Nuclear Weapons

Bomb Dropped On Nagasaki, Japan
Photo Source: Public Domain

Several countries in Europe, that are not listed as nuclear nations, are not happy with us, but they are keeping their opinions under the rug. The cause of this unhappiness is the fact that we have given them nuclear weapon. From what I found out there are four countries involved. They are Germany, Belgium the Netherlands and Italy. The nukes are under our control, but they are there to be given to those governments, so that we would not be the only ones using them if we had to. A very bad policy indeed. The countries are so disgusted with this, that they are now ordering planes that are not capable of dropping these bombs. By the way there are over 900 of them. In case you have ever wondered. Maybe under the new administration we will abide by the will of these countries and eventually take the nukes out. The United States has stationed nuclear weapons in 27 countries over the years, but the difference between these are the ones I just mentioned above, is these the four countries I talked about would actually take possession of the weapons and they would no longer be under U.S. Control.

Convair B-36
Photo Source: US Air Force

When World War II ended, the United States maintained a strategic force based on the Convair B-36. This would have been our main nuclear delivery system if it was needed. Nuclear weapons were deployed in bases all over the world that were calculated to be able to reach any target if necessary. The idea was to make the United States invincible to nuclear attack by having such a strong nuclear deterrent that no one would dare attack us. This was fine for the Cold War and held true, but as times changed after the cold war ended and retaliatory targets became fuzzy due to terrorist groups replacing countries as antagonists, the policy has become irrelevant except for those rogue states that might attack. We now face a delimma, if a nuclear weapon is set off in the United States, do we punish the country of origin that the terrorists came from, if we can even find that out, or do we nuke all those suspected terrorist bases, even if they are in countries that we have relations with? It is a terrible choice to contemplate.

The world would have been so much better off if we had never invented nuclear weapons, however we would have lost many lives invading Japan. Maybe the thing to have done was destroy the weapons after the war and all documentation. I say this because most of the countries that acquired nukes, got their information from spies that got it from us. I have also always suspected that we helped certain nuclear programs along, such as those in Great Britain and we were just never told about this, but I could be wrong.

Multiple Nuclear Warheads For Rockets
Photo Source: Department Of Defense

The only nations that we are told that possess nuclear weapons are the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel and South Africa are also suspected of having a nuclear arsenal. This list is very misleading, since nukes have been stationed in many other countries by the the U.S. and by the former Soviet Union. While this is true, the nukes were not under the control of those individual countries. When the former Soviet Union broke up, the control over those nukes in some places was lost. The Ukraine got rid of all their nukes for example. Do we know for sure that the former Iron Curtain countries did not lose nukes, or that any of the nukes were sold to other countries, or people? No. The record keeping system in some of these places left a lot to be desired and the soldiers who weren't paid for a long time, were selling everything. It has been rumored for years that small nukes called suitcase bombs, were missing.

What would a country like North Korea do if it had a nuclear weapon and a delivery system? Many believe that it would never actually use it. North Korea is infamous for using everything as a bargaining chip. It would probably threaten to use it over and over again and maybe even try and make some huge deal if it got rid of the bomb. No one really thinks that North Korea is ready to commit suicide just to get even with South Korea. As South Korea moves further and further away from the North in technology, the more urgent the North Korean regime feels is the need for the bomb. It is believed that North Korea only has one or two small nukes and and short to medium range rockets. Iran is different. Iran is a country that may or may not be in a huge turmoil. According to the news we read it is, but is that news just for our benefit and are the problems there really as large as they are made out to be? If it is true than Iran wants the bomb more than ever to use it as a threat to keep foreign forces from helping the students and others who are trying to get a democratic government installed. If what we read is not as profound as we are led to believe then Iran still wants the bomb because it fears the United States and has since we installed the Shah, against the will of the people. The Shah was a tyrant that ran a police state that destroyed many lives and we backed him till the end. Would the Iranians ever use the bomb? I think that they would have to be attacked before that would ever happen, but if they felt that we were the cause of an attack, they might declare a holy war and at that point launch everything.

How many nuclear warheads exist in the world today? An estimate would be almost 24,000 nukes of all sorts. This is an estimate and could be off in either direction, but if it is off, it probably underestimates the amount. The largest amount of nuclear warheads that the U.S. ever had was 32,040 in 1966. The most the Soviets had was 45,000 in 1986. It is hard to imagine that between these two countries there was the power to destroy the civilized world many times over.

Joe-1 was the first nuclear device that was tested by the Soviet Union and this was in 1949. Instead of investing vast sums in developing nuclear weapons, they invested much less in spies and were able to steal our nuclear secrets in a short period of time. The United States is still famous today as a place where you can get all sorts of secrets. Much of this is due to the fact that we have an open society and much can be pieced together from snippets that we find all over the place, including the Internet. How many times have we seen spies caught that were spying on us from countries that we considered our friends? Everyone spies on us, because this is where the technology is right now and because it is much easier than trying to spy on a country that is communist or a dictatorship.

Nuclear weapons and nuclear secrets are truly impossible to keep and the best thing the world could do right now is try and develop something that would render them inoperative. The problem with this is that it would be withheld as a weapon.