Nuclear Weapons: Pros And Cons
A while back, I wrote a piece that voiced my concern over the abundance of nuclear weapons, should anything ever happen to destabilize the governments who have jurisdiction over them. That, of course, is still a concern of mine, but I didn't do a very good job of explaining the positive effects of ICBMs either.
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD, one of the most accurate acronyms you will ever find) was the prevailing doctrine of both the United States and Soviet Union after the invention of the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile. Through the years, the missile and warhead were refined, but the idea remained the same: If you fire your nukes, we'll fire ours, and everyone will die. Putting aside the question of whether that is even an acceptable policy at all (I find it to be quite disgusting, personally), it was nonetheless effective. Furthermore, the conventional military wisdom at the time was of the opinion that if a convential (non-nuclear) war was to start in Europe between the superpowers, it would inevitably turn nuclear. Neither side ever wished to test that theory, understanding the consequences involved.
It is in this single aspect that nuclear weapons provide their sole benefit to humanity. Without the threat of MAD, it is highly probable that every couple decades the superpowers of the time - whether the United States and Russia, or a resurgent Germany, or any of a combination of European groups - would have felt the need to settle their differences through war. In World War I, around 30 million people died. In World War II, merely twenty years later, another 50-70 million were killed. With the rate of technological progress in weaponry being pushed to new levels by the cold war (which would have occured with or without nukes), and thus the killing power increasing at an exponential level, it is easy to imagine well over 100 million people being annihilated in the next war, which almost certainly would come soon. And of course, violence begets violence, and increasingly deadly and destructive wars would be fought without end.
However, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the massive numbers of warheads that the two superpowers possess. The basic idea of MAD could be accomplished with no more than fifty one-megaton warheads. But the United States possesses over 10,000 warheads, scattered throughout the country, and Russia has around 8,000 active warheads and another 7,000 or so deactivated or waiting for destruction. In sum, the two former superpowers possess enough firepower to kill every man, woman, and child on this earth ten times over.
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD, one of the most accurate acronyms you will ever find) was the prevailing doctrine of both the United States and Soviet Union after the invention of the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile. Through the years, the missile and warhead were refined, but the idea remained the same: If you fire your nukes, we'll fire ours, and everyone will die. Putting aside the question of whether that is even an acceptable policy at all (I find it to be quite disgusting, personally), it was nonetheless effective. Furthermore, the conventional military wisdom at the time was of the opinion that if a convential (non-nuclear) war was to start in Europe between the superpowers, it would inevitably turn nuclear. Neither side ever wished to test that theory, understanding the consequences involved.
It is in this single aspect that nuclear weapons provide their sole benefit to humanity. Without the threat of MAD, it is highly probable that every couple decades the superpowers of the time - whether the United States and Russia, or a resurgent Germany, or any of a combination of European groups - would have felt the need to settle their differences through war. In World War I, around 30 million people died. In World War II, merely twenty years later, another 50-70 million were killed. With the rate of technological progress in weaponry being pushed to new levels by the cold war (which would have occured with or without nukes), and thus the killing power increasing at an exponential level, it is easy to imagine well over 100 million people being annihilated in the next war, which almost certainly would come soon. And of course, violence begets violence, and increasingly deadly and destructive wars would be fought without end.
However, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the massive numbers of warheads that the two superpowers possess. The basic idea of MAD could be accomplished with no more than fifty one-megaton warheads. But the United States possesses over 10,000 warheads, scattered throughout the country, and Russia has around 8,000 active warheads and another 7,000 or so deactivated or waiting for destruction. In sum, the two former superpowers possess enough firepower to kill every man, woman, and child on this earth ten times over.
posted by Jimmy at 11:53 PM
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