Dropping the N-Bomb

Nuclear.

Egads! Nuclear weapons! The Muslims are coming with them, they want to kill all the poor Christian (read: white) people! We need nuclear weapons to deter them.

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Okay, I'm going to give you one simple reason why the Obama Administration's new nuclear posture is the smartest thing that the president could possibly do with our nuclear arsenal.

We do not live in 1940. Or 1989 for that matter.

On August 6th and 9th, 1945, the people of the world saw the horrors of the use of nuclear weapons. Between the two bombings and the subsequent deaths due to radiation and injury, 410,000 people died with no discretion between citizen and soldier, between guilty and innocent. The world does not need to see that level of inhumanity ever again.

And there's no need for it to. We do not live in the 1930's and 40's; nations do not go to war with each other on the level that was witnessed within the World War conflicts. Very few of today's enemies can be easily recognized as states. I will grant, there are a few "rogue states" that weild an aggressive stance against the United States and the rest of Western culture, nations like Iran and North Korea, that are pursuing nuclear weapons.

However, in today's environment, foes are not defined by borders, but by ideas. While the distinction was one in the same in the 20th century, Nazism in Germany, Totalitarian Communism in the U.S.S.R., today the two groups are distinct. For example, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are based in Afghanistan, however, not all of the people of Afghanistan are part of al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

And likewise in there physical differences, states of government and groups of people brought together by an idea can not be confronted in the same way. While a state can be defeated using force and nuclear weapons, killing the people that live the idea doesn't kill the idea. Take for example, Nazism. Nazi Germany, the nation, was defeated more than 60 years ago; but even today, many people in the Neo-Nazi movement still believe in the tenets of Nazism, anti-sematism, and white supremacy.

Nuclear weapons are completely useless in defeating most of today's foes of ideas. There is no target to aim for; there is no set base to strike. Ideas are preserved not in physical entities and buildings, but in the minds and histories of people. The Obama Administration understands this. While some force may be necessary to calm the more extreme fringes of a movement, ultimately it is education and economic partnership that will defeat ideas that breed violence and threaten global security.

Conservative wingnuts are simply that. To decry the elimination of only one third of the massive U.S. nuclear weapon supply is ridiculous. These levels of weapons served only to further the deterrence of Mutually Assured Destruction in the 1970's and '80s, and today they are a careless conservative's button press away from global overkill. To have these levels of weapons makes no sense today. By eliminating these weapons, it not only improves the security of the world in the event of a computer malfunction, but also shows nuclear states and rogue states that the United States is serious about disarmament, seeks to preserve the world from the horrors of nuclear holocaust, and wants to prove its ability to not just be a nation of war, but an entity of peace and prosperity. And the world, along with the United States, will be better for it.