Thanks! First topic I suppose would be about nuclear warfare and it's development. Let's say one lives in a country that has not produced such weapons, and that country is not in the best of relations with some others that do have those weapons, then should they invest on creation of nuclear weapons themselves to, I guess, level the playing field?

That depends upon whether one's country is under the US nuclear umbrella and then whether one's country has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of the early institutional heart attack moments of Donald Trump's Presidency came when he asked why Japan, South Korea and Taiwan did not just develop nuclear weapons and allow the US to withdraw most of its grounds forces from China's perimeter.

thanks for the response, I did not know those treaties existed! but for the sake of the argument, let's say that the country is not under those treaties. Heck, let's say that the treaty didn't exist, and we're just going by the ethics and morality of developing a weapon of mass destruction for warfare/to prevent warfare itself.

Or maybe I should rephrase the question: should one try to develop nuclear arms just to prevent war, purely because everyone else around them has said weapons?

it's a rather interesting homework given to us, and a rather icky topic to hand to us who do plan to take the Hippocratic oath sometime in the future. I think I have an argument at hand (purely because Vinland Saga's lessons have poisoned me), but I'm fairly curious to the other side of the argument

It's rather easy to claim to be altruistic and optimistic. Be all "Violence is never the answer and developing weapons is not the right way!" but is the path towards lesser bloodshed only accessible with a dangerous weapon in hand?

Well, the Hippocratic Oath used to include an explicit prohibition on performing abortions. So it is already established to be relativistic and subservient to the fashions of situational ethics.

yet another interesting issue! I have no qualms with abortion that is true, but I am still extremely conflicted with nuclear weapons haha

My point was simply that such things are not rooted in some fixed moral system.

Much more interesting than this hypothetical question is the question of what do you do with a active nuclear power plant in an active war zone and there are enemies inside that shoot at you?

@gopher27 i don't disagree at all! Though I myself am still trying to figure out where to actually draw the line

@GOD is that in reference to something occurring today? My goodness that is a loaded question you gave me... If death is the only outcome, and the fate of a future you won't get to experience lies in your hands, what would one do...

It depends on the enemies I'd guess, as well as the location of this power plant. Would I sacrifice my country or an area of that country just to get back at those who took my life? I wouldn't have the heart to press that button, but I'm not sure if I'd feel the same if that actually happens to md

Threaten to induce a meltdown to make your enemies retreat? Ultimate suicide bomb?

No just hypothetical but let’s assume that it’s also the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe.

Also I’ve read today that the Iranians have decided to answer your original question by establishing more resources to get to the bomb.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/22/us-bombs-unlikely-to-reach-underground-iran-nuclear-site-report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCKJi3CKGE

@gopher we don’t do suicide bombs in Europe

Didn't a female pilot pitch kamikazes to Hitler during the war and offer to recruit female pilots for the suicide missions?

https://youtu.be/8UoQywoxm2o?t=110

I'm with the belief "Mutually assured destruction" is a thing. It is the only reason we are not currently looking at a full scale NATO invasion of Russia and why they moved against a neutral nation.

There have been conflicts between nuclear powers, but nobody wants to be the first to use the bomb since 1945. It will be a diplomatic death (and probably a literal one).

My opinion is that the A bomb and the effort of the west to combine their economies (the EU with the help of the US), so we can't attack each other, are two of the most important reasons why there was barely any war conflicts in Europe since WW2. The main accidents were outside the EU (Greece-Turkey, Yugoslavia, the civil wars of eastern Europe and now - RussiaVsUkraine).

Unfortunately, overreaction is a thing. It is possible that we won't be so lucky in the future and an A bomb can be dropped.

The vital question for me is: what then? How are we as a society going to treat the user?

@Gopher there is significant historical debate regarding the Hippocratic Oath and the forbidding of abortion. Other Hippocratic texts from 275 AD detail and allow abortions. In fact, it appears there were more then one Hippocratic school of thought. Which more points to the fact that History is merely a narrative someone writes down and pretends to be a monolith.

@Synarus...I fail to grasp the relevance of your statement to the validity of mine.

The only reason why North Korea hasn't gone the way of Libya and Syria etc, is because North Korean knew that have the Bomb was the only card that the US respects. The joint agreement with Iran was working until Trump threw a tanty and pretty much scrapped that deal. Much as Bush jnr scrapped the arrangement with North Korea that Clinton had negotiated.

@Mikey99 And NK have the backing of China and Russia. Otherwise it didn't matter if they develop the bomb, if their people die from starvation.

In what ways are the paths of Libya and Syria similar?

The Iran Nuclear Deal was hardly working. I would argue that it was illegal under US law any way.

Clinton did not negotiate the deal with North Korea. Jimmy Carter interjected himself into the situation and allowed North Korea to assert that a deal had been agreed to, which the Clinton Administration was not willing to invest the time, attention and political capital to undo. Similarly, it was basically just paying off an extortionist, and North Korea violated the spirit of nearly every element. China shutdown a pipeline for maintenance cutting off energy to North Korea during the Bush era to force a stronger deal.

Libya and Syria have both plunged into civil war for several years, albeit with opposing outcomes.

One country faced an external intervention and the other did not. Wasn't the conversational thread about nuclear weapons shielding one's country from external interventions?

In other news:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPATTyiXaEw

Huh. Both have had planes from a host of nations dropping bombs on perceived or real military targets, which one is supposed to be the one without external intervention?

@gop[her, just a lot of people sharing their opinions instead of facts, and presenting "facts" as facts, when really many non-scientific facts are just myths that we create to reinforce patriarchal, religious, political or economic systems of control.

For example, science has proven shared moral beliefs across countries, ethnicities, etc, there is a fixed moral baseline, but that conflicts with Capitalism or geo-political concerns so instead we justify things as subjective, when historical actions can and should be viewed objectively. Almost every culture and faith comes up with "thou shalt not murder", but its the violence of the elites that creates exceptions. Those exceptions are made-up, we all know what murder is, and we all know war is murder.

@GOD...Libya clearly faced a serious external intervention at the beginning while the state was still functioning and the regime largely still in power with the clear purpose of toppling the regime. Syria largely dissolved as a functioning state into a brutal civil war and into the resulting vacuum various actors from all side deployed proxies. The point of the discussion was about the power of nuclear weapons to shield regimes from external intervention. And I genuinely thought intervention into Libya was a horrible idea on that principle alone. Qaddafi surrendered and dismantled a serious nuclear weapons program, and game theoretical commitment to the declared strategy in a time consistent manner was vital to future credibility regrading such issues. I would go so far as to say that intervention in Libya rendered pointless all future American policy around nuclear non-proliferation (and disarmament), which the last decade in Ukraine has reiterated.

@Synarus...Which "science" would that be? Haidt may be correct about any number of things, but I would not classify him as a "scientist". But I feel compelled to add that it must be blissful to live in a fantasy world where noble subalterns are unacquainted with self-rationalized murderous violence. The crew of the Bounty murdered each other to the last man on Pitcairn Island as I would have expected them to. The leading cause of death for men among hunter/gathers in a pre-capitalist and pre-geopolitical framework was violent murder.

But it is worth noting that the surviving children on Pitcairn Island ended up adopting a particularly harsh, Puritanical form of Christianity that very tightly defined behavioral morality. Adam Smith was by vocation actually an academic moral philosopher with a theological bent. His magnum opus was actually a book about morality. The positive reception of that book got him hired by Charles Townsend (unintended father of the American Revolution) to serve as tutor and chaperone for his son on a Grand Tour. The pension that was his reward funded his writing of The Wealth of Nations as an avocational side project. One of Smith's assertions within his day job was that individuals who live more perilous lives, less insulated from the shocks to life and livelihood, tend to embrace more austere and harshly moralistic religions.

Oh wow, thanks to everyone that has contributed to this forum so far. I'll get back to this if I can to have an opinion on the matters

Coffee and keyboards and popcorn

@JohnyD I also believe that a MAD situation is a good way to cancel it out, and thus ultimately negate the use of it. Supposedly, and may I say theoretically?, it is a way to hinder war as a whole. But I do think underreaction is also a potent killer, just as much as overreaction. Do please enlighten me on the Russo-Ukrainian war because I don't have the facts straight. I heard that there aren't many interventions being handed? What is stopping the US from threatening Russia with the bomb? What do you think prominent leaders should do in the situation at hand?

Also for everyone else, I would appreciate some form of citations here and there because there are a lot of sentences being thrown around that I don't even know where to start XD. NK being backed by China and Russia, is that an obvious thing? A conspiracy? Or something of an open secret? Or is it just putting 2 and 2 together?

I opened this forum for a debate. Now I'm being more aware of my own ignorance the more I read XD

The more one learns the more one knows what one does not know...the better one should understand the enormity of one's own ignorance.

On NK just look up how the state survived the Korean War (millions of Chinese soldiers).

@CoffeeAndKeyboards Back to your original question... There are so many different variables that would have to be considered in your scenario. Does your country have financial, industrial, or natural resources in a quantity that would make a neighbor want to annex/subjugate it? Is it strategically located? Is there a history of conflict between you and the nations you are concerned about? I don't believe any of the current nuclear powers would use them simply because they "do not like" the leadership/people of another country. I think having the weapons available would make you a likely target of a first strike. Personally, I believe that every country that owns nuclear ICBMs has them aimed at multiple countries, according to the threat they feel from that country and the area that would need to be covered. Once those started to fly, I think all would be launched (in cycles to create the greatest damage) and those with better defense systems would hope that some survive. The use of a smaller payload tactical missile or "dirty bomb" MAY keep the retaliation at that smaller scale, but I doubt it. I know the Soviet doctrine included them while I was in army intelligence in the 80s. If you are concerned with one of the nuclear 'super powers', creating a small arsenal of them yourself would only ensure that your nation was one of the first ones annihilated. I just feel that 'most' nations would be less likely to use them against a nation that does not have them. Now, if you are worried about a neighbor that has a lunatic in charge of those weapons, having your own wouldn't probably deter him/her. Instead it would likely provoke them. There are enough of those weapons in the world, your best bet would be working on a relationship that would put you in a position to have a common defense treaty with a nation willing to cover you under their nuclear umbrella. You still may get annihilated if there is a world-wide nuclear holocaust, but more than likely it would be the fallout that would get you, instead of direct hits. Just an additional thought on the matter, I think the biggest danger is if a single power manages to create either a way to disable their opponents missiles across the board, or creates a defense system that has at least a 80-90% reliability. If that happens, they may feel secure in lighting them up. That's one person's opinion you asked for. That's as general as I could make it without getting into any specific political situations.

Tangentially off of Samj's final point - isn't it then the case that any country with functioning missile defense systems keep it an absolute secret, to the best of their ability? because if you remove the 'mutual' of MAD, then you've suddenly removed the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons

@Coffee The US is a leader in the world nuclear de-escalation efforts. If they start threatening Russia with bombs, they lose all credibility for the foreseeable future.
@Samj said it well, it's probably best to be under someone's nuclear umbrella and worry only about conventional wars.
The A bomb usage is considered by the modern world as inexcusable with the exception being retaliation to a nuclear strike. Whoever uses them aggressively will probably going to be treated harsher than the allies did the nazi leaders (with the exception of the recruited ones, obviously).

Update to my previous hypothetical scenario: what if one of the warring parties drains the lake providing cooling water to the power plant?

Depending on the geography of your "hypothetical" situation... That could have dire ramifications for other neighboring countries as well if one entity is trying to create a nuclear meltdown. There is no controlling exactly where and to what extent it would effect a region. They could possibly plan according to expected weather/wind patterns, but there are just too many variables for any 'sane' nation to risk it if they also border the one being sabotaged. When dealing with a power hungry despot though, all bets are off. It's time to rally all the possibly effected countries nearby (and their allies as well) to make a clear statement to the aggressor that creating a disaster of those proportions would not be forgiven and would likely be punished by the world community. (I know, there may be a bloc of nations that really doesn't care about that). Hmmm... we were able to get food and candy to West Berlin... Maybe we could keep enough water coming in as well? I'm sure there are spec ops teams around who would be happy to knock out the 'draining' facilities.

I know there are certain insinuations and it may be inferred that Coffee's line of questions is actually about current events. To be clear, my responses were to the "hypothetical" situations in the original questions, not to actual events occurring now.
My comment about supplying water to refill supplies does not work in the event of a dam break. This was brought to my attention, so I thought I would make it more clear.