Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
That would be ideal, but I doubt it could ever happen. The appeal to keep a few would be too great, the man with a gun in a society with no guns is powerful. Who checks to make sure people are complying? How do you enforce that? What do you do when China decides to build a few nukes again?
I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle.
EDIT: Maybe a more realistic goal would be to have countries continue to reduce the number of nukes to some lower number, 500 each max or something.
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Not realistic, either of them.
The smaller nuclear nations have nukes to curb attacks by their neighbours and to also curb attacks by other members of the nuclear club.
the American's have massive number of weapons because it ensures that a nuclear war is completely unwinnable.
Reduction to a point is fairly cosmetic because we're talking about basically reducing the level of over kill.
Too big of a reduction and with accurate counterforce you suddenly create the prospect of a winnable nuclear war scenario.
We're never going to see the end of nuclear weapons or whatever its inevitable replacements are.
They're a cheaper barrier defense then a conventional military force. Khruschev had the idea of saving money by increasing the accuracy of his nuclear force and the use of mobile launchers and hiding behind a nuclear shield while reducing the size of his conventional military.