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Lol, Mr. and Mrs. Maduro additionally charged with possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Apparently even foreign heads of state need a US firearms permit.
Once again reminding everyone that nothing like this would ever happen to a nuclear-armed regime.
My previous comment:
The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.
A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.
Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.
My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
I have always thought that nuclear weapons program by itself should be casus belli for nuclear strike. If more nations start trying - I can assure you that the big five will come to my opinion too.
More interesting question - which is the jury of Maduro peers ...
Which members of the big five?
While I am willing to concede for the sake of argument that, say, China might appreciate your gracious offer of a nuclear first strike pass on Japan, or South Korea, who both have near-breakout capability, I am not clear why you think the the US- who has a mutual defense treaty with both of them- would want that. Or, in the European context, why Britain or France would want to empower Russia to nuke Poland or Germany, one of whom already is a breakout-capable state and the other who could well move that direction. Or, in the middle eastern context, who is supposed to want who to nuke Israel and Iran and Saudi Arabia alike.
Is this to suggest that you either don't believe that Israel already has nukes, wish to participate in the curious play where they and their allies pretend that they don't (are there levels of e.g. USG clearance where you are obligated to?), or think that them ending the policy of public denial would be analogous to a breakout event in some sense?
It is to suggest I don't know who in the big five Lizzardspawn believes would think it was a good idea to nuke those countries based on his proposed doctrine, hence the question of 'Which members of the big five?'
It is also to suggest I do not know who else in the big five Lizzardspawn believes would come to his view that it is a good idea for their geopolitical adversaries (or allies) to pre-emptively nuke states that are often their own partners of regional importance.
It's just that you listed it along with a set of countries that don't currently have nukes, discussing the hypothetical question whether someone now or in the proximate future would preemptively nuke them to prevent them from crossing the threshold if that were what it took.
At the time when Israel actually crossed the threshold, the world was still a very different place, and they probably were understood to have tacit American backing (potentially including a full "nuclear umbrella") in doing so. As America's ideologically most valued protégé, their situation also seems rather unique; perhaps the closest anywhere gets to it is "lips and teeth" China and North Korea, and notably the latter also managed to cross the threshold ultimately unbothered. I don't think either situation tells us much about what would happen if a more replaceable country (like, say, Saudi Arabia or Cuba) were to try.
(Do you work some US-government-adjacent job that comes with speech obligations, to the extent you would even be allowed to disclose that? That would make a lot of things about my reality model click into place, given the number of times I have been frustrated with you arguing for the "party line" in the past.)
The scope of 'has a nuclear weapons program' does rather run the gauntlet of 'already has' and 'could have soon' and 'has a nuclear power program,' yes. That was rather the point. It was a very poorly bounded claim, and returns to the question of 'who is supposed to agree with about their geopolitical friends/rivals nuking their friends/partners.
Mate. Think about what you just asked and how you asked it.
If I say 'yes,' you can take it as an honest admission and it validates your belief.
If I deny it, you can believe I am lying or am compelled to claim so and that it validates your belief.
If I don't say anything at all, you can believe I refusing to lie in a denial and use it to validate your belief.
If I reply without giving any sort of definitive answer, you can interpret it as a dodge for the same reason and use it to validate your belief.
Whatever you think of me or what I might do, I don't need to be under a nondisclosure agreement to disagree with the sort of reality model that believes it's more reasonable for someone to be under a nondisclosure agreement than to disagree with their sort of reality model. I am quite willing to disagree for free.
To be fair, you are going to bizarre lengths to imply that Israel doesn't have nuclear weapons, as well as to refuse to state that directly, or to deny it. Just stating your beliefs plainly would probably dispell any suspicion about your luminosity levels.
...you know, if someone I had less faith in the good faith of had said that, I would have dismissed it. Instead, I forced myself to do a review. I don't see what you apparently see as 'bizarre lengths' in a short-ish 2-post exchange, but I do see places where I both was relying too much on implicit points, where there was backthought no one else would see, and a place where I simply erred.
Also, @4bpp, since I'm going to eat some crow on insufficient charity towards you, but also admit to suspecting bad faith from you with your question. That, and some things that you weren't to blame for, shaped that response. Consider this me clearing the air, but still being viewing you as someone to engage in good faith going forward.
(...but also @ArjinFerman again, for pushing me to some reflection that might have otherwise ended with concluding bad faith from someone from now on.)
Le sigh. Let's get it on record, but also give Ilforte something to laugh at.
On the subject of Israeli nukes-
I, Dean the Motte Poster, totally believe Israel has nuclear weapons. I sincerely believe I have also repeatedly raised it in the past, unprompted, and enough times that the fact that you thought I was trying to hide this is one of my two reasons for responding. I don't expect anyone to pay too much attention to my past posts, but I'm fairly sure it's come up in the context of why 'and then the Arabs will overrun Israel' or 'and then Iran will wipe Israel off the face of the earth' and even in a long-form about how nukes don't deter proxy wars because look at Israel and Iran.
In the context of this post exchange, I did not address the issue of Israeli nukes (a) I thought my past position on this was common knowledge enough to move past it, (b) because I view it as irrelevant to the point I had made in the post 4bpp was responding to, and (c) because I misunderstood 4bpp's perception of why I'd done that, even as my reason for doing so was not explained on my part.
On the subject of Motte glow-
I refuse to answer questions about my IRL for personal reasons, not professional. I have two personal rules for the internet on top of usual internet secrecy. First, I deliberately never claim, confirm, or deny any professional affiliation. This calls to mind for most people the American espionage cliche of 'neither confirm or deny,' but it's a lot more basic than that. I find it incredibly trite, annoying, and unfalsifiable when people claim it on online, which I don't want to do to others. It also weakens your persuasiveness in other topics, since people will look for excuses to dismiss and a confirmed unrelated profession is an easier basis of dismiss than an uncertainty. Second, I keep my hobby accounts separate. The Motte is where I indulge in my geopolitics and culture war hobby, but people who see that here don't see me spurge on other things elsewhere, so they build a mental model of where the only thing I spurge about is geopolitics and (mostly American) politics. This compounds with the first rule, since people naturally ask/suspect that I therefore must the profession of the thing I talk most about, and I never give a clear answer or alternative.
As for the Motte government thing in particular, I've been not-so-subtly playing along with this theme since Ilforte accused me of being a Polish spook when I was between jobs years ago. The prospect seemed to annoy him at a time he was stanning Russia, so I played along and played it up. I do deep dive into a lot of American government stuff, but this is as often for personal pique (like reading the US National Security Strategy rather than just trusting g media coverage of it) as the fact that I've been subscribing to international relations media for literal decades.
On the subject of NDAs that make you toe a party line-
I am unaware of any sort of non-disclosure agreement- governmental or corporate or judicial- that can require people to take a party line on a topic on anonymous internet conversations. I also inclined to think the premise is dumb, given the monitoring and enforcement challenges of such a premise. On the chance I am wrong and they do exist in the world and not just bad espionage thrillers, then I am happy to say I think the premise is still dumb, and that a better uber-NDA would simply ban you from talking about a subject entirely. Requiring you to talk about it in a certain way to glow to internet audiences is antithetical to a large part of the point of an NDA, which isn't just to keep you from saying something but also to keep people from knowing you could say something.
I also think it's a dumb question to ask outright even if you do suspect it. Any sort of super-surveillance system that could compel someone to have to take 'the party line' in internet anonymous conversations has to catch them to enforce it. That means de-anonymizing their anonymity. If you thought that was how it worked, but also thought you might get an honest answer of yes, you might as well have held up a line to the panopticon going 'would you please incriminate yourself to the panopticon by breaking your promise to the panopticon?' It would also flag the person asking that question. Which trivially leads to de-anonymizing them.
Okay, sure. Aside from the Israel thing, I assume you also mean what my position during this exchange was? I'll clarify it, and use it to clear the air with 4bpp.
In my opening, which 4bpp responded to, I am asking, quite literally, which of the big five nuclear powers is supposed to be convinced of Lizzardspawn's position.
I asked this question because I believe Lizzardspawn's proscription is bad, and as a prediction worse, and indicates a poor understanding of the international environment. I think there are a whole host of reasons why nuclear powers would not want normalize eachother nuclear first-striking states with 'a nuclear weapon program.' Three reasons, unstated but hopefully obvious enough to not need elaboration, are that civil nuclear programs for near-breakout are protected under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, it tends to be bad form to let your geopolitical enemies nuke your allies, and its even worse for you to nuke your own.
But this not-explicit argument was also meant to capture that the scope of 'nuclear weapon program' is incredibly broad. It can include everything across a spectrum of 'has it, but unannounced' (Isreal) to 'does not have it, but seeking others' (Saudi) to 'doesn't have it, but could quickly' (all the other breakouts). Israel and Saudi were both included examples of non-breakout states that could qualify as 'having a nuclear weapon program' despite not being breakout states. They were meant to be a pair showing opposite ends of a spectrum where breakout is in the middle between them, rather than Saudi being breakout as well and Israel being the odd state out. This was not well conveyed.
My intent was to allude to these unstated points by pointing at various ally/adversary clusters who might be nuked for breakout capacity (such as France/Britain and Russia over Germany/Poland over the European theater), and then a cluster of more ambiguous not-ally-but-partnerships, such as the middle east spectrum of 'not-so-secretly has nukes' (Israel, who works with the US), 'is-seeking-nukes' (Iran, who works with the Russians and Chinese), and 'is-not-necessarily-seeking-nukes-but-maybe' (Saudi, who works with both the US and China and-). The point of the answer of the question is to draw out that either a Big 5 nuclear country would be expected to nuke their own allies, let their archrivals nuke their allies, or nuke the ever-stable middle east that both the Europeans and the Chinese really like their energy exports from.
I also thought I was being clear in the second post that I was asking about the big five when I disagreed and did not engage with the premise of 4bpp's leading questions ("Is this to suggest...", "wish to participate in curious play," or the "or think...") and to instead return to my original question.
I viewed 4bpp's questions as leading, not interested in engaging in my question or the points I had made. I also viewed, and view, the form of asking with suspicion, as rather than ask a direct question to me, 4bp passively presented characterizations of positions I had not taken. He proposed what I 'suggested,' 'wished,' or 'thought' when I did no such thing. I have a long-standing irritation at my position being mispresented, but these were also framed in such a way that a non-answer could have been perceived as an answer, a sort of strawman by insinuation. Despite suspicion, I felt charity called for me to clarify if I had been misunderstood.
As for the questions themselves, I ignored them because I felt they were all non-sequiturs to my question of who in the big 5 was supposed to adopt Lizard's position. Whether Israel has nuclear weapons is irrelevant to which members of the big five would adopt Lizard's view. Whether I wish to participate in curious play over Israel's nukes is irrelevant to which members of the big five would adopt Lizard's view. Whether I think announcing nuclear weapons is analogous to breakout is irrelevant to which members of the big five would adopt Lizard's view.
The last question on public declaration did have the seed for a bad misinterpretation and miscommunication on my part, which showed in my third post.
In the third post, I was both surprised and a bit annoyed by 4bpp's closing (yet leading) question, which not only continued the insinuation-if-no-response from the previous question, but invited a new one.
I do find musing about someone's IRL to them to be bad form in the sense of a breach of internet etiquette. Particularly when it appears to be a setup to typecast them as a 'well of course you'd say X, you're Y.' Unfairly to 4bpp, my perception of his (question) was also shaped by a separate sort of 'you'd only say this because you're a X' argument elsewhere recently. This made the suspicion of bad faith from the previous questions worse, and contributed to a conclusion that my question and supporting points that had just been re-articulated were being ignored in order to make the leading questions.
I also felt the final question was bad as a matter of form, in the 'any response could be interpreted the same way' formation. Analogies to 'have you stopped beating your wife yet' came across, and didn't help. I didn't care so much about the government insinuation itself- as raised before I've leaned into it for the sake of teasing- but I am the sort of structural/formalist where if I feel the person is trying to insult me, I will at least hold them to do it better. "Romanes eunt domus" and all that, with an insistence on argument structure being my retort.
This contributed to tunnel vision, and where I deserve to eat crow.
As one of his two remaining paragraphs were about Israel, which I viewed as a non-sequitor, I felt it would be appropriate to briefly acknowledge and push past the first paragraph, of categorization. Here I did misunderstand 4bpp, and so my response was worse than unclear, but bad. In short, I perceived him as making an argument Lizardspawn did not make, when I was trying to draw attention (but didn't explicitly make an argument) about the laxity of Lizard's categorization. Instead, 4bpp was providing his perception of Lizard, and elaborating his question on why I included Israel as the only nuclear state. This was a fair request for clarification, and I did not catch it.
So, @4bpp, I do apologize for misunderstanding your question there. I did and do give you stink eye for that leading question, but I accept your response after that as genuine and worth trying for good faith in the future.
And with all that speaking clearly all spoke out, namaste.
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