Re: Utterly pointless
Zibob,
We do live with an eternal gun to the head. That's what nukes are. But before that, we also lived with an eternal gun to the head - which in that case was an actual gun. Of course, in the olden days - before the invention of the aeroplane - most civilians were broadly OK - so long as an army didn't turn up on their doorstep. Or the war didn't go on so long that famine hit the whole place. The Thirty Years War is estimated to have killed one third of the population of Germany (mostly through disease and starvation - but also an awful lot of violence). Once there were planes of course, then we could add bombing cities to the list of possibilities.
I'm not sure nukes create stability. But then I'm not sure there's ever been much stability to speak of. I strongly suspect their existence made the Cold War a lot less bloody than it would otherwise have been. Though predicting Stalin's actions after WWII is impossible.
In a more multi-polar world the risk calculation changes and also the number of countries with access to nuclear weapons keeps on growing. I don't think we have stability. If nukes make the world more dangerous, it doesn't become safer just because one power doesn't have them.
I don't see the world being more stable if the US say cuts its defence spending to normal levels, becomes isolationist and/or abandons its nukes. There's an awful lot of smug anti-Americanism in Europe, from people that would be horrified by a world not running on the current international system. But who also aren't willing to resource their own militaries, intelligence services and diplomats to replace the US. So the alternative to the US at the moment is China's vision of global governance. Which would be far worse for everyone, including the people of China.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
