Why America needs weapons it will never use.

Nuclear weapons were developed in the forties to end WWII, and have been used a grand total of two times on human beings. Even so, they are still one of the most feared weapons on the planet, considered so dangerous that wars are fought to prevent governments from acquiring or maintaining supplies of them. But the truth is that even if every country on earth had nuclear weapons, none would be used. The nuclear threat from national governments, which are the only groups with the resources to create them, ended when Russia built her first ICBM capable of blowing up San Francisco. At that moment, a standoff came into being, which rendered the nuke a useless necessity.

The reason for this is simple: governments are run by people who like power. The moment any nation fires off a nuke, the rest of the world will give free reign to that nuke’s victim to utterly annihilate the offender in nuclear holocaust, or if the victim is not nuclear capable, then they will do it themselves, or at the very least nuke the capital city of the antagonistic power and seize control of the nation. Since it is very difficult to maintain power over a nation when dead, and very difficult to avoid being dead after a nuclear holocaust, only a lunatic would ever actually use a nuclear weapon on a human population. And believe it or not, there are none of those around. Saddam Hussein was not one. He was power hungry and evil, an amoral, cruel man, but not insane; he knew the getting and keeping of power, and knew full well that these processes did not include nuking Israel or Kuwait. The dictator of North Korea is not a lunatic either, his use of nuclear threats to keep troops from invading his country is a clever bluff that plays on the fears of the world, but it stems from the fact that he wants to maintain power. Since it is not in the best interest of that goal to blow up a foreign city, and in turn be annihilated, he will not use his weapons, at least not unless we invade and it looks like his only hope of survival. No, in the hands of the world’s national governments the nuclear warhead is as harmless as a fly.

So why don’t we get rid of them and be done with it? Why is nuclear weaponry a necessity? Because to destroy them would require complete international cooperation, something that has never once happened in the history of mankind. It would mean all the nuclear powers of the world giving up every last one of their warheads to be destroyed by an international, neutral group. And if one nation held back a secret reserve, then as soon as the job was done they could just pull out their guns and rule the world. To prevent (or attempt) this, therefore, every nation will hold back a reserve, which defeats the purpose of trying to destroy the weapons in the first place. A reduction of weapons has no effect on the international standoff situation, and so accomplishes nothing at all.

Because nuclear arms can be neither used nor destroyed, they do pose two threats. First, if a terrorist group that cared more about their ideals than their lives got a nuclear weapon, it would almost certainly be used to kill people. They have nothing to lose, and much to gain in terms of fame, fortune, and in some groups, heavenly rewards, so why not use it? Second, with nuclear stockpiles being held over long periods, it is only a matter of time before someone finds a way to stop them. The first nation to build a missile interceptor that is more than ninety-seven percent reliable (probably a laser, which, contrary to popular belief, is shortly to leave the realm of science fiction), will be temporarily free from the standoff. In that moment, it is plausible to expect a massive nuclear threat, which may be carried out, if the world does not comply and surrender to the will of the new superpower.