<p>A teacher of mine brought up three good questions the other day that I've been pondering and would like your thoughts on.</p>
<p>1) If anyone, who gets to choose who get nuclear weapons? Who are the "rational" countries that would get them? (Ex. The U.S. does not want Iran to have them, but who gets to choose?)
2) If all countries had nuclear weapons, would there be any use of them?
3) What happens if a terrorist group gets a hold of them? You don't have a govt. to blame it on, but you probably won't be able to find that group easily, possibly risking thousands of lives in the process. (These groups might get it from the areas of the former Soviet Union where there are plenty due to the arms race, yet they aren't well guarded and are basically scattered about different countries.)</p>
<p>1) The people who choose are the people who have or can buy (or sell, with respect to those who need to buy) the know-how, resources, production capacity, and ancillary technologies (e.g., launch vehicles) AND who also have the means to defend themselves against those who object to them procuring nuclear weapons (or any weapon of mass destruction).</p>
<p>2) Yes.</p>
<p>3) They will use them because, unlike nations that possess nukes, there is no deterrent benefit from having them without employing them. Plus, as you note, there's no "eye for an eye" retaliation possible.</p>
<p>Concerning your first question Optimization: I don't think the United States decides as to who can sustain or have nuclear capability, I believe that is the UN's task and a matter of the international community.</p>
<p>3) This is why it's important for powerful nations to make sure they're not exploiting or being cruel to any nation or group, regardless of how weak they may seem -- there will always be some people in that nation who feel persecuted enough to destroy themselves and/or half the world for their beliefs. As technology makes the individual more powerful, offending others becomes ever more dangerous. Really, the way to stop this from happening is just to step away from the world stage and sink into the obscurity of pacifism.</p>
<p>@ fizix: Of course you're presuming some degree of rationality in the decision matrix. In the end, though, those most likely to deploy a nuclear weapon or unleash some other indiscriminate mass killing weapon upon any people will be people who act irrationally. To suggest that we can control others -- in this case, by being fair to other nations/peoples -- grossly overstates the situation. It's a nice point and makes people feel good that they can justify humanitarian efforts because it will create a buffer from nuclear attack. But that's just not true.</p>
<p>Most countries either have or are very capable of making nuclear weapons. Countries, however, will almost never use such weapons due to the retaliation factor and ensuing chaos. Even most terrorist groups, which generally have some sort of base that they try to promote, would not exactly deploy nuclear missiles at will to foreign countries. Why? Because that would undermine their validity, promote mass chaos (which, though it may be an effect, is generally not the primary purpose of most terrorist groups [i.e. power]), and would probably create a huge was that would further damage tentative alliances between countries in their geographic area. In short, because everyone has nuclear weapons (or at least can obtain them readily), no one is all that tempted to use them (as was Nobel's idea..."My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.").</p>
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[quote]
1) If anyone, who gets to choose who get nuclear weapons? Who are the "rational" countries that would get them? (Ex. The U.S. does not want Iran to have them, but who gets to choose?)
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<p>Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). NPT is signed by 188 states. It recognized 5 states (US, UK, China, France, Russia) as Nuclear Weapon States. Other 183(188-5) states have promised that they'll not manufacture NW. In return of that, the 5 NW states provide them technical assistance in using Nuclear Energy for peaceful purposes.</p>
<p>The 3 other Nuclear weapon states(India, Pakistan and Israel) have refused to sign the treaty because of it's inherent bias against 5 NWS (NPT has no provision of adding more members as NWS). Because they aren't signatory of NPT, NW states don't provide technical assistance to them[India would be given access to western technology starting from 2008 after the Henre Hyde Indo-US Act]</p>
<p>North Korea was a signatory on the deal but it broke it and developed NWs. Iran is also a signatory, but it's still going with its Uranium Enrichment program.</p>