This is a contrarian diary about nuclear weapons. It addresses the positive contribution nukes have made to preventing large-scale wars since their invention and suggests that proliferation may be a safer course than a world ravaged by advanced non-nuclear weaponry. Issues of deterrence, terrorism, and proliferation are considered, and it is argued that nuclear proliferation may help keep the peace.
Let us begin by considering the profound defensive value of nuclear weapons. It is the enormous deterrent power of nukes that checks aggression. A potential aggressor cannot be sure of how and when the defender will use nuclear weapons. The agggressor cannot mass conventional forces for an invasion because troop concentrations are ideal targets for nuclear attack. A single nuclear weapon can change the outcome of any military campaign.
Because of the enormous defensive power of nuclear weapons, no nuclear-armed nation has ever been invaded. Indeed, nuclear-armed countries have suffered relatively few military casualties in the 55 years since the invention of the atomic bomb, mainly because they are unwilling to go to war against each other. This great achievement has been overshadowed by the fear that nuclear deterrence has spread among civilian populations. Although the psychological harm caused by the threat of nuclear attack is not negligible, it is far outweighed by the avoidance of global conflagrations on the scale of World Wars I and II.
Critics of nuclear weapons protest that proliferation will put them into the hands of dangerously unstable leaders, but each nation that has acquired nuclear weaponry has behaved responsibly. I believe this is because the leaders of a nuclear-armed country understand that their lives would be at risk in a nuclear counter-strike. Note that nuclear weapons were available to Mao and Stalin, both tyrannical rulers who exhibited signs of mental instability.
The argument that posessors of nuclear weapons would give them to terrorists neglects the fact that nuclear weapons can be traced. The byproducts of the explosion provide a signature that allow the identification of the origin of the fissionable material. Any provider of a nuclear weapon to terorists would face the same danger of retaliation as the direct initiator of a nuclear strike. Moreover, terroists don't benefit from the use of nuclear weapons. The vast devastation inflicted by a nuke would turn world opinion against them, and there are much cheaper ways to inflict terror on civilians. Political terrorism is a tactic, and nuclear weapons do not support this tactic well.
The most important argument for the peace-keeping effects of nuclear weapons is that they act as a counter to all forseeable innovations in conventional weaponry. The general public is not aware of the rapid strides the US arms industry is making in robotic killing systems. Both in the air and on the ground, recent breakthroughs in computer guidance of autonomous military aircraft and vehicles are promising to bring a new generation of invincible conventional weapons into the US arsenal. Only one thing can stop these killing machines: nukes.
I am working on a longer diary that argues that America experiences long-cycle waves of aggressive militarism enabled by technological advances. Helicopter mobility, pecision weapons, and, soon, robotic combatants, are significant enablers of military aggression. But there is one invincible defense against America's old and new conventional weapons: the atomic bomb. As long as other nations possess nuclear weapons, America cannot conquer the world. Should nuclear weapons vanish, aggression by high-tech nations would proceed unchecked.
Nuclear weapons are a sword dangling over our heads, but this sword has prevented the outbreak of catastrophic global wars. We should consider carefully whether policies opposing nuclear proliferation are truly in the long-term interests of peace.