I’m curious which of the two major political parties in the US (and left wing vs. right wing parties more generally) people think is most likely to reduce existential risk. My current view is that the Democrats (and parties of the left) are since they’re more likely to favor policies which reduce the threat of climate change (a tail end existential risk and a potential destabilizing force) and are more likely to favor nuclear non-proliferation. However, I know my own opinions might be biased by the fact that I agree with left wing parties on most other less important issues. Which party do you think would do the most to reduce existential risk and how substantial do you think the difference is?
the two major political parties in the US (...) people think is most likely to reduce existential risk
No comment on the main question, but if you really care about an issue you should try like hell to prevent it from becoming a wedge issue. There’s no longer any meaningful discussion of AGW in the US, because it’s now a wedge issue. Even if you observe a huge correlation between political tribal affiliation and getting the “right answer”, you should never point this out. Once people start to absorb their position on a topic into their self-image, they will never change their minds about it.
It’s worth noting the success of reducing Mercury pollution without much media coverage in the Obama administration while at the same time the administration didn’t went far on climate change.
more to the point, it gets to be used in an endless good cop bad cop routine in which political groups hang it over the heads if captive constituencies who get threatened with ‘vote for us, the other guy is WORSE’, and then nobody does anything since they can always claim tbat the other guy would have done worse or they would have done better.
Answers to this are going to have to depend on politically sensitive judgements, I think, because most of the impact of politicians on existential risk will be indirect and involve things like the overall prosperity of the nation they’re leading. Let’s look at some classes of existential risk:
Asteroids and other spaceborne hazards: prefer whichever party will lead to more technological progress in, say, the next 50 years. That will depend on science and education funding (probably prefer the Democrats), on overall national prosperity (prefer whichever party you think will handle the economy better), perhaps in complicated ways on involvement in major wars (maybe too complicated to call even if you think you know which party will lead to fewer wars).
War (nuclear catastrophe, out-of-control biological warfare): prefer whichever party you think will lead to fewer really big wars in, say, the next 50 years. That’s a very political question, and partisans of either party will surely claim that their preferred policies will produce less war.
Terrorism (ditto): probably not actually a credible existential threat (I’m not even sure war really is).
Societal collapse: well, what would cause that? Resource exhaustion? (Prefer whichever party will (a) advance technology leading to new resources and/or alternatives and (b) reduce resource consumption if necessary; the latter is probably the Democrats but your opinion on the former will probably match your party affiliation.) Social instability following from huge technology-led unemployment? (If that’s coming, probably neither party will help you.) Conflict between social groups? (Political question again. There isn’t clear agreement even about, e.g., the sign of the effect of increased immigration.)
Runaway technology such as AI: probably doesn’t have much to do with who’s in government. You might prefer whichever party you think will lead to less technological progress, but that leaves you more open to (a) other existential risks and (b) runaway technology developed elsewhere.
I’m seeing scarcely anything here whose answer doesn’t depend on things about which people disagree along political lines.
My own answer to your question is: the difference might be quite large but it’s very indirect and complicated, so I see rather little prospect of figuring out which way it goes, so I’m going to carry on voting on the basis of things I actually have (or at least fondly imagine I have) some prospect of understanding. I have (or think I have) some ability to predict, on a timescale of a few years, the effect of one party’s victory on my own household finances, the risk of some possible near-future wars, the welfare of poor and vulnerable people, the competitiveness of the nation’s businesses, etc., and looking at those is probably more effective than trying to guess their very indirect effects on x-risk.
I would say generally Democrats, since the evangelicals are mostly Republicans and I somehow doubt that they could think clearly about AGI, instead getting stuck in arguments about “AGI is impossible, because it wouldn’t have a soul”.
However, there is more to the Republicans than religion, and this criticism wouldn’t apply to a business-focused Republican.
The right-wing would argue that immigration is a destabilizing force, and there are rationalists who believe that most of western society is likely to collapse within 50 years, perhaps to the point of a new dark age, analogous to the dark age after the fall of the Roman empire. I think this is rather paranoid, but given Aumann’s agreement theorem its worrying.
Generally, its too early for any policies to impact existential risk directly, except for preventing nuclear war, and so in general it is best to just pursue good government.
Democrats...are more likely to favor nuclear non-proliferation
Strongly disagree. Both parties verbally oppose nuclear proliferation, but Republicans are willing to go to war to stop it (the last President Bush reasonably thought Iraq was developing nuclear weapons) whereas Democrats are not. (Clinton let North Korea get nuclear weapons and Obama has been unwilling to attack Iran’s nuclear program.)
Which party is better comes down to if you most fear a WWI (where everyone acting tough caused war) or WWII (where the failure of the good guys to act tough caused war) type failure.
I would also add the Cuban Missile Crisis to the list of things to fear, where (as I perceive it) the Soviets thought the Americans would fold, and then the Americans escalated. Being tough but not being perceived as tough is a serious failure mode!
I made a grab for some low-hanging knowledge on the counterfactual question by looking at the first couple of pages of a Google Scholar search for articles I could access which offered background on the topic. (I don’t have the time or the interest to do anything like a real literature review, but I expect even a cursory Google Scholar search to be more reliable than a lone NewsBusters article.) Ignoring the books and paywalledForeignAffairsarticles I can’t read, I got
Michael J. Mazarr’s 1995 “Going Just a Little Nuclear: Nonproliferation Lessons from North Korea” in International Security
I haven’t perused these from start to finish, and even if I had I couldn’t discuss them comprehensively in a blog comment. So I have to give a radically compressed (hence necessarily selective) digest of the bits I saw which shed light on the counterfactual question.
First, Mazarr’s essay. It summarizes itself, but even the summary won’t fit here, so I skip to its p. 104, where Mazarr referred to NK’s “alleged one or two nuclear weapons” (fitting NBC’s report that NK had a nuclear weapon), and quote a longer block from the same page:
Down one road lies an ultimatum—a demand for perfect confidence and complete disarmament; its way-stations are confrontation, an end to IAEA inspections and other forms of international control [...] sanctions, and possibly war. The other road holds a more accommodating approach, lessened tensions, expanded international monitoring [...] and the hope of eventual disarmament; its price is a greater near- to medium-term risk that the proliferant might be able to hide a rudimentary nuclear program.
Mazarr adds that, in practice, the US “always resorts” to the softer approach “in cases of hard-core proliferation”, having “accepted ambiguous proliferation in India and Israel for many years”, and likewise didn’t pursue an all-out approach against India & Pakistan. Further along, on p. 110, in the section on sanctions:
Even had a tougher approach been more appealing, there was little chance it would have worked. North Korea had a long history of rejecting international opinion when phrased as a demand and accompanied by sanctions or the threat of them. Nor could economic sanctions have been effective without the participation of China, South Korea, Russia, and Japan, each of which expressed some degree of unease with a confrontational approach to the North, and reluctance to take any steps that might spark a rapid collapse of the North Korean system.
The section on sanctions was generally pessimistic, though Mazarr granted that “the de facto sanction of existing trade restrictions” could help shape “a proliferant’s motives” (p. 111), and that NK seemed to have an interest “in avoiding condemnation and sanctions as voted by the Security Council” (p. 112). Mazarr was even more doubtful that military action would “have offered a definitive answer to the North Korean nuclear challenge” because it could have “led directly to a Korean war” and “military strikes [...] probably would not work” anyway (p. 113).
Mazarr’s essay was most optimistic about the kind of approach represented by Clinton’s ’94 agreement: “a broad-based policy of incentives built around the offer of a package deal” (p. 114). Even a rejected package deal “would have its uses” because it “would force North Korea to make a clear choice, deprive it of excuses, and seize the political high ground, firming up a political consensus (including China) for UN sanctions” (p. 117).
Niksch’s report doesn’t seem useful for the counterfactual question at issue, because the report is mainly about the (second) Bush administration’s goals & actions. My skimming revealed a description of the US’s obligations under the ’94 Agreed Framework, but no substantial, explicit evaluation of alternatives to the Framework.
Walt’s article is a general assessment of Clinton’s foreign policy. From its paragraph about the 1994 NK deal, on pages 72-73:
Hard-liners have criticized Clinton for rewarding North Korea’s defiance of the nonproliferation regime, but they have yet to offer an alternate policy that would have achieved as much with as little. A preemptive air strike might well not eliminate North Korea’s nuclear capability. Moreover, both South Korea and Japan opposed the use of force. [...] the situation called for flexibility, persistence and creativity; the administration displayed them all. Without the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea would almost certainly have obtained enough fissile material for a sizable number of nuclear bombs. [...] Given the limited array of options and the potential for disaster, Clinton’s handling of North Korea is an impressive diplomatic achievement.
Mack’s essay reminds me of Mazarr’s in its scepticism about sanctions (e.g. p. 32: “What all this suggests is that imposing sanctions will be far more problematic than their more naive proponents in the West realize”), and Mack was at least as negative as Mazarr about military action, writing on p. 33 that “[t]he idea of resolving the nuclear issue by ‘taking out’ the Yongbyon nuclear facilities suffers from three fatal defects”. Those three, briefly: (1) “it is by definition impossible to hit unknown targets” potentially kept secret by a “paranoid” regime; (2) “‘surgical strikes’ against Yongbyon might not only fail to destroy all of the North’s nuclear program, they would also unleash a very unsurgical war against the South”; and (3) “it would be politically impossible to pursue the military option until the less risky alternatives of persuasion and sanctions had [...] failed. But sanctions would likely take years to have the desired effect”. Ultimately, Mack was not sure anything would work. From p. 35:
Given the very real possibility that neither persuasion nor bribery, economic coercion, military action, or even unilateral reassurance will divert Pyongyang from its nuclear path, the international community needs to start thinking about what this may mean for regional—and global—security.
The 1999 Perry et al. review reads to me as broadly positive about the Agreed Framework, asserting on p.2 that it
succeeded in verifiably freezing North Korean plutonium production at Yongbyon — it stopped plutonium production at that facility so that North Korea currently has at most a small amount of fissile material it may have secreted away from operations prior to 1994; without the Agreed Framework, North Korea could have produced enough additional plutonium by now for a significant number of nuclear weapons.
The review team behind the report recommended on p. 6 that the Agreed Framework “be preserved and implemented” as one recommendation of six:
With the Agreed Framework, the DPRK’s ability to produce plutonium at Yongbyon is verifiably frozen. Withou the Agreed Framework, however, it is estimated that the North could reprocess enough plutonium to produce a significant number of nuclear weapons per year. The Agreed Framework’s limitations, such as the fact that it does not verifiably freeze all nuclear weapons-related activities [...] are best addressed by supplementing rather than replacing the Agreed Framework.
Insofar as these sources are accurate and I’ve understood and digested them properly, it’s not only possible but likely that Clinton did about as well on this count as a different president could’ve. If so, then (even if NK didn’t already have a nuclear weapon in ’94) I’d think it unfair to assert that “Clinton let North Korea get nuclear weapons” as if there were an alternative decision Clinton could’ve taken to delay North Korea’s first nuclear test for 13+ years.
The argument here seems to be: North Korea built nuclear weapons, the 1994 treaty was supposed to prevent that, therefore let’s blame the guy who was President in 1994 for North Korea building nuclear weapons.
Similar reasoning could just as easily place the blame on the Reagan administration.
Unless I’m missing something, and there is some reason why that 1994 treaty left the US in a hopeless position in 2002, unable to intervene while North Korea kicked out IAEA inspectors, unsealed its fuel rods, and built nuclear weapons.
The linked article does an OK job of documenting that contemporary news reports were too optimistic about how much Clinton’s 1994 deal would constrain North Korea’s bomb seeking. However, I don’t think that’s an adequate basis for “Clinton let North Korea get nuclear weapons” — not least because the article itself echoes, in apparent agreement, NBC’s contemporary claim that NK already had a nuclear bomb.
Even setting aside that claim, I wouldn’t be confident in inferring that “Clinton let North Korea get nuclear weapons” merely because Clinton made a deal and 12 years later (and 6 years after Clinton left office) NK set off a nuke. Given my original state of ignorance (I didn’t know anything about this 1994 deal before this thread), I can’t rule out the possibilities that (1) Clinton actually made smart moves which were later vitiated by Bush or a lower-ranked politician, or that (2) Clinton made the best of a bad hand, there being no reasonable counterfactual where a US president in 1994 could’ve ensured, without triggering some patently worse consequence, that NK’s first nuclear explosion happened substantially after 2006.
Democrats (and parties of the left) are since they’re more likely to favor policies which reduce the threat of climate change
Bush did manage to get North Korea nuclear under his tenure by not engaging in dialog with the North Korean leadership the way the late administration of Clinton did.
The actual record of his actions matters more than an intention to go to war to stop nuclear weapons.
Not directly, true, but it’s highly probable that it was his administration which greenlighted Stuxnet and its successors. It’s still a subject of debate how much that worm was able to slow down Iran’s program, but it was nonetheless an act of aggression (and the first salvo in the incoming cyber-war).
it’s highly probable that it was his administration which greenlighted Stuxnet and its successors.
Stuxnet was developed and launched under Bush. Obama just continued with the program (that is, if the three-letter agencies even bothered to tell him).
Well, that’s weird. Yesterday I would have sweared to have read in Wikipedia that Stuxnet was developed in 2010. Now in the Stuxnet page it’s written “under Bush administration”. I guess my sources were incorrect.
FYI: There was indeed a 30 minute period on 2015-09-21 where it said ” during the administration of George W. Bush and Barrack Obama”, you’re not crazy. Though 2010 is the year it was discovered, the development is assumed to have been as early as 2005, it never said “developed in 2010”
What kind of scenario are you thinking of when you argue that climate change is an existential risk? How do you think it might kill all or even 90% of the population?
Democrats (and parties of the left) are since they’re more likely to favor policies which reduce the threat of climate change
While the Obama administration did a few symbolic actions for climate change it didn’t move significantly on the issue. I don’t think there good reason to assume that things would be different under another Clinton.
Nixon went to China and the Obama administration waged it’s war against whistleblowers. There might be more political room for a Republican government to make substantial action on climate change than for a Democrat government.
Some Climatologists, such as James Hanson, believe that a runaway greenhouse effect large enough to potentially distinguish all life on earth is possible Obviously this is not a likely extinction event, but I believe it is still worth considerable resources to reduce its probability.
While little has been done legislatively to combat climate change, the Obama administration is pursuing regulatory action through the EPA to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that will make the construction of new coal fire power plants very difficult.
Additionally, the administration has benefited alternative energy industries through subsidies (in large part through the initial stimulus). Some Republicans do support such subsidies, so admittedly the difference between parties isn’t as stark on this point (though this may change with increasing polarization as described below).
Additionally polarization on climate change has increased in recent years. It’s less and less likely that a Republican president would pursue policy aimed at substantially reducing green house gasses. They might also appoint a supreme court member who would rule against the regulations the EPA is attempting to implement now.
I don’t think that the party who holds the presidency is the most important factor in whether we reduce carbon emissions, but it likely contributes.
While little has been done legislatively to combat climate change, the Obama administration is pursuing regulatory action through the EPA to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that will make the construction of new coal fire power plants very difficult.
The question is not whether they are persuing action but whether they are engaging in action that has a significant effect given the scale of the problem.
That’s very hard to say without quantifying “likely” and “considerable”. One could say the same about most extinction events, for certain definitions of those two words.
Convincing explanation for what? I thought we were discussing whether or not it was worth spending resources to prevent global extinction from global warming… which is more of a question than an explanation.
How is putting a numerical amount to “not likely” and “considerable” convuluted. That’s the basis of any decision probelm.
That’s why they are separated by the word “but”. If I were to say “it rained yesterday, but today it looks like it will be sunny”, would you object that “sun today doesn’t follow from rain yesterday”?
I believe we should be spending resources to avoid many unlikely existential risks, even those I believe are less likely to be existential risks than climate change (eg. tracking asteroids).
which of the two major political parties in the US (and left wing vs. right wing parties more generally) people think is most likely to reduce existential risk.
The success of a particular mainstream political party in the US is not a variable that noticeably affects existential risk. None of the parties would do much anything to reduce the existential risk.
A lot of attempts to avert existential risks will require a lot of resources and no company or charity have as much resources as US government and US military (or governments of other large countries).
Yes, but political campaigning is not how the government pays attention to existential risks. Whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the oval office has little bearing on whether NORAD is getting re-purposed to track asteroids.
I’m curious which of the two major political parties in the US (and left wing vs. right wing parties more generally) people think is most likely to reduce existential risk. My current view is that the Democrats (and parties of the left) are since they’re more likely to favor policies which reduce the threat of climate change (a tail end existential risk and a potential destabilizing force) and are more likely to favor nuclear non-proliferation. However, I know my own opinions might be biased by the fact that I agree with left wing parties on most other less important issues. Which party do you think would do the most to reduce existential risk and how substantial do you think the difference is?
No comment on the main question, but if you really care about an issue you should try like hell to prevent it from becoming a wedge issue. There’s no longer any meaningful discussion of AGW in the US, because it’s now a wedge issue. Even if you observe a huge correlation between political tribal affiliation and getting the “right answer”, you should never point this out. Once people start to absorb their position on a topic into their self-image, they will never change their minds about it.
It’s worth noting the success of reducing Mercury pollution without much media coverage in the Obama administration while at the same time the administration didn’t went far on climate change.
more to the point, it gets to be used in an endless good cop bad cop routine in which political groups hang it over the heads if captive constituencies who get threatened with ‘vote for us, the other guy is WORSE’, and then nobody does anything since they can always claim tbat the other guy would have done worse or they would have done better.
Answers to this are going to have to depend on politically sensitive judgements, I think, because most of the impact of politicians on existential risk will be indirect and involve things like the overall prosperity of the nation they’re leading. Let’s look at some classes of existential risk:
Asteroids and other spaceborne hazards: prefer whichever party will lead to more technological progress in, say, the next 50 years. That will depend on science and education funding (probably prefer the Democrats), on overall national prosperity (prefer whichever party you think will handle the economy better), perhaps in complicated ways on involvement in major wars (maybe too complicated to call even if you think you know which party will lead to fewer wars).
War (nuclear catastrophe, out-of-control biological warfare): prefer whichever party you think will lead to fewer really big wars in, say, the next 50 years. That’s a very political question, and partisans of either party will surely claim that their preferred policies will produce less war.
Terrorism (ditto): probably not actually a credible existential threat (I’m not even sure war really is).
Societal collapse: well, what would cause that? Resource exhaustion? (Prefer whichever party will (a) advance technology leading to new resources and/or alternatives and (b) reduce resource consumption if necessary; the latter is probably the Democrats but your opinion on the former will probably match your party affiliation.) Social instability following from huge technology-led unemployment? (If that’s coming, probably neither party will help you.) Conflict between social groups? (Political question again. There isn’t clear agreement even about, e.g., the sign of the effect of increased immigration.)
Runaway technology such as AI: probably doesn’t have much to do with who’s in government. You might prefer whichever party you think will lead to less technological progress, but that leaves you more open to (a) other existential risks and (b) runaway technology developed elsewhere.
I’m seeing scarcely anything here whose answer doesn’t depend on things about which people disagree along political lines.
My own answer to your question is: the difference might be quite large but it’s very indirect and complicated, so I see rather little prospect of figuring out which way it goes, so I’m going to carry on voting on the basis of things I actually have (or at least fondly imagine I have) some prospect of understanding. I have (or think I have) some ability to predict, on a timescale of a few years, the effect of one party’s victory on my own household finances, the risk of some possible near-future wars, the welfare of poor and vulnerable people, the competitiveness of the nation’s businesses, etc., and looking at those is probably more effective than trying to guess their very indirect effects on x-risk.
I would say generally Democrats, since the evangelicals are mostly Republicans and I somehow doubt that they could think clearly about AGI, instead getting stuck in arguments about “AGI is impossible, because it wouldn’t have a soul”.
However, there is more to the Republicans than religion, and this criticism wouldn’t apply to a business-focused Republican.
The right-wing would argue that immigration is a destabilizing force, and there are rationalists who believe that most of western society is likely to collapse within 50 years, perhaps to the point of a new dark age, analogous to the dark age after the fall of the Roman empire. I think this is rather paranoid, but given Aumann’s agreement theorem its worrying.
Generally, its too early for any policies to impact existential risk directly, except for preventing nuclear war, and so in general it is best to just pursue good government.
Strongly disagree. Both parties verbally oppose nuclear proliferation, but Republicans are willing to go to war to stop it (the last President Bush reasonably thought Iraq was developing nuclear weapons) whereas Democrats are not. (Clinton let North Korea get nuclear weapons and Obama has been unwilling to attack Iran’s nuclear program.)
Which party is better comes down to if you most fear a WWI (where everyone acting tough caused war) or WWII (where the failure of the good guys to act tough caused war) type failure.
I would also add the Cuban Missile Crisis to the list of things to fear, where (as I perceive it) the Soviets thought the Americans would fold, and then the Americans escalated. Being tough but not being perceived as tough is a serious failure mode!
Yes, and it’s a common failure mode because people who are not tough often try to convince others that they are tough.
In 2002-2006?
See http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeffrey-meyer/2015/07/15/flashback-networks-hailed-clintons-1994-nuclear-deal-north-korea#.VacSsFXdXck.facebook?NV:.v5gom7:Qd0P
I made a grab for some low-hanging knowledge on the counterfactual question by looking at the first couple of pages of a Google Scholar search for articles I could access which offered background on the topic. (I don’t have the time or the interest to do anything like a real literature review, but I expect even a cursory Google Scholar search to be more reliable than a lone NewsBusters article.) Ignoring the books and paywalled Foreign Affairs articles I can’t read, I got
Michael J. Mazarr’s 1995 “Going Just a Little Nuclear: Nonproliferation Lessons from North Korea” in International Security
Larry A. Niksch’s 2005 Congressional report “North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program”
Stephen M. Walt’s 2000 “Two Cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy” in Foreign Affairs (accessible only because Walt mirrors it on his Harvard website)
Andrew Mack’s “A Nuclear North Korea: The Choices Are Narrowing” in the summer 1994 issue of World Policy Journal
The 1999 “Review of United States Policy Toward North Korea: Findings and Recommendations”, by a “North Korea policy review team, led by Dr William J. Perry”
I haven’t perused these from start to finish, and even if I had I couldn’t discuss them comprehensively in a blog comment. So I have to give a radically compressed (hence necessarily selective) digest of the bits I saw which shed light on the counterfactual question.
First, Mazarr’s essay. It summarizes itself, but even the summary won’t fit here, so I skip to its p. 104, where Mazarr referred to NK’s “alleged one or two nuclear weapons” (fitting NBC’s report that NK had a nuclear weapon), and quote a longer block from the same page:
Mazarr adds that, in practice, the US “always resorts” to the softer approach “in cases of hard-core proliferation”, having “accepted ambiguous proliferation in India and Israel for many years”, and likewise didn’t pursue an all-out approach against India & Pakistan. Further along, on p. 110, in the section on sanctions:
The section on sanctions was generally pessimistic, though Mazarr granted that “the de facto sanction of existing trade restrictions” could help shape “a proliferant’s motives” (p. 111), and that NK seemed to have an interest “in avoiding condemnation and sanctions as voted by the Security Council” (p. 112). Mazarr was even more doubtful that military action would “have offered a definitive answer to the North Korean nuclear challenge” because it could have “led directly to a Korean war” and “military strikes [...] probably would not work” anyway (p. 113).
Mazarr’s essay was most optimistic about the kind of approach represented by Clinton’s ’94 agreement: “a broad-based policy of incentives built around the offer of a package deal” (p. 114). Even a rejected package deal “would have its uses” because it “would force North Korea to make a clear choice, deprive it of excuses, and seize the political high ground, firming up a political consensus (including China) for UN sanctions” (p. 117).
Niksch’s report doesn’t seem useful for the counterfactual question at issue, because the report is mainly about the (second) Bush administration’s goals & actions. My skimming revealed a description of the US’s obligations under the ’94 Agreed Framework, but no substantial, explicit evaluation of alternatives to the Framework.
Walt’s article is a general assessment of Clinton’s foreign policy. From its paragraph about the 1994 NK deal, on pages 72-73:
Mack’s essay reminds me of Mazarr’s in its scepticism about sanctions (e.g. p. 32: “What all this suggests is that imposing sanctions will be far more problematic than their more naive proponents in the West realize”), and Mack was at least as negative as Mazarr about military action, writing on p. 33 that “[t]he idea of resolving the nuclear issue by ‘taking out’ the Yongbyon nuclear facilities suffers from three fatal defects”. Those three, briefly: (1) “it is by definition impossible to hit unknown targets” potentially kept secret by a “paranoid” regime; (2) “‘surgical strikes’ against Yongbyon might not only fail to destroy all of the North’s nuclear program, they would also unleash a very unsurgical war against the South”; and (3) “it would be politically impossible to pursue the military option until the less risky alternatives of persuasion and sanctions had [...] failed. But sanctions would likely take years to have the desired effect”. Ultimately, Mack was not sure anything would work. From p. 35:
The 1999 Perry et al. review reads to me as broadly positive about the Agreed Framework, asserting on p.2 that it
The review team behind the report recommended on p. 6 that the Agreed Framework “be preserved and implemented” as one recommendation of six:
Insofar as these sources are accurate and I’ve understood and digested them properly, it’s not only possible but likely that Clinton did about as well on this count as a different president could’ve. If so, then (even if NK didn’t already have a nuclear weapon in ’94) I’d think it unfair to assert that “Clinton let North Korea get nuclear weapons” as if there were an alternative decision Clinton could’ve taken to delay North Korea’s first nuclear test for 13+ years.
(2/2)
The argument here seems to be: North Korea built nuclear weapons, the 1994 treaty was supposed to prevent that, therefore let’s blame the guy who was President in 1994 for North Korea building nuclear weapons.
Similar reasoning could just as easily place the blame on the Reagan administration.
Unless I’m missing something, and there is some reason why that 1994 treaty left the US in a hopeless position in 2002, unable to intervene while North Korea kicked out IAEA inspectors, unsealed its fuel rods, and built nuclear weapons.
The linked article does an OK job of documenting that contemporary news reports were too optimistic about how much Clinton’s 1994 deal would constrain North Korea’s bomb seeking. However, I don’t think that’s an adequate basis for “Clinton let North Korea get nuclear weapons” — not least because the article itself echoes, in apparent agreement, NBC’s contemporary claim that NK already had a nuclear bomb.
Even setting aside that claim, I wouldn’t be confident in inferring that “Clinton let North Korea get nuclear weapons” merely because Clinton made a deal and 12 years later (and 6 years after Clinton left office) NK set off a nuke. Given my original state of ignorance (I didn’t know anything about this 1994 deal before this thread), I can’t rule out the possibilities that (1) Clinton actually made smart moves which were later vitiated by Bush or a lower-ranked politician, or that (2) Clinton made the best of a bad hand, there being no reasonable counterfactual where a US president in 1994 could’ve ensured, without triggering some patently worse consequence, that NK’s first nuclear explosion happened substantially after 2006.
(1/2)
Rather, he tried to make everyone think that.
Can we please not regurgitate the zombie soldiers from old political battles onto LW..?
Bush did manage to get North Korea nuclear under his tenure by not engaging in dialog with the North Korean leadership the way the late administration of Clinton did.
The actual record of his actions matters more than an intention to go to war to stop nuclear weapons.
Not directly, true, but it’s highly probable that it was his administration which greenlighted Stuxnet and its successors. It’s still a subject of debate how much that worm was able to slow down Iran’s program, but it was nonetheless an act of aggression (and the first salvo in the incoming cyber-war).
Stuxnet was developed and launched under Bush. Obama just continued with the program (that is, if the three-letter agencies even bothered to tell him).
Well, that’s weird. Yesterday I would have sweared to have read in Wikipedia that Stuxnet was developed in 2010. Now in the Stuxnet page it’s written “under Bush administration”. I guess my sources were incorrect.
FYI: There was indeed a 30 minute period on 2015-09-21 where it said ” during the administration of George W. Bush and Barrack Obama”, you’re not crazy. Though 2010 is the year it was discovered, the development is assumed to have been as early as 2005, it never said “developed in 2010”
Thank you, both for the precision and for confirming my sanity!
What kind of scenario are you thinking of when you argue that climate change is an existential risk? How do you think it might kill all or even 90% of the population?
While the Obama administration did a few symbolic actions for climate change it didn’t move significantly on the issue. I don’t think there good reason to assume that things would be different under another Clinton.
Nixon went to China and the Obama administration waged it’s war against whistleblowers. There might be more political room for a Republican government to make substantial action on climate change than for a Democrat government.
Some Climatologists, such as James Hanson, believe that a runaway greenhouse effect large enough to potentially distinguish all life on earth is possible Obviously this is not a likely extinction event, but I believe it is still worth considerable resources to reduce its probability.
While little has been done legislatively to combat climate change, the Obama administration is pursuing regulatory action through the EPA to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that will make the construction of new coal fire power plants very difficult.
Additionally, the administration has benefited alternative energy industries through subsidies (in large part through the initial stimulus). Some Republicans do support such subsidies, so admittedly the difference between parties isn’t as stark on this point (though this may change with increasing polarization as described below).
Additionally polarization on climate change has increased in recent years. It’s less and less likely that a Republican president would pursue policy aimed at substantially reducing green house gasses. They might also appoint a supreme court member who would rule against the regulations the EPA is attempting to implement now.
I don’t think that the party who holds the presidency is the most important factor in whether we reduce carbon emissions, but it likely contributes.
The question is not whether they are persuing action but whether they are engaging in action that has a significant effect given the scale of the problem.
The second part of that sentence oh so does not follow from the first part.
That’s very hard to say without quantifying “likely” and “considerable”. One could say the same about most extinction events, for certain definitions of those two words.
I find mood affiliation to be a much more convincing explanation than convoluted definitions of “not likely” and “considerable”.
Convincing explanation for what? I thought we were discussing whether or not it was worth spending resources to prevent global extinction from global warming… which is more of a question than an explanation.
How is putting a numerical amount to “not likely” and “considerable” convuluted. That’s the basis of any decision probelm.
For Torgo’s belief. He didn’t ask a question, he stated his belief upfront.
That’s why they are separated by the word “but”. If I were to say “it rained yesterday, but today it looks like it will be sunny”, would you object that “sun today doesn’t follow from rain yesterday”?
I believe we should be spending resources to avoid many unlikely existential risks, even those I believe are less likely to be existential risks than climate change (eg. tracking asteroids).
Methane bursts
Could you specify how human caused climate change would lead to such a result?
None.
This is signalling and not an actual attempt to answer.
Two more ways of saying the same thing:
The success of a particular mainstream political party in the US is not a variable that noticeably affects existential risk. None of the parties would do much anything to reduce the existential risk.
Mu
Would any of them tend to increase existential risk more than the others?
Surely not if
I haven’t seen “mu” in a while and I find it to be often one of the most useful answers. Upvoted.
The correct answer is: If you care about existential risk you should not pay any attention to politics.
A lot of attempts to avert existential risks will require a lot of resources and no company or charity have as much resources as US government and US military (or governments of other large countries).
Yes, but political campaigning is not how the government pays attention to existential risks. Whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the oval office has little bearing on whether NORAD is getting re-purposed to track asteroids.