Nuclear Dinner Money

[hmmm_tea]

Iran 'would like nuclear option'

Erm... yes, of course they would!

OK, so Iran doesn't exactly strike me as utopia and it seems generally agreed that nuclear weapons are kind of scarey whoever has them ...except if it's us and our mates when for some reason it suddenly becomes ok *confused look*

However, it does seem odd how surprised we always seem to be when the topic gets raised that all these other places might actually want them too.

OK, so from our position as big bullies of the world playground we may be able to turn around to all the littler countries and steal their dinner money to prevent them reaching us, but every now and then one of them will grow up and gain access to these things, at which point we suddenly declare them our mate and life carries on. We would never dream of giving up our power over the world though, why on earth would they want the same power as us?

Next thing you know we'll be finding one of these countries we don't like the look of invading them on fairly tenuous evidence and enforcing regime change to make them more like us... Oh, yes, hang on a minute, I remember now, we've already done that one

One day we may stop being hipocritical and actually get rid of our nuclear weapons like ElBaradei suggests. Who knows, maybe we'll even replace them with missiles made out of bacon.

In the meantime who's turn is it to polish the nuclear superpowers halo?

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Britain has a pretty good record at cutting back on nuclear weapons, actually - I suspect only South Africa can credibly claim any better.

As to “if we can have them why can't they” the answer is easy: a world where nuclear weapons are limited to a small number of countries is pretty clearly better than one where many countries have them, and this is true even though a completely nuclear free world might be better than either.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

We've still got them though and unless we get rid of them entirely it is hipocritical of us to say to other countries that they are not allowed them.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm (essentially) not allowed to own a gun. The police are. Is that hypocritical of the state, or just because (in this society) we think minimizing the numbers of guns is a good place?

(Whether we achieve that goal is an orthogonal question, but the same is true for nuclear weapons.)

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

There's a subtle difference, the police are answerable to us via government. We are not answerable to Iran for example.

and no, I don't think the police should carry guns either.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The relevant kind of answerability is the NPT, which Iran is actually a member of, albeit one in breach of its treaty obligations.

As for the police, they pretty obviously need the option to use firearms (with due care and responsibility etc etc etc), since criminals already have and use them.