Nuclear weapons have done more for world peace than any other invention in history. Countries with a nuclear option are effectively uninvadable, and that pushes conflicts away from the grueling total wars of the Napoleonic and World Wars, and into constrained, limited proxy wars. Want Israel to stop committing atrocities? Nothing better for it than nuclear armed neighbors. Want to keep Israel from ceasing to exist? That's why they've got the bomb.
Supporting Israel in preventing Iran from getting nuclear capabilities is destablizing, not the opposite.
The more countries with nuclear weapons, and the more unstable or extremist they are, the greater the likelihood of an eventual detonation, even if accidental. 40 years ago, everyone understood this and agreed nuclear proliferation was bad, the US and USSR committed to reducing their stockpiles, and Reagan himself expressed a desire for complete nuclear disarmament, in part because of the near-catastrophe of the Abel Archer incident--a catastrophe only narrowly avoided despite the US and USSR both being stable superpowers led by rational actors. Anyone encouraging nuclear proliferation for every tin-pot dictatorship or gay-lynching theocracy to make the world safer is insane.
> effectively uninvadable
Yet Israel was invaded during the Yom Kippur War when it had nuclear weapons, the UK was invaded by Argentina during the Falklands War, Russia was invaded briefly by Ukraine (Kursk). And Israel arguably just demonstrated that developing a survivable nuclear deterrent probably isn't as easy as many thought. (Ukraine, to a lesser extent, also with Spiderweb.)
> Supporting Israel in preventing Iran from getting nuclear capabilities is destablizing, not the opposite.
On the contrary, it sends a strong "fuck around and find out" message to any country pursuing nuclear weapons. And if Israel is capable of this kind of decapitating strike against a country's nuclear program, imagine what the US (or China) could pull off.
>"Israel is well past the point of international sanctions for their Gaza genocide, the west has another ace up their sleeve and could even promise to sanction Israel for their nuclear weapons program in return."
Given how gray this comment already is, I'm not afraid to go against what seems to be the HN-hivemind today: Good luck with that proposal, last week Rubio himself stated there's a no-tolerance policy for anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and such behavior can be the single determining factor against one's ability to legally migrate here. This administration is blindly pro-Israel, much to its detriment - and likely its battle between dovish and hawkish foreign policy; because they're damned either way.
In these situations I like to point out that Pakistan also has nukes, Muslim terrorists, and skirmishes with another ally of ours (India) and there's no political campaign to crush them over it.
A lot of this is just a consequence of repeated exposure to foreign propaganda. It's not reasonable policy.
The fact of nukes is that they are both a get out of international jail free card and security against existential threat.
Previous decade arms control understood this, and understood something very valuable needed to be offered to keep countries from pursuing them.
Current nuclear arms control is failing (Iran, North Korea) because the international community is pretending they aren't worth pursuing at almost any cost.
If a country wants to pursue a foreign policy antagonistic or counter to the US, they'd be insane not to develop nuclear weapons.
Arguably if India had the intel and military means/technology to quash Pakistan's nuclear program without a full-on invasion at the time they would have. I'm sure several other countries would have too, but the ability just wasn't there during the 70s
"In these situations I like to point out that Pakistan also has nukes, Muslim terrorists ..."
Tell me, did the "Muslim terrorists" nuked Hiroshima and Nakasaki? did the "Muslim terrorists" massacre the Vitenamese and Cambodians ? What about the current genocide occuring in Gaza ?
Dear god I can't even articulate how cunning is/was the western media when it comes to brainwash their people.
Supporting Israel in preventing Iran from getting nuclear capabilities is destablizing, not the opposite.