This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Suppose there's a coup and a new leader shows up who nationalizes the power plant. Historically it's within the rights of states to nationalize foreign-owned assets in their country. Take Suez or Iranian oil. Then this mildly untrustworthy turned very untrustworthy country has a nuclear plant, which is the goal you wanted to prevent. You can't get away from dual-use that easily. Plus you probably make a loss because nuclear plants are capital-intensive investments that pay off over decades. Furthermore no country would allow such an imposition on their sovereignty.
I think a more realistic reason is that the US is so incompetent and useless when it comes to nuclear power plant construction nobody would be interested - recent US nuclear plants have been amongst the most expensive in history. South Korea would do a better job but they're not interested in such a deal. They're eager to export their nuclear technology normally, as opposed to this weird way! Same with Russia, they just export to their friends:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Russia
What country are you thinking of, that would be suitable for this approach? Iran? The US hates them, plus they have their own nuclear industry, plus Israel would probably bomb it like they did in Syria. The US sent some light water reactors to North Korea back in the day under a deal that both sides later reneged on - then NK acquired nuclear weapons.
I'd imagined that the site would be diplomatically (edit: and militarily) privileged somehow, so that the US could operate and secure the site, and quietly have a standing plan to irreparably scram the plant and make the equipment useless in case of being overrun. My ignorance shows in lack of details, I'm afraid.
Iran, for the use case of providing nuclear power without exposing nuclear tech to a hostile power. The various countries in and including South Africa, for sponsoring stability and prosperity, since Warographics tells me they've been notably incompetent and corrupt in administering their domestic infrastructure in the last decade and might welcome some foreign investment slash paternalism.
For the benefit of the unaware, South Africa is a particularly interesting case w/r/t nuclear technology: they already have a single 1980s era nuclear power plant (supplied and partially owned by the French nuclear power company Framatome), and formerly had nuclear weapons until dismantling them in the lead-up to the end of Apartheid/power transfer to the ANC.
I wish I were knowledgeable enough to provide commentary on this state of affairs but I don't know much beyond what's on these wiki pages.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link