Quote:
Originally posted by Table 5@Aug 23 2004, 05:26 PM
the thing is cow, since they were the "progressive" countries moving towards nuclear power, it was probably seen as a legitimate and viable war tool of the future. Yes, you had both sides balancing each other out, but the fact remained, when you have such a nuclear arsenal ready to go, its still very disconcerning that one mistake could start a whole downfall.
and yes, in essence today might be even more dangerous, but as it is,
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the thing is cow, since they were the "progressive" countries moving towards nuclear power, it was probably seen as a legitimate and viable war tool of the future. Yes, you had both sides balancing each other out, but the fact remained, when you have such a nuclear arsenal ready to go, its still very disconcerning that one mistake could start a whole downfall.
I presume you're conceding that it would have been a mistake, rather than intent, that might have started things off. Dangerous to be sure but lacking intent by and large.
At various points in the Korean conflict, the USA gave serious thought to a nuclear escalation with China if I remember right. The USA was probably pretty serious in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which caused the USSR to back down.
its a little hard to go protesting at a terrorists hideout right? Its much easier to protest an american nuclear program when you are still bound by the rules of a democracy that allows you to protest. good luck doing that in north korea or almost all of these rogue countries.
While many protesters in the 70's and 80's included the Soviet Union in their argument, the central focus was still pressure on their own governments. In many, many more cases, it was a stunning call for unilateral disarmament, putting ALL the pressure on their own governments.
That's what's missing today.
We're not talking about the probability of North Koreans staging a protest against their government.
We're talking about millions in the West protesting their own governments just as we saw at the British Submarine base today.
Where have these millions of people gone? Are they conceding a nuclear deterrent is necessary? Has their view of the world changed?
Has the globalization of the world economy, the new protest target, reduced the threat of conventional, non-terrorism, nuclear war?
Or is this about The Protest Generation, the boomers of the 60's and 70's, growing into older age and having different values?
By the way, the Soviet government was fond of staging an occasional anti-nuclear war protest of its own - one was with about 250,000 people in Moscow in about 1985 if I remember right.
Carefully orchestrated and certainly not ordinary.
Didn't the German government, the scene of tremendous anti-nuke protests in the 1980's, indicate the other day it was only a heartbeat away from being able to produce nuclear weapons?
An interesting link:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Pub...rch/peace.html
Cowperson