On Fri, 11 Feb 2005, Steve Brust wrote: > On Fri, 2005-02-11 at 11:46, Howard Brazee wrote: > > > There's a real difference between fission bombs and fusion bombs as far as > > physicists are concerned - but the social-political difference is > > neglible. We treat them the same when found in a third world country. > > I think that's the heart of the matter. Everyone gets nervous when > weapons of terror are in the hands of "backward" nations, just because > of the obvious conflict between the nation being backward in so many > ways, and the weapon being advanced. Everybody gets nervous when weapons of terror are in the hands of unstable or loosely-governed nations. Everybody should be nervous if nuclear weapons are controlled by countries insufficiently technologically sophisticated to safeguard and maintain them. > What constitutes a "backward" nation? That's harder to say. Here are a > few general guidelines, however: > > 1. Backward nations have not yet abandoned the barbaric practice of > capital punishment. This is more or less a religious argument - I happen to oppose capital punishment, but experience shows that such nations are capable of responsible possesion of nukes. > 2. Backward nations are still unable to provide their own citizens with > health care. We are able to provide our citizens with health care. Maybe not free, universal, cutting-edge health care, but this seems like an irrelevancy in context. > 3. Backward nations usually have an enormous percentage of the wealth > concentrated in the hands of very few, which few exercise more and more > direct political power in defense of that wealth (usually under the > cover some sort of religious doctrine combined with blatant militarism). The Soviet Union managed under these conditions to behave responsibly. > 4. Backward nations generally keep an unreasonable number of their own > citizens in prison. Ditto. > There are others, of course. But I think most people would agree that a > nation that displays those characteristics ought not to trusted with > weapons of terror. Most people are of course more interested about when the next episode of Desperate Housewives is than the FSU's loose nukes, or Pakistan's technology export policy, or how to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran. I for one am glad my racist, fearful, imperfect country developed nuclear weapons in the face of the USSR's expansionism and development of nukes. I'd like to see us continue nuclear disarmament, perhaps to 0; but the extent to which our arsenal has restrained China from annexing its neighbors and North Korea from waging war on South Korea and so forth would have to be considered, and that is a question for another day.