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Banned
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Ok, I really don't see how international monetary problems have anything to do with nuclear disarmament or how, if your plan was successful, disarmament would bring any sort of economic benefit or how the US could keep anyone from rearming.......
......Clearly you need to brush up on the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine and what it's all about.
Look, I'm all for monetary reform, but your suggestion is tatamount to trying to hold back the tide. There is no way in hell that it would ever work, and the best case scenario, as I see it, is an arms race that reinvigorates the military industrial complex.
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You need to do the "brushing up", The_Jazz.....and I'll do the "thinnin" around here, Babalooey !
MAD was yesterday....meet the new concept....and the targets are Russia, and to a lesser extent, China. Nations allied with the US now, will be inclined to cooperate. The US enforces the ban, as I've described in other posts...with weapons inspections and permanent occupation of areas in Russia or China, or wherever else it is deemed neccessary, by US troops/weapons inspectors; of areas where weapons or delivery systems, are stored, designed, or manufactured.
It's simple....the dollar is done, unless our leaders are willing to leverage one of the things that's destroyed the dollar, the unparalleled US strategic advantage; a temporary benefit of the out of control military industrial complex, or if it is not exploited effectively, and soon, the MIC boondoggle:
Quote:
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200603...r-primacy.html
The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy
Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006
Summary: For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia's decays and China's stays small, the era of MAD is ending -- and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun......
PRESENT AT THE DESTRUCTION
For almost half a century, the world's most powerful nuclear states have been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). By the early 1960s, the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated that neither country could entirely destroy the other's retaliatory force by launching first, even with a surprise attack. Starting a nuclear war was therefore tantamount to committing suicide.
During the Cold War, many scholars and policy analysts believed that MAD made the world relatively stable and peaceful because it induced great caution in international politics, discouraged the use of nuclear threats to resolve disputes, and generally restrained the superpowers' behavior. (Revealingly, the last intense nuclear standoff, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, occurred at the dawn of the era of MAD.) Because of the nuclear stalemate, the optimists argued, the era of intentional great-power wars had ended. Critics of MAD, however, argued that it prevented not great-power war but the rolling back of the power and influence of a dangerously expansionist and totalitarian Soviet Union. From that perspective, MAD prolonged the life of an evil empire.
This debate may now seem like ancient history, but it is actually more relevant than ever -- because the age of MAD is nearing an end. Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces. <b>Unless Washington's policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China -- and the rest of the world -- will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come.
One's views on the implications of this change will depend on one's theoretical perspective. Hawks, who believe that the United States is a benevolent force in the world, will welcome the new nuclear era because they trust that U.S. dominance in both conventional and nuclear weapons will help deter aggression by other countries.</b> For example, as U.S. nuclear primacy grows, China's leaders may act more cautiously on issues such as Taiwan, realizing that their vulnerable nuclear forces will not deter U.S. intervention -- and that Chinese nuclear threats could invite a U.S. strike on Beijing's arsenal. But doves, who oppose using nuclear threats to coerce other states and fear an emboldened and unconstrained United States, will worry. Nuclear primacy might lure Washington into more aggressive behavior, they argue, especially when combined with U.S. dominance in so many other dimensions of national power. Finally, a third group -- owls, who worry about the possibility of inadvertent conflict -- will fret that U.S. nuclear primacy could prompt other nuclear powers to adopt strategic postures, such as by giving control of nuclear weapons to lower-level commanders, that would make an unauthorized nuclear strike more likely -- thereby creating what strategic theorists call "crisis instability."
ARSENAL OF A DEMOCRACY
For 50 years, the Pentagon's war planners have structured the U.S. nuclear arsenal according to the goal of deterring a nuclear attack on the United States and, if necessary, winning a nuclear war by launching a preemptive strike that would destroy an enemy's nuclear forces. For these purposes, the United States relies on a nuclear triad comprising strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and ballistic-missile-launching submarines (known as SSBNs). The triad reduces the odds that an enemy could destroy all U.S. nuclear forces in a single strike, even in a surprise attack, ensuring that the United States would be able to launch a devastating response. Such retaliation would only have to be able to destroy a large enough portion of the attacker's cities and industry to deter an attack in the first place. The same nuclear triad, however, could be used in an offensive attack against an adversary's nuclear forces. Stealth bombers might slip past enemy radar, submarines could fire their missiles from near the enemy's shore and so give the enemy's leaders almost no time to respond, and highly accurate land-based missiles could destroy even hardened silos that have been reinforced against attack and other targets that require a direct hit. The ability to destroy all of an adversary's nuclear forces, eliminating the possibility of a retaliatory strike, is known as a first-strike capability, or nuclear primacy......
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Read the background on US capabilities:
....and here is a decent examination and reaction to the above article:
Quote:
http://russianforces.org/blog/2006/0..._primacy.shtml
Speaking of nuclear primacy
As the history of the cold war clearly demonstrates, nuclear primacy is a notoriously poorly defined and elusive goal. This is why it was very interesting to read the article by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”, in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. The authors argue that the United States has achieved (or is just about to achieve) nuclear primacy, which would make the concept of mutual assured destruction obsolete by taking “mutual” out of it. The United States, the authors argue, is getting the capability of destroying all (and they mean literally every single one) Russian strategic launchers in a first counterforce attack. A longer article, which the authors promise will contain details of the model they used to calculate effectiveness of a first strike, will appear in the Spring issue of International Security.:
Quote:
http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/BCSIA_c...ieberPress.pdf
The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy
Lieber, Keir A., and Daryl G. Press. "The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy." International Security 30, no. 4 (Spring 2006, forthcoming): 7-44.
<i>It's at the link above, and it's 38 pages. I haven't read it yet...- host</i>
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The argument looks convincing at first – Lieber and Press paint the familiar picture that many now take for granted – decline of the Russian strategic forces, gaps in the early-warning network, and all that. But a closer look at the article reveals a number of factual errors and unsubstantiated statements, which in my view completely undermine its conclusions.....
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....so, The_Jazz....it isn't BS....it's a concept that merits consideration. We are fucked, financially. We show no inclination to rein in our lifestyle. Our government invested in these terrible capabilities, and we should examine and discuss where we are, if we are in a financial crisis, and whether to let event overtake us, whether to over react later, lashing out when it's too late to do what we might pull off now.....or leverage our investment in nuclear primacy at the earliest possible moment.
You are naive if you don't think that these options are officially being discussed and planned for, or that they won't save the dollar, temporarily, at least, if the most aggressive military option was carried out to it's fullest potential.
The challenge and the question is, why aren't we, the people, discussing them. I've described the "fix" that we are all in...it is a crisis, and we have access to quite a bit of information, so it seems hypocritical, possibly defeatist, and even silly, to use the excuse that such a discussion is "unthinkable". We funded and built all of this shit, if we don't use it, it should be because we decided not to, fully aware of the consequences of that decision.....willful inclination to submit to Russian and Chinese hegenomy, as soon as a decade from now....or postponement of the inevitable use of the military option, when we are cornered and weakened, only after the dollar implosion event has overtaken us.....what's it gonna be? |