Nukes are Good

First of all, if you’re going to read this I want you to shed that ‘NUKES R BAD’ Attitude that everyone has had drilled into them by Greenpeace and other various organisations. Just suspend it for a moment and let me try to explain to you how nuclear weapons have probably saved more lives than penicillin, and how ridding the world of them will probably lead to death and destruction on a scale greater than nuclear war.

Europe is a continent that has been ravaged by war for thousands of years. There’s nothing the inhabitants of  this continent like more than picking up anything that can be used as a weapon, walking a couple of hundred miles, beating someone around the head until they’re dead, nicking their shit and then either settling down or wandering off back home again. Even today, while there hasn’t been a major war in Europe (as in, one that engulfs the continent) since WWII, and the EU likes to put across this picture that we are all happy pals, the rivalries remain. The British and French keep glaring at each other over the channel. The Netherlands and Belgium snipe at each other verbally on a frequent basis. In the UK, the Celts and the English have calmed down a little, but still glare. Protestantism and Catholicism continue to divide communities in many areas. Hell, both world wars started here. We are a typical example of the human race.

Now, ask yourself this question. In this day and age, if someone wants to break into your house and take all your stuff (maybe kill you in the process), what is there to stop them? You could tighten up security on your home, or you could hope the person fears getting caught by the police. We shall call these two ideas deterrence and retribution. Deterrence occurs when you stop someone wanting to do something to begin with (A word any person who has researched nuclear weapons should already be familiar with), retribution is when you make them afraid of the consequences of doing it. Similar ideas, but the subtle differences are important.

Now, I’m going to state something here which is true. It’s a sad truth and as a Buddhist I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. People are arseholes. Not all of them, some are very good folks, and some are bigger pricks than others. But if you look at the human race as a whole, how we treat each other and what we do to help each other, we’re a bunch of self serving arrogant tards willing to blow up a country for some rotten trees and then blow up the person who did the first blowing up, taking a bunch of poor sods who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with us. We lie, we cheat, we steal, we defraud and our very near sighted.

To put it short, most people’s moral compasses point directly back at themselves.

But it gets worse. When you get a group of these self obsessed narcissistic pricks together, and give them something to believe in beyond killing each other and having sex, you get an impressive wadge of hate that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Clever people who are especially arse like then direct that hate to smash up other people will much smaller groups, take their stuff and improve their ability to get a bigger gang.

This has two main names, religion and nationalism. There are others too, but these two are the main culprits.

Now, I want you to consider these three important facets of my argument:

1. People don’t like each other and want each other’s stuff.
2. Once people are formed into a mob by clever people, it’s hard to disband them, and easy to direct them.
3. The only way to stop people who want to take your stuff is to make them not want to attack you in the first place, or make them shit scared of what will happen after they attack you.

See where I’m going with this?

Up until the Second World War, battle death tolls where measured in two units. Hundreds, or thousands. Hundreds lost was an average, large scale battle in the Napoleonic era. Thousands of losses were the unit of the First World War, 16 million deaths was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Generals and leaders did not baulk at the idea of killing thousands of people in a conflict. Or millions over the course of a four or five year war. They wanted other people’s stuff too badly. And being clever people, they took the tribal carnivore nature of human beings and forged the hate into a tool they could use to direct and control them for their own ends.

In Europe there was a major war every 50 years or so going back centauries. There was no deterrent, there was no retribution, and people thought thousands of lives was an acceptable price. Turns out in modern times they also thought millions was an acceptable price. What do you do to deter that kind of ferocity? How do you make someone who is willing to throw thousands of men into a meat grinder baulk at the idea of waging war on you?

With Nuclear weapons.

As nuclear weapons became more and more numerous- and more countries began to test and build them, suddenly armed conflict curbed off between nations with nuclear capability. Now, leaders paled at the idea of waging a war in which the cost was measured in millions of people over a few days- and probably a few urban centres too. Proxy wars broke out certainly (Vietnam anyone?), but the casualties in these wars where infinitesimally smaller than a direct conflict between the super powers. What would you rather have? Thousands dead in the jungle, or millions dead in the cities?

At this point most people start waving their arms around and screaming about how it never should have happened at all. I refer these people to point one above. Armed conflict WAS going to happen between the Soviet union and US. War is a terrible thing, don’t get me wrong. But it is in humanity’s very nature to fight and kill. We are tribal carnivores. And no amount of waving plastic signs and signing petitions is going to stop the fact that the majority of people are by and large gits. And even if they weren’t, with the current government schemes in the world, you can fight a war even without the approval of the populace. See point 2 above.

What we are left with is a system whereby if two nuclear powers hate each other or want each other’s stuff, nothing will come of it. There will be nothing more than a skirmish, or maybe a proxy war. They’re too shit scared as they don’t want to risk pushing the other side too far in case they get turned into radioactive dust. The price tag of millions of lives once the enemy goes nuclear more than outweighs the risks of starting a war with them in the first place. This is the security.

No one will use nukes as a first strike weapon, as the resulting backlash from the international community would be suicide. Assuming the power they where attacking had nukes, the nukes that survived the initial attack will immediately launch back at the aggressor, sending them to the stone age as well. And if no nukes survive, well the international community will be ripping that country to shreds politically for the next hundred years. Same thing occurs if a nuclear power uses nukes on a non nuclear nation. Why do you think the Americans didn’t use them in Vietnam? This is deterrent.

So there you have it. Nukes STOP OR MINIMIZE WARS and SAVE LIVES. The threat of nuclear weapons stopped the cold war turning hot. They prevent nuclear superpowers from attacking each other far better than any alliance (World war one anyone? Proof that alliances and treaties are more lilkely to propergate wars).

On the day that humanity finally overcomes its bestial nature, (assuming I’m still alive), I’ll be first in line to start planting flowers in the abandoned nuclear silos. But until then, anyone who thinks we can all get along and play happy without nuclear weapons to keep us inline is sadly deluded. The way we want the world to be, unfortunately is not the way it is. With so called ‘rouge states’ also developing nukes, we still need the security and the deterrent. And as for terrorists with nukes, well… seriously what can we do about that? If they want to build them, they’re going to get the material from somewhere, stopping nuclear manufacture will, if anything, make it EASIER for people to get their hands on the raw material. As for the financial cost of maintaining a nuclear arsenal, if nukes save lives, how can you put a price tag on life?

Nukes are good. People are bad.