Xref: utzoo talk.politics.misc:63470 talk.politics.mideast:33589 trial.talk.politics.peace:31 alt.desert-storm:6645 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!decwrl!mcnc!uvaarpa!murdoch!faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU!lhb6v From: lhb6v@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Laura Hayes Burchard) Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast,trial.talk.politics.peace,alt.conspiracy,alt.desert-storm Subject: Re: The Nuclear Option Keywords: mass destruction, anyone? Message-ID: <1991Feb11.111319.9041@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Date: 11 Feb 91 11:13:19 GMT References: <1991Feb9.075438.17779@alembic.acs.com> <1991Feb11.023449.17583@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <1991Feb11.050408.10399@ccu.umanitoba.ca> Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU Distribution: talk Organization: University of Virginia Lines: 43 In article <1991Feb11.050408.10399@ccu.umanitoba.ca> thorntn@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Duncan Peter G. Thornton) writes: >In <1991Feb11.023449.17583@ddsw1.MCS.COM> bhv@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Bronis Vidugiris) writes: >>very well drop a tactical nuke on one of the Republican Guard units. >>I'm pretty sure the U.S. population would support such a move - I'm >>not so sure of world opinion, but I suspect the reaction would be >>negative, but not overwhelmingly so. >I suspect that outside of Britain, and maybe France, the reaction >would be almost uniformly very strongly negative. That goes for >Canada, one of the coalition partners. Oooh, I think it would be negative amongst a lot of us Americans, too. I suspect that even a lot of those who answered yes to the poll would think again when they saw the result. Not incidentally, it would be a violation of treaties which we have signed to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear power. All bets are off, though, if Saddam somehow has managed to put together a bomb, and nukes Tel Aviv. >Whether it is logical or not, using (tactical) nuclear weapons >would seem to be a response very much of a different order. But >I think the reaction would be the same if the U.S. were to use >chemical weapons as well. The U.S. is only barely holding on >to support in a lot of the world, and giving up the position of >moral superiority they can claim by not (since 1945) having used >nuclear or chemical weapons would cost the U.S. very badly. >I think there is some value to having the nuclear threshold as >one which it would cause world-wide horror to cross. What >_clear line_ would there be after tactical nukes? Yes, it would be nasty. Note, for example, what happened after the world more or less winked at Saddam's use of chems against the Iranians; it became integrated into his battle tactics, and now those that stood by now will face chemwar themselves. There's a certain dark justice to it... -- Laura Burchard lhb6v@virginia.edu lhb6v@virginia.bitnet #inc The fact is that one side thinks that the profits to be won outweigh the risks to be incurred, and the other side is ready to face danger than accept an immediate loss. --Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War