This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot)

> Australia has dropped its opposition to a landmark treaty banning nuclear weapons in a vote at the United Nations in New York on Saturday.

> The Nobel peace prize-winning International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons had been urging Australia to vote in favour of the UN resolution on Saturday - or at least abstain in order to "End five years of opposition to the TPNW under the previous government".

> Wong told the UN general assembly last month that Australia would "Redouble our efforts" towards disarmament because Russian president Vladimir Putin's "Weak and desperate nuclear threats underline the danger that nuclear weapons pose to us all".

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Another proof that the UN is useless. What is their plan to convince the entire world to nuclear disarmament and keep it that way and don't nuclear weapons prevent wars?

No idea why we'd even be against it since we don't have any nuclear weapons.

Actually, logically no sane nation should want to build a nuclear arsenal. I’ve never seen a comprehensive cost analysis, but from r&d, testing, implementation, security, cleanup, and many costs I haven’t thought of, the nuclear powers have to have spent countless trillions on the game of my dick is bigger than yours, realizing too late they can’t use them. Given a clear picture of how badly nuclear weapons would hobble your country’s progress with no benefit that good diplomacy could achieve, the cost benefit analysis seems pretty obvious to me.

I Am Not A Nuclear Weapons Expert.

The cost/benefit is actually pretty good, and we can see it play out in North Korea right now.

See the thing about nuclear weapons is that they only need to be 'in working order,' to be effective. What's that effect?

You don't get invaded. That's their entire use. You might fight a proxy war, you might not get your way, but quite simply you don't get invaded.

No country will ever have their tanks on US, UK, French, German, North Korean, Russian, Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani soil. Ever. It's not happening. So all military funding for these countries is no longer on 'defense' it's on 'offense and upkeep of nuclear weapons.'

That enables countries to massively overhaul their militaries to be much more imperialistic (in the cases of the US and Russia, now also China), or reduce military spending overall to minimum levels in order to accomplish their foreign policy goals (i.e. France/UK/Germany).

If you have nuclear weapons, no one is invading you since you can end the world if you start losing. Regardless of the cost, it is a ridiculously good benefit given the existence of imperialist countries that can and do invade random countries regularly (see US and Russia.)

The UN is absolutely not useless. It's just not a world government / world police which imposes regulations on sovereign countries. It's not supposed to be that. "The UN" doesn't have plans for disarmament over and above the plans discussed and agreed by national governments. It's a forum for international dialogue (amongst various other things) and it's very successful at that

The US was never been invaded from the time it became a nation, without nukes. North Korea forced an end to the war they arguably started with help from the CCCP, and were not invaded afterwards, again without a nuclear deterrent. European politics are…historically complex and putting a finger one one element- nuclear weapons- as the core reason for post WW2 stability is overly simplistic.

Saying that nuclear weapons “only need to be in working order” is another oversimplification. Maintaining and protecting a nuclear arsenal requires not only huge amounts of money, educating people to be qualified to do so, maintaining a security apparatus to protect that arsenal, but also a system to develop, evaluate and effect upgrades to aging systems. Let’s not leave out the incidental costs of having these weapons around, like poisoning of individuals and communities, which also need to be considered in a full accounting. If you leave out the most important costs and only list “there might be a monster under my bed…someday”, that’s not a valid cost benefit analysis.

> The US was never been invaded from the time it became a nation, without nukes.

The United Kingdom: am I a joke to you?

That's what America & Russia did to Ukraine? Right?

My guess is because of the nuclear subs you're looking to acquire.

Those aren't-- nevermind

Understood but would you want a new capability without all its potential weaponry at your disposal? Like I said...a guess.

(For anyone else just because a nuclear sub exist doesn't mean its armed with nuclear weapons)

Japan, crying in the corner.

We were prob told to by our boss the US.

and this treaty will be enforced how exactly?

best case scenario i see is nukes "officially" disappear, only to magically re appear when useful...

And you just know they are going to force you to buy that extended warranty

Simple bud any non nuclear nation is at a disadvantage in case of any fallout or war at this point of time. Unless everyone agrees to disarm nuclear weapons its foolish to expect every country has sensible minded people.

Having nuclear weapons have been a war deterrent in between direct hostile countries.

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Australia is a nuclear threshold state. It means they have the technical capability (and even possibly plans ready to go) to develop nuclear weapons if the geopolitical situation changes. If e.g. the US pulls out from Asia, Japan and Australia might develop nuclear weapons very quickly to counter China.

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Who is bringing nuclear weapons to a UN vote?!

A pen would suffice!