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Post by pacific on Feb 13, 2024 7:34:21 GMT -5
The point is that an organization such as Hamas doesn't have the power to defeat Israel though. Terrorist organizations don't have the strength to trigger nuclear deterrence. Israeli nuclear weapons deter a concerted attack by other states, because if Israel goes down, it will take at least the region with them. Are we really going to argue that Hamas is a realistic existential threat to (i.e. capable of destroying) the state of Israel to trigger a nuclear response? I would say the triggering of a WMD of any sort (dirty bomb, nuclear weapon etc.) would, given the size of Israel, effectively destroy the country. Especially if it were released in somewhere like Tel Aviv. I don't think anyone is doubting the will of Hamas to detonate such a weapon if they managed to get hold of one; in fact, I think this is probably the most likely scenario globally for that sort of weapon to be deployed, for some very obvious reasons - no fear of MAD, and also a fanaticism which encourages the absolute destruction of infidels with eternal reward. I would suspect one of Mossad's main goals would be to stop this sort of scenario occurring, and we know from past events how strongly they are likely to react - for example, military strikes on enrichment factories in Iran or other facilities, they are under no misapprehension about what sort of danger that represents to them. |
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Feb 13, 2024 8:11:54 GMT -5
The point is that an organization such as Hamas doesn't have the power to defeat Israel though. Terrorist organizations don't have the strength to trigger nuclear deterrence. Israeli nuclear weapons deter a concerted attack by other states, because if Israel goes down, it will take at least the region with them. Are we really going to argue that Hamas is a realistic existential threat to (i.e. capable of destroying) the state of Israel to trigger a nuclear response? I would say the triggering of a WMD of any sort (dirty bomb, nuclear weapon etc.) would, given the size of Israel, effectively destroy the country. Especially if it were released in somewhere like Tel Aviv. I don't think anyone is doubting the will of Hamas to detonate such a weapon if they managed to get hold of one; in fact, I think this is probably the most likely scenario globally for that sort of weapon to be deployed, for some very obvious reasons - no fear of MAD, and also a fanaticism which encourages the absolute destruction of infidels with eternal reward. I would suspect one of Mossad's main goals would be to stop this sort of scenario occurring, and we know from past events how strongly they are likely to react - for example, military strikes on enrichment factories in Iran or other facilities, they are under no misapprehension about what sort of danger that represents to them. Coincidentally enough (or not), Israel has extensive research into dirty bombs due to said fear. Their conclusion is that dirty bombs are more of a psychological weapon as opposed to a significant damage weapon. apnews.com/general-news-f6a40b71fbec4472b707fbf125489a3awww.timesofisrael.com/israeli-tests-find-dirty-bombs-pose-no-substantial-danger/Never say never of course, but in the last 20 years it has become reasonably clear that terrorism has equally effective and much easier access to other methods. As for nuclear weapons, those would almost obviously be sourced by another state, so it is very unlikely even countries like Iran are crazy enough to supply their pet terror organizations with such weapons. |
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Post by Haighus on Feb 28, 2024 4:50:40 GMT -5
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Post by redchimera on Feb 28, 2024 5:49:34 GMT -5
Unfortunately, at one-and-a-half hours long, I'm not going to see it. |
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Post by Haighus on Feb 28, 2024 5:53:37 GMT -5
Unfortunately, at one-and-a-half hours long, I'm not going to see it. Fair. Video essays are not for everyone. |
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Post by pacific on Feb 28, 2024 6:08:18 GMT -5
Sorry @disciple of Fate I missed your reply there.
My reply to you there would be that (if I can explain on a roundabout route here) there was a GW discussion on Dakka I was part of a while ago and one of my criticisms of their 'one employee' policy for stores is that it leaves the door open for a child abuse scandal to occur - either a genuine case of abuse scandal, or for staff to be accused of something (and working on their own, they would have no defence from the accusation). Someone replied "well it's been the policy for ages and nothing has happened yet so I don't see it as a problem".
My response to the prospect of a potential WMD deployment is the same as my answer in that thread - looking at the potential danger, if it happened even *once* the fallout (literal in one case) would be so awful, the connotations so extensive, that it would immediately overshadow the fact that the probability was so low. It is why Nuclear power plants are meant to be designed to withstand 'once per hundred-thousand year' events in mind, and the 'Risk' logs are compiled extensively in this area.
I think Israel knows this - it's why they are prepared to carry out massive airstrikes in the past on Iranian nuclear plants (I think one in the past involved about 30 F16s/F18s) that have even the *potential* of carrying out Nuclear enrichment for use with bombs. Why Mossad is prepared to carry out assassinations and kidnappings of rogue nuclear scientists in foreign countries. They are prepared to deal with the condemnation they receive for carrying out these operations because the implications are so terrible if they do not.
I would also say, with respect to nuclear proliferation, the world is in a much more dangerous place than it was perhaps at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. North Korea possibly has warheads, Iran either has them or is getting close (I know Colin Powell famously quipped about them enjoying "polishing it", implying they only had one, but where one exists others will follow). We also have Pakistan which is currently politically unstable and a flailing Putin/Russia, removing their country from anti-proliferation treaties, and who may become increasingly belligerent and unstable as the Ukraine conflict drags on. So I think quite possibly the ability for non-state actors to somehow get hold of a bomb is higher than ever. Or even a desperate Iran or Russia to make use of 'useful idiots' via proxy.
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Feb 28, 2024 8:57:36 GMT -5
To be clear, I mean that a dirty bomb isn't considered significant. It's not great obviously, but not a country/city ruining event that the media sometimes depicts it as.
As for WMD, of course I agree. But as you say, this is a state issue. Organizations like Hamas can't realistically develop a nuclear warhead, so they would need to be given one by a state. Because the source would be so obvious, nobody is going to equip pet terrorists with WMDs, because it would basically be invoking MAD. The whole reason for countries like Iran to engage with Hamas/Hezbollah like organizations is plausible deniability at best and "not bad enough to provoke a direct attack" at worst. The skill to use and maintain such devices isn't readily available and the risk that they are stolen (given their size) is very small, those fears have been vastly overplayed in the aftermath of 9/11.
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Post by pacific on Feb 28, 2024 10:58:57 GMT -5
I definitely think fears have been overplayed (after all, they've been used to justify every piece of security crackdown and reduction of civil liberties since then by eager governments) but I think there is also a nugget of truth and risk risk there, that then get blown up in terms of proportion.
Although I did listen to a Sam Harris podcast on a group in the US some time ago, related to non-proliferation and including some quite senior US ex-diplomats, that had the task of trying to keep track of any produced nuclear weapons and especially rogue WMD - the danger point highlighted was around the collapse of the Soviet Union and movement of weapons from one state to another at that time, including some very frightening stories of 'missing' trains which did not arrive at their intended destination and the like. Apparently those are now accounted for, but it does make you think there is a possibility of these weapons falling into the wrong hands, if such an organisation (attempting to keep track of them internationally) exists.
I'm also not sure it would be an 'auto MAD' if one was deployed (saying for example here, a proxy weapon used by Hamas or other terrorist group against a US or Israeli target) given how the waters are muddied and ability to the guilty states to try and shift blame. Think of the sinking of the Cheonan in South Korea for example (where it was quite obvious who the culprit was, but 'evidence' was found that suggested otherwise), or a rogue group was blamed for shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 over Ukraine.
There is also the possibility (and I am thinking chiefly of Iran here) of the weapon being put into the hands of someone for whom the disintegration in nuclear fire is a worthy punishment for infidels, while they themselves will be granted eternal paradise, and so MAD not even being the deterrent that it is meant to be.
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Feb 28, 2024 12:15:16 GMT -5
But shooting down an airliner or sinking a vessel is on a far different scale. When we talk about getting away with something, having them kill a few hundred civilians or a few dozens soldiers is peanuts, it doesn't cross enough of a line. Having your pet use your nuclear weapon does cross that line. This is where a response is needed and the real culprit is easily found.
Even Iran isn't run by totally insane individuals, just evil, because they're currently smart enough to fight through proxy wars and not mentally unstable Jihad wars with all their 'wrong' neighbours. These countries know what they're working with.
Without state support, we fall back on the lack of knowledge to effectively do something.
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Post by semipotentwalrus on Mar 3, 2024 13:48:05 GMT -5
It's also worth pointing out that from what I understand the radioactive decay of the isotopes following a nuclear detonation can be used to trace which reactor(s) the material came from, negating any plausible deniability. If it's got Iranian fingerprints, for instance, Iran either gave away a nuke or they're so inept that someone stole one and they didn't say anything.
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Post by Peregrine on Mar 3, 2024 19:06:40 GMT -5
But shooting down an airliner or sinking a vessel is on a far different scale. When we talk about getting away with something, having them kill a few hundred civilians or a few dozens soldiers is peanuts, it doesn't cross enough of a line. Having your pet use your nuclear weapon does cross that line. This is where a response is needed and the real culprit is easily found. Exactly. With conventional weapons it's fairly easy to avoid escalation and if the parties involved would prefer to avoid a war excuses can be made. But nukes change the entire game, every major nuclear power knows how easily "limited" use of nuclear weapons can turn into the end of civilization as we know it and maintains a hard line that must not be crossed. Using them as anything other than an absolute last resort against an invasion is exactly the sort of thing nobody wants to see a country get away with because it encourages future use. Their use must be punished as a lesson to anyone else who might be tempted to see nukes as anything other than an extreme last resort. The absolute best case scenario would be a conventional invasion of Iran/Israel/etc to dismantle the country and annex it into its neighbors, and it's quite likely that the response would be nuclear annihilation of the aggressor.
(This is why North Korea getting nukes is such a big concern, because they can't be trusted to have the rational self interest to refrain from using them.)
It's also worth pointing out that from what I understand the radioactive decay of the isotopes following a nuclear detonation can be used to trace which reactor(s) the material came from, negating any plausible deniability. If it's got Iranian fingerprints, for instance, Iran either gave away a nuke or they're so inept that someone stole one and they didn't say anything. Yep. It's not 100% but combined with other evidence it would likely be pretty obvious where a nuke came from, at which point Iran would likely be removed from the map as a lesson to anyone else who might think about "accidentally" letting nukes out of their control.
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Mar 7, 2024 14:09:56 GMT -5
So the US is going to install a floating harbor to try and fix the Israeli war crime of starving the population of Israeli occupied Gaza. Kudos I guess, but what a bizarre turn of events.
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Post by pacific on Mar 8, 2024 5:51:14 GMT -5
Peregrine - agree with the point about 'rational self interest', i.e. I don't want to end the world. But the difficulty lies when you have even a subset of that larger organisation that doesn't think that way. Look at Wahhabism within the Saudi Arabian command & military system that effectively led to 9/11, and which the more 'rational' subset of the Saudi ruling families were unable to fully suppress. They flew hi-jacked airliners into the WTC, but do we think they would have stopped there if they had had access to a nuke?
Staff in North Korean military will have been subject to a level of information control, education and propaganda that probably hasn't been seen outside of the novel 1984 - possibly in the history of the earth, other than perhaps in the most tyrannical theocracies. If they were suddenly faced with the collapse of the regime or danger from a potential aggressor, can we assume that they will act rationally?
Poland is now discussing the prospect of obtaining Nuclear Weapons - they know full well what they will potentially face should Putin win in Ukraine, and arguably this is one of the only ways that they can defend themselves. But in doing so this is making civilisation less safe as more of those weapons are in circulation, it increases the possibility of deployment by either accident or by design.
I would say we possibly haven't been at such a dangerous juncture, in all of history, certainly since the Cuban Missile crisis.
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Post by Disciple of Fate on Mar 8, 2024 7:54:16 GMT -5
You're right on North Korea, that is a dangerous state, but self-preservation instincts at the top layer might carry restraint, even if Kim is not willing. An attack on North Korea seems highly unlikely. However repressive North Korea is, there still isn't a monolithic population supporting the state, hence the required repression. Regime collapse is therefore very difficult to predict.
But the Saudi Arabia example falls back on the insane-evil axis. These countries fund groups like this out of self-interest, as evidenced by SA cracking down on Wahhabism when it/splinters of it became a threat to the kingdom in the form of IS. They were mostly happy to let it happen when it meant these extremists were going abroad, it was almost shadow SA foreign policy to strengthen the state. Countries like SA and Iran support these groups to an extent, but the people running these countries are after power, they are not true believers wanting Armageddon. This is what keeps the means of terror groups restrained when it comes to state support.
There is a lot more uncertainty in the world, but the risks have stayed roughly proportional. We have come close to nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the US several times during the Cold War. So far we are lucky enough not to have gotten that close since, but now we have a nuclear armed North Korea.
And in essence, is a nuclear armed Poland that different from a nuclear armed France or US nuclear weapons in Turkey during the Cold War?
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Post by Haighus on Mar 8, 2024 8:04:39 GMT -5
Would a rogue state like North Korea or terrorist actor using nukes lead to the "end of the world" though?
Very few states have the nuclear capability to do that, and I doubt China would launch nukes in support of North Korea if North Korea was flattened by a counterstrike by the US (which would probably be conventional anyway, I don't think nukes would be required for the US to militarily devastate modern North Korea). North Korea has become so politically isolated it is unlikely to lead to a major nuclear exchange between world powers.
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