Consider Tacitus:
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
How better to make a desert than with nukes?
As a general rule, real WMDs do not help nations achieve the goals they think of as victory. Imagine for example that we had created plentiful nukes two years earlier, and we had then bombed 20 german cities while the germans surrendered to us. We would then have to deal with russia, and our german ally would have 20 fewer cities to assist us than they would otherwise.
WMDs don’t give us what we want. They only help us avoid disastrous defeat by threatening a different sort of disaster.
Usually, threatening to use nukes is an admission of defeat. You don’t do it when you’re winning. Ex: USA in korea. USA in vietnam. israel in 1973. Exception: USA in invasion of iraq. We said if iraq used chemical or bioweapons we’d use nukes. The word is out now that they didn’t have them and couldn’t have used them, but it’s a rare thing—as if we thought their mustard gas might give them a decisive victory or something.
You might be right that we haven’t used any other WMDs because we used nukes once. There’s no compelling evidence in either direction. I want to also point out that we have not had many uses for them. WMDs are mostly good for destroying cities full of civilians, with side effects that might last for many generations in the cases of biological, genetic, ecological etc weapons. All have known long-lasting side effects except for the nerve gases which are not particularly effective. How often have we needed to destroy enemy cities? We bombed Hanoi and Haiphong as part of our peace negotiations, but when have we done the like since? We pride ourselves on pinpoint strikes against particular targets.
It’s only losers who use WMDs, and only when the surrender they face is worse than the side effects of the WMDs. Why would it be surprising that it hasn’t happened again since our ill-advised single use?
Funky, you might be right.
Consider Tacitus:
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
How better to make a desert than with nukes?
As a general rule, real WMDs do not help nations achieve the goals they think of as victory. Imagine for example that we had created plentiful nukes two years earlier, and we had then bombed 20 german cities while the germans surrendered to us. We would then have to deal with russia, and our german ally would have 20 fewer cities to assist us than they would otherwise.
WMDs don’t give us what we want. They only help us avoid disastrous defeat by threatening a different sort of disaster.
Usually, threatening to use nukes is an admission of defeat. You don’t do it when you’re winning. Ex: USA in korea. USA in vietnam. israel in 1973. Exception: USA in invasion of iraq. We said if iraq used chemical or bioweapons we’d use nukes. The word is out now that they didn’t have them and couldn’t have used them, but it’s a rare thing—as if we thought their mustard gas might give them a decisive victory or something.
You might be right that we haven’t used any other WMDs because we used nukes once. There’s no compelling evidence in either direction. I want to also point out that we have not had many uses for them. WMDs are mostly good for destroying cities full of civilians, with side effects that might last for many generations in the cases of biological, genetic, ecological etc weapons. All have known long-lasting side effects except for the nerve gases which are not particularly effective. How often have we needed to destroy enemy cities? We bombed Hanoi and Haiphong as part of our peace negotiations, but when have we done the like since? We pride ourselves on pinpoint strikes against particular targets.
It’s only losers who use WMDs, and only when the surrender they face is worse than the side effects of the WMDs. Why would it be surprising that it hasn’t happened again since our ill-advised single use?