Addressing the UN General Assembly, the US president defended the war against Iran, saying it stopped Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon. He predicted a future deal and warned of severe consequences if diplomacy fails.
Which is why they should never have been allowed to be developed. You just showed what kind of rationale would be used to justify something that is still a nuclear weapon, but somehow fits past the MAD idea in some people’s minds. Once we make that line gray, it can be shifted around to allow all sorts of things, and MAD fails.
MAD still works just fine. Iran is not a nuclear nation. The whole idea behind MAD is that nuclear capable nations cannot nuke each other. Some nuclear nations say countries xyz are under our protection, but nobody has such an agreement with Iran.
If the US used a tactical nuke on say Russia it would absolutely trigger a response leading to MAD. The only thing stopping nukes being used on non-nuclear nations was a combination of ethics and diplomacy. Two things the US very much lacks.
MAD never meant you absolutely can’t use nukes, it always referred to who specifically you can’t use nukes on
Which is actually worse. That’s saying both “they’re just small nukes” and “they can’t attack back”. No, it’s not MAD in the case with Iran, but the point was once we start using things like that, we’ll find reasons to excuse it and use them again elsewhere, and MAD will be tested at some point if that happens. We shouldn’t even be having this kind of debate. We seemed to understand that for a while, but now it’s like “well, tactical nukes are different”.
Which is why they should never have been allowed to be developed. You just showed what kind of rationale would be used to justify something that is still a nuclear weapon, but somehow fits past the MAD idea in some people’s minds. Once we make that line gray, it can be shifted around to allow all sorts of things, and MAD fails.
What are you talking about?
MAD still works just fine. Iran is not a nuclear nation. The whole idea behind MAD is that nuclear capable nations cannot nuke each other. Some nuclear nations say countries xyz are under our protection, but nobody has such an agreement with Iran.
If the US used a tactical nuke on say Russia it would absolutely trigger a response leading to MAD. The only thing stopping nukes being used on non-nuclear nations was a combination of ethics and diplomacy. Two things the US very much lacks.
MAD never meant you absolutely can’t use nukes, it always referred to who specifically you can’t use nukes on
Which is actually worse. That’s saying both “they’re just small nukes” and “they can’t attack back”. No, it’s not MAD in the case with Iran, but the point was once we start using things like that, we’ll find reasons to excuse it and use them again elsewhere, and MAD will be tested at some point if that happens. We shouldn’t even be having this kind of debate. We seemed to understand that for a while, but now it’s like “well, tactical nukes are different”.