War and Peace

It seams that the overall concept of Richard Rhodes article 'Living With the Bomb' is how war can create peace. How destruction can create diplomacy. Let me restate that, how an impending apocalypse can create a mutual understanding amongst world leaders. This article states that through the creation of nuclear weapons we have since formed better relations with countries who would have otherwise wanted to bomb the hell out of each other. I think that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) was merely a sensible result that had been caused by the world wide example of the potential devastation of nuclear weapons (I.E. Hiroshima). No country led by a even somewhat respectable, sensible, even power hungry leader, wants to destroy a region or culture of people and ruin that area for decades. It almost seems to me that countries who are attaining to gain nuclear weapons are doing so for their own protection. They want the world to see them as a threat. It's like your little brother or sister who started to lift weights and now you have to take them seriously. They don't necessarily want to kick your ass they just want to be recognized that the potential is there. They may also want nuclear technology to say to a potentially invading country (pardon my profane english) "Don't fuck with us, we got the nuke," and not necessarily have to employ it but the simple danger of having it is enough to scare them from attempting to do so. This being said I do have to agree with Rhodes, as well as many others, in saying that the danger does exist in terrorists gaining nuclear technology. But, how can we eliminate that threat? It's nearly as impossible as preventing a college student to stop stealing music off the internet. That being said, I have no viable solution to the problem of prevention only that it should be thoroughly processed and thought out before it's too late. Maybe I'll respond later with some possible solutions to preventing terrorists from receiving nuclear weaponry, but until I attain a higher IQ and a degree in Advanced Weaponry Prevention Tactics, let's just cross our fingers. :/

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