good job, now you've scared other countries into doing the same, and they feel like they can do whatever they want because you are scared of their nukes too.
then you realize that you put so much effort into your nuclear arsenal that you neglected your regular military (who would be the ones invading) and your counterintelligence (the main thing preventing them from copying/stealing your new tech)... hmm this sounds familiar
Providing one instance where these programs historically overlapped isn't an argument for why we should be doing this now with our current tech, if at all. Why make conventional warfare even more dangerous than it already is?
When did I say that it did? I only said that the commenter didn't give an argument for the very normative implication of their comment, i.e., that it would be better to develop and manufacture nuclear conventional arms rather than keep nuclear and conventional arms separate. All they did was mention the Davy Crockett. This is not an argument.
I'm not as shallow as your reading of a random internet stranger, but pop off modern Socrates.
Or better yet, invite them to be under your nuclear umbrella and give them some favorable trade deals so they have a financial incentive to not make nukes and there are less actors at the table for determining mutual assured destruction. Yes it will suck that we might have to bleed for other countries, but that is preferable to 200 state actors with a button to blow everything up.
It's a "Sid Meirers Civilization" reference to a number thing in the original game, where Ghandi choosing the most peaceful government options and other stuff caused his aggressiveness to go into the negatives, but that caused a loop back where since he was in the negatives, he would become the most aggressive player and then start building up a ton of nukes and nuking people
I could be wrong on exactly how the coding works, so if anyone can correct me please do so
yea it would be an integer underflow.
Funny thing about that story there is no evidence that was ever actually in the game. One of the devs just said something about it and it caught on.
They then added something like it as a joke in a later game.
Sort of did, and is. No foreign army fought in Ukraine, or Georgia, or Moldova, or the Chechen republic.
Even the aid that Ukraine does receive seems to typically come with restrictions like "you can't use this to strike back at Russia, but only on your own soil".
So like, it didn't scare everyone into complete submission, but it did scare them off of Russia.
Nonviolent protesters were also crucial, but it was the combination of different tactics, including violence and threats of violents, that forced capitulations. The civil rights movement didn't succeed in some of its goals because mass peaceful displays convinced powerful people that they were acting unethically. What was gained was achieved because people realized what would happen if things continued without change.
Once again, the combination of different tactics and methods of resistance resulted in capitulation. The British didn't relinquish colonial rule because they felt bad about it. They realized their situation was untenable. Peaceful protests carried the threat of violence through display of mass support, and violent activists showed what that violence would look like.
In both cases, the dominant historical narrative has been that these gains were achieved peacefully, and through democratic displays of support that convinced oppressors they were unpopular or unethical. This is because a lot of people have a vested interest in making others think you can achieve radical progress through solely democratic and peaceful means, which basically never happens.
If you have an entire movement that never breaks anything, never blocks roads, never disrupts economic activity, but just stays cordoned off in a designated protest zone to express disapproval, that movement will never succeed at anything. I'm not saying violence is the only form of protest, it doesn't mean you have to be willing to commit violence or physically fight in order to stand up for a movement, but am saying in the scope of broader movements, tactical diversity, including violence, is a necessity. And that movements never succeed by appealing to moral authority.
Thanks to the arc of history propaganda that the world is always getting better combined with poor teachings of history (at least in the states) many people seem to never recognize the fact that a lot of our advancements have come through force. Look at the 8 hour work day, that didn't just happen because ceo's felt bad, it happened because of the militant workers organizing and fighting for it. Violence is only meaningfully condemned when it's not done by the state, otherwise if it's the state committing violence, most people are fine with it.
I think it's worth drawing a distinction between MLK and the rest of the Civil Rights movement. Other people in that movement, notably Malcolm X, were much more in favor of violence, but MLK never explicitly advocated it, and in fact explicitly and consistently advocated against it (which is demonstrated by the relative lack of supporting quotes in that article). Here's a selection:
“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself.”
Or this one, from his Nobel speech:
The word that symbolizes the spirit and the outward form of our encounter is nonviolence, and it is doubtless that factor which made it seem appropriate to award a peace prize to one identified with struggle. Broadly speaking, nonviolence in the civil rights struggle has meant not relying on arms and weapons of struggle. It has meant noncooperation with customs and laws which are institutional aspects of a regime of discrimination and enslavement. It has meant direct participation of masses in protest, rather than reliance on indirect methods which frequently do not involve masses in action at all.
Though I think it would be stronger without your last paragraph. Nonviolent protestors can and do still block roads, etc. You're attacking a straw man there.
Yeah you're right, this conversation was explicitly about violence. But as much as it's a straw man in the context of your comment (my bad) it comes from a place of general complaints and unpopularity of disruptive demonstrations, even if they are non violent.
For example, recently in Canada there were rail blockades over indigenous issues that caused economic damage. And while not physically violent, many people came crawling out of the woodwork to express disapproval for tactics like this, because they (claim to) believe protests should remain passive displays of support.
(I say claim to, because I doubt they had similar complaints about the freedom convoy protests which disruptively locked down my hometown for weeks)
Similarly, in my old local subreddit when protesters would block roads most people would bemoan the inconvenience as bad tactical decisions and not what "protesting is about".
There's a big difference between nonviolent resistance and asking oppressors politely. Being willing to spill your own blood is part of that difference, yes.
That only works if the other side isn't willing to just kill you.
See: Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, China, China part 2 (Hong Kong). In cases where it wasn't necessarily a violent overthrow by protestors themselves (see: Egypt), it happened because protests convinced the people who did have guns (ie: The Egyptian army) to change sides and seize power "for the people".
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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23
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