Nuclear weapons used within this decade? I doubt it. They are such destructive weapons that even one bomb could devastate an entire region from the fall out. If I had to pick a country to use it this decade it would be Israel. Say if Iran is practically on the verge of acquiring nukes, Israel might just think to it self, right sod this not taking any chances and launch tactical nuclear strikes (assuming they have them) and if not then possibly strategic ones.

Now onto the future I think there is a very real chance nukes could be used. Say NATO and Russia. NATO won't budge on the Missile Defense Shield so Russia said it will develop more offensive capabilities (which is far cheaper) to counter it. We are talking Cold War levels of mutual distrust here. Anyone who's read their Cold War history will know there have been a few occasions (not just the Cuban Missile Crisis) where NATO and the WP came dangerously close to WWIII. One only has to look at the sparks that triggered previous global conflicts. It really doesn't take much and as long as nukes are around, the possibility they will be used will exist.


Other conflicts where nukes could be used-

China vs Taiwan and US.
China may decide to launch a nuclear tipped 'carrier killer' DF-21 ASBM against a US carrier fleet to wipe it out in international waters. Reason is because the US should have a robust anti ballistic missile shield soon and the way to increase chances of a hit is by going nuclear. Being in international waters it is unlikely the US will retaliate against the Chinese mainland.

India vs Pakistan
As we can all see from the news Pakistan is under severe attack from Islamic militancy. India may at one point come under a sustained terrorist attack emanating from Pakistan in one form or another. India seeing the anarchy in Pakistan decides to launch a major land, air and sea assault to destroy Kashmir/Islamic militants. From a position of great weakness Pakistan retaliates with nukes and India fires nukes back.

Iran vs Saudi Arabia
Say Iran does acquire nukes, the Saudi's will probably follow suit and the US will probably turn a blind eye to it like they did with Israel and Pakistan. Most of the Middle East oil reserves just happen to be sitting underneath the population of Shia Muslims. The Shia's are repressed by their Sunni rulers in Bahrain, Saudi etc and Shia Iran want's 'liberate' them and extended it's influence. It would start by creating 'Hezbollah's in those regions and things could quickly spiral out of control. Say the GCC send in troops to quell an uprising, Irans's well armed and trained proxies fight back while Iran decides to intervene, say starting with a clash of the navies in the Persian Gulf which would then get each others airforce involved and finally ballistic missiles and perhaps even nukes.

I recommend the following WWIII fictions:-
Total War 2006
The Third World War
Arc Light
Defcon One

Hmm, people still trying to justify bombing of Japan. Among many things that testify against any military necessity of attacks is a similar operation six months prior to that - bombing of Dresden. Come to think of it, the whole allied European campaign doesn't look like much of military necessity. So it goes.

Dresden was a completely different story, though yeah, the firebombing of Dresden was completely pointless.

The Nuclear bombs however... saved lives.

The fact that the pro peace side of japan saw the nukes as a "Gift sent from the heavens" I think pretty much sums up why it was needed.

The truth is, the bombings of japan don't need to be justified because the overwhelming amount of evidence that already justifies it.  If you can't believe the people bombed by it, who were trying to convince the other side to agree to surrender... what would convince you?

^The main reasoning behind nuclear bombings of Japan is rather political than military. I could understand cynical but honest attitude of people admitting that bombings were a necessity though of different kind, but pretence of any morality (saved lives etc) behind it... hardly. The rest is just lyrics.

You probably understand where I'm going with this, so I leave it as that due to a lack of time for going into further detail.

That really depends on your definition of morality I suppose.

I suppose if you are a Lawful good D&D type it would be immoral.  Since a wrong action is a wrong action.   (AKA: assassnated adolf hitler before he came to power would be wrong because you would be assassanating someone.)

I don't think they chose to bomb for moral reasons, so much as saving their own troops lives and cutting off the russians from dividing japan reasons.

Me, I think when your forced between shitty options and not making a choice will just make things even worse, then the action that is least shitty is in fact the moral choice.

When given a "Sophies choice" moment, I think the most moral thing to do is to choose the negative option that has the best results.  I think choosing neither and letting both your kids get gassed or whatever is actually the immoral option... and also cowardly.

Life is far from perfect, and in a lot of situations it comes down to just doing the most with awful circumstances.

No way. No one(not even Iran or NK) is crazy enough to do that. The leaders of the world are cowards who only care about maintaing power and wealth, and they know using nukes would eliminate their power, wealth, and probably their life.

Please, spare me these tedious moral talks.

Why exactly we're arguing then? We've agreed that bombings didn't have much of military necessity.

If it was the moral choice.

The moral choice isn't always made based on moraliy, however that doesn't change the fact that it is the most moral of all the available actions and by far the best and most justified choice.

And yet you've brought up morality issue here, despite my request not to =)

Again remind me why exactly we're arguing? You've basically agreed with me on two points I'm trying to make: 1) decision "to bomb, or not to bomb" was based on matters other than morality; 2) bombings by themselves weren't much of military necessity. Your perception of the fact as moral or not is of little interest to me here, since it's pointless to argue - there's always a "shield" of personal opinion.

Point 2.  You are holding the bombings to a higher standard then the other 2 options.  It's a logical fallacy that assumes that option A is less moral then B or C without any factual basis.  You are the one using the "shield" of personal opinion.

One of the three options was a military nessessity, and the one they went with was by far the one  that had the best consequences for all.  That is a fact. 

Furthermore to now say don't care about personal opinion itself is hypocritical since by your same judgement the first statement you made was itself, an opinion.