RE: The Nuking of Japan
September 15, 2012 at 3:42 pm
(This post was last modified: September 15, 2012 at 4:08 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(September 15, 2012 at 2:24 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I'm aware I don't have to. I'm just stating my position in this debate. Regardless of how "necessary" people seem to think it was, I view it as an act of terrorism due to the targets being cities rather than military installations. Indeed, most of the Japanese military were elsewhere, anticipating an invasion.
There is a reason why those nukes are still to this day the only nukes ever launched against a country during a war. It's because we realised how much of a mistake it was to use them. Nukes cannot be controlled; they will destroy much more than is intended, and they leave behind deadly radiation that spreads, killing more and more people who weren't even initial targets.
It was not a mistake to use it in a major war against peer power when one has a monopoly of nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons have come of age in the 1940s. Whether we dropped it or not everyone knows we have it, soon other major powers would have them as well. How often they would be used in later wars is totally unaffected by whether we used it during a historically unique period when we had monopoly of it.
As to why they were never used, the main cause is simply nuclear equipped states have never fought any really serious wars against each other or against non-nuclear equipped states.
It is the understanding that no squeamishness about civilian would be countenanced in the nuclear war that deters nuclear powers from fighting a really serious war against each other.
I think there is high probability nuclear states will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear powers within our life time. Last time when major nuclear powers publically threatened to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states was when Clinton threatened to use nuclear weapons against chemical and biological weapons facilities of non-nuclear states. Last time when nuclear powers probably meant to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that I am aware of was Soviet plan to nuke chinese nuclear facilities a couple of years before China detonated her first bomb.
The only reason nuclear weapon wasn't used on that occassion was because the US thought a having another nuclear power on Russia's doorsteps was better for the US during the cold war than having one less nuclear power in the world, so leaked the plan to China and threatened the Soviets with retaliation if they followed through with it
