Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Azumarillussy t1_iu6t4ca wrote

Reply to comment by Spinaccio in Australia drops opposition to treaty banning nuclear weapons at UN vote by misana123

The cost/benefit is actually pretty good, and we can see it play out in North Korea right now.

See the thing about nuclear weapons is that they only need to be 'in working order,' to be effective. What's that effect?

You don't get invaded. That's their entire use. You might fight a proxy war, you might not get your way, but quite simply you don't get invaded.

No country will ever have their tanks on US, UK, French, German, North Korean, Russian, Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani soil. Ever. It's not happening. So all military funding for these countries is no longer on 'defense' it's on 'offense and upkeep of nuclear weapons.'

That enables countries to massively overhaul their militaries to be much more imperialistic (in the cases of the US and Russia, now also China), or reduce military spending overall to minimum levels in order to accomplish their foreign policy goals (i.e. France/UK/Germany).

If you have nuclear weapons, no one is invading you since you can end the world if you start losing. Regardless of the cost, it is a ridiculously good benefit given the existence of imperialist countries that can and do invade random countries regularly (see US and Russia.)

10

Spinaccio t1_iu6vo0v wrote

The US was never been invaded from the time it became a nation, without nukes. North Korea forced an end to the war they arguably started with help from the CCCP, and were not invaded afterwards, again without a nuclear deterrent. European politics are…historically complex and putting a finger one one element- nuclear weapons- as the core reason for post WW2 stability is overly simplistic.

Saying that nuclear weapons “only need to be in working order” is another oversimplification. Maintaining and protecting a nuclear arsenal requires not only huge amounts of money, educating people to be qualified to do so, maintaining a security apparatus to protect that arsenal, but also a system to develop, evaluate and effect upgrades to aging systems. Let’s not leave out the incidental costs of having these weapons around, like poisoning of individuals and communities, which also need to be considered in a full accounting. If you leave out the most important costs and only list “there might be a monster under my bed…someday”, that’s not a valid cost benefit analysis.

−6