Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#61

Post by [deleted] »

wil421 wrote: post #58
pluma wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but as far as I know most incidents of the USSR coming close to a nuclear strike were accidents or technical glitches. IMO it's incredibly unlikely the USSR would have had actually used nuclear weapons precisely because the military had such an aversion to actually using it. OTOH incidents like Able Archer demonstrate exactly the kind of carelessness I'm talking about: that anyone was surprised the USSR could h…

The instance with the USSR sub wasnt a glitch. How is a training exercise the US's fault? This was a NATO operation in Europe. At the time we werent speaking to Russia very much. Military exercises happen all the time between many countries. Lets not forget that Russia had just shot down a civilian airliner that had a US congressman on board.[1] Could you imagine if the US brought down a plane with Russian politician…

[deleted]

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#62

Post by jrs235 »

ThomPete wrote: post #46
oneloop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't buy this idea that Trump is just an innocent buffoon. The guy is genuinely dangerous. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j1vlMUfR_Wc

Yet the only one who sent US troops in war and partly responsible for the power vacuum which allowed ISIS to gain power is Clinton. Clinton might be saying many crazy things but he is fundamentally a business man not religious or idealistic person.

>Clinton might be saying many crazy things but he is fundamentally a business man not religious or idealistic person.

Did you mean Trump (not Clinton)?

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#63

Post by jrs235 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

> The president can order this without consulting Congress, without being checked by the Supreme Court. Perhaps a single person's power to launch up to 2,000 nukes needs to be revisited?

>Perhaps a single person's power to launch up to 2,000 nukes needs to be revisited?

A single person does not have the power to launch any nukes. A single person has the power to authorize the use of nukes. It still takes a number of people to actually launch nukes. And in that group many along the chain of command could/can refuse.

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#64

Post by dragonwriter »

sevenless wrote: post #15
Gargoyle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you add more than a couple minutes of delay, it's no longer an effective deterrent. Not an ideal situation, but it's where things stand.

I always considered that if you believe nuclear deterrence is effective, it would be logical to disband the entire conventional military, and keep the nuclear weapons. The advantage would be you save an enormous amount of money, and vastly reduce the size of government. Politicians will stop being tempted to invade and interfere in other countries, and grievances against your country are reduced or eliminated. The lo…

> I always considered that if you believe nuclear deterrence is effective, it would be logical to disband the entire conventional military, and keep the nuclear weapons.

That only makes sense if you believe "effective" for a deterrent is a binary trait that isn't sensitive to context.

But even those who believe nuclear deterrence is effective only believe it is very (but not, for any of them, perfectly) effective against a particular range of threats, and less effective (ranging down to completely ineffective) at deterring other things that application of conventional force might be useful for.

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#65

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #38
sevenless wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, sure, you might be unwilling to surrender, and willing to risk a global nuclear war The thing is that there is no reason to believe that a nuclear exchange is necessarily the same as national suicide or will escalate to a global nuclear conflagration. The political scientist Ken Waltz made this point quite forcefully ( https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/waltz1.htm ): even if one or two nuclear bombs are exc…

All of this relies on rational actors. There is major advantage to being or even feigning irrationality when the stakes are this high.

> There is major advantage to being or even feigning irrationality when the stakes are this high.

There is a major advantage at times to feigning rationality with a different utility function when the stakes are high to shape perceptions of your likely responses.

Irrationality is less useful, because you always want to project a clear set of preferences from which likely actions can be predicted which will strongly create an incentive for other actors to act in your interests.

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#66

Post by toyg »

Noseshine wrote: post #27
toyg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your logic assumes the military is only required for defensive purposes, which is not the case.

That's the point - remove temptation from your own politicians. That is for those who believe in a "military is for defense" doctrine. Myself, I'm not so sure the evidence for interventions abroad would support an offensive military - narrow interest groups who clearly have benefited a lot excepted.

As much as I want to agree with the overall sentiment, when one talks about defense one inevitably ends up defining a spectrum of activity beyond "protecting the Motherland from invasion". Protecting South-China Sea trade routes, is that not defending your own economy? Peacekeeping in neighboring countries like NATO did in the Balkans, is that not defending your own security and borders? But you couldn't do it with nukes or some proxy rebel army. Adventurism is bad, but even the most peaceful of strategies sooner or later will run into a situation where a non-nuclear big stick is the lesser evil.

As much as I loathe post-9/11 US foreign policy (and a lot of pre-9/11 as well, to be honest), I wouldn't want the US to lose much of their military capability at this point in time. I'd rather live with a conventional military and no nukes than the opposite scenario.

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#67

Post by wil421 »

mabo wrote: post #59
wil421 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The instance with the USSR sub wasnt a glitch. How is a training exercise the US's fault? This was a NATO operation in Europe. At the time we werent speaking to Russia very much. Military exercises happen all the time between many countries. Lets not forget that Russia had just shot down a civilian airliner that had a US congressman on board.[1] Could you imagine if the US brought down a plane with Russian politician…

> When has the US ever brought down a civilian airliner? It has happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

Very interesting I've never heard of this incident. Thanks for the link.

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#68

Post by xlm1717 »

pluma wrote: post #24

As a European, I am always nervous about nukes. American nukes specifically. And not so much about Trump, who is a buffoon but doesn't actually want to get too involved in messy foreign politics, but Clinton, who as a Secretary of State has already proven to be another warmonger. The US has had a blasé attitude to nuclear weapons ever since the start of the Cold War. The majority of situations where we have come clos…

This is why I roll my eyes every time Hillary tries to use nuclear weapons for scaremongering. Nobody, absolutely nobody wants to use nukes. Hillary needs to get realistic here.

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#69

Post by oneloop »

pluma wrote: post #53
oneloop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't buy this idea that Trump is just an innocent buffoon. The guy is genuinely dangerous. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j1vlMUfR_Wc

Please don't link to The Young Turks. They're on par with Fox News even if they're politically on the opposite end of the spectrum. Again: we know Clinton's stance on war and the Middle East, Russia and China. Clinton already holds a lot of political power in the US (just look at her campaign's biggest sponsors and the Clinton Foundation -- plus the entire thing with her having been the de facto blessed Democrat cand…

http://imgur.com/gallery/n1VdV

I'll call your attention to "Should the US formally declare war on ISIS?"

Re: Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

#70

Post by ThomPete »

jrs235 wrote: post #62
ThomPete wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the only one who sent US troops in war and partly responsible for the power vacuum which allowed ISIS to gain power is Clinton. Clinton might be saying many crazy things but he is fundamentally a business man not religious or idealistic person.

>Clinton might be saying many crazy things but he is fundamentally a business man not religious or idealistic person. Did you mean Trump (not Clinton)?

Yes sorry too late to change
Post reply on HN