Quite a lineup on nuclear weapons in today's @washingtonpost Outlook section!
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First,
@vermontgmg on the deep, ingrained reluctance to order a nuclear first strike:https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/would-the-president-actually-order-the-use-of-nuclear-weapons/2017/08/18/a7ff0ed8-837d-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html?utm_term=.9d967f9e3815 …
In both cases, Trump can easily be a counter-example if you want him to be. Not clear he has Truman's taboo. Not clear he cares about allies
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They (taboo and deterrence) are unmeasurable, untestable, and not scientific in any serious sense.
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The evidence we do have on deterrence is that it is not 100% perfect as a strategy — it can fail for many reasons.
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Was Khrushchev deterred by the danger of nuclear war in Cuba? Or did he just get a deal he liked? We can’t know.
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You've set up a really impossible epistemological bar. We can know some things, there are levels of knowledge & plausibility.
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I think I’m just asking for a certain level of scientific knowledge if we’re all going to be asked to risk being blown up.
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We're in that position regardless.
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But it’s not inevitable that nuclear weapons exist. We choose to allow them to exist. Don’t make me quote JFK at you.
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Question for me is not whether deterrence exists (ideas exist, threats exist) but whether they are adequate given consequences of failure.
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Deterrence and Taboo are both things that exist inside peoples' heads. Neither, therefore, can be measured in ant scientific sense.
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Therefore claims of "knowing" things about them, or grouping experiences with them are no more than speculation.
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Bottom line: President Trump is proof even stable, mature democracies can elect leaders who can't be trusted with
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Therefore, nuclear deterrence has to go.
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