1. Check this list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_we...

2. Cross out the countries which are attacked for having nuclear weapons.

Here's your definition of approved nukes.

Russia attacked ukraine because they didn't. Iran got attacked because it didn't. North korea isnt attacked because they have. That's the moral of the story.

It's "make nukes first, ask questions later"

How do you explain India vs Pakistan?

I mean israel gets attacked even though they have nukes, but some rockets are not the same as a regime-changing war

Your original point was that nukes prevented attacks. India vs Pakistan rejects your hypothesis.

You then proceeded to move the goalpost from "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" to "yeah countries with nukes get attacked, but attacks don't escalate" which is also an absurd argument to make.

It's a particularly silly point to make in light of India Vs Pakistan because it was described as an electoral stunt to save face, which means nuclear nations still attack themselves even for the flimsiest reasons.

It's not. the world is not a binary system to make simplistic black/white arguments. Nukes certainly act as deterrent for escalating a war. yes , attacks will exist , but we are not escalating with russia for a reason. you are being pedantic , but the argument for deterrence still stands strong.

I agree, simplistic comments on the line of "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" are silly and don't pass the smell test. Don't you agree?

If you enter into a scenario against a nuclear opponent where they go nuclear (which you going nuclear would certainly do) then you may well defeat them, but they're simultaneously also defeat you. This is a big part of the reason that Russia is so paranoid about the US surrounding it with military bases. The only possible way to treat to sidestep this problem is with a massive decapitation strike where you try to nuke your enemy into oblivion before they have any chance to respond with their own nukes. Realistically, it's probably impossible, but but it remains the Achille's Heel of MAD / mutually assured destruction. And drones/internal strike issues are certainly going to be causing some consternation.

Well, there's also missile defense, but I think that's a dead end. We're talking about the offensive goal being to shoot a bullet at the side of a massive barn, and the defensive goal being to shoot down that bullet. It seems impossible to imagine a state of technology between near peers where the latter becomes easier than the former.

But let me put it in familiar worlds from pop culture:

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

(Because Iran doesn't have nukes, it's currently being forced into playing and making losing moves.)

What I’m saying precisely is that quite often things will appear to be one way for a long time even if the underlying premise is wrong. E.g. the chicken who thinks the farmer is nice because the farmer feeds, houses, and provides safety until the inevitable untimely end for the chicken.

Similar situations which are assumed to be impossible have risks pushed right up to the edge until it becomes inevitable. Sure Pakistan and India narrowly averted this time but what if they didn’t. Take for example the concept that US housing market couldn’t crash simultaneously across the US, this enabled cheap debt which pushed the market to the edge until one day it went over the edge.

There is additionally the problem of victory disease, it looks like you’re winning right up until you fail.

There is a survivability bias, we wouldn’t be discussing the viability of MAD had it not worked out thus far.

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon they’ll be able to avoid being invaded while being able to constantly needle Israel, to the point the survival of Israel would be at stake. Similar to how Israel is needling Iran now but with proxies. At that point Israel must make a choice, peacefully collapse or escalate and I’m confident they’ll escalate. I don’t think it’s a question of if but a question of when, once the threshold has been crossed the once unthinkable becomes routine.

Additionally the inaction of a strong adversary is often seen incorrectly as sign of weakness, but it is the cornered rats that lashes out. We can cross Russia’s and Chinas red lines all day every day, right up until they think they’re a cornered rat and then we can’t. How confident can we really be that we know exactly where that limit is. Because the bellicose are more often promoted the people marking these assessments are more likely to have an overly optimistic on the location of that limit. It appears to me China and Russia have a wait and see approach to the US which appears to be in terminal decline, and yet again the west is taking that as a sign of weakness.

When you have morons in charge not even MAD can save you.

What was this, then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_co...

ukraine is what a war looks like when both parties dont have nukes

Looking at india pakistan, and ukraine russia, its clear whether you should give your nuclear arsenal up or not

This seems analogous to the idea that every household should have guns if they want to be safe.

And furthermore most gun crime is committed by people who do not legally own the firearm being used. [2] I'm loathe to link to that site, but this is an issue that is poorly reported and so it requires exploring a web of data sources, which they actually competently do, on this issue at least.

You can also kind of sniff test this claim by considering that homicide rates are much higher in urban than rural areas, yet urban areas have dramatically lower gun ownership rates.

[1] - https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

[2] - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/12/john-faso/...

You should take a refresher on statistics and the difference between correlated and causative

And why a divorced guy living in his house be an issue with your friends or neighbors?

Why is “divorced” relevant. Maybe he should be the one worried about NIMBYs.

I made a profile of a person that fits the profile of somebody that might be a little angry at society. Clearly I've struck a nerve here, and maybe thats something worth interrogating.

For what its worth, there are plenty of guys I know who are divorced, and it was probably the right decision, and they're great people. Most marriages end that way, in fact. It doesn't mean the "divorced jaded man who lost his social place in the world, struggles to find kindness or peers, and lashes out" is a stock character that will go away. It's a real problem

Oh god… please fix me.

Anyways it read to me like an obvious generalization. My bad if you weren’t. After all, some of your best friends are “x”.

Problem is it is impossible to combine: - responsible storage of firearms - immediate availability of firearms anywhere at home when faced with hostility

Also most gun violence is domestic so having firearms at home do not solve a problem but creates it.

Curiosity is the number one problem with kids and guns, and that's because we hide them behind a mystique and don't make them understand. But talk to any redneck kid, and guns aren't a big deal, because they've had the mystique removed through education and familiarity.

Also people can be responsible for years until they aren't. As much as you believe you couldn't hurt someone you love, there is no way you (pr anyone else) can be 100% sure that reality will never change. If there was a way to know, people would be stopped or would surrender their weapons before they commit crimes.

That said: lock up your guns. Your mid will probably survive a stove burn.

In most case, it is the same countries that give adequate training to their cops, a not-so-surprising correlation.

When it's rare, then it's easy and reasonable to take a highly idealistic approach. When it's frequent you have to deal with uncomfortable practical issues like whether an officer should prioritize your survival, or their own. There's a line where heroics turn into suicidality, and that's largely driven by frequency.

We’ve seen the footage of the police brutalizing peaceful protestors beating them with clubs, riding over them repeatedly with horses.

The police in this country are woefully undertrained compared to the rest of the industrialized nations.

It takes more time and training to be certified as a hairdresser in most parts of the US than it does a cop.

What is "the police" on the level of countries? There is no majority that agrees that, e. g., the NATO can serve as the police. It feels like on this level, we live in an anarchy with only very few actors who don't really want to live together. So maybe nukes are an option, although I don't like it.

You're naive. The police (or whatever you call it) is meant for inward force projection of the state. Your security is not the main concern.

Besides the police works too slowly to truly protect you when SHTF. Sometimes even a minute or two is the difference between you being alive or dead.

This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home. I'm countries with virtually no private ownership of guns, it is extraordinarily unlikely to be in life threatening danger in your home.

> This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home

Citation needed, because I highly doubt you're correct.

Conversely, if people with guns think there's a decent chance you have a gun too, they'll be terrified of any move you make and have a high chance of misinterpreting any gesture you make into violence. So there is much higher tension.

Of course, there is a possibility that you're being attacked by a crazed murderer - in which case you're probably going to die either way. But this happens vastly, vastly less often that robbery.

You can take a look at crime stats from even the poorest European countries. The proof that lack of gun ownership in no way causes more violent crime is evident. Everything I just added above is an explanation of why this happens, but the fact it happens is not up for debate.

I was once involved with a project that returned determination of land ownership from people's physical custody to the courts and the resulting drops in assault and homicide rates (for the entire country) was in the double digits over a period of months.

If you re-read what I've wrote carefully you can observe I didn't refer once to my lived experience.

A safe community isn’t one where people are held in check by police. People are not roving around thinking “oh I’d break and enter and murder and rape but for the fact a police officer might shoot me.”

People in such a community lack guns but they do have things like a working public health system, decent education, daily encounters with other people that are positive and so on.

The threat of police shootings is not what makes a safe society safe.

Constructive, open and fair trade is the equivalent at an international level. Cooperative and trusting. Not staring down the barrel of each other’s guns.

Except this isn't borne out in the data. Look at deeply conservative places where guns are literally everywhere, and you'll see very low crime rates compared to cities with strict gun control.

And why? Well, as a criminal, I'd be loathe to try something when there's a good chance the victim is armed.

In your perfect community scenario, a single armed criminal would wreak havoc, completely unopposed.

[1] - https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...

Although on this topic I'd also add that urban areas have a similar issue. Criminals know that the overwhelming majority of crime goes unpunished, while people have a reality deluded by shows like CSI. Homicides, for instance, have the highest clearance rate, by far. And it's 47.5%. [1] Vehicular theft has the worst at 6.6%. If you end up with your window busted out and everything that's not strapped down stolen, there's no real point reporting it to the police unless necessary for an insurance claim because you're never getting that stuff back, and the thief is never getting caught.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearance_rate#In_the_United_S...

Why do Canada and Europe have dramatically lower violent crime rates despite having a mostly unarmed population?

Grew up rural Alberta with rifles around the house all the time, in plain view. For shooting game. Not a word was ever uttered about "defending ourselves" with guns... From who?

Hell, we left our door unlocked when we left the house unless it was overnight.

Good grief. Nothing is sadder than people valorizing social/cultural breakdown.

"Peace, order, and good government."

I don't lock my house or my car habitually, never had a problem, never felt the need to keep a weapon either, but I know plenty of people that live in the city that have been robbed or assaulted and do feel the need to carry though. I can't really blame them for not relying on police.

Source: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.3040...

That's also not necessarily the point I'm making. Suppose you are in a society where a small part of people are bad actors, for whatever reason. They will break and enter, murder, and rape. You want to protect the rest of the society against these bad actors. You can now equip everyone with weapons so they may defend themselves. That also enables the bad actors to use said weapons because we don't know who really know who is a bad actor (at least not the ones that didn't commit any crimes yet). Or you give weapons only to a small part of society, where you enforce strict gun laws.

The alternative is to reduce the number of bad actors and this is, in part, fulfilled by the conditions that you are describing. But how do I reduce the number of state leaders that are willing to shoot each other? I guess it's what you are saying, namely constructive, open, and fair trade. But we're not really making progress in that direction it seems.

Turns out, making yourself a more dangerous target works to an extent.

> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

You know because it’s hard to make a case about being a country of rights, due process, law and order if you don’t extend that to the people within it’s borders.

The blue cities are enforcing the Constitution as sanctuary cities are legal laws of those states. The red states and federal government are violating it.

There’s a supremacy clause, and it’s quite clear.

That's a lie. They broke the law when they entered the country illegally. Then some of them committed more crimes.

Just like you don't need a judge to determine if someone drives without a driver's license.

The states don’t have any sovereignty to make their own decisions about immigration.

Putting aside ICE tactics, if their immigration status is not legal, then by definition they are not law abiding citizens.

Unless you are privy the status of any planned or ongoing ICE operations against criminals, you have no idea what they are doing in that regard.

Law enforcement at all levels needs checks along with better direction in carrying out their duties. However, allowing people to continue living in an immigration limbo is not a solution. Sanctuary cities leave illegal immigrants unprotected.

There are plenty of guns in LA, and any ICE agent or cop would be dumb to assume those they are arresting are unarmed because “it’s against the law”.

The red cities don’t have sanctuary city rules in place, so local law enforcement helps ICE and the arrests don’t make the news.

Going with your analogy, this would be the same as if police basically ignored all home invasion/trespassing laws such that the only houses that criminals entered were in fact those of undefended home owners. In this scenario, it would be demonstrated, by this policy, that yes home owners need to own guns to be safe.

To your point, if you don't want a world where it's safer for home owners to own guns, than you need to ensure there are policies in place to create a world where that was true. The lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that, if you don't have nuclear weapons, your sovereignty is always at the mercy of nations that do.

A world where every country needs nuclear weapons to remain sovereign is similarly undesirable (on a larger scale) to a country where every home needs to have guns to be safe. However we're on a path with nuclear weapons where that is unfortunately not the reality we are creating.

Relations between sovereign states are fundamentally anarchic. There are no world police. The UN and other international institutions have little or no real power, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty is only enforceable through kinetic action by other countries when it suits their interests.

Second strike weapons are in some ways a holdover from Cold War strategic thinking which it's sort of acknowledged probably overestimated the penchant of any side to engage in a first strike.

The practical reality of nuclear war planning has generally been that no one will accept even a single city-buster landing - and no first strike option is really reliable enough to guarantee you didn't miss one.

So achieving monopoly on violence first. Which requires forcefully disarming all opposition just like what is happening right now. Is the Sovereign hypocritical because they arrest and potential kill people they don't like but they do not others to do so? According to many mainstream political theories, not neccessairly so.

The matter of fact is that if a major power really wants to destroy a smaller power, there's nothing a smaller power can do even if they develop a handful of nukes, especially at the cost of their economy. Much better just to work diplomatically with said major powers so that interests are aligned rather than demanding a absolute respect for sovereignity which does not exist in reality. So then the question is, why can the Shah or the Gulf States work with Israel and America, but not the Islamic Regime? Even worse so, it's one to turn a cold shoulder that America or Israel wouldn't care much, but to actively fund proxies that destabilize other allies is just warranting a response.

But if law enforcement is not only not doing their job but actively threatening you: well, I guess 2A won this time.

The differences are so extreme it's a waste of time to discuss the analogy further.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_re...

Before this there was every reason to doubt Israel's claims, which they've been making for 30 years, about Iran imminently having a nuclear weapon. But at this point there's a practically 100% certainty that they will be aiming to create nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.

Let's hope NATO doesn't get compromised, else I see 30 new nuclear programs starting soon.

We all hooray (well, some of us) the "good" countries having nukes, to bring peace and stability. But it only takes one funky election to get a crazy person in charge of such "good" nukes. And if you 10x the number of nuclear powers, that's 10x more shots at that.

Also, you probably mean "unleash".

I do disagree with your premise that Gaddafi’s death was a natural consequence of the Western intervention. Whilst watching the events unfold at the time, I’d say he would be ousted and killed irrespectively of any intervention — either by the populace or by the various factions vying for power.

I don't intend this as a drive-by zinger, far from it, but I think you're being hopelessly optimistic. Every country with the science and engineering muscle to make it happen will be pursuing a nuclear program. NATO, former Warsaw Pact, some assholes who managed to cobble together a broadly recognized country by virtue of force of will, you name it. They're all going to be seeking to create nuclear weapons.

Seoul is in artillery range of the border.

Regarding guns: if you have easy access to weapons, everyone also has access, so the Nash equilibrium is "get a weapon". If weapons circulation is restricted, the Nash equilibrium is "don't waste your money on weapons".

I think a part of the reason North Korea plays crazy is because they have to. If the US didn't think they'd push the big red button, then we'd invade them in a heart-beat. Mutually assured destruction only works when you believe the other guy will push the button. So you need the bomb and then you also need to make sure everybody thinks you're willing to actually use it.

North Korea has enough conventional rocket artillery within range of Seoul to level the city. This is how Kim was able to run his nuclear program to completion in the first place. It also hasn't changed.

(Probably the risk to S. Korea, and the risk of pulling China into a war.)

Iraq also attacked an allegedly nuclear capable Israel without fear of a nuclear reprisal.

Please give dates, locations, and number of casualties. Iran has made many aggressive statements and funded and armed Palestinian resistance organizations, but actual conflict between Israel and Iran has been mostly clandestine and not officially acknowledged, with a few exceptions where Israel and the US unilaterally attack Iran.

More recent events show that it doesn't matter. India-Pakistan endless fight.

And Ukraine. Imagine they had nukes in 2022 and russian army advances. Should they nuke russian cities? It would not stop troops and give them more motivation to fight, to revenge. Should they nuke russian troops? To many nukes need for such large frontline.

The only nuclear weapons Ukraine would need is enough to reliably ensure Moscow and St Petersburg cease existing.

Do you really think the US would trade Washington and New York for a chunk of Mexico?

Like...that's the whole point of MAD. You might as well ask "well why didn't the US and Soviet Union go to war? Obviously they won't launch..."

The entire point of a nuclear deterrent is it stops people asking those sorts of questions, because ultimately it's a gamble. The only guarantee you get is "don't invade my territory and I won't launch". As soon as you start not doing that, you get to ask if you think it's a 1% chance, or a 2% chance, or or or... You get to find out when your capital and most populous city do or do not explode. And you get to roll those dice over and over again.

However, we don't live in a reasonable world, so I suspect the first step will be, as much as I don't want it, World War III.

If it wasn’t the US as the world’s leading power, but rather China, the list of countries forced to give up nuclear programs would be entirely different.

I’m not against trying to limit nuclear proliferation, but trying to paint it as some democratic legal process is naive.

The US loves to use the UN as cover for their own strategic goals, but happy to ignore the UN if it benefits them. Same with those talking nuclear non-proliferation.

Invasion of Afghanistan only happened after diplomatic efforts to get the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden. Iraq invasion was pushed through UN. Likewise, the Balkan war in 1990s was UN-sanctioned.

This? I mean, never mind the question of nukes, I don't think anyone declared war. Iran is a buffet of pick-your-own-target, in the middle of a negotiation that was supposed to end the nuclear program peacefully. I'm not saying it because I like Iran (I don't) but because it sets the tone where countries just do what they want, if they can get away with it. It's a step back from a world, where at least in theory we were supposed to stay within the frameworks of principle-based laws.

You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it. Maybe. But I'd like to think it set a limit to how far they can bend it. Now? I'm not so sure.

Well, Iran has been funding armies to the tune of millions (billions?) of dollars to attack Israel, as well as funding multiple terror attacks against Jews and against the US for many years.

So, alternative view - the fact that Iran has been allowed to do this, while the entire time stating quite clearly that they intend to destroy another sovereign country, while at the same time develop most of what they need for nukes - the fact that they've been allowed to do all this is actually proof that countries can do whatever they want and get away with it. And stopping their program is actually a way to show that countries can't just get away with it.

I'd love to see a UN resolution calling for the dismantling for this terrorist network. Or if not that, at least some kind of multilateral, or even hell, unilateral declaration on this - "end this or else". But no, it's a western style drive-by shooting. It just so happens the guy who got shot is a baddie.

It also flies in the face of anyone with general knowledge:

Two of Iran's main proxies are Hamas, that has been shooting rockets at Israel for the last 15 years, and launched a major invasion planned (in their mind) to destroy Israel?

And Hezbollah, which fought multiple wars with Israel, also launched hundreds of rockets at Israel since the Gaza war began, and had thousands of rockets aimed at Israel, as well as tens of thousand of ground troops hidden in caves and tunnels on the border of Israel, with plans to launch an invasion into Israel?

This is all on top of the Iranian regime saying over and over again that one of their goals is to destroy Israel?

The Iran-Iraq war was the first one, with Iraq funded and supported by the Gulf states.

Supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is strategic in this context. The Saudi regime wants rapprochement with Israel and to remain aligned with US interests. But neither of these are remotely popular in the Saudi population. By funding guerrilla warfare against Israel, Iran and to a lesser extent Qatar, keeps the Sauds discredited and unpopular among at home and in other Arab countries. The same applies to Egypt, another regional rival of Iran, whose government have never been off the defensive with the Egyptian people and wider Arab opinion since normalisation with Israel.

Obviously Hamas and Hezbollah themselves are only interested in fighting Israel and not the wider regional conflicts. But Iran itself uses that conflict, quite cynically, for wider geopolitical goals. Its stance is the reason that, from Afghanistan to Turkey to Tunisia, it can always find allies who want to challenge the Gulf states vision for the Middle East. Iran supplies the weapons and the know how, but there's never a shortage of locals to drive the car bombs.

There is an interpretation of Iran's behaviour which sees it as a source of Muslim pride for standing up to imperialism, and suggests in contrast that the Saudi leaders are too decadent, too corrupt, and bring shame by ignoring injustice and exploitation done to Arabs. I would certainly question this, but it's not an unpopular discourse in Saudi and other Arab countries.

If you have never come across the idea of the conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine etc being part of a long game of proxy war and influence between Iran and Saudi, I would question how broad your sources of analysis are.

Still, I think you (or austin-cheney) go way too far in seemingly completely dismissing the idea that the proxies are to fight Israel. Yes, there are a lot of larger strategic implications here, and yes, this is sometimes seen as part of Iran positioning itself as the leader of the Muslim nation that will restore honor to Islam, etc.

But "Israel just happened to be there and frequently get in the way when not directly intervening." doesn't make much sense, given the consistent statements of Iran for the last 40 years, given the fact that they're pouring so much of this funding into Hamas and Hezbollah which, as you say, are only interested in fighting Israel themselves.

(Btw, in some sense, Israel is probably the most powerful regional power in the Middle East.)

In any case, none of this makes my original point "nonsense". The point that it's Iran that's disrupting the rules-based order, not the US, still stands, even if the proxy wars were not "really" to destroy Israel (most evidence to the contrary) and even if it's only funding these proxies which have spread terror and war in the region to try and destabilize Saudi Arabia.

Would you at least agree that yours is at the very least far from a mainstream opinion? I feel like you at least need to back it up with some evidence given that.

For the record, I have no formal expertise in anything related to this. I do live in Israel, have been living through the bombing campaigns, invasions etc of Iran's proxies for most of my life. The country that just "happened to be in the way".

Except in the case of Hezbollah (first Google result for "why was Hezbollah founded": "Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran primarily to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon."). And except in the case of Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, on the border of Israel. This is the first time I've ever heard Hamas referred to as not mainly having to do with Israel, but with Saudi Arabia.

(In any case, differences in opinion aside, thank you for your service!)

So, are you saying the US must go war with Iran now because Hezbollah was founded 43 years ago and does not like Israel?

You are doing a really bad job of presenting anything coherent.

No, I didn't say that, and I'm not sure why you're switching to talk about this.

I was specifically refuting this idea from the GP of this thread:

> Sort of. I think there was an effort to put a rules-based framework, still skewed towards the "great powers", but a framework nonetheless.

This and other parts of that comment implied that, up until now, there was a rules-based order, but this attack somehow goes against that.

I was pointing out that this doesn't make much sense to me, because Iran has been breaking that rules-based order for years and getting away with it. Saying that enforcing the order is the problem, and not the attempt to circumvent it, is IMO incorrect.

You're free to correct me on that idea if you disagree, it's certainly a debatable opinion. But the only thing you disagreed with me on (or at least the thing you called out) was that Iran wasn't funding proxies against Israel, it was to contain Saudi Arabia. That, unlike my alternative view of what the war signifies, is something that is at odds with reality.

No.

Your parent is figuratively flying in the face of …

I have five figures of karma with which to fight this battle…

Hezbollah is not Iran. Israel has gone to war with Hezbollah in the past completely without military intervention from Iran.

Well, sort of. They tried, but when the UN gave an answer that the US and UK didn't like, they went ahead anyway.

> You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it.

I'm not quite cynical enough to wholly agree with that, but given enough motivation and power the façade does crack pretty easily.

Democracy doesn't really work when people think the US invaded Vietnam attacked they attacked us, that the US invaded Iraq because they have or are building WMD, that we invaded Libya to "liberate" it, and so on. And as for Iran, here's [2] a montage of Netanyahu claiming Iran will imminently have nuclear weapons, and so they should be invaded. The claims started 30 years ago and generally had a timeline of 1-3 years at most.

If the justifications for wars were more honest, even if that entails completely dropping the facade of morality, it'd have enabled populations within countries to have a better understanding of how the world "really" works, and also to make better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzmtdwsef8s

I recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com/United-Nations-History-Stanley-Meisle...

The UN isn't working very well right now, but it's worked considerably better in the past. In the wake of WW2, I think there was a genuine sentiment that war was really horrible and it should be avoided at all costs. Sadly most of the people who saw WW2 have passed away by this point.

In terms of populations "making better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support" -- I think international law is, if anything, helpful in this regard. Foreign policy is complex, and human nature is such that people are always predisposed to see their own interests as just, or at least cloak their interests in the language of justice. On the other hand, total pacifism is also ideologically unworkable for various reasons. (Even most leftists are against "America First" style isolationism for WW2 or Ukraine.) So international law is valuable in the sense that, at least in principle, it helps you figure out who the bad guy is: Who is breaking international law? That may sound rather academic, but in practice it seems to carry more weight than you might expect.

To state my position another way: I think having some sort of international law is a good idea, even if the current scheme needs to be reworked. A better scheme might be: Have some ritualized, non-lethal way for nations to test strength against each other, e.g. through athletic competitions or wargames, as a binding method of resolving disagreements. This could be game-theoretically stable, if success at the "ritual test of strength" is thought to correlate strongly with real-world war performance. Furthermore, any state which initiates lethal, kinetic confrontation after losing the "ritual test of strength" (sore losers who refuse to abide by the outcome) should become international pariahs subject to secondary sanctions.

And the thing about war is that there's no real way to tell who's going to win. For instance I think many people believe that the war in Afghanistan basically simmered down once the media coverage of it simmered down. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The Taliban was killing US proxies and soldiers alike, by the tens of thousands. The only way we could have even possibly won would have been a full-on ground invasion which would have entailed at least tens of thousands of US deaths, which Americans would never tolerate so it wasn't even an option. We withdrew because we were losing - the Taliban defeated the US. No sort of proxy you could ever create would predict that.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...

If a mafia boss defines anything he gets away with as legal, that's not aligned with what we commonly think of as legal justice and thus a pointless distinction.

So I've made peace with mafia boss power politics keeping the number of countries with nuclear weapons on the low end of the spectrum, and for that matter I'd support a much more aggressive approach to that end than we have seen these last 30 years.

It’s not that people were just too dumb or too scared to do something about it.

As challenging as it sounds, we need to develop a strong impartial international institution whose the only mission would be maintaining peace and preventing wars on the planet. This should be the only entity that's approved to have nuclear weapons.

The scenario you concocted here is Disneyland. It’s not just challenging, it’s just an oppressive version of the UN, but it won’t be impartial because it will be the most powerful organization on the planet and a target for every extremist and ideologue that seeks to acquire power. You haven’t changed the game, you’ve temporarily changed the battlefield.

This speaks like someone who has never been outside of a heavily bureaucratized regime. People don't get "approval" for things, they just do them.

Agreed. Let's start with US and Russia first.

Or maybe that is the wrong approach, but the policy we've had that let North Korea develop nukes and Iran at least get very close also isn't working.

Iran is more straightforward. I don't know why we've been so reluctant to make real diplomatic effort, especially after so many of Iran's proxies were significantly weakened in the last year or two, and Iran's sway was at a minimum. There seems to be an unwritten rule that once we've categorized a country as an enemy we're obligated to deal with them in the dumbest ways imaginable.

>> A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them.

you're both correct.

Also note the Iranian monarchy signed the NPT in 1970, while the Iranian Revolution was in 1979. When your national origin story is built on the illegitimacy of the previous government, why would you consider yourself to be constrained by the actions of your illegitimate parents?

When the west has had such overthrows, we've tended to declare the acts of the previous administration null-and-void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_9_August_1944

Not saying the current Iranian government is good, just acknowledging that legitimacy is determined by the victors, and the current regime has been victorious over the previous, just as last night's B2's were victorious against the air defenses. Might makes right, morality is increasingly a propaganda story, and history really is written by the victors.

There was a hope that once they acquired nuclear weapons, rogue countries would become responsible, because they didn't need to worry about their own existence. Pakistan has proven this theory wrong, sponsoring terrorism in in its neighbouring countries and abroad while being immune from the consequences.

Yes, tell me more about the US please

I think all current nuclear-weapon states would very much care, because it diminishes their status. Also Switzerland or Brasil would be breaking the Non-Proliferation Treaty which would make even more countries and the UN and IAEA care.

In general many sanctions around nukes are based on many many treaties and the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs. [2]

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferat...

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_disarmament

Israel is not a singer of the treaty.

Several countries have voluntarily dismantled nuclear weapons programs (the participants in the South American nuclear arms race of the 1980s being examples), and several countries have voluntary disarmed of actual nuclear weapons. South Africa is not unique in doing either.

It is arguably unique among the latter group in not having inherited the weapons as a successor state from a distinct preceding regime, but even if we were going to draw broad conclusions from n=1 examples, its quite arguably that that is less relevant to the difference in experience versus that of (say) Ukraine than other geopolitical factors.

> It built 6 nuclear weapons during the apartheid era, but then voluntarily dismantled them and joined the NPT. This decision was influenced by international pressure, political changes, and a desire for greater global integration. Despite that, it suffered no negative consequences to its sovereignty or regional power projection abilities.

Kind of hard to specifically isolate the loss of regional power South Africa experienced from nuclear disarmament from the loss of regional power it experienced from other causes concurrently, but it certainly had less after than before.

What made me realize that was the people who jumped in defense of Russia, because the people of Ukraine aren't allowed to join EU or NATO, because for some reason the people of a sovereign country have to respect the will of a paranoid neighbour, who wants to keep a "buffer zone" for completely irrational reasons. Who would have invaded? The Belgians?

And I mention the Ukraine because they will surely think:"We should have kept those nukes". And wo can blame them, one of the powers at the Budapest memorandum attacked them while the other two reluctantly sent weapons. So with nukes they would have had better cards.

After this episode the Iran is probably more motivated than ever to get nukes. And who can blame them, they had a good deal with the west, Trump comes along tears it up, can't deal with the consequences of tearing it up, Israel is so comfy the US will dance to its tune they attack and surely the clowns dance. Lesson: don't make deals, these idiots just listen to raw power.

Who loses? Everybody.