The case against American nuclear disarmament (2013)

Highlight from the article:

qualitative evidence from the past 70 years shows that leaders pay close attention to the nuclear balance of power, that they believe superiority enhances their position, and that a nuclear advantage often translates into a geopolitical advantage. During the Cuban missile crisis, American nuclear superiority helped compel Moscow to withdraw its missiles from the island. As Gen. Maxwell Taylor, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a memo to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, “We have the strategic advantage in our general war capabilities.… This is no time to run scared.” Similarly, Secretary of State Dean Rusk argued, “One thing Mr. Khrushchev may have in mind is that he knows that we have a substantial nuclear superiority, but he also knows that we don’t really live under fear of his nuclear weapons to the extent that he has to live under fear of ours.”

We see similar patterns in South Asia. When asked years later why Pakistan ultimately withdrew its forces from Indian Kashmir during the 1999 Kargil crisis, former Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes cited his country’s nuclear superiority. In the event of a nuclear exchange, he said, “We may have lost a part of our population … [but] Pakistan may have been completely wiped out.” ... Competition between nuclear powers is like a game of chicken, and in a game of chicken, we should expect the smaller car to swerve first, even if a crash would be disastrous for both. The United States has always driven a Hummer, but it is trading it in for a Prius, even though games of chicken are likely for decades to come. Rather than cutting its forces, the United States should, as President John F. Kennedy promised, maintain a nuclear arsenal “second to none.”

I fear we can only play the game of nuclear chicken for so long, and one day -- either deliberately or accidentally -- there'll be a nuclear exchange and we'll be in uncharted waters, with the existence of the world at stake.

Einstein felt our only hope rested in a world government with total control of all nuclear weapons, which would be tasked with preventing war between any nation.

Given the failure of the EU to maintain unity, of an America ready to tear itself apart, and civil wars of all kinds, such a world government is probably too optimistic. But I'm not sure what else is going to work. Total nuclear disarmament seems highly unlikely, given how distrustful countries are of each other, and even non-nuclear weapons are both getting more powerful all the time and getting easier and easier to use by non-state actors, never mind states which are ever more eager to use them.

The human race most likely has a very dark future.