The essential problem of campaigning for the proliferation of handguns is the same as for proliferating nuclear weapons. The suspicion that the first million people who would choose to take advantage of the restoration of legal handgun ownership in the United Kingdom are precisely the million people least trustworthy with such weapons.
The assumption behind the global crusade to keep nukes in the hands of a global establishment is the same as that which would only allow state officials to carry guns.
Yet we have a case example of how nuclear proliferation need not make the world less safe: India and Pakistan. Both sides have governments that are itching for war: the Indian nationalist government believes it would win a conventional war and the Pakistani military regime stands to gain legitimacy from a show of force against India.
There is a balance of terror which ensures that neither side has opted for all-out war, as well as keeping neutral bystanders concerned enough to pressure both sides into staying within certain bounds.
Even deranged leaders seem to accept the balance of terror. One of the curious differences between the First and Second World Wars was the use of battlefield chemical weapons. Civilians in London and Paris carried gas masks during the early months of the second world war in the expectation of gas attacks by the German air force. No such attacks were made because Hitler believed that the British would retaliate (the British government planned to use anthrax bombs).
Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Kurdish people living inside Iraq and against the Iranian foreces during the 1980s Gulf War. He did not however use them against Israel or the Gulf states, despite firing missiles at both during 1991.
As a libertarian internationalist, I have no problem with free countries liberating the unfree, by deposing tyrants. I support a global assault on leftist, fundamentalist, racial supremacist and eco-terrorists. However, I have misgivings about wars started to impose global gun control, especially as this is so selective: why no war to disarm North Korea, Israel, India, Pakistan, or France? Would Australia be a target, or Brazil, Morocco, Turkey, Japan, Germany and Iran if they planned nuclear weapons programmes?
I have a theory that nuclear powers are simply not allowed to develop crack-pot governments: one way or another they are weeded out. If true one could say “A nuclear armed society is a VERY polite society.”
Never fear Antoine! Imagine living in a properly armed society. One of your neighbors is known to be a practicing psychotic. You and other neighbors notice he is getting an extraordinary number of deliveries from AisA Nuclear Products Ltd. One of the neighbors heard him muttering ini the hardware store about how “they’ll all be sorry soon”. He’s shot at the Insurance company inspectors.
Might it not be prudent to request the local police company to check things out and perhaps cart him off if they find he’s building a doomsday machine?
I don’t see us as out to use armed force to stop everyone from getting nukes. I can’t see us doing much of anything other than talking to stop rational nations from acquiring them.
But it does make sense to draw the line at psychopaths.
And from the minarchist perspective, while I support the right to bear arms, it only makes sense to deny that right as a punishment to violent criminals.
More to the point, in Iraq, part of the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire was that Iraq would cease to develop WMD. Right now, they’re in breach of that contract.
Heh. What can I say, Adrian, except “Advantage: Unqualified Offerings!”
I have a slightly different take on this. I will allow any nation to have WMDs (or individuals to have guns) until they point hem at me. Then they can expect to be blown away.
Iraq does not really want to explode a nuclear device in NYC. Saddam wants to avenge the Gulf War, but that would be going too far. No, Saddam wants control of 70% of the world’s oil reserves.
Controlling the oil and having a nuclear deterrent at the same time! Now you are talking!
Saddam the All-Powerful, Keeper of the Oil, Holder of the Balls of Western Civilization, would very much like for Antoine to talk cowboy Bush out of his pre-emptive planning.
So, it really is all about oil? Not all. Saddam does indeed torture women and children for fun. But oil is not an insignificant reason for war, given that the commerce of the western world is based upon transportation using oil. Combining oil with WMD, cowboy Bush has good reason to yell “yippyayekiyay!”
When a MURDERER is being disarmed by the police it is not because they are enforcing Government monopoly over firearms, it is because they are performing thier correct function of protecting the people.
“Controlling the oil and having a nuclear deterrent at the same time!”
And he does what with it? Serve it to his subjects for dinner? Fill the swimming pools of Arab royalty? Spread it across the Empty Quarter in a monomolecular layer so the Bedouin can admire the pretty rainbows?
Or does he…sell it. Since that’s the region’s only serious commodity and earner of foreign exchange.
By way of a clue, I observe that Saddam has spent a great deal of effort since the autumn of 1990 trying to sell more oil than he was allowed to sell.
Controlling the oil and having a nuclear deterrent at the same time!”
And he does what with it? Serve it to his subjects for dinner? Fill the swimming pools of Arab royalty? Spread it across the Empty Quarter in a monomolecular layer so the Bedouin can admire the pretty rainbows?
Hmmmm. How much oil income has Saddam had in the past 12 years? Enough to continue consolidating power, while starving his own people, which he does not mind doing.
But with control of three fourths the world’s oil reserves, Saddam does not need to sell any more oil than he sells now, under UN sanctions. The price will be so much higher.
And the relative shutoff of the flow of oil will send western economies, including the US, into a tailspin.
Do you think China will have “special access” to Saddam’s oil? Of course they will. What about Japan? No, because they support the US. France? We’ll see . . .
Saddam does not think like a libertarian merchant, in terms of maximising profit. He thinks in terms of maximising power, regardless of who suffers.
If the oilfields are mined with dirty bombs or other WMD, no one will want to seize them. The west will have to suffer its 100 year recession, and bloody well like it, for it will have no choice. The R&D to develop alternatives to oil for transportation will be set back decades by the inevitable depression.
Once again, Saddam wants power first of all. Power to punish in ways that are the most painful. For the west, that means cutting off their livelihood. Saddam can do well enough selling oil to China, Germany, and other nations wise enough to know that the US was too hesitant to act while there was time.
Cartels can maintain discipline for 100 years? (There will still be other producers.) Oil is not fungible? (You’ll sell to China but not to me, thus reducing China’s demand for the oil from people who will sell to me.) Saddam will sell to Germany and China et al at rates substantially below the new Saddam-ized “market” rate? (Now Germany and China et al have a major profit incentive to transship oil to the US.) Saddam won’t give his appeasers like Germany and China a break from the new Saddam-ized “market” rate? (Back to fungibility.) All that Julian Simon stuff about the adaptability of human ingenuity to changed material conditions isn’t true? (This phantom 100-year recession.) Iraq’s succession of leaders has the will and interest to maintain this blinkered policy for a century.
Shit. Libertarianism must be wrong then! Oh well, easy come easy go. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to the coal mine. I owe my soul to the company store.