Nuclear security

What Should the World Do With Its Nuclear Weapons?

...Nuclear-armed states are attacked all the time. The U.K.’s nuclear weapons didn’t stop Argentina from attacking the British-held Falkland Islands in 1982. Israel’s nuclear weapons didn’t stop Arab states from attacking that country in 1973. Nor did they deter North Vietnam from fighting the United States. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan still teeter on the edge of all-out war.

True, the potential for going nuclear may have reduced the risk of a global war between the Soviet Union and the United States, but deterrence almost failed catastrophically several times, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In the real world, those who have had their fingers on the button have taken a different view of nuclear weapons’ security benefits. Colin Powell had 28,000 nuclear weapons under his command as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The one thing I convinced myself after all these years of exposure to the use of nuclear weapons is that they were useless,” he has said. President Ronald Reagan knew that “Everybody would be a loser if there’s a nuclear war.”

Using a nuclear bomb on a non-nuclear armed foe could kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, send shock waves through global security and financial structures, and bring world condemnation on the perpetrator of the catastrophe. Using such a bomb on a nuclear-armed adversary would trigger a devastating nuclear response.