Nucleur Deterrent

[pilchard]

What’s the Church’s position on this? Someone told me today that the Church has recently made some quite strong statements against Nucleur weapons as a deterrent. JP II et al.

Is this true? Can anyone point me to the relevant documents or addresses?

 

[Al_Masetti]

What’s the Church’s position on this? Someone told me today that the Church has recently made some quite strong statements against Nucleur weapons as a deterrent. JP II et al.

Is this true? Can anyone point me to the relevant documents or addresses?

Good grief. This topic has more than a 50 year history … since the late 1940’s. You might want to start your research with Pope Pius XII.

 

[Benedictus]

What’s the Church’s position on this? Someone told me today that the Church has recently made some quite strong statements against Nucleur weapons as a deterrent. JP II et al.

The Church has been speaking out against nuclear weapons for many decades.

 

[pilchard]

Any documents? links?

might be a question of degree - the amount of money spent if the arms race. i just cant see what is immoral about the deterrent themselves. A bit like owning a weapon - it’s not the having of the weapon - it’s what you use it for - and having it as a deterrent - I don’t see the problem

 

[Hastrman]

Any documents? links?

might be a question of degree - the amount of money spent if the arms race. i just cant see what is immoral about the deterrent themselves. A bit like owning a weapon - it’s not the having of the weapon - it’s what you use it for - and having it as a deterrent - I don’t see the problem

The problem with nukes is they’re obscenely indiscriminating. Vaporising a 3 to 50 mile radius (that’d be, uh, 5 to 80 km) is, unless the target’s been evacuated, going to take out a lot of noncombatants. And to be most effective, it has to be able to hit by surprise, because we now have anti-missile defenses and so do several other countries.

Nuclear deterrence is also a degrading idea based on fear, and is thoroughly ineffective against wackos like Ahmadinejad who think it’s their *duty *to bring about the end of the world.

 

[Al_Masetti]

The problem with nukes is they’re obscenely indiscriminating. Vaporising a 3 to 50 mile radius (that’d be, uh, 5 to 80 km) is, unless the target’s been evacuated, going to take out a lot of noncombatants. And to be most effective, it has to be able to hit by surprise, because we now have anti-missile defenses and so do several other countries.

Nuclear deterrence is also a degrading idea based on fear, and is thoroughly ineffective against wackos like Ahmadinejad who think it’s their *duty *to bring about the end of the world.

The “city buster” nukes in the multi-megaton size went away decades ago.

The calculus of nuclear deterrence needs to start with the technology and discussions surrounding employment of heavy bomber attacks of World War 2. That evolution led directly to the war-fighting theories that led to nuclear superiority and eventually to nuclear deterrence.

MAD (mutually assured destruction) was an outgrowth of the discussion that was favored by former Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara. [What was his middle name?] Anyway, MacNamara wanted to save money. So he embraced MAD.

Further, any discussion of nuclear deterrence needs also to include modern technological defense issues such as the anti-missile Strategic Defense Initiative.

The discussion is a reasonable one to have; however, it will not fit on a bumper sticker.

P.S. For the benefit of readers, lurkers and other posters and non-posters, visit www.abebooks.com and get a copy of “On Thermonuclear War” by Herman Kahn.

Gotta do the reading.

P.P.S. Also gotta get a handle on both U.S. and non-U.S. nuclear weapons programs. I recommend Jeffrey Richelson’s recent book, “Spying on the Bomb”. He’s got a good section on the Soviet nuclear weapons program.

P.P.S. If you get to Las Vegas, visit the Atomic Testing Museum. It just opened a year or so ago. Quite good, although it lacks ( or did lack) detailed information on the Soviet nuclear weapons testing programs.

 

[Benedictus]

Any documents? links?

might be a question of degree - the amount of money spent if the arms race. i just cant see what is immoral about the deterrent themselves. A bit like owning a weapon - it’s not the having of the weapon - it’s what you use it for - and having it as a deterrent - I don’t see the problem

Starting with the Catechism:

2315 The accumulation of arms strikes many as a paradoxically suitable way of deterring potential adversaries from war. They see it as the most effective means of ensuring peace among nations. This method of deterrence gives rise to strong moral reservations. The arms race does not ensure peace. Far from eliminating the causes of war, it risks aggravating them. Spending enormous sums to produce ever new types of weapons impedes efforts to aid needy populations; it thwarts the development of peoples. Over-armament multiplies reasons for conflict and increases the danger of escalation.

A few seconds with Google turned up these two:

Pacem in Terris, John XXIII. See paragraphs 109-113.

Message for the World Day of Peace by Benedict XVI. See para. 13.

 

[JimG]

The United States bishops in a pastoral letter in 1983, gave “conditioned moral acceptance” to possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent, judging that a deterrent was necessary to prevent war. Some bishops have since changed their mind about this, believing that current conditions no longer support the use of a nuclear deterrent.

 

[JimG]

Nukes can be indiscriminate, but they don’t have to be. They can also be smaller than “city killers.” And they can be highly accurate.

During the cold war, if the USSR had targeted a 1 megaton ground burst warhead at a hardened U.S. Minuteman missile silo located 10 miles south of Fortuna, Missouri–one was located there at the time–that would have been sufficient (with a direct hit) to take out the silo, and there were not many civilians in the vicinity, (excepting possibly the retiree in whose back yard the silo was located.) Trouble is, nobody would have targeted just one.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Keep in mind that “nukes cost money”. And large nukes cost a lot of money and they are heavy.

The lighter a country can make a nuke, the less it costs.

An improperly designed nuke might be so “thin” that it might not survive re-entry. But making it tougher and stronger would make it heavier and maybe too heavy for the launching / carrier missile.

So, what has happened is that nukes have become lighter and lighter and smaller and smaller.

Larger nukes were necessary because the accuracy of the earlier bombers and missiles (and knowledge of precise target location) was / were so poor. But as accuracy has improved, the size of the nuke could be made smaller.

Obviously, getting hit with a 1 megaton nuke is going to be “almost” just as damaging as a getting hit with a 5 megaton nuke.

But, sizes have really come down … dramatically.

So, “collateral damage” is greatly reduced.

ANYWAY, many of the arguments are based on the 1950’s designs … at one point the Soviets test-fired a nuke with (as I recall) 68 megatons. [Although that may have been a “device” rather than a weaponized nuke.]

If you visit the Air Force Museum outside of Dayton Ohio, they have (or used to have) full size mockups of some of the nukes. And the old ones were the size of giant sewer pipes… five feet in diameter and 40 feet long, as I recall.

The new ones are the size of bowling balls and weight 50 pounds and have much ower yields. … if that is of any consolation.

But, let us, at least, get the data and information right.

 

[Hastrman]

The “city buster” nukes in the multi-megaton size went away decades ago.

I knew that, but even the little ones are damnably dirty weapons, what with the radioactive leavings. And even a single megaton will, I believe, take out about a 3 mile radius–which is huge. Not that some of our heftier conventional bombs can’t do the same thing.

MAD (mutually assured destruction) was an outgrowth of the discussion that was favored by former Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara. [What was his middle name?] Anyway, MacNamara wanted to save money. So he embraced MAD.

I don’t know what his middle name was, but I think it started with an I or an R. And MAD is an older idea than that–it goes back, actually, to Nikola Tesla’s “Peace Ray,” a theoretical particle beam weapon that he wanted to sell to all the 19th century Powers. Mark Twain wrote essays in favor of the idea. It’s also similar to some of the arguments of the English “Blue Water” School, the camp that insisted England needed to keep apace with continental naval developments or its enemies (by force of habit, the dumber ones usually used France, while the smarter ones used Germany) would be emboldened and attack.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Robert MacNamara’s middle name is Strange.

No, really, it’s Strange.

209.85.165.104/search?q=cachegXixqWkLFQJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara+wikipedia+robert+macnamara&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

[What kind of parents would name their kid “strange”?]

Tesla didn’t write nuclear weapons policy with Mutually Assured Destruction in the 1960’s. That was Robert Strange MacNamara.

MAD was truly immoral.

I knew that, but even the little ones are damnably dirty weapons, what with the radioactive leavings. And even a single megaton will, I believe, take out about a 3 mile radius–which is huge. Not that some of our heftier conventional bombs can’t do the same thing.

I don’t know what his middle name was, but I think it started with an I or an R. And MAD is an older idea than that–it goes back, actually, to Nikola Tesla’s “Peace Ray,” a theoretical particle beam weapon that he wanted to sell to all the 19th century Powers. Mark Twain wrote essays in favor of the idea. It’s also similar to some of the arguments of the English “Blue Water” School, the camp that insisted England needed to keep apace with continental naval developments or its enemies (by force of habit, the dumber ones usually used France, while the smarter ones used Germany) would be emboldened and attack.

 

[Hastrman]

Tesla didn’t write nuclear weapons policy with Mutually Assured Destruction in the 1960’s. That was Robert Strange MacNamara.

Well, I obviously didn’t mean Tesla wrote the policy, considering he died in 1943. I meant that he first proposed the concept of all sides having weapons that would annihilate their enemies, thus making war too costly to engage in. You seem to think MacNamara’s idea of MAD came to him ex nihilo; it didn’t. It was a development of a long-standing idea in pragmatist circles. Have you ever heard of England’s “Blue Water School” in the 19th century? Similar idea, at least insofar as it involved an arms race and was predicated on fear as the deterrent to wars.

Besides, while it’s easy to pin blame solely on MacNamara, it’s frankly an oversimplification. Kissinger deserves some of the blame, too, since he based much of his diplomacy on selling the idea of MAD. There were any number of diplomats and policymakers who employed the idea, all at roughly the same time; to blame MacNamara exclusively is, in essence, simply to relieve your feelings. History is more complicated than that, especially when dealing with bureaucracies. While, considering Prussia was an absolute monarchy, Frederick the Great bears the blame for his policies, it’s a lot harder to pin blame exclusively on his descendent, Kaiser Wilhelm. Was MacNamara responsible for MAD? Sure. Was he solely responsible? That’s foolishness.

 

[JimG]

I don’t know who invented the concept of mutual assured destruction. In any event, when both the U.S. and USSR were armed to the teeth with ICBM’s during the cold war, that seemed to be what was in effect, although we called it a policy of “deterrence.”

If I recall correctly, it was actually our beloved Eisenhower, or at least the policy during his administration, who invented the idea of “massive retaliation.” The idea was that any Soviet strike against a NATO country–even a non-nuclear strike or an invasion–would be met by a massive U.S. nuclear strike using B-52’s against the USSR homeland. Note–not a joining of forces in the war zone in Europe, but a massive nuclear strike against Soviet cities.

Now, we fault the US for targeting civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although it was also done in Germany). But for years and years, targeting of civilian populations was official U.S. policy. And, presumably, it worked, since the USSR never invaded a NATO country and never went to nuclear war with the USA.

During JFK’s run for the presidency, he made political hay out of the “missile gap” between the USSR and the US, which, like WMD’s in Iraq, turned out to be non-existent. Nevertheless, the big push for ICBM’s led to a massive build-up on both sides.

It’s always easy to second guess matters in the future. But back then, the thinking was “I could be wrong, but do I want to take a chance on a USSR first strike, or having to learn Russian as a first language?”

 

[Sixtus]

nd, presumably, it worked, since the USSR never invaded a NATO country and never went to nuclear war with the USA.

What was the ;standoff between East and West that occured around early 1980’s when BOTH sides were conducting ‘manouvres’ and it took JP 2 to secretly meet representatives from both sides and they found a way of retracting without either side giving in or losing face?

I recall in military circles this was the gravest time throughout the whole of the Cold War. But I have never found anything on the net or heard of any books about the subject. Officially it did not happen. Unofficially it was the closest we ever came to war.

 

[JimG]

Actually I give JP II credit for instigating the fall of the Soviet empire; when he encouraged the Solidarity movement in Poland, it ultimately ended in the collapse of the communist regime in that country, followed by the destabilization of the entire Soviet network. Reagan and Thatcher also kept pushing. Guess I’d have to give our lady of Fatima credit as well, as she predicted both the spread of communism and its collapse.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Actually I give JP II credit for instigating the fall of the Soviet empire; when he encouraged the Solidarity movement in Poland, it ultimately ended in the collapse of the communist regime in that country, followed by the destabilization of the entire Soviet network. Reagan and Thatcher also kept pushing. Guess I’d have to give our lady of Fatima credit as well, as she predicted both the spread of communism and its collapse.

In the book, “Victory” by Peter Schwizer check the spelling], the author describes in detail exactly how JPII, Reagan, Thatcher, and others worked together to bring down the Soviet Union.

It was a very dangerous time. The Soviets had taken (installed new Communist regimes in) something like 11 countries in the four years previous to Reagan getting elected. It was quite scary.

Also read “Vietnam: the necessary War” by Michael Lind … who described what he calls the “proxy wars” between the Communists and the West.

There were assassination threats against key senior members of the staffs of Reagan etc. Somebody tried to kill the Pope.

It was a very bad time.

 

[Sixtus]

jimG wrote:

Actually I give JP II credit for instigating the fall of the Soviet empire; when he encouraged the Solidarity movement in Poland, it ultimately ended in the collapse of the communist regime in that country, followed by the destabilization of the entire Soviet network.

The world is greatly indebted to his late Holiness JP2.

I am sure the end of the world would have come a lot sooner had he never intervened.

Just goes to show the power of one man [person] when backed up by the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

[Steven_Merten]

jimG wrote:

The world is greatly indebted to his late Holiness JP2.

I am sure the end of the world would have come a lot sooner had he never intervened.

Just goes to show the power of one man [person] when backed up by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hello Sixtus,

I read where Pope John Paul II was awakened by a call from the president of the United States. The President told the Pope that the Soviet Union had troops lined up on the Polish boarder ready for an invasion. The Pope got involved. The Soviets, troops eating dog food and armorment 20 years old and most in need of repair, saw state of the art sofisticated US aircraft on the launch pad of US carriers, with their engines running ready for launch. The Soviets decided to take Pope John Paul II advice and not invade Poland.

I think there was a bit more than the Holy Spirit backing Pope John Paul II when he diverted a major invasion of Poland.

 

[Steven_Merten]

Hello pilchard,

Which do you see as a more deadly detterant; nuclear weapons or Church anathema?

The “sword” of Christ’s mouth is His ability to hold sins bound to a soul in heaven which causes spiritual death. If a person’s sin is not forgiven by Jesus, they suffer spritual eternal death. Jesus swears to His Apostles that anyone that they hold bound to sin on earth, He will hold bound to sin in heaven. This is what Jesus calls the “Keys to the Kingdom”. One soul going to hell for all eternity, due to Apostolic Successor use of the “Keys to the Kingdom”, to have Jesus bind a soul to sin in heaven, is a greater amount of death, infinite death, than the combine loss of life cut short from all the wars in human history including the use of nuclear bombs.

Jesus empowered Apostolic Successors with the “Keys to the Kingdom”, which can cause spiritual eternal death, which is infinitly more deadly than nuclear weapons, to be used as a detterant.

Please visit: Throwing Stones

What do you think?

**NAB MAT 16:13 **

I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven." **NAB REV 1:16 **

A sharp, two-edged sword came out of his mouth,…I hold the keys of death and the nether world." **NAB ISA 11:4 **The Rule of Immanuel

**He shall strike the ruthless with the **rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.​

**NAB JOH 20:20 **

**“Recieve the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound.”****NAB MAT 18:17 **

"If he ignores them, refer it to the church . If he ignores even the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. I assure you, whatever you declare bound on earth shall be held bound in heaven, and whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be held loosed in heaven."Anathema

…“To understand the word anathema”, says Vigouroux, “we should first go back to the real meaning of herem of which it is the equivalent. Herem comes from the word haram, to cut off, to separate, to curse, and indicates that which is cursed and condemned to be cut off or exterminated……but anathematized, and that he may be stricken by the sword of Heaven”… …"strikened with the sword of anathema; but if plunging to the depths of the abyss,…**In passing this sentence, the pontiff **is vested in amice, stole, and a violet cope, wearing his mitre, and assisted by twelve priests clad in their surplices and holding lighted candles. He takes his seat in front of the altar or in some other suitable place, amid pronounces **the formula of anathema **which ends with these words: Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N-- himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate … …He who dares to despise our decision, let him be stricken with anathema maranatha, i.e. may he be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions. Quoted from: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - Anathema