The consequences of a "small" nuclear war would be widespread and long-lasting.
Regional nuclear war would have worldwide fallout
If you think a small-scale nuclear war between, say, India and Pakistan would only devastate part of the Asian subcontinent, think again. A new report suggests that the effects of a regional nuclear exchange would have global environmental impact. What can world leaders do?
"Our research supports that there would be worldwide destruction," said University of Colorado at Boulder Michael Mills, co-author of the study and a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It demonstrates that a small-scale regional conflict is capable of triggering larger ozone losses globally than the ones that were previously predicted for a full-scale nuclear war."
Combined with the climatic impact of a regional nuclear war -- which could reduce crop yields and starve hundreds of millions -- Mills' modeling shows that the entire globe would feel the repercussions of a hundred nuclear detonations, a small fraction of just the U.S. stockpile.
What should the United States do about nuclear proliferation? Do such studies lend new urgency to efforts aimed at disarming Iran and North Korea? Is nuclear deterrence still viable? Can nuclear war be averted in an age of terrorism?
Thoughts
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Submitted on April 10th, 2008 by CORNFINGER66Wow, I thought I was insane.
Lets go farther, lets pull out of Irag and Afg. Then Nuke them.
Hell while we are at it, lets take out Iran, Somalia, North Korea, Libya and any where else we think terriost may be.
Notice I didn't say China. If we nuked them, all the greedy corperations that have moved their production over there would loose their money.
Then we would not be able too buy all those cheap goods.
On Nuking North Vietnam and Why I Support
Submitted on April 9th, 2008 by Chuck_JohnsonThere's something of a myth that the Soviet Union and China were affiliated with the Viet Cong. Towards the end of the war, the Soviets had all but abandoned Vietnam diplomatically and the Chinese were considering invading themselves given the trouble that Ho Chi Minh and others were causing on their Southern border. (They eventually did invade.)
I would justify nuking North Vietnam because more people died afterwards. The Vietnamese caused more regional instability and effectively started a war with China afterwards in which a million or so soldiers died. (No one really knows.)
As for the civilians, a few million people died after the Americans turned tail and ran in Vietnam. The Communists used force relocation efforts to relocate a million or so North and break up the resistance.
One of those families who was directly affected by the Communists was my girlfriend's. The Communists didn't want South Vietnamese children to be "bred" so they gave her aunt a third trimester abortion with a military knife. If you have the stomach for other atrocities, read the following article.
I hate to break it to you, but the domino theory wasn't entirely hogwash. For starters, the Communists invaded South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after the Americans left. Scholars like Walt Rostow, Dean Rusk, and Lee Kuan Yew have argued that the American involvement in Vietnam gave time for ASEAN and wider diplomatic and economic ties to be formed between the other non-Communist southeast Asian countries and hence that stopped the tide of Communism.
The Soviets and the Chinese weren't going to risk their own countries over Vietnam, as much as the historicists tell us otherwise.
Chuck Johnson is a student at Claremont McKenna College. Feel free to contact him.
This is a scary thought.
Submitted on April 9th, 2008 by The Big KlosowskiHow do we keep all these nations to keep their fingers off the triggers? What can be done about it?
Re: Nuking Vietnam
Submitted on April 9th, 2008 by Joel"I subscribe to the notion that it's a pity he didn't."
Pretty cavalier, Chuck. What good do you think would've come of it? You don't think use of nuclear weapons would've invited a response from, oh, China or the Soviet Union? You think slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people would've made people around the world more or less sympathetic to American notions of freedom and democracy?
And given that the dominoes didn't really fall across the world after Vietnam, what legitimate American national security interest would've been served by using the nukes?
American victory in the Cold War wasn't pre-ordained, Chuck. Use of genocidal weapons -- and at the end of the day, that's what nukes are -- might've secured the independence of South Vietnam (which was rotten and corrupt to the core) but it might've tipped the broader balance in the other direction.
Few know this but...
Submitted on April 9th, 2008 by Chuck_JohnsonNixon came perilously close to nuking the North Vietnamese to bring about a close to Vietnam. (The concept is known as the "mad man theory" in which you pretend to be completely off your rocker to get what you want diplomatically and you can read about it in this issue of Wired
I subscribe to the notion that it's a pity he didn't.
Chuck Johnson is a student at Claremont McKenna College. Feel free to contact him.