All through the Cold War, nuclear weapons were considered a mutually assured destruction threat deterrent. Because of the power to destroy humanity and cripple the planet for a long period of time, it was believed that no one would use nuclear weapons again (after World War 2). World safety was assured because the super-powers could not and would not use those weapons.
Now we have gone to war over one nation's supposed nuclear weapons and complain about other nations possibly developing their own nuclear arsenals. It is a poorly kept secret that Israel has nuclear weapons. We are in negotiations with North Korea to get them to dismantle their nuclear weapons development. UN inspectors are in Iran, questioning their use of nuclear material. Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons.
My question is: Why go to war over nuclear weaponry?
If what our leaders told us during the Cold War is true, that nuclear weapons are, in fact, too terrible to use because of their power, wouldn't the "safety" of mutually assured destruction in the middle east and other hot-zones create a new cold war in which world safety is assured?
Are those in power now admitting they lied to the world all through the Cold War? Or is it only a deterrent when the United States has those weapons?
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What I think I'm learning about politics as I get older is that I'm too smart and too cynical for my government to let me live.
Our government is in the job of scaring us. The more fearful we are, the more control we give them. The more power they have, the less likely we are to educate ourselves or question their decisions.
Think for yourself. Question everything.
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The United States assumes that the rest of the world shares our basic philosophy of fairness: if we don't use our weapons, they won't use theirs. If Japan had developed "Fat Boy" during WWII, it would have been used without hesitation on US because it would have assured Japan would win the war they began. Ditto Korea, and the Gulf regions, and any other country with whom we've had military operations since WWII.
ReplyDeleteAsking pretty please for other countries to comply with our needs is ridiculous. Why on earth would any country in a position to defeat the great US of A decline to do so?
There are people in the world right now who are strapping on explosives and walking into churches, crowding onto buses, boarding airplanes, and driving vehicles into pre-selected targets solely to kill their enemy. There is nothing that will stop these same people from using nuclear weapons once they have them.
Life has more value in the US than it does in other countries because we value ourselves more highly as individuals than do other countries. Our lives are, to us, more precious than the lives of other people, so we do whatever is in our power to protect ourselves from loss of life. Until we learn that the ideal is more valuable than the individual, we will continue to be the target of other countries who want what we have and will stop at nothing to achieve it.