam (“the most bombed country in the history of aerial warfare—a dubious distinction for an ally”). The US actually supplemented those bombs by dropping about 70 million litres of herbicides on Vietnam, including over 40 million litres of Agent Orange and Agent Orange II, such that “millions of Vietnamese were likely to have been sprayed upon directly” and over 2 million hectares of Vietnam were sprayed repeatedly. (This excludes the anti-personnel gases and tens of thousands of tons of napalm the US employed during the 1960s alone.) And a working group in the US Department of Defense actually reckoned it could substantiate hundreds of reports of US war crimes.
How do you know?
(The most obvious example of US willingness to be sufficiently brutal seems like Vietnam, which wasn’t a responding success.)
Let’s steelman VoiceOfRa’s argument and choose the nuking of Japan as an example of the U.S. using sufficient brutality. While it is true that the threat of the Japanese Empire was successfully ended, it inevitably spawned a dozen other problems in other scenarios. Most notably, it paved the way for the Cold War. The madness that was the latter half of the 20th century could have been avoided if neither part had felt scared enough to engage in a spiraling arms race by building up their nuclear arsenals.
The same logic has been repeated elsewhere: Pakistan only started developing nuclear weapons because India did, and India only did so because they were afraid of China, and China only developed nukes because they were afraid the Americans would defend Taiwan with their own bombs. As soon as you use “sufficient brutality” and prove yourself to be dangerous, you will prompt everyone else to become more dangerous. It’s the same stupid logic by which everyone buys a big, fuel-thirsty car because they’re afraid to be crushed by all the other big, fuel-thirsty cars already in the streets.
In the case of ISIS, let’s say the U.S. gets fed up with the situation and drops nukes on strategic Iraqi and Syrian cities. ISIS is wiped off the map. Good! Next thing you know, Iran will panic and get its own nukes, the Saudis will respond by getting their own, Russia will defend the Assad regime with everything they’ve got, and who knows what the remaining jihadi groups will do. It’s just not worth it.
Edited to add: Moreover, as soon as Iran and Saudi Arabia openly display their new nuclear capability, Israel is bound to do something very stupid.
By these standards, pretty much everything one does of any consequence in international relations spawns a dozen other problems.
Everyone else is quite capable and willing to become more dangerous without any prompting from us. Becoming dangerous is useful for its own sake, not just as a response to others being dangerous.
In the sense that Communism and the Free World wound up crashing once the common enemy was removed, yes. Your argument about nuclear weapons seems to boil down to arguing that if the US hadn’t developed them, no one else would have. I’ll let you clarify in case it’s something not quite this silly.
You don’t have to go that far. How about having the government not treat rumors that an interrogator may have flushed a Koran down the toilet as a moral crisis.
Um, Iran is already developing nukes as fast as it can, despite the US not being very brutal.
First, “Free World” my ass.
I admit we were too lucky that the Nazi nuclear program didn’t succeed. But the fact that the “good guys” were the first to get the bomb is no more reassurance than the “good guy with a gun” cliché.
If the Koran-in-the-toilet remark is meant as an argument for enhanced interrogation, we live in separate moral universes.
When the Iranians say they’re not currently developing nukes, I find them believable. Experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency whose job it is to get their nose in places and ask questions and get paid to get this answer right and who understand that the future of the world depends on their findings agree with me on this.
So your argument is that therefore good guys shouldn’t develop atomic weapons or carry guns?
I was making factual (not moral) claims about the effects of various levels of brutality on the chances of retaliation. We can talk about moral claims once we’ve established what the effects of various policies are likely to be. Also, if you can’t imagine there being valid arguments for policies you disagree with, you’re going to have a very hard time being rational about policy.
Would those be the same experts that are outsourcing inspecting Iranian nuclear sites to the Iranians themselves?
Um, no. The US was actually extremely soft in Vietnam. However, photographs from the war were presented in a misleading manner to domestic US audiences to make the US seem brutal (e.g., the infamous Vietnam execution photo was a guy killing a Viet Cong assassin who had just killed his family). Thus, the US lost its will for even that level of brutality and promptly lost a war it had been tactically winning.
The execution in the “infamous Vietnam execution photo” wasn’t even being carried out by a US person; it was not the sort of thing I had in mind. I was thinking more of, e.g., the My Lai massacre.
Is that what you consider “extremely soft”?
The idea that the US had been “tactically winning” the Vietnam war is, so far as I can tell, far from universally held. Can you explain to me why I should believe your description rather than anyone else’s?
Um, no. The US actually dropped “one million tons of ordnance” on North Vietnam (where US air strikes killed “approximately 52,000 civilians”) and “some four million tons of bombs” on South Vietnam (“the most bombed country in the history of aerial warfare—a dubious distinction for an ally”). The US actually supplemented those bombs by dropping about 70 million litres of herbicides on Vietnam, including over 40 million litres of Agent Orange and Agent Orange II, such that “millions of Vietnamese were likely to have been sprayed upon directly” and over 2 million hectares of Vietnam were sprayed repeatedly. (This excludes the anti-personnel gases and tens of thousands of tons of napalm the US employed during the 1960s alone.) And a working group in the US Department of Defense actually reckoned it could substantiate hundreds of reports of US war crimes.