Kat wondered:
> > On a side note, why is it OK for the US to be armed to the teeth with
> > nuclear missiles, but Horror Upon Horror for anybody else to have one?
Jeroen replied:
> Quite simple. When you are the only one armed to the teeth, it gives you a
> lot of power. Being in power feels GOOOOOOOD. Now, if you would allow an
> other country to have those weapons too, that country might use those
> weapons to take your power away from you so they can be the only one in
> power. And that would be BAAAAAAAD...
Overly simple, or you left off the smiley. I'll give you the benefit of the
doubt...
We in the US have 2 seemingly contradictory opinions of nuclear weapons, and
it's all tied together.
(1) They're Good Things To Have Around:
They keep the Bad Guys from trying to push us around. While we wouldn't
actually USE them (unless backed into a corner), as a deterrent, they keep
the Other Guys' missiles from flying. (Gautam has posted some darn good
info in the past detailing MAD and how it was the best option at the time.)
We can't just let the missiles we've got sit and deter, as The Other Guys
are busy upgrading their arsenal as we speak. If we want to keep them from
bullying us around, we've got to have an acceptable deterrent. While we're
at it, we can use OUR deterrent to protect our friends in Europe from the
Bad Guys in Eastern Europe.
and
(2) They're Scary Things To Have:
We used them twice, and we're still not sure we did The Right Thing there.
These are weapons that can incenerate a whole city, fergoshsakes! We're
going to keep working on an incremental basis (keeping #1 above in mind) to
reduce the number of these weapons all around so everyone's in less danger.
It'd be great if we could do this unilaterally, but Those Guys Over There
aren't acting like they're going to let us do that without tilting the
balance of power too far to The Wrong Side. In the meantime, we can try to
make sure that nations without a good series of internal checks and balances
aren't stockpiling these Scary Weapons for use against their neighbors, our
friends or us.
You can debate the overall morality of the Cold War and the concept of MAD,
and we should, but we should also consider that, at the time, that seemed
the best option. Now the world is different. The US is pretty much the
most powerful single nation on the planet, and we're suddenly not sure we
*wanted* to be Top Dogs in the first place (hence the strong isolationist
tendencies we're always fighting). We've got all these weapons, Russia
still has all of theirs (and they don't have them as secure as anyone would
like), and China is busy making missiles to keep us from interfering in
their interests (Taiwan, specifically). It's a merry-go-round, and there's
no easy way to stop the ride. What we can do is keep nations like Pakistan,
Iran, Iraq, India, North Korea and Togo* from making nuclear weapons and
keep trying our damnedest to keep another arms race from starting up.
See? It's not a simple answer, and it still has lots of morally squicky
issues all tangled up in it. There's enough room between and on either side
of opinions (1) & (2) that people can stake out pretty much whatever
territory they want, and they do - all the way from Edward Teller on the
"NOOKS IZ GUD" side to Ground Zero on the "NO NOOKS IZ GUD NOOKS" side.
I'm open to correction on this from them as are in the know.
Adam C. Lipscomb
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ# 32384792
* - I know Togo doesn't *really* have a nuclear program, and I've never
heard anyone say anything bad about them - it's a joke.
