When we read eye witness accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima, which occurred in August 1945, we are shocked at the horror and inhumanity of the world's most terrible weapon - the atom bomb, which subsequently evolved into the hydrogen bomb. If today's nuclear arsenals were unleashed against urban centers, hundreds of millions would die. Entire national economies would collapse.
Some people imagine that nuclear weapons are, in themselves, a great evil. They argue that all nuclear weapons should be scrapped. After all, in the fullness of time, by design or by accident, nuclear war is inevitable. Doesn't it make sense to do something to prevent such a disaster? Shouldn't we embark on a universal program of nuclear disarmament?
Two points should be made regarding this subject. First, nuclear weapons are not evil. They are merely inanimate objects. If there is danger in the world, it comes from evil politicians. Second, lethal biological weapons have greater death-dealing potential than nuclear weapons. The United States does not possess an arsenal of lethal biological weapons. If we eliminate our nuclear weapons and do not account for the biological arsenals of Russia, China, North Korea, etc., we will leave ourselves open to attack without any means of retaliation.
Few have considered what genuine nuclear disarmament would entail. Unless the whole human race takes a drug that makes everyone stupid, nuclear technology is not going to disappear. As long as modern civilization remains technologically advanced, we will have weapons of mass destruction. There is no way around this, because the ultimate weapon is not a nuclear bomb. The ultimate weapon is the human mind.
Our new administration in Washington thinks that eliminating all nuclear weapons (in every country) would be a good thing. President Obama says that eliminating all nuclear weapons "is not pie in the sky." But if this is not pie in the sky, then nothing is. For even if every nuclear arsenal were dismantled, some countries might build new arsenals in secret. Therefore, real nuclear disarmament requires the elimination of all whose skill and knowledge would facilitate the construction of future arsenals. One would have to arrange abortions, as well, for all fetuses that might be born and later become nuclear scientists. It must be admitted that weapons of mass destruction do not exist of and by themselves. They stem from our technological sophistication, from our intellectual accomplishments, from modern scientific concepts. Only if we eliminate these precursors, can we eliminate the possibility of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.
Nevertheless, the new administration is determined in its utopian venture. The White House Web Site states: "Obama and Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it. Obama and Biden will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist. But they will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. They will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global."
Obama and Biden are determined to remove the chief guarantor of peace - America's nuclear arsenal. They no longer believe in the "balance of terror." What they want is a treaty for the elimination of nuclear arsenals worldwide. Totalitarian countries have a long record of treaty violations. The ruling KGB gang in Russia is currently developing a super-plague weapon in violation of existing treaties. These people are not going to keep a nuclear arms control agreement if they can achieve global dominance by cheating. If all nuclear weapons were eliminated, you would merely achieve the disarmament of the United States.
Obama and Biden are dreamers. If you are going to play the utopian game, why stop at the elimination of nuclear weapons? Why not eliminate evil? Get every world leader on the phone and propose the elimination of evil worldwide. After all, the problem was never in the weapons. It was in the people who built them. Even if you remove all the nuclear weapons from the planet, evil people will try and build new weapons. And they will do so secretly. How does Obama propose to stop them?
In discussing the elimination of nuclear weapons, or the elimination of evil, we are not talking about a fourth grade math problem; in fact, many so-called problems are not problems at all because they do not admit of any solution whatever. We cannot prevent a nuclear war by eliminating nuclear weapons any more than we can eliminate evil. The truth of the matter was eloquently summed up by Ursula LeGuin, who wrote: "[Evil is not] something that can be solved..." Instead, she observed, it is "all the pain and suffering and waste and loss and injustice we will meet all our lives long, and must face and cope with over and over, and admit, and live with, in order to live human lives at all."
As mature adults, as realists and not fantasists, we should embrace LeGuin's words. Evil is among us, it is within us, and it is here to stay. And the same is true of nuclear weapons, with the following addendum. There is a path to nuclear disarmament and a nuclear-free world. It is the path of nuclear war, in which civilization and mankind are taken back to an earlier, less technologically advanced era.
