Get Ready For Nuclear Proliferation 2.0
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Science, The WorldUp to 30 countries may have the capabilities to build nukes soon.
Speaking at a conference on tightening controls against nuclear proliferation, Mohamed ElBaradei said more nations are “hedging their bets” by developing technology that is at the core of peaceful nuclear energy programs but could quickly be switched to making weapons.
Canada, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Taiwan, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania are among nations that either have the means to produce weapons-grade uranium if they chose, could quickly build such technology, or could use plutonium waste for weaponization. [...]
Other countries considering developing nuclear programs in the near future are Egypt, Bangladesh, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Namibia, Moldova, Nigeria, Poland, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and Yemen, U.N. officials say.
Let me ask a pretty obvious question…if everybody has nukes, won’t we have a more polite world?
This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 and is filed under Science, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 21st, 2006 at 10:08 am
A more polite world? I’m not sure “polite” is how I’d put it, not unless by “polite”, you mean “minding your own business.” I think that could happen–as long as none of the old nuclear powers doesn’t do anything to terminally piss off any of the new nuclear nations during th eadjustment period. That’s not a certainty, though. It can take time and some sharp object lessons before long-cherished beliefs change.
October 21st, 2006 at 11:26 am
Well, gun lovers say that the armed society is the polite society. And there’s a certain bit of wisdom and research to back that point of view up.
So if everybody gets nukes, won’t we be able to collectively intimidate those rogue nations into reforming, and not treat them as special little problem children?
Perhaps not, but I’m just floating it out there.
October 22nd, 2006 at 4:56 am
The way I see it, the more countries that have nukes, the more likely that some insane idiot is going to end up with control of a nuke, blow it up somewhere that’s really nasty (like Israel or LA), and probably initiate nuclear WW3. I’m one of those weirdos that thinks gun control means NO ONE except law enforcement should ever own guns, and I extend that to nukes. Except with nukes, no one at all should have them. Ever.
October 22nd, 2006 at 9:01 pm
The problem is that many countries will not be able to keep the nuke weaponry out of the hands of nutcases.
Polite?
October 24th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
The theory behind “an armed society is a polite society” implies more than the commenters here are reading into it.
As a gun rights advocate, I say that if you introduce guns into a formerly unarmed society, pull the police out, and let go, that society will undergo a phase of rapid change before settling into a steadier state. That steadier state will be one of politeness. Prior to that, there could very well be an abundance of violence, involving the more brutal individuals within that society who were up to then restrained only by an authority with a monopoly on the ability to use force.
In short, an armed society is a polite society, yes, but if you start with an unarmed society, getting to an armed one is going to result in some tragic but temporary consequences.
Education can mitigate a lot of the tragedy. Even a simple effort to advertise that all citizens may be armed is enough. Potential criminals, like nearly all people, are opportunists; they choose crime because crime offers easy gain, and if their targets can now shoot back, the gain is no longer easy.
I claim two differences between this situation, then, and nukes. One, the calculus is different for individuals than for whole nations; two, the progression from unarmed stable society to armed stable society incurs an especially fierce intermediate period of violence if that society has not already progressed substantially beyond the mindset of tribalism.
A nation in a global system with a nuke is likened to a person in a smaller society with a gun. In the vast majority of cases, no violence occurs because the knowledge that other parties are armed serves as a deterrent. However, in rare cases, one party may be irrational, and use force unprovoked. In the society of people, unjust damage is limited to a few people. In the society of nations, unjust damage is limited to a few nations, each with thousands or millions of people. High price to pay, in that calculus.
Meanwhile, introduce a more efficacious tool of force into a society where tribalism (or gang mentality) is the source of morality, and there will be a period of heightened violence, as murders of one tribe are repaid by murders on another, on and on, until the various parties finally weary of the conflict. This can take years, even generations. Again, high price to pay. Furthermore, if the society has 99 people with a global mindset and 1 with a tribal mindset, and 100 guns are distributed, Mr. Tribal is going to be near-term threat. If everyone knows who Mr. Tribal is, then there is a strong argument to keep a keen eye on him, and perhaps block his access to a gun. Same could be said for the global analog.
So if you want a rational response to your post, Justin, there’s my shot.
October 25th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
EH? what? yeh, of course, cos america now has no problem with gun crime at ALL after this initial period of settling down into a steadier state… (that was sarcasm by the way, i know it’s the lowest form of wit, but often this has to be explained..) the uk’s gun crime figures are consistently low BECAUSE of not having the right to bear arms, PEOPLE can’t be trusted to bear them responsibly, and NATIONS cannot be trusted to bear nucular(!) weapons for exactly the same reason…. only a matter of time before some leak into the wrong hands are either threatened or used….