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Originally Posted by SaintessHeart
You could ask our older forum members, especially those who lived through the Red Scare, Cuban Missile Crisis and Ping Pong Diplomacy, if anybody actually cared about that point.  |
Many, many people in my lifetime were concerned about the consequences for the world if a nuclear exchange had taken place. Not everyone is as cynical as you, Saintess. You have the advantage of living in a time when global thermonuclear war is no longer a daily concern. Enjoy it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Bombadil
Well, actually, I am going to argue that the fact that we still live today without a nuclear war in last 60 years is evidence that people actually care.
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I believe it was the result of mutual agreed destruction. One of Kennedy's more brilliant diplomatic moves during the Cuban Missile Crisis was to announce in his speech that any attack by a missile based in Cuba would be interpreted as an attack by the USSR and that the Soviet Union would be the target of retaliation. MAD was a horrible, scary policy to live under, but in retrospect it seems to have worked. However MAD only works when both sides have a lot to lose. India and China fall into that category today; I'm not so sure whether it applies to Pakistan or North Korea. Terrorists with nuclear weapons is a whole other problem.
I'm surprised that after all the efforts of criminals like A. Q. Khan we have yet to see another nuclear device exploded. Tel Aviv remains high on my list of likely targets.
As for the size of the US military, I'm fully convinced we could halve our military expenditures over the next five to ten years and see no serious reduction in our security. This very persuasive
article by two US military analysts argues that we could scale down the nuclear arsenal to just 311 strategic weapons. They list the ones they'd keep and those they'd demolish.