The public understanding of Nuclear weapons as huge, potentially world ending threats is a brake on the development or deployment of smaller nukes. The public opposes those as they don’t believe they’re as limited as presented and think their use would still lead to a worldwide conflagration.
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And what is the prevailing wind direction in the eastern Mediterranean? Northwesterly. So the 200,000-something Israelis in the city of Be’er-Sheva better start stocking up on iodine tablets, I guess.
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The public understanding of Nuclear weapons as huge, potentially world ending threats is a brake on the development or deployment of smaller nukes.
Alas, this is simply not true - its too late for that brake to be applied. Micro-nukes are fully developed, and fully deployed. The general public already fatally tolerated their development during the Cold War.
This is why misanthropes feel comfortable in making these threats. “MAD is not relevant at these scales”, goes the insane argument.
If you want to do something about this in the Western world, well it is time to start holding our military masters to task for their insane weapons. Demand disarmament, and not just the state-killing sub-launched, easily tracked missiles - demand also that the suitcase nukes be removed from cities all over the world …
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The larger context of the conflict is what matters, not the minutia over the type of weapons we’re discussing… but this is one of the ways that war is often naturalized in our discourse - by reflexively focusing on the weaponry to the point of myopia rather than the impact OF the weaponry. When war in other places becomes a debate about this kind of stuff rather than the people involved, then we’re in danger of losing the thread that matters.
And the thing that matters is making sure that no nukes are ever used again. By anyone. At any time. Whether it’s a MOAB or a mini-nuke hardly matters in the moral scheme of things.
Yes… it is. I would mark an intolerable escaltion, whatever the type, as it signals a very clear genocidal intent, whatever the size of the nuke. The other powers in the region would feel more compelled to muster a military response, spinning this conflict way out of control. It’s nearly there now, and this kind of language is not helpful.
And if Israel dropped a nuke, I’m gonna guess that Putin would feel far more emboldened to use nukes in his war on Ukrainians.
Again, you’re making assumptions here about people, what they know, what they do, etc. How about maybe don’t do that?
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They’ve never been deployed. And I’m sure many countries have been disabused from developing them.
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There are conventional bombs that rival mini nukes in power.
Is it more likely that Israel would use a mini nuke and prompt a very pronounced response from both adversaries and allies- and potentially bring the after effects down upon themselves and their own military - or is it more likely they’d just go with huge conventional ordnance?
Pretty simple question when you consider it.
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There is a very high chance micro-nukes would be deployed in the Gaza tunnels, which have thus far been seen to be resilient to the conventional bunker busting munitions.
Yes, it would be met with world outrage if Gaza were nuked - but we already know that the world is incapable of dealing with the genocide of Gaza, even on the basis of the last two weeks of inaction while mass murder of innocents occurs on the world stage for all to see.
Forward-deployed micro-nukes, and the threat of their use, may indeed play more into that equation than any of us are willing to confront. The signaling over this issue in that context is even more sinister.
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It would be met with a hell of a lot more than “outrage”.
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Yeah… the guy’s comment was clearly meant to be extremist saber-rattling to rile up the right wing base who are hungry from the destruction of the Palestinians and for greater Israel… if you ask me, that context matters much more than the specifics of their nuclear arsenal.
You know, since you clearly know so much about what the IDF is planning, should you be running your mouth?
A nuke WOULD change things, however large or small.
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Now- where have a I seen nuclear Saber rattling many times before?
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Why nuke when you can deliver similar kinetic energy down upon your enemies?
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There was one, but its deployment was limited and brief because it was clearly a terrible idea.
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