Newsweek Explains Why Nukes are a Good Thing

In the post that follows, I imagine the probability of a nuclear event in the next 50 years. Hence, why not read up on Richard Branson’s plan to speed off into the cosmos, when Planet Earth erupts in a nuclear cloud?

Newsweek’s Jonathan Tepperman says “Not so fast. Nukes are actually a good thing. They keep us all in check.”

The main reason not to disarm is essentially: we’re stil here. I don’t believe Tepperman makes the case for keeping nukes, except that we haven’t blown up the world yet. Therefore, nukes must be good thing.

Assumed rationality is key to Tepperman’s analysis of the nuke issue. He’s assuming that no crazed YouTube commentator will ever get his hands on the black box. Or that nuke roguers in the hills of Afghanistan really and truly will say — when Armageddon is moments away — ” … naw, those guys really aren’t so bad. Let’s go have a pizza together.”

No offense, but the CIA couldn’t detect a Bernie Madoff Ponzie scheme when it was right under their nose. Obama seems to be totally blindsided and unprepared to articulate any position in the American healthcare debacle (I know … we have a rewind next week).

Not being the ‘expert’ journalist that Tepperman is, I believe that the secular west does not understand the depth of hatred and religious belief that make a global fireball jihad the most ‘noble’ gesture in the history of mankind. Consider it the ultimate suicide bomb attack.

And if you’re wrong, Jonathan. What then? It a “woops?”

I think the “tipping point” concept of the preceeding article on climate change is valid in this discussion. Nuclear war does not unfold. Like fragile ecosystems, financial markets,  and even epileptic seizures, the world seems perfectly stable and balanced by complex systems, until one day it’s chaos.

I can’t envision the world disarming, from a pragmatic, political perspective, but is a nuclear-bomb-free world (we will have nuclear energy, no matter what) really such a bad place to live?

 Anne