Serious Business

I had a discussion last night with my roommate, Jackson.

We talked about the situation in Libya and how intervention, no matter how legitimate, is almost as remote to American national interests as the 100,000 troops guarding poppy fields in Afghanistan.  Jackson brought up the point about how Qaddafi is getting his just desserts for giving up his nuclear weapons program.

I've previously posted about the practical and tangible benefits of having nuclear weapons (or even just developing nuclear weapons).  The U.S. and E.U. are immensely concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and cases like Libya and South Africa are victories in that campaign.  Unfortunately, I don't think there are enough policy-makers (or policy critics) that grasp the juicy irony of the mixed message being sent with this Libyan adventure.

Qaddafi, in 2003, embarrassed by the interception of centrifuge parts bound for Libya and undoubtedly afraid of the zealotry employed in the post-9/11 U.S. WMD crusade, gave up his nuclear program.  Iran and North Korea did not give up their programs.  Today, Iran and North Korea might be pariah or near-pariah states, but they are not the targets of cruise missile barrages and U.N.-sanctioned no-fly-zones.  I don't want to entirely downplay the fact that Qaddafi is a deplorable character with a long track record of bad behavior, but injecting ourselves into a civil war (this is not a Rwanda/Sudan/1990s Balkans situation) is sending very dangerous messages to potential proliferators and proliferatees.

I'm not going to dwell anymore on this topic, since I feel I have already done it justice in previous posts.  I did want to mention it simply because it serves as a "current events" demonstration of the problems with nonproliferation policy.

One of my favorite webcomics, xkcd, has a blog, blag if you will, that I usually never visit.  Over the weekend there was a really cool infographic posted about ionizing radiation doses.  It's difficult to hammer down a definite number on ionizing radiation exposure in nuclear explosions.  Varying yield, detonation altitude, and warhead design make picking one number impractical.  Ground bursts, like those employed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, will produce a lot of lingering ionizing radiation from the dust kicked up by the blast whereas high-yield airbursts will unleash high ionizing radiation doses immediately and over a wider area.  Neutron bombs are designed to release as much ionizing radiation as possible.  Even without a number, its perfect reasonable to assume that nuclear bombs easily match the ionizing radiation released in the Chernobyl disaster.