Nuclear weapons are otherwise regarded as evil, immoral, and illegal. The only justification there is for owning some and the only legitimate function of these weapons is deterrence.

In the light of much paranoia happening around as to who has nuclear weapons and just who has the business of telling owners they should not have them, the question remains: just what are nuclear weapons for?

If we go by the bickering we hear and read about, nuclear weapons come with other buzzwords such as retaliation, aggression, stubbornness, and sanctions. It seems that deterrence means all these put together, a far-cry from the original meaning of the term ‘nuclear deterrence.’ In other words, having nuclear deterrence, nowadays, really means being justified to own nuclear weapons.

In yet another digression from the supposed intention: ‘Deterrence theory has sometimes also extended to deterring non-nuclear attacks. During the protracted Cold War, for example, the United States threatened nuclear retaliation in response to a hypothetical conventional Soviet attack on Western Europe – in an attempt to dissuade the USSR from launching such an attack. (Never mind that in historical retrospect that threat appears never to have been more than a phantom, used primarily to justify enormously bloated military budgets of our own.)’

Nuclear deterrence is one country’s means to be able to sleep at night while knowing that there are enemies outside. Its fundamental notion of ‘basing one country’s security on the threat to entirely incinerate another country, and all its inhabitants, and also making that country (and likely surrounding countries as well) radioactive and uninhabitable for generations to come’ is but means to pacify the pangs of paranoia. It is more a psychological assurance of a country’s security.

The concept of nuclear deterrence, therefore, has come to mean nothing more than posturing of quasi-aggression. It’s still the same old psy-war. No one would be stupid enough to incinerate the planet and wipe out humankind.

So, as long as paranoia abounds, we will never see a nuclear-free world.

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Via truthout