December 16, 2006
Imagine if There Were No Nukes…
…it’s easy if you try
(Sung to the tune of John Lennon’s “Imagine”)
How would the world have developed over the last 60 years if nuclear weapons had never been developed? Conventional wisdom, of course, is that we all would have been much better off… But is that really true?
Nuclear weapons have raised the cost of war such that nuclear powers are absolutely fearful of fighting each other. The Cold War only remained cold, IMHO, because of the concept of MAD. While nukes are certainly horrendous weapons, they create a deterrent power that is unparalleled (one of the main reasons we want to make sure nobody like Iran has them).
What do you think? Would the world be more or less stable without nukes?
PS - I’m out in Corpus Christi, TX, spending the weekend with my brother and his family. Posting will remain light.
What If Diaries linked with What If There Were No Nuclear Weapons ?
Below The Beltway linked with What If There Were No Nuclear Weapons ?
4 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
[...] Brad Warbiany wonders how the past 60 years might have been different if nuclear weapons had never been developed. [...]
There would not have been as cold war and America would have saved quite a bit of money on defense. I think we would have fought the Soviets and won, that would have save us from fighting proxy wars and little coups and insurgencies in South America. In some situations we would have been on the right side of a foreign conflict instead of helping the anti-communist side. One instance would have been Cuba. We would still have the conflict in the middle east, because that scenario was not base on nuclear weapons. Quite possibly the problems in Africa, conflicts between Pakistan and India and China territorial disputes would still be occurring. I don’t think Chinese communism would have survived with a weak Soviet Union. Unfortunately the only way to have kept nuclear weapons from being made, would have been to destroy the Physics books and scientist.
We would have managed to kill at least half the worlds population with conventional and biological weapons.
No question about it.
[...] Brad Warbiany wonders how the past 60 years might have been different if nuclear weapons had never been developed. Here’s a few scenarios that I think are quite likely: [...]