In 1973 israel lost a war. Egypt wasn’t ready to take half of the sinai much less the whole thing, but still it was clear that israel had lost and would have to negotiate. instead, israel threatened to nuke egypt.
The USA detected nuclear material crossing the dardanelles, and “we” initiated DefCon 1 and announced it as DefCon 3. “We” told the russians that unless they backed down and let israel threaten egypt with nukes when there was no countermeasure available to egypt, we would kill everybody in the world and let the russians kill us all too.
Luckily, the russians weren’t as crazy about egypt as the USA was crazy about israel, so they backed down. We then shipped to israel everything the israelis needed to win—our best planes, our best tanks, our best ECM, our best analysis of our best satellite photos, things we’d been keeping secret from the russians, etc. Israel then won the war and we negotiated with egypt for them, giving israel tens of billions of dollars in echange for their agreeing to accept the peace we negotiated for them.
Given this background, how could it be acceptable to have MAD between israel and iran? Far more pleasant for israel to be a nuclear power with only non-nuclear nations as enemies. When you can do anything you want and nuke em if they can’t take a fuck.… And the alternative is to have to negotiate? Negotiate with somebody who could destroy you?
If iran gets nukes there will be a big US uproar about it, kind of like “who lost china?”. The republicans will say that they were 100% ready to take care of the problem but the democrats wouldn’t let them. And every time israel and iran have harsh words the uproar will start up again. The only reason israel is in danger of total destruction is that the democrats made it happen.
We could make an argument similar to the one about hiroshima. We could say, if only there is one nuclear exchange between a couple of small nations—israel and lebanon would be ideal—and the whole world gets to observe the result, then we will get disarmament. The world won’t stand for anybody holding nukes. If one nation tries to do it their own public won’t stand for it. We could clear up the continuing MAD madness, but it takes one graphic example. Without that, too many people will keep beleving that MAD works.
See the problem with MAD? It isn’t just that wars can start from accidents or mistakes. More fundamentally, we have strategists who try to carefully judge just how far they can push our enemies before MAD will break down. The better we are at persuading the world that we are willing to kill everybody for trivial reasons, the more we can get away with. And the more we get away with, the more we try to get away with. The only way to find out how far we can push before MAD breaks down, is to push a little bit too far.
However it gets described, this is not a stable strategy.
But it will take a small nuclear war before we can get out of it. Therefore a small nuclear war is necessary, and beneficial, and if we do something to promote one we will be doing the world a great and necessary service.
I tend to feel there is something wrong with this reasoning. And yet, it looks so true....
Frelkins, let’s consider MAD in action.
In 1973 israel lost a war. Egypt wasn’t ready to take half of the sinai much less the whole thing, but still it was clear that israel had lost and would have to negotiate. instead, israel threatened to nuke egypt.
The USA detected nuclear material crossing the dardanelles, and “we” initiated DefCon 1 and announced it as DefCon 3. “We” told the russians that unless they backed down and let israel threaten egypt with nukes when there was no countermeasure available to egypt, we would kill everybody in the world and let the russians kill us all too.
Luckily, the russians weren’t as crazy about egypt as the USA was crazy about israel, so they backed down. We then shipped to israel everything the israelis needed to win—our best planes, our best tanks, our best ECM, our best analysis of our best satellite photos, things we’d been keeping secret from the russians, etc. Israel then won the war and we negotiated with egypt for them, giving israel tens of billions of dollars in echange for their agreeing to accept the peace we negotiated for them.
Given this background, how could it be acceptable to have MAD between israel and iran? Far more pleasant for israel to be a nuclear power with only non-nuclear nations as enemies. When you can do anything you want and nuke em if they can’t take a fuck.… And the alternative is to have to negotiate? Negotiate with somebody who could destroy you?
If iran gets nukes there will be a big US uproar about it, kind of like “who lost china?”. The republicans will say that they were 100% ready to take care of the problem but the democrats wouldn’t let them. And every time israel and iran have harsh words the uproar will start up again. The only reason israel is in danger of total destruction is that the democrats made it happen.
We could make an argument similar to the one about hiroshima. We could say, if only there is one nuclear exchange between a couple of small nations—israel and lebanon would be ideal—and the whole world gets to observe the result, then we will get disarmament. The world won’t stand for anybody holding nukes. If one nation tries to do it their own public won’t stand for it. We could clear up the continuing MAD madness, but it takes one graphic example. Without that, too many people will keep beleving that MAD works.
See the problem with MAD? It isn’t just that wars can start from accidents or mistakes. More fundamentally, we have strategists who try to carefully judge just how far they can push our enemies before MAD will break down. The better we are at persuading the world that we are willing to kill everybody for trivial reasons, the more we can get away with. And the more we get away with, the more we try to get away with. The only way to find out how far we can push before MAD breaks down, is to push a little bit too far.
However it gets described, this is not a stable strategy.
But it will take a small nuclear war before we can get out of it. Therefore a small nuclear war is necessary, and beneficial, and if we do something to promote one we will be doing the world a great and necessary service.
I tend to feel there is something wrong with this reasoning. And yet, it looks so true....