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Targetarear -> RE: New restrictions for the use of nuclear weapons (4/8/2010 2:51:29 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: takemeforyourown
I am conflicted. My peace-loving hippie side says that's a step in the right direction, my former Army officer side says that he just gave a bunch of bad people an invitation to attack us.
Edited for spelling
Don't worry. Even after reducing their weapons by one third, I believe Russia and the USA will still each have enough nukes to destroy the whole world.
And the reduction isn't all it seems anyway. I heard on BBC News this morning that a nuclear bomber will be counted as one nuclear warhead, even though modern bombers can carry many Cruise missiles that have nuclear warheads.
The people who should worry most are those in Europe, because the USA has agreed it will not use nuclear weapons first against any country that has signed up to the Non-proliferation Treaty, and has complied with its obligations under that treaty, even if that country uses chemical or biological weapons.
That means Europe is no longer shielded by the USA's "nuclear umbrella". Although Russia, at the moment, seems indisposed to aggressive or expansionist policies, that might not always be the case. A future militant Russian government could safely send its tanks rolling through Europe, stopping only at the English Channel, without the risk of a nuclear first strike from the USA.
As a UK citizen whose attitude to our "special relationship" with the USA has always been ambivelant, I beleive that relationship is now dead - if it were ever really alive, except in the mind of Sir Winston Churchill - and the time has come to join with France, the only European country with a truly independent nuclear deterrent, to provide a European nuclear umbrella.
Although I could imagine nothing better than the elimination of all nuclear weapons, the truth is we let the genie out of the bottle in July 1945, and, try as we might, we can never put it back in. Even if all nuclear weapons in the world were to be disarmed and destroyed tomorrow, the knowledge of how to build them again would remain, and the risk that at some time in the future some unscrupulous "politician" might take advantage of that knowledge is just too great to ignore. (Could we have trusted Adolf Hitler not to have used nuclear weapons had he possessed them? Somehow, I don't think so).
So my advice to you is to follow the instincts of your Army Officer side; much safer, however sad or guilty your hippy side might feel as a result. (I have a hippy side too, so I know exactly how you feel).
Target.
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