How awkward

[niropizo]

I just had a talk with one of the English teachers about America's military adventures, (Iraq, Vietnam), and the use of nuclear weapons. How can I possibly argue with a middle-age Japanese woman about that? What can I say? How can I possibly defend the use of nuclear weapons

Comments

[lyleonline]

The only effective defenses I've seen of nuclear weapons are:
1. We need them to defend against crazies like North Korea and Iran (bullshit, but it's sufficiently absurd that it's difficult to argue against)
2. Avoid the subject and build up your nuclear arsenal (much more effective, I think)

Ethically, morally, and rationally, though, there is no defense I know of. We gots the big guns so people do what we say? A clearly unsustainable strategy in that it encourages others to get the big guns too to defend against us.

[fatespawn]

I don't want to defend nuclear weapons, but I think the argument is pretty much this:
1) America is largely populated and run by fairly good, decent people. (This has a hard time standing up to scrutiny these days. It was much more defensible during the cold war and I'm hoping that it will be defensible again after a few years with a new president.)
2) Human technology has reached a point where nuclear weapons can be made and therefore will be made by people who want to use them.
3) If we don't make nuclear weapons than other, less decent people will and they will then have free reign to set them off wherever they like.
The result -> mutual deterence.
Unfortunately even if you take the initial premise of a morally superior USA this doesn't do a whole lot to nationless terrorists. It also does very little to justify blowing up a pair of japanese cities.

Zach, how did you end up in such an akward conversation?

[lyleonline]

Right, this is a more detailed and less dismissive elaboration of my first argument. What frustrates me is that the premise of this argument, that Americans are good, decent people is true. I just wish we'd start electing leaders that were good and decent. And of course, when we have good and decent leaders they talk about the importance of nonproliferation and make agreements with other nations to disarm (while still spending absurd amounts of money to maintain an obscene nuclear advantage over the rest of the world).

[niropizo]

Yeah, I didn't do anything at all to bring it up