Nuclear Madness and Hypocrisy

I stand with the rest of the international community in condemning the North Korean leadership in its quest for nuclear weapons. I have no doubt that the Korean people would be much better off without Kim Jong Il and his mad cult of personality in power. Indeed, North Korea may be one of the most uncaring and callous governments in recent history. However, there is one point that the UN is missing when it addresses nations on the prowl for nuclear arms – hypocrisy.

For more than 60 years, we have lived in an atomic age where millions of people could be wiped out in a matter of minutes. As an American, I lived most of my youth under the shadow of the bomb and learned to cope with it as best I could. Then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, I began to wonder why we still had so many nukes lying around. I mean, really, we will almost certainly never use them.

Think about it… Even if we suffered a nuclear attack, we would probably not respond in kind. It would be too much to bear to see so many innocents die because some mad leader (be it of a country or a terror organization) chose to use a nuke. To be honest, it is almost certain that any nuclear attack would come via terror and not conventional means. That would surely make any nuclear retaliation virtually impossible because there would be no “place” to bomb. The strategic use of nuclear weapons is simply out of the question – there is no strategic use for WMD.

As a result, there are many military leaders in the U.S., and other nuclear nations, who question the validity of a modern nuclear arsenal. Because of the above examples, these leaders see no real need or call for such weapons. In fact, the military would be much better off channeling the personnel and funds from the nuclear arsenal to the conventional military. It would simply be a more realistic and pragmatic application of resources.

When you look at the current political and strategic environment, there is truly no need for any country to have nuclear weapons at the ready. Of course, you cannot put the cat back in the bag, but you can keep it under lock and key. International and total WMD disarmament is the first step toward making all people around the world sleep easier.

So my point is this – if we don’t really need nukes, let’s just get rid of them. That way no one will have them. Here is where the hypocrisy comes in. We cannot tell North Korea, Iran, or anyone that they are not permitted to have something that we already possess (in mass). That argument lacks any moral high ground and these rogue states know it. If we first cleansed ourselves of these weapons of mass destruction, we would then be in a true leadership position to tell others how we think they should act. Though this is no guarantee that other countries will not try to get nukes, it does start everyone off on the right foot. Until that point, we are merely arrogant hypocrites to our detractors and make ourselves more vulnerable to hatred and terror.