Nuclear weapons are actually good

Besides what's been said by other posters...may I add this:

We are closer to nuclear conflict now than since 1983, the last time we were on the brink with the Soviets. Except now, the number of small countries with nukes has increased and the likelihood of their use has expanded accordingly. When Pakistan and India first squared off with their arsenal of A-bombs in their hip pockets in the 1970s, it took a herculean diplomatic effort by the UK and US to keep them from blowing each other away.

Now, the Taliban is threatening to topple the Pakistani government. With proper respect to our Pakistani friends, the acquisition of viable nuclear weapons by a future Taliban regime in Islamabad would undoubtedly trigger a massive, preemptive military response from other powers from across the globe.

Would a foundering Pakistani government, about to fall to the Taliban, as a last act, ship their nukes safely outside the country...out of the fanatics' reach ? I hardly think so, although it would be the basis for a great action novel/movie.

Pakistan's government is under a state of siege from these radicals. Iran is racing to build their nuke. North Korea claims to have several "devices."

Do you remember a line early-on from the movie "The Peacekeeper" where Nicole Kidmann is talking to George Clooney on the aircraft where she says "... I'm not afraid of some country with thousands of nukes. I'm fearful of the man WHO HAS JUST ONE."

I'd say...in 2009...soon... the nuclear "genie" is about to go "poof" on the world's stage and "poof" may go one or more major cities from the earth. I don't see any easy way to stop it from happening.

Thanks for reading my comments.

CmdrCody

. . .and nobody would win.

Another point to the OP that I should have mentioned;

Nuclear weapons did not prevent war. Rather, nuclear weapons shifted the theater of war from Europe to the third world; instead of fighting army to army in the Fulda Gap, which is what most people pictured when they said "war", we fought in proxy wars, revolutions, coups and counter-coups in just about every third world country.

Much was made throughout the Cold War of the fact that these weapons "kept the peace"; I suspect that people in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere have a rather different perspective.

The Ingsoc regimes in "1984" had as its mantra WAR IS PEACE, meaning that war, by distracting the lower classes and directing any anger outwards, meant peace for the high Party officials. Same thing here; war for the third world meant peace for the West and East, but that's not the same as an actual peace.


Denny Crane.

Someone said, "One wrong move by some nutbar with some homemade bomb or a stolen warhead in his tent would be all that it would take for humanity to have a really bad day."

Do you think nukes are as easy to get as a carton of cigarettes?

One crazy nutbar cannot access a nuclear weapon. The only people who has access and utilize a nuke are largely developed, and some third-world nations. Terrorists do not, and will not get access to nuclear weapons... because they are far too guarded and too complex to detonate.

You're letting the sensationalist media get to you.