Nukes, revisited

Anonymous, in response to my post on Nuclear Weapons: Keeping the World Safe for 60 Years, said these things:

>>I would like to know, how exactly would using nuclear weapons on a country to keep them from going to war work? 
Very effectively


>>If Iran invaded Pakistan, and Pakistan used its nukes to attack Iran, the fallout would kill every last man, woman, and child in the Middle East. 
Hmmmm, probably not.  Prevailing winds being what they are, odds are better that Pakistan would be impacted more than the rest of the Middle East.  Take a look at the data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Probably wouldn't kill every person.  Depends, though, on how many bombs Pakistan has and how bad their targeting is.


>>And, have nuclear weapons kept wars from happening? No. Maybe they kept the US and the USSR from going into all out war, but they found ways to fight each other regardless. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, to name a few. 


If you read my post, it was all about how nuclear deterrence only works when the actors are rational, as the US and USSR were during the Cold War.  The post was about the stupidity of unilateral nuclear disarmament and the abandonment of missile defense.  Mutually Assured Destruction wasn't used to discourage conventional war (as you point out in these proxy wars), it was designed to discourage nuclear war.


You also ignored the central point that the LACK OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS on our part would do nothing to reduce nuclear weapons on anyone else's part, especially those countries we trust least with them.  North Korea, Iran, Pakistan do not have nukes because WE do, they have them because they want to deter South Korea, Japan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, India. 


>>No country would use nuclear weapons on an invading country, that makes no sense. They would kill themselves in the process.


Oh, that depends.  Granted, WW3 would have been fought in Europe again, but, US strategy included the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield, even at risk to Western European allies and NATO troops.  Depends on how bad you're losing.


>>Nuclear war could only lead to one thing: the annihilation of the entire human race. 


Not necessarily true.  Certainly possible, in the all-out sense, but, not guaranteed.


>>Your idea of nuclear weapons as peace keepers, especially today, is completely foolish.


No, that was the reality of the Cold War.  Period.


However, you probably stopped reading the post because it was critical of Obama's naivete'.