Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb

[Minor Axis]

Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb- at Newsweek.com.

Interesting premise, but I'm undecided on the validity of the argument. I'd feel better if we could not blow up the Earth...

The argument that nuclear weapons can be agents of peace as well as destruction rests on two deceptively simple observations. First, nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. Second, there's never been a nuclear, or even a nonnuclear, war between two states that possess them. Just stop for a second and think about that: it's hard to overstate how remarkable it is, especially given the singular viciousness of the 20th century. As Kenneth Waltz, the leading "nuclear optimist" and a professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley puts it, "We now have 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It's striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states."

The record since then shows the same pattern repeating: nuclear-armed enemies slide toward war, then pull back, always for the same reasons. The best recent example is India and Pakistan, which fought three bloody wars after independence before acquiring their own nukes in 1998. Getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction didn't do anything to lessen their animosity. But it did dramatically mellow their behavior. Since acquiring atomic weapons, the two sides have never fought another war, despite severe provocations (like Pakistani-based terrorist attacks on India in 2001 and 2008).

The article also discusses todays crazies- Kim Jong II and Ahmadinejad, that the bottom line is that these leaders want to live and not evaporate in a mushroom cloud and because these weapons are very expensive to produce and dangerous enough that any of the new countries that develop nukes won't just give them away, especially to a group they don't really control. And Washington has made it very clear that it would regard any terrorist use of a WMD as an attack by the country that supplied it -and would respond accordingly.

 

[Meirionnydd]

Uhhh, didn't India and Pakistan fight a small conflict with each other over Kashmir in 1999?