The USSR acquiring nuclear weapons was the closest humanity has come to complete annihilation. We were one bad day away from extinction during the Cold War. I'm not sure I would point to that as something we should do more of. Not to mention the potential for accidents and mistakes.

I don't think bombing a country should be the first course of action. Diplomatic action should leave no stone unturned. But if all of that fails, it is strategically advantageous and safer for the world to prevent countries from acquiring nukes by any means necessary.

If you set the example that the cost of pursuing nuclear weapons is unbearable, countries will find better things to do, like enriching themselves in more productive ways.

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carefree-bob an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That is a very, uh, idiosyncratic reading of history.

You are conflating the Cuban Missile crisis of October 1962 -- which was the USSR placing nuclear weapons close to the US in Cuba in early 1962, in response to the US placing nuclear weapons close to the USSR in Turkey in 1961, and in your mind you have blended that crisis, which was a close call in which both sides ultimately agreed to withdraw their nukes, with the acquisition of nukes by the USSR 11 years earlier.

Yet when North Korea, India, China, Pakistan, South Africa, or Israel, got nukes this did not set off a crisis, it was the brinksmanship that set off a crisis.

Soon, both major powers in the gulf -- Iran and KSA will get nukes. Odds are this will happen within a decade. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

There are too many pressures forcing this to happen, not least of which is the clear understanding that these nations need to have nukes to prevent destruction by the other nuclear powers some of which are clearly hostile to them and bent on their destruction. It's why North Korea, which kept their nukes, is still around, but Libya, which gave up their nukes, has been dismembered. Just as a matter of self-defense and survival this is inevitable.

However what we can do is tone down the rhetoric of nuclear brinksmanship, threatening global war if a rival doesn't withdraw their nukes. That was the real lesson of the Cuban Missile crisis, which you have confused with Russia's 1949 achievement, or China's 1964 achievement.

Since no one is going to disarm their nukes, this is just something people have to live with. Threatening war over this issue is exactly what causes the risk of global catastrophe, not the spread of the technology, which is inevitable.

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lwansbrough an hour ago | parent [-]

I never mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis. You’ve misinterpreted what I said.

The USSR getting nukes in the first place lead to several incidents which were a judgment call away from armageddon. With the benefit of hindsight the correct call would have been to exhaust all options to prevent the soviets from acquiring nukes.

We just got lucky. Whether it was the Cuban Missile Crisis, the soviet early warning system malfunction in Sept 83, or Able Archer 83 in November, there was a lot of dumb luck.

Proliferation will bring the end of humanity. There will be too many actors, too many variables. You can get lucky with 2 actors. You can’t keep getting lucky. The only option is to ensure you don’t have to be lucky.

	▲	carefree-bob 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I assumed you meant the Cuban missile crisis since that is the only tenuous connection that can be made between "USSR acquiring nuclear weapons" and "end of humanity". If you generally meant "any nation acquiring nuclear weapons" then the statement would kind of make sense, but there is no reason to fear just the USSR, and not, say, the US, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, or North Korea. Maybe some information made it into the popular press about the USSR, but it is unlikely that there is something especially dangerous about the USSR compared to all these other nations. And in any case, the genie is out of the bottle. There is not gonna be a situation in which a small group of nuclear powers endlessly bomb and attack other countries with impunity. The other nations will get nukes to defend themselves against the existing nuclear powers, it's just a matter of time.

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tpm an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

One of things the US could have done to stop proliferation was to actually honor its commitments it gave to Ukraine in the 1994 agreement in return to Ukraine agreeing to abandon their nukes. It didn't. Now a country sees that US is happy to bomb other non-nuclear countries, but not nuclear countries, and they doen't help even when they agreed to. There is exactly one lesson a country will learn from that.