OEN member and friend Ward Wilson has been honored with an award. His essay "The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence" has been selected as the winner of the Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Challenge Essay Contest. You can read the official press release here.
The contest had entries from a dozen countries and twenty-four states. The essays will be published in The Nonproliferation Review in the November issue and will be presented at an event in Washington, DC. The contest winner also gets a $10,000.00 prize.
See an article published on OEN that's on a similar subject, here:
Here’s the beginning of the award winning article:
Did nuclear deterrence “keep us safe” for sixty years during the Cold War? Does it, in other words, work? For those who already have nuclear weapons, does nuclear deterrence justify their keeping them? For those who do not have nuclear weapons, do the benefits of nuclear deterrence justify attempts to acquire them? These questions matter because nuclear weapons remain dangerous and powerful weapons that appear to be slowly but steadily spreading.
The conventional wisdom holds that nuclear deterrence – the threat of a nuclear attack in order to dissuade – provides those who possess nuclear weapons with three important benefits: 1) protection against attacks with nuclear weapons, 2) protection against attacks with conventional forces, and 3) an indefinable additional diplomatic clout. If the conventional wisdom is true, it is both a powerful argument against nuclear disarmament and a considerable obstacle to those who wish to prevent proliferation.
There are reasons, however, for doubting the conventional wisdom. Closer inspection calls the fundamental soundness of nuclear deterrence theory into question. Nuclear deterrence relies on the threat to inflict great harm with nuclear weapons. “Inflicting great harm” is usually presumed to mean attacks on cities. Classical deterrence theory (that is, deterrence prior to World War II), however, defines deterrence as a threat of war. It is natural to presume that attacks against cities are a part of war. However the historical record shows that attacks against cities have little impact on the course of wars, and that defining them as threats of war is at best problematic. City attacks are better understood as terror attacks. Nuclear deterrence is best understood, therefore, as the threat of terrorism on a grand scale, not as classical deterrence that employs a threat of war. Attempts to evaluate it based on historical examples of deterrence with military force promote a fundamental confusion about the nature of nuclear deterrence and are unlikely to accurately predict its success. Unlike military threats, there is strong evidence that threats or attacks aimed at civilians almost never work.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
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On the topic of Nuclear Deterance, readers must see the most important book I have read in my life, the new book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. by James W. Douglass. Here is the best picture of what exactly JFK faced from the "first strike" crowd in the JCS.
This book is the most convincing rebuttal to what--IMO-- is the false-left arguments put forward by Chomsky and Cockburn and the "publishable leftists" that JFK was 'just another Cold Warrior' That view is far from being baseless.
Its just that Douglass provides the other 53% of the picture. This book is not simply an assassination book but rather a picture of WHY it happened, a picture of when the Cold War permanent military industrial bureacracy reached a point of no return.
I would also like to recommend James Caroll's exellent House of War on this topic
by
Nathaniel Heidenheimer (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 45 comments)
on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 7:43:56 AM
Deterrence was merely a cover story to allow our nuclear war fighting elite the resources necessary to build up the weaponry needed to kill us all.
It is likely that JFK did not know the truth of the situation when he first came into office. After the Cuban missile crisis he understood what the real game plan was and set about to stear us in a new direction.
The nuclear 'Trigger' has been pulled on us several times over the decades. At this time Iran is scheduled to be used in the next attempt to bring about a large scale world wide nuclear war.
The plan from 1946 (to wage an all oiut nuclear war) is still the plan today. Our nuclear war fighting elite are hiding underground and are still trying To subject the human race to an all out nuclear war.
The missing nuclear tipped cruise missile did not just fall of the wing of the Minot B-52 last year; that was launched onto us.
We are the Living Dead.
We only exist because "Somebody up there loves us."
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by
Patrick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 401 comments)
on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 1:13:03 PM
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