War, what is it good for?

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I am not posting this in support of Saddam or Gaddafi. But I AM saying that chaotic regime removal increases overall harm. If in doubt, the west should entirely FUCK OFF.

With the notable one off principled exception of Israel lol?

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

The lessons of history are that Western Imperialism is fucking shit and leads to chaos and death.

Would preventing Iran from getting nukes be imperialist?

Iran interferes an awful lot in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, etc. Are they imperialist?

None of this seems to engage with the question of the day—what to do (or not) about Iran's nuclear ambitions now that a long-awaited Israel-Iran war has started.

[CaptainFritz28]

I am not posting this in support of Saddam or Gaddafi. But I AM saying that chaotic regime removal increases overall harm. If in doubt, the west should entirely FUCK OFF.

With the notable one off principled exception of Israel lol?

Oh, I don't think Jamie has any doubt about that.

[yavuzovic]

I believe that Iran deserves to disregard external warnings concerning its nuclear program, given that Israel is already a nuclear-armed state. Israel is one of the most aggressive governments in the world. Fairly, there should be either mutual assured destruction to deter anyone from using a nuke, or no nukes at all (second one is more pleasant to me). If Western powers wish to convince Iran to not pursue nuclear weapons, they should start with convincing Israel to remove nuclear arms first. Anything else will be biased, and without the enforcing power behind them, are just a joke to the fair mind.

[CaptainFritz28]

As Bert denoted, Israel does have the threat of mutually assured destruction, from Pakistan. They also have a whole subcontinent who'd like them destroyed.

[Octavious]

Ukraine chose no nukes at all, and I don't think that their experience was particularly pleasant.

[yavuzovic]

As Bert denoted, Israel does have the threat of mutually assured destruction, from Pakistan. They also have a whole subcontinent who'd like them destroyed.

Okay that's Israel's perspective. Now see Iran's. While I can't speak of their relationship with Pakistan, because I lack knowledge, they usually don't get along well with Sunni countries enough to depend on Pakistani nukes.

[Jamiet99uk]

I am not posting this in support of Saddam or Gaddafi. But I AM saying that chaotic regime removal increases overall harm. If in doubt, the west should entirely FUCK OFF.

With the notable one off principled exception of Israel lol?

If you think that the West has been leaving Israel alone you really haven't been paying attention.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I believe that Iran deserves to disregard external warnings concerning its nuclear program, given that Israel is already a nuclear-armed state. Israel is one of the most aggressive governments in the world. Fairly, there should be either mutual assured destruction to deter anyone from using a nuke, or no nukes at all (second one is more pleasant to me). If Western powers wish to convince Iran to not pursue nuclear weapons, they should start with convincing Israel to remove nuclear arms first. Anything else will be biased, and without the enforcing power behind them, are just a joke to the fair mind.

You can't convince a country that has nukes to give them up. That basically never happens. The prominent misremembered example is Ukraine. Ukraine didn't really give up "its" nukes. What actually happened is they agreed to let Soviet nuclear weapons, which were on Ukrainian territory but controlled by Moscow (and for which Ukraine didn't have the launch codes or the needed infrastructure), be removed and dismantled. If there were an easy way to get countries to give up their bombs then we would have already applied such tactics to Pakistan, North Korea, etc.

Iran is welcome to ignore external warnings and keep developing a bomb. Their desire for a bomb indeed makes strategic sense. But the rest of the world is allowed to think "I'm willing to risk a war with Iran to prevent them from having atomic weapons".

The underlying principle here seems to be that because some nations have nukes, every sovereign nation should. That's an appeal to "fairness" that doesn't make any sense to me: countries are not otherwise equal in their military and economic power, nor are they all equally likely to be stable stewards of atomic weapons (I'd say Israel is clearly too dangerously erratic, but we're too late to stop them from getting a nuclear arsenal). Proliferation based on some misguided notion of fairness is so obviously a recipe for nuclear annihilation that I'm deeply confused why anyone would propose it.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

You can't convince a country that has nukes to give them up. That basically never happens.

In fact, the only example I could find is South Africa, where the outgoing apartheid government dismantled its nukes because they didn't trust the incoming black and Soviet-aligned ANC to steward them.

The former Soviet countries that had Soviet nukes leftover on their land lacked the ability to launch or even maintain them, which made the inert weapons a huge liability. Many probably would have risked a US invasion if they had rushed to indigenize these weapons (a process that may have taken many years).

Libya gave up on its nuclear program in the 2000s under international pressure, but they never actually produced a working bomb.

Syria had its secret nuclear weapons program blown up by Israel in 2007. And thank God that happened lol. A nuclear armed Assad regime could have been another North Korea, or worse because it's even less stable.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Syria had its secret nuclear weapons program blown up by Israel in 2007. And thank God that happened lol. A nuclear armed Assad regime could have been another North Korea, or worse because it's even less stable.

Jamie and Yav seem to want Iran to get the bomb for Iran's sake.

The reality is giving the Mullahs a bomb would not only be disastrous for nuclear proliferation, but also terrible for ordinary Iranians. It would greatly increase the latitude of the government to repress its own citizens a la North Korea. The evidence for this can be seen clearly in Israel, where its nuclear arsenal is clearly a precondition for its cavalier genocide of Palestinians.

[yavuzovic]

I don't advocate increasing the number of nuclear armed state. But if Israel's protectors were to pressure Israel to get rid of its nukes, I think Israel itself wouldn't be able to stand against this long. If Iran was to develop threatening nukes, Israel and its allies would have an extra reason to come to an agreement to completely eradicate both side's nukes. The more under threat Israel is the better. If Israel cannot be convinced to give up on its nukes, as you say, so be it, let them feel the same threat as well. If not the government, its people will certainly dislike this feeling. If we don't want Israel to use its nukes, the second best bet is MAD, after disarming them.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

This is all extremely backwards.

Israel would rather have its nukes than all the Western support in the world.

Iran's desire for nukes in no way makes Israel more amenable to give up its nukes. In what world would a mutual agreement to eradicate nukes on both sides ever come to pass? Iran is run by an opaque theocracy, Israel by an unstable right-wing coalition, both sides would rightly distrust the other.

The second best is not MAD. Israel's nukes are more likely to be launched in a world where Iran also has nukes. That's before even considering the new risks posed by Iran's new nuclear arsenal. And, of course, nuclear proliferation doesn’t just mean “Iran vs. Israel”—Iranian bombs would invite a regional arms race, which also raises the chance a weapon leaks to non-state actors. Nothing about Iranian nukes would reduce the chance of nuclear war in that region—very much the opposite.

[yavuzovic]

That's not exactly right. We have seen how MAD reduced the number of arms between soviets and NATO in the past. We also have seen what happened when only one side of a war possessed nukes.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

That's not exactly right. We have seen how MAD reduced the number of arms between soviets and NATO in the past. We also have seen what happened when only one side of a war possessed nukes.

So your expectation is that Israel will use its nukes unilaterally, undeterred unless Iran also has nukes? It seems to me MAD already applied to Israel, who would be nuked by Pakistan and/or invaded by all its neighbours after such a launch. Iranian nukes don't add to MAD here, they just add to the nuclear risk in the region.