Via digby: Jorge Hirsch at UC San Diego has gathered a few of his friends — Nobel Laureates, Boltzmann and Fields Medalists, Medal of Science winners, and past Presidents of the American Physical Society — to write a letter to President Bush, urging him not to use nuclear weapons against Iran. The signatories are:
- Philip Anderson, professor of physics at Princeton University and Nobel Laureate in Physics
- Michael Fisher, professor of physics at the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland and Wolf Laureate in Physics
- David Gross, professor of theoretical physics and director of the Kavli Institute of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Nobel Laureate in Physics
- Jorge Hirsch, professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego
- Leo Kadanoff, professor of physics and mathematics at the University of Chicago and recipient of the National Medal of Science
- Joel Lebowitz, professor of mathematics and physics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Boltzmann Medalist
- Anthony Leggett, professor of physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Nobel Laureate, Physics
- Eugen Merzbacher, professor of physics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former president, American Physical Society
- Douglas Osheroff, professor of physics and applied physics, Stanford University and Nobel Laureate, Physics
- Andrew Sessler, former director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and former president, American Physical Society
- George Trilling, professor of physics, University of California, Berkeley, and former president, American Physical Society
- Frank Wilczek, professor of physics, MIT and Nobel Laureate, Physics
- Edward Witten, professor of physics, Institute for Advanced Study and Fields Medalist
In reality, winning a Nobel Prize doesn’t make you an informed judge of geopolitical affairs. But anyone in their right mind can see it would be a bad idea to launch a nuclear first strike against Iran or anyone else, and these folks are in their right minds. Hopefully they can lend some heft and gather some publicity for the cause.
Part of me wonders whether the administration understands perfectly well that a nuclear strike would be madness, but they want to give the impression of being reckless cowboys so that Iran will dismantle their nuclear program — that’s a hopeless plan, of course, but at least not wildly irreponsible. Then I remember that they have consistently acted like reckless cowboys in every previous situation, and my heart sinks a little. Remember DeLong’s Law: “The Bush Administration is always worse than one imagines, even when taking into account DeLong’s Law.”
April 19th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your analysis of the tactical nuclear weapon situation is a bit off, as is the analysis of most any other sane person trying to make sense of the Sy Hersh article.
The confusion here rests primarily on the difference between strategy and tactics. While many Americans are well aware of the nuclear strategic decisions made during the Cold War, such as the implementation and success of Mutual Assured Destruction, many are unaware of nuclear tactical planning. In most respects, the tactical usage of nuclear weapons started at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I concede that a fair argument can be made for the strategic implications being more important. However, it is far more likely that the use of the bomb was a tactical decision at its most basic. We had seen the effects of fire-bombing and massive campaigns in Dresden and Tokyo; had we continued such a campaign, it is highly likely the Japanese would have still surrendered. But how could we achieve the same effects with the use of one weapon? The answer was clear: drop the bomb. Save thousands of planes and tons of munitions by simply using one or two bombs, one or two planes.
This evolved drastically with the emergence of a Soviet conventional threat, especially in Europe. It had been NATO doctrine for years to use tactical nuclear weapons as the only real way of stopping a massive Soviet conventional force. So while on a strategic level we were limited to the confines of MAD and the red telephone, tactically the nuclear option remained as real as it ever had.
After the end of the Cold War, tactical usage of nuclear weapons lost prominence in much the same way strategic usage of the weaponry did. The lack of a large conventional threat made us rethink our military’s tactical aims. Only recently, as the “New World Order” has continued time and again to prove itself less orderly, and with the emergence of the so-called “rogue states,” has the development and usage of the tactical nuclear weapon re-emerged in its importance. Supposedly, no other weapon possesses the abilities that the “bunker busters” have, for instance, in eliminating certain unconventional threats in rogue regimes quickly and efficiently. As a matter of policy, we withdrew our strategic “No First Strike” policy early on; this had obviously been a long time coming.
As the Hersh article points out, if we were to attack Natanz, for example, then the bunker buster seems the only “logical” tactical choice. For those in the administration, it has not come down to a matter of looking at the big picture. There is no big picture anymore for them. It is about what gets the job done fast and hard, just like 1945.
It is my hope we can avoid this option at all costs. Humanity is too close to emerging from this age of trial by fire to risk it all for another misguided adventure. I hope the rest of us can join our fellow Americans in writing to our representatives to end this insanity before it begins. After all, you don’t have to be a physicist to understand this one.
April 19th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
I would argue that the use of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs, as a demonstration of nuclear power, was a strategic decision.
But that’s not the point. Whether you use a tactical nuke or a strategic nuke, once you cross the nuclear threshold, the only hope you have is that it will be so horrible that the world will collectively jumped back to sanity. I cannot imagine living in a world where use of nukes is considered an option to any end.
April 19th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
I actually question how effective the standard “deterrence” argument really is anymore; times change, the nature of warfare has changed, yet Cold War mentalities still seem to prevail. More to the point, human memory is short. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fading into the distant past, to such an extent that Japan — a country that once swore it would never pursue nuclear weapons — is on the brink of considering it.
Not a scientific assessment… just that of a concerned citizen.
I hope the letter carries some weight…
April 19th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Well, to be perfectly honest, theres not much of a technical difference between bombing the nuclear installations to such an extent as to penetrate and cave in the bunkers (massive, repetitive and enormous strikes over many days/weeks) as using a bunker buster. Even with the additional probability that the bunkerbusters blast leaks radioactivity out from the fissure.
The loss of life and carnage to the environment will be more or less identical. In many ways, its sorta like positing which is worse, firebombing alla Dresden or using the A bomb. Both are equally successful in destroying more or less the totality of what they are designed to do.
Otoh, nuclear weapons carry a certain stigma to them, so I suppose its ultimately far more sage to keep that cat leashed in the box.
April 19th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
To underline the reasons for Arthur Schlesinger’s gloom, see “Ahmadinejad’s Demons” in the New Republic:
Ahmadinejad is representative of those—the Basiji—who sent children into the minefields.
April 19th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
I concur with Haelfix — the real issue here is the irrational stigma against powerful weapons that just happen to be nuclear. The horror of nuclear armament should not be exhalted over that of white phosphorus, Claymore mines, and so on.
The US already has (and will never relinquish) awesome nuclear capability, and is the only nation to ever deploy a nuclear weapon. The cat’s already out of the bag.
April 20th, 2006 at 12:48 am
Actually, I completely disagree with putting other “conventional” weapons on the same footing as nuclear weapons. There is no way that any set of conventional weapons can match the destructive power of nuclear weapons. Horrible as those conventional weapons can be, nuclear weapons are magnitudes more destructive than all of them combined.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:23 am
I agree with Eugene that the stigma is actually deserved. But regardless of whether or not it is deserved, as Haelfix mentions, the fact that the stigma exists is reason enough not to deploy nuclear weapons. Americans are already seen to condone torture and other nasty things. Deploying nuclear weapons, in whatever form, would send up a huge, mushroom-shaped, neon-lit sign reading “Hate America!”
April 20th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Chris W, we are representative of the people who backed Saddam’s invasion of Iran.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:49 am
A cruise missile carries half a ton of conventional explosives. A nuclear armed cruise missile with a nuke with a tiny yield – 1 kiloton – is 2000 times more explosive than the conventional cruise missile.
The whole issue of limiting destruction is that there is a chance than the insanity will stop at the 100th or the 1000th cruise missile. With the nuke however, there is no stopping it. Moreover, the means may not exist. Ahmednejad cannot do much to Israel today, because something bad will happen to him before he lobs the 50th conventional missile. The whole reason we see a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat is because of the instantaneous nature of the destruction that can happen.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Chris W. on Apr 19th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
“To underline the reasons for Arthur Schlesinger’s gloom, see “Ahmadinejad’s Demons” in the New Republic:”
First, The New Republic is a bad source for decent analysis. Second, as has been pointed out above, the USA, in particular the GOP, supported Saddam in his war, up to and including the use of chemical weapons on civilians. Third, whenever reading about the alleged suicidal tendencies of the current Iranian leadership, remember that anybody in Iran who wanted martyrdom had a zillion chances of getting it. Their leadership is no more suicidal than the average GOP leader.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:25 am
Arun on Apr 20th, 2006 at 7:49 am
“A cruise missile carries half a ton of conventional explosives. A nuclear armed cruise missile with a nuke with a tiny yield – 1 kiloton – is 2000 times more explosive than the conventional cruise missile.
The whole issue of limiting destruction is that there is a chance than the insanity will stop at the 100th or the 1000th cruise missile. With the nuke however, there is no stopping it. Moreover, the means may not exist. Ahmednejad cannot do much to Israel today, because something bad will happen to him before he lobs the 50th conventional missile. The whole reason we see a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat is because of the instantaneous nature of the destruction that can happen. ”
Arun, you’ve provided an excellent justification for the government of Iran to seek nuclear weapons.
April 20th, 2006 at 9:18 am
Nuking clandestine nuclear facilities, while leaving the dangerous regime responsible for them untouched, strikes me as a foolish strategy. Nuking will not destroy the Iranian regime’s capacity to strike back at American cities with simple radiological bombs smuggled across our porous southwestern border. Nuking will, however, make the regime feel totally justified in attempting such a thing.
The problem isn’t Iranian nukes. It’s the Iranian regime.
The best bet is to remove it. The U.S. should bribe the Russian and Chinese leaderships and effect Iranian regime change through fomented revolution assisted by and coordinated with American air power, funds, electronic intel, and communications/propaganda assets.
April 20th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Barry, even if Iran had nukes they could not attack Israel, because Israel would still be capable of attacking after being attacked first.
Belizian, the US is already trying to do some of these things, but it isn’t working.
April 20th, 2006 at 10:22 am
The best bet is to remove it. The U.S. should bribe the Russian and Chinese leaderships and effect Iranian regime change through fomented revolution assisted by and coordinated with American air power, funds, electronic intel, and communications/propaganda assets.
They tried that. They ended up supporting the Shah, who turned out to be a hideous despot, leading to the backlash of the Iranian revolution.
Or, to belabour the point, outside meddling does not go well with actual Iranians. How would Americans act if a foreign gvt fomented revolution in their country? I bet they wouldnt like it.
April 20th, 2006 at 10:30 am
I don’t want to be overly cynical, but “no bunch of eggheads is gonna tell me what to do, I’ll show ‘em”.
This is old style politics, what you need now is very old style politics, namely a very rich person explaining quietly to some people that this would be bad for business, say a physics educated head of a major investment fund, or the head of large technology based corporation.
If I were overly cynical I would worry about what business this is good for and who they know to talk to…
April 20th, 2006 at 11:52 am
> Even with the additional probability that the bunkerbusters blast leaks radioactivity out from the fissure.
Just so there is no mistake.
The nuclear bunkerbuster does not penetrate deep enough to just “leak radioactivity”. You will have significant nuclear fallout and all the usual side effects.
April 20th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Count Iblis (from comment#14 to Berry) – Are you implying that it would be rather pointless for Iran to first attack Isreal (a hypothetical enemy) because Isreal (a hypothetical enemy) has a superior counter-attack response mechanism enabling Isreal to momentarily survive an initial nuke attack by Iran? Questioned in the reverse: are you implying that Iran has an inferior counter-attack response mechanism to Isreal’s more superior counter-attack response mechanism? If the answers to these questions are in the absolute affirmative, then one can draw the following two conclusions: 1) the final outcome of a nuke-attack-counter-nuke attack initiated by Iran would – more likely – lead to bilateral destruction on both sides -yet (in contrast) 2) the final outcome of a nuke-attack-counter-nuke attack initiated by Isreal would – more likely – lead to unilateral destruction on one side. Therefore, it appears that a nation’s intrinsical nuke strength lies more in its ability to have a strong counter-attack system than its ability to have a strong initial attack system. In addition, could you please furnish me with a hierarchical list of nations with the best counter-attack response system to nations with the worst counter-attack response system? Keep in mind, my understanding of nuke strategy is quite infantile.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
> nuke strength lies more in its ability to have a strong counter-attack system than its ability to have a strong initial attack system.
Sounds (and is) absurd, but this is actually correct. Counter-attack capability requires more complex technology, like submarines with underwater fired nuclear missiles (and all the command-control issues that come with it).
Israel reportedly does have this capability already.
The list includes of course US, Russia, China and perhaps India.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Wolfgang:
As far as I am aware, India does not actually *have* an assembled *anything*, so that if attacked, it will take over a month to respond, even though they do have the technology. The reason is that the attack is most likely to come from Pakistan or China, and counter-attacking EITHER country would mean radiation fallout in India too, and would lead to over 100 million deaths within a few months. As far as I can see, no Indian politician (no matter how idiotic) is THAT stupid.
This is the sad thing about the Indian situation: say China/Pakistan attack India with nukes. India knows it cannot possibly respond, but the US nukes China (it will never nuke Pakistan, since it has served as an American watchdog against India for decades) and the winds carry the radiation fallout to NE Indian states. End result: several hundreds of millions dead, i.e. 50% of India’s population wiped out in a few months due to strikes and counterstrikes, in a war not started or desired by them.
Whoo!
April 20th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
India was working on the ATV (a nuclear powered submarine) and leased a similar vessel from Russia for a while. I am certainly no expert on India’s capabilities and most of this is probably not discussed in the public domain.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
I forgot to mention that by 2002 a typical estimate was that India had 30-35 nuclear warheads stockpiled. Of course, I do not know the readiness of such weapons.
April 20th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Count Iblis,
As of 2005 the CIA has done little other than fund the feckless Reza Pahlavi. It has not funded dissent groups to any substantial degree, nor has is coordinated with them on plans for a surgical decapitation strike, nor has it carried out this strike. [For example, we turned our backs on the massive student uprising in Tehran in July 1999.] [The general feeling in the U.S. administration seems to be that they should allow Iran to go nuclear, because stopping them would result in bad press. And when they get the bad press resulting from an Iranian-nuked American city, they'll already be out of office.]
Guthrie,
The cold war is over. The cost of direct intervention has reduced sufficiently that we need no longer take the cheap route of installing a despot loyal to us. We can now afford to do the hard work of building democracies. [Incidentally, the Shah's despotism, severe as it was, pales in comparison to savagery that followed the revolution. An indication of this is the relative easy with which he was ousted.]
Suppose that Pat Robertson and his followers had taken over the United States, imposed a brutally repressive “Christian” regime, slaughtered all challengers be they believers or not, and — to consolidate power — provoked an 8 year war with Mexico in which he used children as young as 12 as human land mine detectors. Most Americans would welcome foreign intervention. I bet you would, too.
April 20th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Off-topic: http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_051114.html
April 20th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
This is directly on topic:
http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers18%5Cpaper1765.html
especially question 5 and beyond.
April 20th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
If America attacks Iran, the finger on the button will belong to a right-wing Republican; but much of the responsibility will lie with the liberal hawks who provided cover for the adventure by treating the violation of international law as a normal activity. For a great many people, including many who are not obviously fundamentalist nut jobs, it has become perfectly rational to treat world domination the obvious and legitimate goal of American foreign policy. I expect we’ll pay for this hubris.
If I were an Iranian, I’d sure want my government to have the bomb.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
It’s interesting to review the cold war as a historical data point. The myth in the United States was that we were building up our nuclear arsenal to counter the Soviet threat. The reality was that the U. S. was in the lead and the Soviets were responding to our buildup.
I do not believe the issue is nuclear capability, it is a cultural divide Christianity vs. Islam that is at the core of this. Islam is growing faster than Christianity and that shift in “market share” is what’s worrying a lot of people. Until we respectfully accept the differences of their belief structure and are willing to openly discuss the “ownership” of oil issue which is at the root of some of this, we cannot hope for a long term effective resolution of this issue.
We don’t run the world. We should stop acting like we do.
April 20th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
This kind of reminds me of the 1966 Jason study by Freeman Dyson, Steven Weinberg and others advising that using tactical nuclear weapons against North Vietnamese infiltrating into South Vietnam was not a good idea. As in the Iranian case, the point being made is completely obvious and there’s no evidence the U.S. military wanted (or wants now) anything to do with such a nutty idea.
But, as in the case of Jason and Vietnam, this document stays silent on the much more real and serious issue of whether non-nuclear warfare makes any sense under the circumstances. Vietnam was a horrific disaster for the Vietnamese and for the US, and the real danger here is that we are just at the 1966 stage of an even greater US vs. Iran-Iraq war that will grow out of control over the next few years. It would be helpful if well-known physicists and others would start publicly addressing this problem, not just the tactical nuclear weapon issue.
April 20th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Eugene,
Indeed, nuclear weapons are in an entirely different class than other forms of weapons in terms of destructive ability.
However, that is not germane to whether not the US should use nuclear weapons apart from the stigma they carry. The US already has an enormous, well-managed and well-practiced nuclear capability, so if one small nuke gets the job done better than 1000 conventional sorties, why not use it? This would not be an enhancement of the US’s capability, just a use of it.
***
Pacian,
I agree that the world would see a nuclear deployment as an escalation. Everything the US does is symbolic to the world.
April 20th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Sourav says :
I think you are missing the point. Nobody doubt that you can reproduce the power of a small nuke with lots and lots of conventional weapons. The real question is whether you want to cross that threshold (and thus legimatizing others to cross it). In your opinion, you stated that this threshold has already being crossed.
I disagree. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are poor analogies when compared to the current scenario. The former is the (highly debatable) use of nukes as a way to quickly end a war that has raged for 6 years and a hundred million lives. The latter is the use of nukes to stop an alledged possibility of a future threat.
The world has collectively pulled back in horror from the use of nukes after Hiroshima/Nagasaki. We should be thankful. Why should we let the cat out of the bag again, when we have tried so hard in the past few years to keep it in? The cat has grown a million fold and will kill everyone, including the ones who think they are its master
April 20th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
I must be missing the point. What is the difference between dropping a tactical nuke and the damage-equivalent of conventional weapons? The only difference I can see is stigma. Force is force, and that is what is legitimate/illegitimate, not how one chooses to deliver it.
I don’t see why if a military chooses to use a 1 kiloton tactical weapon as an alternative to conventional bombardment, it would suddenly be more tempted to use 10 megaton warheads. Similarly, just because the US chooses to deploy a 1 kiloton weapon, it would not suddenly entice countries to develop nuclear capability who do not already have such ambitions. Finally, the US has already developed technologies upto multi-megaton and down to suitcase nukes, so the use of tactical nukes would not spur further development.
April 20th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
> What is the difference between dropping a tactical nuke and the damage-equivalent of conventional weapons?
E.g. the nuclear fallout
April 20th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
By the way, the Hiroshima & Nagasaki (10kilo-ton) bombs would be considered tactical nuclear weapons today. Even a ’small’ 5kilo-ton bomb has the equivalent of 10000 conventional bombs, plus the nuclear fallout.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Cynthia,
I agree with Wolfgang, but there are also some other factors to consider here. Iran won’t be able to produce a large stockpiles of nules very soon. Israel is capable to take out incoming Iranian missiles, provided there aren’t too many. It is thus doubtful if Iran would be able to attack Israel at all.
Countries such as the US, Russia and Israel that are capable of detecting incoming missiles are at a clear advantage.
During the Cold war the US would have attacked the Soviet Union within the 20 minutes it would have taken for the Soviet missiles to arrive. A number of B-52 bombers were always on standby with their engines running, ready to take-off on a nuclear bombing mission.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Just one more remark. The B61-11 nuclear bunkerbuster bomb has a “dial-a-yield” function and the yield can probably reach from 1k-ton to 100k-ton.
However, I doubt it would be set to anything smaller than 5kT for the simple reason that for very low yield one has all the disadvantages (radiation & bad politics) without the ‘advantages’ (the high energy). If the US would use the B61-11, I assume the politicians want to be sure the job is finished with only one round of bombing to contain at least the poitical fallout.
April 20th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
I agree with Peter Woit. And if we only talk about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, then the pro-war camp could use that to argue that a war with Iran wouldn’t be so bad because ”we could do it without nukes”.
A war with Iran would have devastating consequences for the West. Iran’s best strategy is be to destroy all the oil installations in the Mid East with their missiles. The oil installations are not defended against a missile strike, so the Iranians don’t have to simultaneously fire a lot of missiles at the same target.
Once the Saudi, Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil installations are destroyed the war will be lost for the US. Iran could still supply the world with their oil after the strike, so they would gain enormously in power. The US could take revenge and bomb targets in Iran, but that wouldn’t get the oil back flowing.
If the oil installations are rebuild, then Iran could just take them out again. So, the US would have no option but to negotiate a cease fire, or to remove the regime in Teheran.
Taking out the missiles by bombing them is not going to work. In the Iraq war Saddam was able to fire missiles at Kuwait and Doha despite all the intelligence gathering from overflights of the no-fly zones.
April 20th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
My pet theory about why Bush went into Iraq was that the Saudi Royal family told him to. Because they were afraid of Saddam coming south again through Kuwait into S. A.. I don’t think they will instruct him to attack Iran because the geography does not lend itself for Iran to “invade” Saudi Arabia.
April 20th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
Another worth reading,
http://forward.com/main/article.php?ref=creveld20060419101
April 20th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Wolfgang,
Doesn’t radioactive fallout above background levels only last for a few months? Of course, the concern for collateral damage is enhanced because bunker-busting would throw a lot of contaminated dirt in the air.
(Of interest: a debate on bunker busting nukes at Physics Today.
April 21st, 2006 at 4:24 am
Wolfgang, there wasn’t any fallout in Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they were air bursts. The total amount of local deposited activity was just 0.02% measured in Nagasaki, according to Glasstone, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons 1950. See also http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm#faq12
The neutron induced activity at ground zero didn’t produce residual doses that would cause radiation sickness.
When you hear about the black rain due to the firestorm at Hiroshima, remember that resulted from the firestorm which got going 30 minutes later. By that time, the mushroom cloud had been blown downwind. So the fallout was trivial. American and British observers surveyed the very low levels of fallout and neutron induced activity on 9 September. In a controlled sample of 36,500 survivors, 89 people got leukemia over a 40 year period, above the number in the unexposed control group. http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm#faq2
April 21st, 2006 at 6:35 am
An airburst won’t take out Natanz.
April 21st, 2006 at 6:43 am
Also worth a read:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/04/19/notes041906.DTL
April 21st, 2006 at 7:03 am
Let me pose a simple question to all the nuclear strategists: why would one believe our species is resilient enough to survive the detrimental effects of radioactive fallout emerging from a massive scale nuclear bomb? Needless to say, Homo sapiens are far from being related to Extremophiles in the domain of Archaea. Consequently, our extremely fragile species is incapable of winning any battle with a nuclear bomb. More importantly, our highly refined species – the embodiment of frail complex life – is even less able to survive the aftermath from a large-scale/nuclear-fission experiment.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:44 am
Cynthia, because 200 fission megatons detonated in the atomsphere in the 1950s didn’t exterminate everyone! In the worst accident, 239 Marshallese Islanders downwind were contaminated but because the fallout dose rises slowly, they were saved by evacuation two days later.
April 21st, 2006 at 10:01 am
You could also try to explode a thermonuclear weapon without a nuclear bomb as a trigger. So far, there is no known way to do this. Perhaps it is possible to use Hf-178 or Ta-180m to make a gamma ray laser that can be used to make radiation implosion work.
April 21st, 2006 at 10:24 am
Only if you were an Iranian who opposed democracy, freedom of speech, women’s rights, gay rights, freedom of assembly, due process, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, fair trials, and freedom from torture. And, moreover, you supported extra-judicial killings, disappearances, summary executions, arbitrary arrest, global terrorism, inhumane prison conditions, the destruction of Israel, and general oppression by a tyrannical clerisy. Then, sure.
Otherwise, you’d be praying for American intervention.
April 21st, 2006 at 11:04 am
Lots of Iranians are unhappy with the policies of their government; but even liberal Iranians want Iran to be run by Iranians; and they have every reason to fear attack from imperial powers, granted the history of the last 150 years. Remember they suffered millions of casualties during their war with Iraq, a war we supported diplomatically and that was before world domination became the more or less acknowledged aim of our foreign policy. The Iranians also have to operate in a region where four other powers (China, India, Pakistan, and Israel) have nuclear weapons and in an era when the norms of international law have been drastically eroded.
If I were an Iranian, I’d sure want my government to have the bomb.
Of course Belizean probably figures that the loss of national independence is a small price to pay for the delights of American occupation, motivated as it surely would be the purest idealism. Why the freedom from torture alone would be worth it.
April 21st, 2006 at 11:05 am
Iran’s missile batteries would be targeted in the initial surprise attack. [Their SCUDs are short range and inaccurate. Their longer range No-dongs require support infrastructure easily identifiable from space. Their even longer range Taep' o-dong 4s and 5s can't be shot from mobile launchers and are similarly sitting ducks.]
I’m going out on a limb here. But I’m guessing that if Iran blew up all middle eastern oil operations outside of their country, we would be inclined to remove the regime there.
But you raise a good point. The chance that this terrorist-supporting regime might attempt to damage the world’s oil supply is yet another reason to remove it forthwith.
April 21st, 2006 at 11:21 am
No country would be happy if their neighbors were supplying an aggressor with much needed energy supplies. When war is imminent, the Iranians would probably demand that their neighbors stop supplying the West with fuel. If they refuse to do that then they are collaborating with the enemy. An attack on their oil installations would then be allowed under international law.
Iran has developed mobile solid fuel missiles that are very hard to take out.
April 21st, 2006 at 11:48 am
They are not merely unhappy. Many are suffering and dying; millions are brutally oppressed.
Wrong. They’d rather have Iran run by a liberal foreign power than by local despots, just as you’d rather have the U.S. run by Canada than by a tyrannical regime of Christian Rightists. Read a few Iranian blogs. Irrespective of this, the U.S. has no interest in running Iran. It would happily end its hypothetical occupation once convinced that another tyrannical minority was unlikely to seize power.
Iran doesn’t have national independence now. The nation of Iran has no say whatsoever in its government or its government’s policies. Only a few of the tyrants in the ruling clerisy do.
April 21st, 2006 at 11:51 am
Has anybody else noticed the lack of affect in the military philosophers hereabout who talk about invading or bombing other countries as if it were the merest technical problem to decide whether or not to use nuclear weapons on the people who haven’t attacked anybody? I guess it’s just garden-variety sociopathy, what used to be called moral imbecility, but maybe it deserves its own paragraph in the DSMIV. The lack of insight is striking. The hawks ascribe insane intentions to the Iranians–they’re just itching to nuke Manhattan, don’t you know–but they don’t seem to notice the craziness of their own fantasies of omnipotence and revenge.
April 21st, 2006 at 11:53 am
Such nonsense. I fail to understand why people are unable to accept the obvious point that it would be in Iran’s security interests NOT to develop the bomb and to instead go the sage route Libya has taken.
They are risking massive retaliation (probably not nuclear, I think thats just a big stick thats being waved around) and possibly war. Worse, even if they developed one, it would cause a regional arms race with Israel and we would likely have a thirty year cold war scenario all over again.
We’ve been hellbent for the last twenty years on global disarmament, people who (for relativism reasons) feel this is no longer applicable, are on the wrong side of history.
April 21st, 2006 at 12:20 pm
You don’t hear anybody saying, “It would be in Israel’s security interests NOT to develop the bomb and to instead go the sage route Libya has taken.” Iran has at least as good a rational for going nuclear as Israel. The alternative for either is to assume the permanent good will of the United States, a pretty dubious proposition.
April 21st, 2006 at 12:42 pm
International law would have undoubtedly sanctioned Hitler’s attacks of London with V2s. I don’t get your point, unless it’s that international law is absurd.
Not quite. Iran’s internal capacity for missile development is modest. They acquire rather than develop. Their No-dong medium range missiles are their only mobile-launchable missiles with any range or accuracy. You can’t launch these without an easily detectable support infrastructure. Iran wants to acquire solid fuel, mobile-launch missiles (M-9/M-11) from China, but these are still of the short range (
April 21st, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Mr. Harrison,
No need to be so melodramatic. A thing can be both horrific and a technical problem. Just because a problem is grotesque (in any sense), should we recoil from a measured analysis of it? I don’t find situational epistemology palatable. Furthermore, this very debate on whether to use nuclear v. conventional is informed by moral parameters. Otherwise, we “military philosophers” would simply assert that a 10 megaton warhead would do the job, and be done with it.
April 21st, 2006 at 1:34 pm
I have no objection to analysis, and I accept that policy makers sometimes have to do terrible things. Indeed, a good part of my objection to the military philosophers is that they don’t have a very firm connection to reality, that they aren’t objective enough. Their activities are more like game playing than adult thinking and feature a heavy component of fantasy.
During the Cold War, I met some of the Rand people—I once even had a long conversation with Herman Kahn. They were a bunch of permanent adolescents who wanted to play Risk with actual human lives. It’s telling that none of the innumerable scenarios they dreamed up had the remotest resemblance to anything that subsequently happened. The liberal hawks and neocons who talk so blandly about war strike me as similarly facetious characters.
By the way, what the heck is “situational epistemology?”
April 21st, 2006 at 2:46 pm
And the Aryan Nation gang has at least as good a rational for being well armed as the owner of the delicatessen next door, these two being in complete moral equivalence.
[last part of the accidentally truncated post #54: Iran wants to acquire solid fuel, mobile-launch missiles (M-9/M-11) from China, but these are still of the short range (less than 200 miles) of later SCUDs but are probably more accurate. U.S. pressure on China seems to have blocked these sales for now. In short, we need to remove the Iranian tyranny lest it become a lethal threat.]
April 21st, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Belizean wrote:
This is colonial bullshit! There is absolutely no country in the world that wants to be ruled by a foreign power rather than a local despot! (Maybe Americans now, but Americans are in the process of losing their b*lls where they prefer safety and slavery to liberty- but I doubt that too). The whole Iraq mess is because of this very basic human wish. And in Islam, it is even more pronounced, where rule by a Muslim government rather than by infidels is important. A few liberal Iranian blogs, likely written by Iranians in the West doesn’t change that fact.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Haelfix wrote:
Head in the clouds! That statement qualifies as “not even wrong”.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Beats me why anybody thinks it is obviously true that Israel is morally superior to Iran. Calling Iranians skinheads–the implication of Belizean’s analogy– is not much
different than calling Israels kikes. Apparently that sort of rhetoical excess is justified by the old explantion ” we have got/the maxim gun/and they have not.” which, of course, is why they want the maxim gun.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Unlike the “we can’t resort to military action because someone might get hurt” mindset that lead to the totally preventable and completely needless deaths of 1.5 million Armenians, 7 million Ukrainians, 30 million additional Soviet subjects, 6 millions Jews, 40 million Chinese, 1.6 million Cambodians, 900,000 Rwandans, 2 million North Koreans, and 1.3 million (and counting) Sudanese.
April 21st, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Indeed. Who says freedom is superior to oppression.
April 21st, 2006 at 4:30 pm
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=32573
April 21st, 2006 at 4:35 pm
“The best bet is to remove it. The U.S. should bribe the Russian and Chinese leaderships and effect Iranian regime change through fomented revolution assisted by and coordinated with American air power, funds, electronic intel, and communications/propaganda assets.”
Belizean, I like your bribery idea.
The problem that I’ve always hadwith the “fomenting revolution” approach is what to do about the Chinese & Russians. You’re bribery idea would solve that. Putin won’t be president forever, and while I’m sure he’s amassed an ample fortune, he doesn’t strike me as the type to turn down a few billion dollars more. Of course we’d probably have to pass out money throughout Russia’s national security apparatus, but I can’t imagine it would cost more that 10 billion. Say another 10 billion for Hu, and we’re all set. 20 billion really isn’t all that much money in the big scheme of things – just a few months of the currently spending in Iraq.
Come to think of it, the current situation in Iraq might make the price much cheaper. Think about it. The US doesn’t exactly have a lot of credibility in the whole “installing a broadly representative democracy” game right now. Putin & Hu will probably think “what a bunch of idiots, they can’t install a friendly govt in Iraq with 150k troops, how the hell are they going to do the same in Iran with no troops?”. They’ll figure there’s no harm in letting us try, so they might as well take our money. But the joke will be on them, of course!
But what about using the 20 billion to bribe Ahmedinejad et al to give up power? That would probably make the revolution itself much cleaner. What do you think about this idea?
April 21st, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Belizean’s “idealism” borders on psychosis if he really thinks that America could have prevented the Armenian and Jewish genocide, overthrew Stalin, occupied Red China, etc. And over and beyond the assumption that one nation has ever had that much power, he has to assume that America is also magically virtuous so that its endless crusades wouldn’t turn out to be pilaging expeditions.
I’ve supported interventions where our national interests are are really at stake or where we can put together a genuine coalition to prevent mischief. I’m not a pacifist. It’s just that I’m also not a war monger who demonizes every potential opponent in order to justify violence. Iran is not the nicest country in the world, but it’s no Nazi Germany either.
The logic here is rather like a James Bond movie. Bond needs impossibly evil enemies to justify his license to kill. Juvenile.
April 21st, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Belizean = John Bolton in real life?
April 21st, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Changing how you think about situations based on your emotional reactions to them. (Which, of course, should not be confused with optimizing situations in accord with your values.)
April 22nd, 2006 at 8:30 am
Belizean, assuming you are correct about the Iranian missiles, they could still defend them using this system that Russia is going to sell them despite US presure.
April 22nd, 2006 at 8:53 am
I read Hersh’s article twice, and I don’t see his main point being discussed here- the attack would begin with 400 airstrikes, and continue with two air campaigns, one to unmask and destroy Iranian defenses, and the other to “degrade” infrastructure- to destroy powerplants, communications etc.
There is not going to be one explosion that solves a problem. The people talking to Hersh were discussing a major war, and one that we could very well lose.
If there is any Hitler analogy to be made here, it might very well be that Hitler never expected the invasion of Poland to spark a major war. That’s not a comment on the nature of good and evil, it’s a comment on the nature of war.
April 22nd, 2006 at 8:56 am
“During the Cold War, I met some of the Rand people—I once even had a long conversation with Herman Kahn. They were a bunch of permanent adolescents who wanted to play Risk with actual human lives. It’s telling that none of the innumerable scenarios they dreamed up had the remotest resemblance to anything that subsequently happened.” – Jim Harrison comment #56
My dad was a civil defence instructor in the UK. Before WWII, they predicted that London would be totally ruined by air bombardment (conventional weapons) and fallout (actually they assumed mustard gas, but both have a cancer risk). So you can say that civil defence is always wrong.
However, Hitler didn’t use gas because it wouldn’t do much – because everyone in Britain had a gas mask!
Herman Kahn took on the unenviable task of telling the truth, and playing public benefactor is a thankless task.
Any fool can come up with calculations showing that any type of weapon can kill everyone, but what Kahn did was to show that civil defence is valuable in most practical situations. If you do that, it deters attacks.
April 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
Boy, this thread has really taken a few twists and bent them into some convenient directions. I have relatives who lived in Iran during both the Shah and Khomeni’s regimes. My nephew served in the Iranian army in the war against Iraq. The age is not the biggest factor but behavior is. Just as the Soviet Union’s Red Army would take their youth gangs and jail birds and send them to the front lines (mostly with empty weapons) at gun point to draw fire and see where mines may lie ahead, so did the Iranian army do the same as other armies have done in history.
Right now former eastern Europeans cannot believe that while America’s Clark Kents are being sent to the front lines to die, back home the likes of Charles Manson remains protected. The very fact that our armies and allies armies had killed off many of their child molesters gave them an incentive to shake hands with us and forgive us and move right into our country after any battled conflicts.
I see more and more Americans in the inner city and in the gang neighborhoods wishing we would adopt the same policy..12 olds are picking up weapons and using them right here and there is now a culture that worships male macho dominance throughout the United States more than ever.
I wrote this not because I think it is the road that we must necessarily follow. When we bully bullies we become bullies ourselves.
I wrote this in response to a few here who might need to take a second look at the false halo they may have over their heads and to realize that the desire to bring the same pains to our own citizens harbors within all of our reactionary emotions. I take gang bangers to school each day on a bus and there are times when I feel there is a way out for them and other times when I feel that they are better off dead. Within them are seeds that can send them either way. In that respect they are no different than the rest of us.
April 22nd, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Doesn’t look like this system would be effective against F-117As or Raptors. If it would be, however, this is another argument for accelerating attack plans and increasing bribes to Russian officials.
April 22nd, 2006 at 7:34 pm
Amen, brother! After all, who wouldn’t prefer abject oppression by locals to freedom fostered by foreigners? We have, of course, the well known example of black slaves in the American south invariably siding with their local plantation owners against their Yankee liberators, and Jewish concentration camp residents repeatedly urging allied forces to leave them to the mercies of their fellow Germans.
April 22nd, 2006 at 7:47 pm
The TOR-M1 is capable of taking out bombs and missiles fired from aircraft. Stealth aircraft like F-117A have a much larger radar signature than typical bombs, so they should pose no problems (if they come close enough). Anything larger than 0.1 square meters radar cross section can be engaged up to a distance of 12 km. This system is ideal to protect your longer range missile/air defense systems.
April 22nd, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Belizean:
Suppose that there existed some African superpower in the early 1800s and that they had invaded the US to liberate the slaves and install a new democratic system that would allow the African Americans to participate in elections etc.
I’m 100% sure that this could never have worked. You would have had a strong insurgency and you would also have a lot of terrorists attacks against African American and against American who collaborated with the occupation forces.
April 22nd, 2006 at 10:39 pm
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. If the Western powers in general and the United States in particular simply had a policy of putting any tyrant responsible for the deaths of, say, 100,000 people on their terminate-at-all-cost list, a substantial fraction of the 80 million lives lost to tyrants in the 20th century could have been saved. The tyrants would have been killed or deterred well before their pile of victims figured into the millions.
Absolutely. That’s America’s stock and trade — crusade and pillage. Just imagine how much better off countries like Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, not to mention the whole of western and central Europe, would be without American pillaging. And Africa, don’t get me started — one pillaging operation after another. Then of course, there was that attempt to conquer South Vietnam — no doubt for its oil. And we’re still looting Afghanistan and draining Iraq of all its assets without investing a dime in either place. Good thing we’re smart enough to divert attention from our pillaging ops with billions in foreign aid and World Bank subsidies.
April 22nd, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Of course it would work, because in essence it did. Look at the historical record. Terrorism against blacks (and their white sympathizers) in the south continued for 100 years after the slaves were liberated — long after the northern occupiers withdrew. But blacks were still better off than they would have been had they continued to be enslaved for a century. And a fully inclusive democracy ultimately appeared.
The only difference your hypothetical example (black liberators/occupiers) would have made is that the intensity of terrorism by racist whites would have been higher. So the occupying power would have had to remain longer. If this black superpower were astute enough to understand that their occupation would need to last long enough for a couple of generations to grow up in the new environment, their success in installing a more inclusive democracy would be all but assured. This is because the most rabid racists (those most prone to commit terrorist acts) would die off to be replaced by successively less rabid racists who would increasingly accept the new reality that they would nevertheless continue to dislike. Meanwhile, the fraction of the population thriving in the new environment and fully familiar with it — having known nothing else — would continue to rise.
April 22nd, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Count Iblis,
I don’t think that this is correct. Both the F-117A and the F-22 were designed to have radar cross sections on the order of that of a typical bird — about 0.01 square meters viewed head on. They’re even stealthier viewed from below, when they’re not directly overhead.
April 24th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Check the claims in this article:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/floyd1.html
April 24th, 2006 at 7:26 am
This, too, is worth reading:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/birchblog/index.php?entry=entry060421-181315
April 24th, 2006 at 7:36 am
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309096731?OpenDocument
April 24th, 2006 at 9:10 am
Arun, the earth-penetrator base surge radiation studies you link to assume a large fission yield. The “Uncle” test at Nevada in 1951 was at earth penetrator depth and was 1.2 kilotons fission, available in declassified report DASA-1251. The fallout was slightly heavier than the 1.2 kt “Sugar” surface burst tested in the same series, with the serious hazards a few hundred metres around ground zero upwind and 1-2 km downwind. If you are using an earth penetrator you would need to tell people to take cover for from the base surge and fallout, or walk out of the area.
The time to walk away is short compared to the time taken to accumulate a serious dose for such a small weapon. The dose rises slowly, you can see the underground burst fallout hazard (not the radiation, the actual fused particles of fallout), so what’s the big deal?
April 24th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
I believe a large yield is going to be needed to destroy Natanz.
April 24th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eglobsec/publications/pdf/10_1Nelson.pdf
April 24th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Arun, the fallout dose takes many hours to accumulate, indded much of it is accumulated over a period of days. The authors of those papers assume that everyone over several square kilometres is a sitting duck. You can walk away in time to avoid a fatal dose.
April 24th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
We are all assuming that these nukes will even hit thier intended target, remember the “precision’ strikes in Iraq? I’m not sure about how subsurace bombs compare to thosse you would drop on a city .A ground penetrating explosion soaks up much of the thermal radiation and has a smaller blast radius, but does it make the air fallout worse? The blast site itself will also become hot, how long will it remain radioactive?
April 25th, 2006 at 4:28 am
The fallout decay rate is approximately porportional to t^-1.2, so at 7 hours it is only 10% of that at 1 hour, and at 2 days it is 1% of that at 1 hour, etc. There are 210 radioactive fission products which decay in ‘chains’ of a few steps into 90 stable end products. These 300 nuclides consist of 36 elements, with isotopes ranging from zinc-72 to terbium-161. About 72% of the half-lives are under 24 hours, and only 4% exceed one year. It is also easy to sweep you or hose off fallout from land burst explosions:
‘A number of factors make large-scale decontamination useful in urban areas. Much of the area between buildings is paved and, thus, readily cleaned using motorized flushers and sweepers, which are usually available. If, in addition, the roofs are decontaminated by high-pressure hosing, it may be possible to make entire buildings habitable fairly soon, even if the fallout has been very heavy.’ — Dr Frederick P. Cowan and Charles B. Meinhold, Decontamination, Chapter 10 (pp. 225-240) of Dr Eugene P. Wigner, editor, Survival and the Bomb, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1969.
April 25th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
As a counterpoint for all the useful and unuseful academic, scientific, and humanistic ramblings above — I suggest everyone see the stunningly moving, sad, and brutally honest photo exhibit by Paul Fusco from Magnum currently on the homepage of Slate.com. http://www.slate.com
Those are the effects of nuclear radiation, ten years out.
April 25th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Belizean,
I see you have been back, but still no comment on my idea of bribing Amhedinejad and his buddies to give up power. I still think it would be more likely to work than your idea of bribing Putin & Hu to allow us to foment a revolution. What do you think?
April 26th, 2006 at 11:32 am
weichi,
This won’t work. Unlike the jaded leaderships of Russia and China, Ahmedinejad is a true believer. The only viable option is to depose or kill him. Moreover, because he is merely the current front man for the ruling clerical elite, this must be destroyed as well.
It looks like the Bush administration’s shortsighted fear of bad press will soon result in an age of unprecedented nuclear proliferation and blackmail against the West by scores of Islamic terror groups. If you think that the West was overly timid in the face of cartoon jihadists, just imagine how we’ll be once they’ve gone nuclear. Assuming that there’s a limit to our submission, the West’s inaction now will surely lead to WWIII later. I now have some inkling of what analysts steeped in common sense must have felt during the 1930s.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:56 pm
http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html
should be read.