> why should you submit to THEIR moral argument of denying YOU of nukes when they themselves have it?
As the parent poster explicitly states, there is no "moral argument" made there, it's a very utilitarian realpolitik argument that allowing you nukes is risky enough that for any western politician respecting their countries' interests the right choice is to enforce submission with all kinds of means (economic, military, espionage).
>Worth noting that the concept of building nuclear weapons is stupid to begin with, sacrificing large regions to radiation, possibly for a looong time is clearly unreasonable
It's not unreasonable in context. If the US had decided not to build nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union would have eventually.
Also sacrificing large parts of your enemy's land to radiation in many circumstances could be a perfectly rational decision. You could argue that it's an immoral decision but not necessarily an unreasonable one.
>One of the most heinous weapons every deployed on Earth likely saved a net million-plus lives.
It's really an argument that can't be made because the other event never happened. The weapon killed people, that's it. I don't know if there's a moral side at all?
> you have no right for your opinion on it to be considered valid. Period.
That is so wrong it is actually dangerous. Do I need to understand how a nuclear bomb works for my opinion on it to be considered valid? Obviously not. I only need to understand the consequences of it. It does not matter at all how it works, if I am against the fact that it will kill a whole lot of people.
> Invalid opinions do harm to democracy and endanger our way of life.
And engineers have done much, much more to endanger most living animals (including humans) than authors and artists: technology is the reason for the mass extinction we are currently living, and the problems that are coming with climate change. Maybe it's important to start thinking about the consequences of what you do, not only the technicalities of how you do it. And maybe it's high time you start listening to people who are able to think about the consequences of what you do (maybe they understand that better than you do, ever thought of that?), even if they don't know how to do it.
> "If you believe there is a case where it may be moral and rational to use nuclear weapons, why would you want to put a potential barrier in the way of their use?"
Because you think the point where they become moral and rational to use is way way way further than commonly discussed, and you want to put many barriers of many kinds (physical, emotional, logistical) to delay their point of use without completely blocking them.
You could also say that if a person is incapable of doing the hard parts of the job, don't vote them into the position. (Downside of that is that you'll end up voting someone who doesn't mind killing someone in cold blood while expecting that to be a filter that brings more empathy to the position).
> the whole point is to maintain an imbalance of power and capability in one’s own favor
That’s one strategy. Another, once the nuclear cat is out of the bag, is mutual assured destruction (MAD). If that’s your strategy then it is hypocritical because then the point is that everyone has enough power to destroy everyone else so no one will make a move.
I personally think that both strategies are stupid. The former will just breed current and future resentment and the latter is vulnerable to one unstable person with authority to use the weapons.
But I don’t have any sort of alternative so it seems like preventing others from getting nukes and then falling back to MAD is just the way the world is working.
> I also consider nuclear retaliation strike to be morally dubious. What's the point?
The point isn't that you win something with a second strike. The point is that second strike capability ensures no actor can make a first strike without risking consequence. It's about deterrent, not about winning.
>>Nature by default doesn't have nuclear weapons....
While I agree with your sentiment, just would like to point this out that nature does have nuclear weapons, pretty scary ones for that matter: the stars.
Also, if we take these things to their logical conclusion, then the nuclear weapons created by human beings are, of course, created by nature - in this case, indirectly, using the humans.
This is just to point out the logical aspects of the arguments. Other than that, I do agree with you that we, the humans, need morals to sustain a better life for most human beings.
>Can we agree that people should not be able to unilaterally take existential risks with the future of humanity without the consent of humanity, based solely on their unilateral assessment of those risks?
No, we cannot, because that isn't practical. any of the nuclear armed countries can launch a nuclear strike tomorrow (hypothetically - but then again, isn't all "omg ai will kill us all" hypothetical, anyway?) - and they absolutely do not need consent of humanity, much less their own citizenry.
> The neat thing about nuclear weapons is that if you only care about self defense, you don’t need anything else.
Nuclear weapons have no proportionality, so it's bad to rely on them for defense. If you do rely on them, you're either going to start WWIII over a border skirmish, or your enemy is going to chip away at you because you won't.
>Here's the thing - from an ethical standpoint, it never makes sense to actually fire it. If you're dead, well, you're dead - there's no sense in murdering millions of citizens of an enemy nation.
Everybody does not die in a nuclear war. You want your survivors to have a better chance. Leaving whoever nuked you mostly untouched is highly counterproductive to that.
> Shouldn’t every country have the right to mutually assured destruction?
not really. If you didn't already have nukes, but your regime is much against the west, i'd argue that it is the right thing for the west to deny it from them. I am attaching no moral argument to this - simply a practical, utilitarian argument.
The reason russia has free reign to invade ukraine is _because_ they have nukes. Iraq invaded Kuwait just the same, but was pressed back in a war - imagine if they did have nukes; it would mean that Iraq could've acted with impunity, and they'd control all of the oil resources that was Kuwaits'.
> Would you agree that using nukes as an example is arguing in bad faith
Nope. I chose nukes because they were an obvious example of something that we didn't want just anyone to have within arms' reach. I didn't expect it to be subjected to the kind of criticism you're raising.
> The reality is that any amount of nuclear war is the end of humanity
One of the more absurd myths still going. It's not remotely close to being true.
You could detonate all the globe's nuclear weapons simultaneously within the territory of Texas and you'd fail to kill everyone in Texas. It's also not an argument that nuclear war is acceptable obviously. Pretending humanity and or civilization will cease due to nuclear war is very outlandish.
We detonated five hundred nuclear weapons above ground over half a century, and two thousand total. You could nuke the biggest 100 cities and humanity would pick itself up and promptly keep going.
No. You can make a moral argument in favor of balance of power. But the statement that if you do X I will be forced to do Y is not a moral argument.
>It’s a self-inflicted wound
Yes, they will be the only ones that suffer. Because that's how nuclear weapons work. Fucking incredible.
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