Nuclear arms have made the world safer
I agree with Robert McKinney’s views in his recent letter that US President Barack Obama “didn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009” and that his record of advancing peace has been “deplorable”. But if McKinney is hinting that Obama should lead a charg
Conventional wisdom says the world would be much safer without nuclear weapons, but would it really? Before 1945 no such weapons existed – and yet in the first half of the 20th century, two massively destructive world wars killed around 80 million people, maiming and displacing millions more.
Nearly all the death and destruction in of World War II occurred before the atomic bombings that halted the war. No war since has come close to the levels of death and destruction of the two world wars.
Nuclear weapons are horrible if they’re actually used. Sitting in their silos, though, they’ve provided the best possible deterrent to war. When emotion is removed from the discussion, logic and facts allow no other conclusion. During the Cold War the US and Soviet Union went eyeball to eyeball and yet never came to serious blows, mainly because each possessed nuclear weapons.
Before nuclear weapons, powerful countries invaded and occupied weaker neighbours and wars caused millions of civilian deaths. Since 1945 such military aggression and large-scale wars have been reduced considerably. History doesn’t bear out the contention that the world would be safer without nuclear weapons.
Jennifer Kim
(From the Japan Times/ANN)
