Valerie Plame: Eliminating world's nukes guarantees terrorists will not get them...

[cynatnite]

written by Valerie Plame Wilson

snip:
Getting to global zero will be arduous, but it can be done. Many who supported nuclear weapons as a deterrent during the Cold War now recognize that the threat today is not nuclear war with Russia or China, but proliferation and the risk of nuclear terrorism. Eliminating these present-day threats outweighs any benefits we might gain from retaining our nuclear arsenal.

The world’s nuclear stockpile has already been cut by more than half over the past 20 years—from its Cold War peak of about 70,000 warheads to today’s 23,000. And a political consensus is building in support of eliminating the rest. Presidents Obama and Medvedev have jointly declared their commitment to the goal of global zero and taken the initial step toward it by negotiating a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty—the first significant agreement to cut nuclear arms in decades. The United Nations Security Council has declared its unanimous support for the goal.

In the previous century, America led the world and defined the age—defeating Hitler, rebuilding Europe through the Marshall Plan, promoting civil rights for all people, sending men to the moon. Now we must again lead the world to conquer the gravest danger of this young century—nuclear terrorism.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/30/the-power-of-zero.html

The entire article is well worth the read. I can't wait to see this documentary.

[Hugabear]

1. It wouldn't guarantee that terrorists wouldn't get nukes, just make it a lot harder

You can get rid of nukes, but you can't get rid of the knowledge of how to build them.

[cynatnite]

2. But weapons grade plutonium isn't easy to get as I understand it...

It's not a nuke if you don't have that.

[Hugabear]

3. You can make an atomic bomb with uranium

Granted, it's still not an easy process, getting the enriched uranium, but you can make an atomic bomb without plutonium. The atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima used uranium, while the Nagasaki bomb used plutonium.

Suffice it to say that we would definitely be much safer if everyone eliminated their nuclear stockpiles. It would be far easier for terrorists to acquire nukes via the black market, or taking over a country like Pakistan, than it would be for them to develop their own nukes.