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India-Pakistan
China urges India to abandon nuclear weapons
2006-03-03
If the Chinese are against it, I'm for it.
BEIJING - China urged India to abandon nuclear weapons and strengthen atomic safeguards as President George W. Bush and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sealed a controversial nuclear pact on Thursday. Under the deal signed while Bush visited Delhi, the United States offered India nuclear fuel and technology in return for India agreeing to put a wall between its civilian and military nuclear facilities and place its civilian programme under international inspections.

India should sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and also dismantle its nuclear weapons, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Qin Gang, told a news briefing in Beijing. “As a signatory country, China hopes non-signatory countries will join it as soon as possible as non-nuclear weapon states, thereby contributing to strengthening the international non-proliferation regime,” he said.

Qin said current international safeguards on nuclear weapons were the hard-won product of many countries’ efforts and should not be weakened by exceptions. “China hopes that concerned countries developing cooperation in peaceful nuclear uses will pay attention to these efforts. The cooperation should conform with the rules of international non-proliferation mechanisms,” he said.
Funny how this wasn't a problem back in the 1960s when the Chinese were building their first bombs.
The NPT grants China, the United States, Russia, France and Britain status as nuclear weapons states, but bars other signatory countries from having such weapons.

China has been pursuing nuclear power cooperation with Pakistan, IndiaÂ’s long-time rival, and has also hosted stalled six-party talks on North KoreaÂ’s nuclear weapons programme.
And we all remember how angry the Chinese were with Khan.
China urged Iran on Thursday to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog and suspend nuclear enrichment activities, adding to rising international pressure on Teheran. “China hopes Iran will fully cooperate with the agency and clarify the unresolved questions about its nuclear programme and will restore the international community’s confidence in Iran,” ministry spokesman Qin said.
"Mr. Quid, this is Mr. Pro. Mr. Pro, meet Mr. Quo."
Posted by:Steve White

#19  
Posted by: john   2006-03-03 21:30  

#18  
The road/rail mobile Indian Agni 3 missile is ready for test launch and these (with 200 kT thermonuclear warhead) will be aimed at Beijing and Shanghai.

There are strong rumors that one (perhaps two) Akula nuclear submarines have been sold by Russian and are on the way to India now. These will be armed with nuclear tipped cruise missiles.

The really perverse thing is that China brought this on themselves.
India would probably not even have an army now (or much of one) far less nuclear weapons were it not for the Chinese attack across the McMahon line.

The 1962 Indo-China war

Soon after Independence the first commander-in-chief of the Indian armed forces, General Sir Robert Lockhart, presented a paper outlining a plan for the growth of the Indian Army to Prime Minister Nehru.

Nehru's reply: "We don't need a defence plan. Our policy is non-violence. We foresee no military threats. You can scrap the army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs."

He didn't waste much time. On September 16, 1947, he directed that the army's then strength of 280,000 be brought down to 150,000. Even in fiscal 1950-51, when the Chinese threat had begun to loom large on the horizon, 50,000 army personnel were sent home as per his original plan to disband the armed forces.

After Independence, he once noticed a few men in uniform in a small office the army had in North Block, and angrily had them evicted.

After the war was another story

"I remember many a time when our senior generals came to us, and wrote to the defence ministry saying that they wanted certain things... If we had had foresight, known exactly what would happen, we would have done something else... what India has learnt from the Chinese invasion is that in the world of today there is no place for weak nations... We have been living in an unreal world of our own creation."
Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajya Sabha, 1963

Posted by: john   2006-03-03 20:31  

#17  Bootstrapping A Nano-Tech Assembler

overview

Drexler
Foresight Nanotech Inst.
Nano-Rex
Posted by: 3dc   2006-03-03 20:24  

#16  Excellent observations, as usual, 'moose. Slight nitpick:

The metal of the 21st is titanium

The "metal" of the 21st century is going to be composites. Pure metals and alloys will be reserved, almost exclusively, for armor, aerospace hulls and powerplants (until ceramic engine blocks come about). Composites, like those used in the B-2 and stealth fighter's skin can weigh half that of steel, yet possess thirteen times the strength.

bombay hits this one on the nose. Nanotechnology is the ne plus ultra of manufacturing. No selvage, no scrap, no overrun, no waste and few, if any, byproducts. Articles built from individual atoms and molecules from the ground up. Nearly zero labor costs and exceptionally low, if non-existent, defect densities. No cracked castings, no voids or bubbles, no chipped edges or surface dings. Superior utilization of critical materials via selective deposition of precious metal electrical contacts without etchback, doping and implantation at the crystal lattice level without thermal diffusion or high energy ion beams and their collateral damage. Single crystal materials plus innovative monolithic detectors and sensors constructed out of traditionally incompatible compounds.

For a fun and informative little romp with nanotechnology, please read "The Assemblers of Infinity" by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason. The authors note how a renegade self-replicating nanodisassembly robot could turn the earth's entire surface into gray slime in the matter of a few weeks. Quite obviously, such little critters will need to be modified, much like ecoli bacteria, to perish in ambient oxy-nitrogen atmosphere.

Still, it's fun to imagine a large swimming pool sized vat of these disassembly robots into which you can toss worn out computers, automobiles, refrigerators, sofas, shoes and organic waste only to extract pure elemental components therefrom. It is the ultimate recycling machine. It even has the potential to deconstruct toxic and hazardous waste back into more benign compounds. The nation that masters nanotechnology will achieve unheard of degrees of self-sufficiency. I look forward to America being the unrivaled master of such critical technology.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-03-03 19:44  

#15  wxjames: Most definitely there is a plan. This stuff is not unknown to economists, they are paid big bucks by those with the big bucks to predict where business is going to be in the future.

Right now, for example, everybody who can is migrating out of big oil. Not because of "peak oil" or global warming, or other short term issues like that, but because even the oil producers know that there is no future in it--it's dead already, Jim. Oil is a creature of huge, stable contracts, with fluctuations limited to marginal markets. As new sources of energy, and ways of using energy are invented, oil will first tumble in the marginal markets, then it will settle down as a not very profitable commodity.

That is why the UAE for example is spending tens of billions of dollars on becoming major transport and tourism hubs.

They know that their petrodollars aren't going to just up and stop one day, but they will be in a slow decline that could drag on for decades. And they don't want to stagnate or slowly decline. They want to stay at the top as best they can.

As far as steel goes, it is a 20th Century metal.

The metal of the 21st is titanium, mined at enormous mines in Australia. Sure, steel will still be good and profitable, but it's not *going* anywhere.

A little known principal of economics is why a "boom" economy *is* a "boom" economy. Simply put, it is when a huge *new* demand is created where there wasn't one before. In trying to create the supply needed to fill that demand, lots of innovation happens, and there is a ripple effect through the economy. Compare steel and titanium again.

There is very little innovation being done with steel anymore. Most is just re-working existing solutions. So it's a pretty stable market. It no longer excites the economy. However, when great amounts of the previously rare titanium enter the market, suddenly everyone has to ask the question, "Would this be better if it was made with titanium?"

If there were huge amounts of titanium, what would happen to our economy if all of a sudden, GM announces a new line of ultra-safe, ultra-light titanium cars that are competitively priced? Not only does the entire automotive industry need to re-tool because everybody now wants a titanium car, but there are huge fluctuations in the auto insurance industry, the banking-loan industry, and a dozen other industries simultaneously.

And, BTW, the steel industry gets kicked in the newts at the same time. But after its prices drop into the basement, all of a sudden, everyone wants to buy steel to make stuff that had been made out of plastic. So the question arises, "What can we make out of steel?"

This being said, an economy that keeps a push-push-push attitude will always win out over one satisfied with the status quo. Sure lots of jobs go to India and China, but the jobs that are going there are jobs in stagnant industries--those countries will fight for the consolation prize.

Meanwhile, the Americans who would have had those go nowhere jobs *have* to find better jobs. They have to do whatever it takes, even if it means they have to get a personal push-push-push attitude, too. But if they do, the rewards they can get also go up.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-03-03 16:14  

#14  Well, what Moose is describing exactly does happen. The weak die, or are sucked up in aquisitions by the strong or mergers to be stronger. Perhaps not a macro economic scale per se, but at Enterprise level it is out do the competition or sink. This forces the evolution he's describing.

For us, being in Aerospace it is likewise true. We have to adopt new technologies and fundamental new ways of doing this or else the LCCs (low cost countries) based competitors will destroy us ... only a matter of time. So in our specific case, we are doing everything we can. Likewise to all of our industry peers regardless in the supply chain (vendor, customer, partner).

An extreeme shift will come when nano-manfucaturing tech is a reality. When we no longer tear things down to make stuff, but build it from the groud up there is a huge savings in waste. Whoever gets there first is going to utterly dominate (be it a specific company, an industry, whatever) but that will be the next wave.
Posted by: bombay   2006-03-03 15:09  

#13  Moose, you actually believe there's some kind of plan in action here ?
Whatcha smokin ?
Posted by: wxjames   2006-03-03 14:32  

#12  Elmavimp: Economies have to evolve to efficiency. For example, right now the US has moved away from heavy industry into high-tech. It has done that for three reasons.

First, we cannot compete with those who can run heavy industries far cheaper than us. We also don't want to pay the price for heavy industry in terms of pollution, energy consumption, etc.

Second, while heavy industry is profitable, it is less profitable than high tech. Many countries realize this and want a high tech industry. So by losing the heavy industry, we can but our resources to being at the forefront of a competitive high tech industry.

And third, we are moving to high tech because we *can* move to high tech. We are far less reliant on heavy industry than is China. Our infrastructure is built. Maintaining it is far less expensive than building it anew. Even if we retained our heavy industry, we couldn't retain it at the levels we wanted or needed; we just don't need it as much as we used to.

So what of the future? The US has long ridden the crest of the wave of development. We like doing that, and want to keep doing that. This means that we have to brutally allow what is less efficient to go by the wayside, and look for ever increasing ways to get more bang for our buck, in whatever enterprises our cutting edge technologies can take us.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-03-03 13:55  

#11  The only thing that really sucks about India is the globalization factor. Look how many jobs we have lost in the last 10 years to china. How many more will we lose when India's economy revs up. If you think the manufacturing and steel industries are bad off now, just wait. Everyone cant be an IT tech you know.
Posted by: Elmavimp Javiling7379   2006-03-03 13:19  

#10  In other news; Fox requests henhouse keys.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-03-03 11:51  

#9  I wonder if a Nuclear equipped India with a billion plus Democracy embracing citizens seeking economic betterment was in their 20 or 30 year plan. We will just see how the big lumbering third world, Madarin=Imperial power China reacts to this. Should be worth a couple of bags of popcorn...
Posted by: TomAnon   2006-03-03 11:22  

#8  Remember that the Soviet Union asked the US to unilaterally disarm, too.

Remember who they used as proxies to try to get the US to unilaterally disarm? Several of them are still in office in the US.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-03-03 10:34  

#7  And we urge China to abandon nuclear weapons.

Go ahead, China - practice what you preach. Set a good example for the world!

(You'll notice I'm not holding my breath....)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2006-03-03 10:21  

#6  You know, they might as well try skywriting "Surrender Dorothy" over New Delhi, see if that works.
Posted by: Phil   2006-03-03 10:20  

#5  And I thought the Asian giants were playing the Iran card together.
Posted by: Listen To Dogs   2006-03-03 07:13  

#4  Lol, Spo'D... They did invent and perfect supreme arrogance, lol. Later equaled by the Arabs...
Posted by: .com   2006-03-03 02:29  

#3  Well you can if you are chinese I guess PD and say it with a serious face too. LOL
Posted by: SPoD   2006-03-03 01:48  

#2  ROFL!

To the only nuclear threat to their hegemony and conquest in the region they have the unmitigated arrogance and gall to politely request that they unilaterally disarm.

ROFL!

YJCMTSU.
Posted by: .com   2006-03-03 01:31  

#1  Never happen. For the same reason Israel will never sign. To do so would be foolish.
Posted by: SPoD   2006-03-03 01:24  

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