USA, N. Korea, Nuclear Power And Double Standards.

Would you give a man a gun, knowing full well he was intending to shoot you with it? That is pretty much the scenario with N.Korea, we wont let them have nuclear weapons because we already know why they want them.

What about France? Can we nuke France too? Seems like a good idea.

yeah

Derp. I got all excited before I remembered you were probably talking about weapons and not power generation.

Didn't back in the cold war era of I think ( don't quote me) when Reagan and Gorbachev era...wasn't the KGB or the russian governments supplying the Afghans with Machine guns and RPG's to help in their holy wars?

with #4, wasn't there a Star Wars plan put into effect as well?

With Iran * North Korea( maybe possibly in cahootz, idk..) but both nations should be more of a Big red blip on radar screens now, then what they were back then. I even heard that the Japanese would be working with the US to stop N.Korea, b.c there was something to do with a truce or Armistice of the Hiroshima act..

I think that S.Korea would play along side Japan, and US, b.c I heard a lil' while ago, N.Korea took out a S.Korean frieghter, b./c North thought the South was spying....

( please note, I'm not entirely correct, as I claim not to be a historian, I just love to read the wikia's from time to time. I even read about the Canadian wars with North Korea and the 38 or the 37 parallel ( Canadians called it the Korean Conflict)

...Even the US has a major role over this, and it was funny, most of this began with a border issue and one big f'n huge *** Tree in the way!!

I never said anything about not giving them nuclear weapons, I said nuclear power.. I understand the fear and rationalization behind it all, because it would give them an excuse to enrich uranium, which could then take a turn towards weapons eventually as well.. To keep them from making nuclear weapons, we need to keep them from enriching uranium, and to do that we need to keep them from making nuclear power plants at all..

Regardless of the justifiable fear behind not wanting them to have it, it still seems a bit hypocritical to me to deny them nuclear power.. I'm not even saying that we should let them have it.. Was only asking to see what other people thought, if I was alone in thinking/feeling it's a bit of a hypocrisy or not.

Thanks for the helpful info Excelior.

If we're going to discuss the issue of Nuclear have and have not countries, Pakistan and India would be better countries to discuss. They did not sign the original NPT so they aren't in the same hot water that North Korea is. However, the US worked very extensively with India to get the amount of IAEA oversight we currently have.

I think the world realizes the gravity of nuclear arms races. I don't see it as a power thing -- more like a "hey guys lets all stop pointing the loaded gun around the crowded room".

Yeah the Reagan answer to the soviets arming afghans was to fund, and train groups to be a thorn in the side of the soviets. One of those rebel leaders was Osama Bin Laden. Great work >.>

As far as Star wars that was another Reagan era piece of work. Billions upon billions spent on that project w/o a single successful test ever b4 they finally gave up on it.

"You cant hug your children with nuclear arms!!" lol.

Hahaha. Had to say it.

Yeah, im trolling now.

It's cool; I lol'd. :3

That's pretty much what the main say should be, if there was a board meeting , and in the room, was all the super powers and the other "potentials".


*I like that quote there, Blind.. Nice one!*
( pretty much hit the nail hard on that one, who wouldn't get that!)

Also...


Why in the hell would you want to point fingers and blow up France?

That's completely stupid, just b/c its France.. France is party of the Superpowers.. or like Canada and the other Blue nations..

0.o <smirk> ugh..anyways...

Well it's gotten to the point where Russia and the United States are stalemated. We have strategic nuclear parity, and also control 2/3rds of the worlds weapons between our states. The idea of any state going to war now is completely absurd for this reason. The reason we want to make sure nuclear weapons don't proliferate is to make sure the war-torn areas of the world don't use them.

Of course you can get into complex interdependency theory as well, which also argues that war is sort of dead now.

So basically you started a topic which in turn anything anyone said to you could be at least slightly wrong ...

Troll
-You has it ...

I clearly stated that I was curious of people's feeling on the matter of America holding a double standard for Nuclear POWER

So no, I didn't make a thread in which anything anyone said to me could be wrong.. Actually, given my question, it's 100% impossible to be 'wrong' since I'm asking for opinions. If you're addressing my question, in which I'm asking for an opinion, then you can't be wrong. If you're not addressing my question, then it doesn't apply to what I'm asking and therefore can be neither right nor wrong.

So you fail.

China would have no means to deliver nuclear weapons against us anyway except through terrorism. A lot of people like to assume that every large country has a capable blue water navy but most nuclear powers don't. Pakistan doesn't, India doesn't, Israel doesn't, China doesn't, pretty sure South Africa (I've never read much on this nation) didn't but they disarmed themselves.

Iran makes extreme anti-Israeli statements like "wiping them off the map" which can be interpreted many ways but everyone knows the first one that comes to mind. They're potentially unstable but use of the weapon would cause so much collateral damage (to the Palestinians whom they support) and cause so much international backlash that they would lose a lot of foreign policy support, probably have severe sanctions enacted against, etc. Really nobody in the world is allowed to use a nuclear weapons unless they're prepared for an enormous hit to their foreign standing.

North Korea still has tiny occasional military confrontations with South Korea and are no strangers to making threats against the South in response to foreign policy statements by the US. Also worth noting for what it's worth, the Korean War is technically not over. They're potentially unstable too.

The general consensus among those who support American foreign nuclear policy is that nuclear power is one step closer to nuclear weapons. To what extent that is true, I don't know. I won't pretend to understand how much civilian power research is actually relevant to weapons research, if the same amount of enrichment or the same materials in general are applicable for nuclear weapons, etc.

According to the NPT (from which North Korea has withdrawn) every signatory has every right to a peaceful nuclear program. America isn't the only nation that doesn't support these countries getting nuclear material though. Some even have different ways of showing their opposition by supplying their own civilian nuclear technology. It is a double-standard of sorts but America doesn't make threats of mass destruction to regional powers. For those unaware of North Korean threats here is one. It is in the interest of regional stability.

The question is: Is regional stability (because just building a civilian program invokes fear in neighboring countries) a legitimate reason to hinder a sovereign nation's right to peaceful nuclear technology?

Sure is Bush Propaganda up in here.

The USA is the only country with a full blue water navy.

Intercontinental ballistic missles can reach almost any place in the world within half an hour. Blue water navy with nuclear submarine delivery systems are really only important for a state to make a return-volley. The first wave of nuclear missles in any attack will be every single missle the state owns, and they will target ICBM silos first, followed by secondary targets. China really has no chance of winning a war because they wouldn't be able to knock out retalitory abilities.

The main reason we opose North Korean power is because they've proven to only go after nuclear weapons. When you have a state testing their nuclear weapons out in the pacific it is extremely threatening to the security of the region. Treaty or not, if you're an enemy of the US you will not be getting nuclear weapons.

Also, State Sovereignty has declined since the united nations came about. It's like that for every state now.

Furthermore: Nuclear power is no where near weapons-grade. The most advanced nuclear power needed for nuclear medicine requires 20% enriched uranium 235. Nuclear weapons need 90%. It's years and years off. However, there is no use for Uranium besides nuclear weapons above 21% enriched.

None of those countries have ICBM capabilities, that I am aware of, that can come near reaching America either except North Korea. Or am I mistaken? Blue water navy is the first thing that comes to mind for me because I seldom read about countries with far enough reaching ICBM capabilities. Without a blue water navy the strike would be rendered pointless because they could never launch a land assault against us anyway. Unless their only goal is our complete destruction and they have the capabilities to hit any and every American military target, and have the warheads to hit that many targets, there is no winning.

I really think some people overhype the threats other countries are to America... We really would be a very tough country to try to beat in a full scale war. Far beyond the capabilities of most of these underdeveloped countries people fear at the time.

If you can put a satellite in orbit you have ICBM capability. China has placed satellites in orbit, ergo can lob nuke at us. They do have some ICBMs, in fact. Check http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/icbm/index.html

While I don't want many nations (which I consider nutso) to have nuke weapons I do consider this to be a matter of national sovereignty. I sure would oppose some other nation telling mine what we can or cannot do within our borders. I imagine even N. Korea or Iran feel that way too!

I like depleted uranium. It makes such a dandy sound when fired from an A-10's GAU-8 30mm cannon!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger
Used to work on A-10s. That Brrrappp sound is just awesome!

There is no such thing as national-sovereignty. There is State-Sovereignty only, but I know what you mean. Unfortunately state-sovereignty doesn't mean ***in a world that is as globalized as our own. You have to play by the rules of others or you'll get ***.

Countries that say they need a nuclear program for energy should be shown Wind Farming. Two things a wind turbine will never do A: Be used as a weapon. B: Melt down, and poison the ***out of everything around it.

I could see this possibly being a issue and why other nations wouldn't want more constructed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Nuclear meltdowns generally don't effect anything more then the immediate area, it's not even the bomb itself that poses a risk when people talk about nuclear winter after detonating a few bombs.. It's the resulting floating dust cloud that blocks out the Sun, something a meltdown wouldn't do unless I am missing something and don't understand the way a nuclear plant works. (which I don't think I am)

If it would only effect them, and no chance of having any direct adverse effects on us, then it should be completely the decision of that country, just because a melt down could happen and kill people in their country isn't grounds (IMO of course) for us to stick our nose in it.

We should've asked ourselves the same thing before literally arming Sadaam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

Aside from the risk of a plant melting down, and contaminating the surrounding area/ground water they also have another pleasant feature. A perfectly run plant that never had any emergencies still will produce byproducts that are, and will continue to be deadly for thousands of years. Therein lies the problem. The true nuclear threat of our lifetime will not be the big bad commies that eat babies, and are such a "grave threat" It will be an act of terrorism which involves "waste materials." A lot easier to come by those sort of materials than you might think.

So if a country wants to play the "it's for energy research/production" card it's better to steer them in the direction of a smarter cleaner renewable resource. That goes for the USA also as far as I'm concerned. Since this country takes it upon itself to tell many other countries what their policies should be just seems we could kinda kill two birds with one stone there. Alas, that will only happen in fantasyland unfortunately.

The reality of the situation is the U.S. & other countries will continue to try to develop, and use sources of energy that are dirty, and harmful. Also they'll keep pointing their doomsday machines at eachother instead of trying to solve problems like climate change, and poverty.

Actually 90% of France has nuclear energy, which if u nuke them, you'd be blowing up prob that side of the earth

More importantly: no more baguettes ;;

Sarcasm?

The last part yes... duh

But france is 90% of nuclear energy. I know because I work for the parent company of France for nuclear engineering.