(From the tone of the article, I was worried that the symbol originally meant something quite different from what it has come to mean today. But no. Same ballpark.)
Of course, in a peaceful world, who needs nukes. But is this world peaceful yet?
There is zero commitment from the major nuclear powers for an eventual complete denuclearization, the only thing they agree about is that they should be the only ones having nuclear weapons. As long as this hypocritical game goes on, the world will gain more, not less, nuclear states.
And we'll keep hearing this tune: "The world is too dangerous to aim for complete denuclearization, look, country X just became nuclear illegally by breaking [bullshit nuclear treaty we designed to keep our geopolitical edge]".
The nuclear powers agreed as part of the 1970 treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, particularly article 6, that they would pursue a complete nuclear disarmament. Of course, they have not fulfilled their obligations over the past half century and non-nuclear powers have complained about this, and the International Court of Justice agreed with them in 1996. A UN resolution in 1999 condemned the US for restarting a nuclear race - only the US, Israel, Albania and Micronesia voted against it. Bush withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002. The US has been in a nuclear arms race since then.
I say this as an Israeli who has genuine concern for my children's well being. Iran has legitimate nuclear ambitions. The chain leading up to those ambitions is difficult for some people to admit, and the direction that those ambitions are pushing Iran may very well harm my family. But I don't blame the Iranians themselves for the position that they are in.
Even personally I feel saver knowing other countries are able to defend them self, making it less likely to end up as collateral damage for the US democratisation process.
That's the worst case scenario for me. Compared to (!) that, this is how I feel about climate change and nuclear war:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/there-will-come-soft-rai...
There's also voluntary extinction (vhemt.org), of course, but that's not really a "cause".
CND et al never campaigned for the Soviets to disarm, for them it was always about clearing the way for a Soviet expansion westwards.
I beg your pardon?
I'm not going to bother granting you a response, you seem to have a political axe to grind and I don't do political flame wars.
WW2 started on a nuke-free Earth, and indeed finished with the use of nuclear weaponry.
The knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons wont go away, so the next World War, with no-one having nuclear weapons would probably take 4 years less time to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons (rather than MAD, it would be a furious race to build and use nukes first).
You're not considering second and third order consequences.
When two nations can unilaterally destroy the earth, they are greatly incentivized to use diplomacy over warfare.
(I am not pro nuclear weapons, but that's because I don't want Trump to have the power to accidentally the whole world because he couldn't keep his short, fat fingers from a big red button he couldn't read the label for. I do not, however, believe their removal would positively affect world peace at the current time.)
Therein lies the problem with nuclear weapons: they will never be used to win a world war by a calculating Hitler-like figure, but they can be used to kill most people on earth by an irrational Osama-like leader.
And since democracy and most other political systems frequently promote irrational figures in positions of authority, nuclear weapons (or rather, large nuclear stockpiles) pose a fundamental new problem for humanity, with no precedent in the history of war: catastrophic negative externalities for political insanity. The consequences of wars are no longer limited to the belligerent parties, but exported thought the world to peaceful and neutral nations. It's therefore rational for anybody to seek world denuclearization.
As a side comment, a good example or irrational behavior is the US treatment of Iran - a country that agreed not to proliferate only to be currently jerked around - versus the overtures made to North Korea after it obtained nuclear weapons. The political value of nuclear weapons becomes clear - although the reasons why US is pursuing this strategy of pushing states to proliferation is much less clear, and have to do with irrational internal US politics.
Yes, but the reason that this does affect the existing threat to peace is that an "irrational Osama-like leader" will wage war and slaughter regardless. Nuclear weapons massively increased the collateral damage, but it was not what disrupted the peace in the first place.
Unless you consider "living in a cozy first world country while ignoring all war and famine" to be "peace". If that's the case, then yes, the collateral of nuclear war would suddenly be forcing you to be part of the world.
But again, I do not like these toys either. I just find the statement that they by themselves affect peace to be wrong.
I am pretty sure neither Trump nor any previous presidents were never given that power. That briefcase is just a necessary prop used to build his image of most powerful human being around, but either it doesn't work or, if it does, before the red button pressed signal turns into an attack order it goes through some deep technical error checking and human approval list. That is the same reason there are two pilots on airliners (especially after Germanwings flight 9525): humans can go nuts, even best trained ones although rarely, but if they do with a nuclear button at hand the outcome can be catastrophic. That's more likely the risk in much smaller countries when they develop the technology necessary to build atomic weaponry, which - though I'm against them on principle - is probably the reason why a very small number of nukes can be still useful as a deterrent. But on a world size scale, today IMO atomic war should be the least of our concerns.
However, the existence of nuclear weapons does greatly increase the risk of nuclear war compared to if they didn't. The people that have them also just so happens to be the ones whose judgement and rationality I trust the least.