The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 7 of 16)

br> Palm City, Florida /p> p> DR. STRANGELOVE, I PRESUME br> Re: Christopher Orlet's Nuclear Dominoes : /p>

Orlet is correct that we can't stop any nation from acquiring nuclear weapons of some sort and he is equally correct that a world of nuclear-armed nations is subject to the whim of the least stable dictator or national leader. However, once the technology becomes available, it is inevitable that sooner or later all nations capable of mastering the technological advance will develop the weapon system.

During WWII, the Germans, Japanese and Russians all had a nuclear weapons program under development. We got there first, but if we hadn't the Russians would have had a nuke without our unwitting help. They had their own "Manhattan Project" east of the Urals and simply lacked the resources, not the technical skill to develop a bomb. In 1943, under the Lend-Lease program, the Russian purchasing section in Washington D. C. issued a requisition to our government for 6,000 pounds of uranium oxide, a sure sign they were developing a nuclear weapon. Wisely, we refused that request.

Being first to develop a new weapons system grants us no special privileges or confers any unique responsibilities. The Germans developed the first cruise missile called the V-1 buzz bomb and the first ICBM called the V-2 rocket. With their development of sarin gas near the end of the war, Germany had a weapons system capable of depopulating London or Moscow. It took America years to catch up with the Germans, even after abducting their leading scientists. We didn't hesitate to follow the German advances in rocketry and biological warfare and rightly so.

Americans have been steadily indoctrinated with a superstitious awe of nuclear war that wasn't there in 1945. As Churchill dramatically said about the atom bomb: "It's the Second Coming in wrath" and we fervently believe that. In fact, the American war experience illustrates how easy it is to ignore international agreements and moral principles when it comes to weapons systems. At one time, we were against submarine warfare directed at civilian shipping and terror bombing of enemy cities. Once WWII started, we dropped all reservations and were, along with the British armed forces, the leading practitioners of both forms of warfare.

p>The lesson is we just aren't a "super" enough superpower to control weapon acquisition throughout the world. America doesn't have friends or international responsibilities, we only have "interests." Our interests should be the protection of Americans, not president of the world bloc club. I hope the Japanese are lying when they recently said they wouldn't go nuclear in response to North Korea. And, if they're not lying, they should be. br> -- Patrick Skurka

topics:
Religion, Islam, Abortion, Global Warming, Movies, Law, Russia, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons