Nuclear_Arms_Opposing_Viewp

Ever since the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, some argue that nukes pose a threat to humankind. It is known that there are more than enough nuclear weapons in existence today to end the world. Many countries have nuclear weapons, posing a threat to use them in all-out warfare. Some believe that it is necessary to have nuclear weapons, while others beg to differ; they should be disposed of, and further manufacturing should be illegal. Still, others are content with the existence of nuclear weapons, but search for stricter methods to control their use. Ever since the detonation of the two U.S. atomic bombs over Japan in August 1945, the United States understood how massively destructive those weapons were. They also realized the powerful security value of nuclear weapons -- through the threat of atomic retaliation, the United States could deter almost any nation from attacking it or its allies. Those aforementioned benefits were not ignored by other nations. In 1949, the Soviet Union became the second nation to develop and test a nuclear weapon. In the ensuing years, the two superpowers (USA and Russia) built the largest nuclear arsenals in the world. Despite their efforts, they refrained from using them, a restraint that was tested most severely during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Ironically, many experts believe that nuclear weapons have helped prevent such an outcome: neither side dared risk initiating hostilities that could lead to a devastating nuclear strike. The North Koreans, who CIA Director Robert Gates warned may be only a few months away from building an atomic bomb, did it all by themselves. "Things that were very difficult for the smartest people in 1943 are easy for ordinary people now," says Richard Garwin, a former nuclear-weapons designer. He also implied that, if the North Koreans can do it, anyone can. The West's attempt to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons has failed, and a new and much more dangerous era of nuclear proliferation has begun. "We should have pointed to Iraq as proof positive that the system doesn't work and that something much more aggressive must be put in place..." admits a senior U.S. official. North Korea's approach to building the bomb is a case study of how a determined country can evade international mandates -- without much outside help, either. The North Koreans successfully built their own “Manhattan Project” without any international inspection agency discovering what they were up to. They successfully overcame every checkpoint of the International Atomic Energy Agency's monitoring efforts. Even designing a nuclear weapon, once the most closely guarded of all secrets, is now not a terribly difficult task for a physicist anywhere. "What's classified today is how to build a good weapon," says a senior scientist, "not how to build a weapon." Mathematical problems that challenged some of the best minds in the world during the Manhattan Project can now be solved on a personal computer. The bottom line: the threat of nuclear proliferation is very serious and should not be taken lightly. However, some believe the problem of nuclear proliferation is grossly exaggerated. Because government confidentiality and ignorant news reporters drawing their own conclusions, the general public has been misinformed. The problem really isn't that severe and solutions are much simpler than they seem. Very few people are actually informed enough to understand that getting the bomb is much harder that most strategists believe. It requires a wide array of advanced technology and a huge and expensive industrial infrastructure. This means that the international community continues to have "timely warning" in which to take action to stop a potential proliferation. In the process of building nuclear weapon capabilities, states of rapid growth are highly vulnerable to cut-offs of technology and equipment, diplomatic pressure, and covert action. Up to now, the international nonproliferation efforts have been extremely successful, especially given the meager resources that have been devoted to the task. The intellectual logic that supports a freezing or inversing of the nuclear programs throughout the world, "winning the battle" is set out in a series of propositions. The first proposition is that the proliferation problem is finite, involving only a comparatively small number of significant countries, and that number is unlikely to grow in the foreseeable future. The fatalistic assumption that proliferation will continue indefinitely to all regions of the world, and that more countries will get access atomic technology, is not supported by either historical evidence nor detailed analysis. A second proposition is that nuclear proliferation is not a one-way street -- reversing the tide is possible. Indeed, U.S. policy interventions both in the mid-1970s and recently have already succeeded in shortening the list of active problem states. The third pillar of the “winning strategy” is the conclusion that nuclear export controls have substantial utility even against states with advanced industrial capabilities. At a minimum, export controls ensure that a nuclear weapon program will be correctly identified as such early on. In every known case, export controls have forced proliferating countries to take steps in acquiring equipment and materials that clearly label their effort as being directed toward a military program. The final tenet of the winning strategy is simply that we are now faced with several golden opportunities that may never come again. First, the United States has an unprecedented opportunity to show the world through its own actions that nuclear weapons are only useful for deterring the use of nuclear weapons, not for extended deterrence.