The Truth about Nuclear Weapons

The current rash of nuclearfreeze and no-first-use proposals was described by Benjamin Stein in the New York Times not long ago as “junk thought”: surely one of the most felicitous put-downs in recent polemical history. It is indeed that, but it is also much more. The truth is that the anti-nuclear movement fundamentally misconceives the true significance of nuclear weapons and their impact on the future behavior of the human race.

Since early times when men began fighting each other with rocks and clubs, war has been one of the staples of human conduct, or misconduct. Only the weapons have changed: clubs gave way to spears, and spears to gunpowder; armies took to the road, then to the seas, and then to the air. Sooner or later, it ought to have been obvious, technology would reach a point at which the most advanced nations would have at their disposal weapons capable of inflicting altogether “unacceptable” —because too extensive and too terrible—damage on an opponent, even if that opponent struck first.

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William A. Rusher

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The current rash of nuclearfreeze and no-first-use proposals was described by Benjamin Stein in the New York Times not long ago as “junk thought”: surely one of the most felicitous put-downs in recent polemical history. It is indeed that, but it is also much more. The truth is that the anti-nuclear movement fundamentally misconceives the true significance of nuclear weapons and their impact on the future behavior of the human race.

Since early times when men began fighting each other with rocks and clubs, war has been one of the staples of human conduct, or misconduct. Only the weapons have changed: clubs gave way to spears, and spears to gunpowder; armies took to the road, then to the seas, and then to the air. Sooner or later, it ought to have been obvious, technology would reach a point at which the most advanced nations would have at their disposal weapons capable of inflicting altogether “unacceptable” —because too extensive and too terrible—damage on an opponent, even if that opponent struck first.