My View of Nuclear Weapons

Here is a quote from neo-nutcase Joel Rosenberg, "[Iran's President] Ahmadinejad believes he has been chosen by Allah to annihilate the US... The only way that is remotely possible, is for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them against America and Israel. How then could the West deter or contain Iran’s messianic, apocalyptic leaders?....Yet many in Washington do not see the problem. [Iran's leaders] believe their life mission is to kill millions of Jews and Christians and usher in an Islamic caliphate." 

There are many people in the US with the same view as him but the problem is that they aren't thinking far enough ahead. If you think past Iran getting a nuke you realize very quickly that they would never be able to use it. Every country that has tried to acquire a nuclear weapon other than America has been met with fear and criticism from Americans and the US government has always done everything in their power to stop or slow it down. This happened when China wanted nukes, when India wanted nukes and when Pakistan wanted nukes. They said it would be the end of the world, but it never came. The reason it didn't come is because other than the United States no one has ever used a nuclear weapon and nobody ever would. The reason they wouldn't is two-fold. One reason is, if you did happen to blow up one of our allies with a nuke, your country would be counter-nuked about 450 times 30 seconds after the nuke hit the ground. The second reason is that it takes away the power and prestige a country recieves you get from having a nuke. A country like Iran, or North Korea for that matter, isn't trying to get their hands on a nuke so they can use it. They want a nuke so they will be taken seriously by other countries. It gives them some leverage to use during negotiations but the leverage a nuke gives you is predicated upon their not using it. When a country sees that every country with nuclear weapons are permanent members of the UN Security Council it gives a ton of incentive for them to acquire them so they can be a power player too. 

Eight different countries have had nuclear weapons and only one has used them, us. Some of these countries have even been at war since they developed the weapons and have never used them. We are the only ones that have, so I find the logic that somebody else can't have them but we can is pretty flimsy and sanctimonious to say the least.

The real answer to this question is full nuclear disarmament and a global ban on nuclear weapons in the from of a treaty. The ban has to be serious though. It has to include automatic war by all of the other countries in the world and seizure of the nuclear weapon immediately. In this scenario it would probably be more likely that one rogue nuke might be detonated but it has the added bonus of ensuring that no matter what happens the whole world won't be annihilated. As it stands right now, we have enough nukes to destroy the world many times over and it could happen as long as nuts like Joel Rosenberg and people like him have any say on who has nukes and when to use them. I would never be scared of another country nuking us, I'm much more afraid of us nuking someone else. 

-James D.