Hey readers ,
So
yesterday I gave my two cents about Israel's potentially world
unbalancing plans to defeat Iran's nuclear ambition. Today I’m
going to talk about the nuclear issue and my stance on it. Or at
least I’m going to try to. In my last post I was quite clearly
anti-intervention concerning Iran, do I want Iran to have nuclear
weapons? No of course not, its a matter of both politics and
strategy, politically the world is in a very difficult situation in
regards to Iran, military intervention would not only be extremely
costly, as explained previously, but politically almost impossible to
justify. There's no current Causus
Belli, a
clear reason for war. Iran hasn't invaded anyone, directly attacked
another nation for any reason, nor is there some sort of large scale
humanitarian crisis a la' Somalia, Yugoslavia or more recently Libya
and Syria. But what about Iraq? Ah well see in late 1990 Saddam
Hussein ordered Iraqi forces to invade Kuwait and... Oh right, yeah.
Well exactly, no one wants to go through that
again,
at least the Democratic party doesn't.
So does this mean I want Iran to have nukes, or at least am
comfortable with the idea? No, absolutely not, in fact, I’m not
comfortable with nukes whatsoever. No one should have them at all.
Absolutely no one. In fact, I’d rather they'd never been built at
all. The ultimate irony of nuclear weapons is that they are simply
too effective. So effective in fact, they have no real military
application whatsoever. Think about it for a moment, the whole
purpose of pursuing a war is to defeat your enemy in order to gain
something, once it was territory and resources, more recently its
been in defence of human rights, or regional stability. Annihilating
your enemy is ultimately pointless, even more so when they themselves
can retaliate in kind. Everybody loses and nothing is gained,
meanwhile the pitiful pockets of survivors stumble around a shattered
and poisonous landscape, perhaps periodically stopping to fall to
their knees in tattered garments and scream dramatically elongated
one-word questions at an uncaring sky. Or maybe pausing thoughtfully
to mull over their own inevitable agonizing death in such a place
whilst staring off into the middle distance and dryly delivering an
internal monologue about human nature, preferably quoting famous
thinkers from throughout history. Does this mean I think we should
get rid of ours? No, why? Because no one else will. (Which of course
puts me in the tricky position of trying to justify the states that
have nuclear weapons attempting to stop those that don't from getting
them... but that's going to ruin the flow of the post so I won't for
now, remind me to do that another time.)
The whole thing seems ridiculous right? A weapon that can't be used
by the military! Well yes, precisely, they are utterly ridiculous,
but that's not to say they aren't useful. Nuclear weapons have
as they have grown in power, developed into something more than a
weapon. They're a bargaining chip, a reminder of a nation's status
and a powerful deterrent to anyone considering military action
conventional or otherwise. Just recently Argentina's government wet
it's collective diplomatic pants at the mere thought of a Royal Navy
nuclear submarine near its waters (despite the fact that even if
there is a submarine in the region, it would most likely be a
Trafalgar or Astute class, and therefore only nuclear powered, not
armed) and went to the U.N. In a big huff because 'big nasty Britain
won't give us back something we didn't want when we gave it to them!
Also the potential for the launch of a nuclear strike so close to
our coastal waters thus giving us no time to react is
scaaaaaaaaaaary!' (lack of punctuation very much intentional – also
be on the lookout for a tirade against Argentina's pants-on-head
retarded diplomacy - coming soon to a little-read blog near you!)
But this incident illustrates my point rather well I think, nukes or,
more accurately, the threat of nukes makes them incredibly
useful diplomatic tools. It seems to me that nuclear strategy today
is used much like when parents make stuff up to scare their children into
behaving themselves: 'Stop thinking about attacking us, we've got
nukes!' is pretty much the diplomatic equivalent of parents telling
children to stop pulling faces else it stays that way. Of course,
both are essentially idle threats, but they work, most of the time.
The big fear of course is that one day the threat will no longer be
idle, that an irrational force will get hold of such a weapon and
have no qualms against using it, is there a risk of that with Iran?
Maybe, but probably not, that appears to be the general opinion of
everyone sane at least and I’m inclined to agree Iran likes to
rattle its Sabre sure, but once you draw a Sabre especially in a room
where everyone else has their hands on theirs, it gets kind of
difficult to back down and put it away again. (Wow I’ve got
analogies on the brain today.) Simply put, regardless of it's
political position both towards its own population and the world at
large, no amount of religious fervor is going to convince an entire
nation that risking annihilation in nuclear fire is a good idea.
I really hope I don't live (or more accurately, die if I’m wrong)
to eat my words here, but realistically full scale war against Iran
to stop them getting nukes is just not feasible, can we stop them?
Not really, should we stop them? Difficult thing to do/justify. So
what can we do? Same thing we have since we all got the damn things
in the first place, point them at each other. Now how stupid is that?
Thanks for reading,
Wheelchairman2
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