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Nuke’em The struggle for nuclear power has been a problem since the dawn of the nuclear age. Governments continue to use the threat of a nuclear attack as a deterrent. However, small terrorist groups may not feel threatened by a nuclear attack due to their mobility. Thus, the question remains; are nuclear weapons a necessary safety, or a danger. The solution is therefore to observe the pros and cons of nuclear capabilities, and to look at some precautions that can be taken to help protect people. The benefits of having nuclear weapons may not be quite as obvious as some of the downfalls of having such capabilities. The entire purpose of nuclear weapons is to act as a deterrent--the countries possess these weapons but hope to never have to use them. Even though the usefulness of a nuclear deterrent is usually only considered in the scenario of negotiations between countries with second-strike capabilities, multiple studies show that the possession of only a few nuclear weapons could help deter even a country with second-strike capabilities from doing something against the wishes of the smaller country. The general logic behind nuclear deterrence is that the guarantee of either mutual destruction or a high level of damage can help keep adversaries from trying to intimidate a country on important issues. Even though critics have challenged the logic, it is generally applicable (Sobek 150). This means that countries can make decisions without the looming threat of an attack from another country. Nuclear weapons act as a deterrent, because even the thought of having a single nuclear weapon used against them keeps an adversary from thinking about intimidating other countries. This benefit allows for a more just and uniform platf... ... middle of paper ... ...(2007): 563-578. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. Neu, Donald. Interview. Nye, Joseph S. "From Bombs To Bytes: Can Our Nuclear History Inform Our Cyber Future?." Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists 69.5 (2013): 8-14. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. Perrow, Charles. "Nuclear Denial: From Hiroshima To Fukushima." Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists 69.5 (2013): 56-67. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. Robock, Alan, and Owen Brian Toon. "Self-Assured Destruction: The Climate Impacts Of Nuclear War." Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists 68.5 (2012): 66-74. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. Sobek, David, Dennis M. Foster, and Samuel B. Robison. "Conventional Wisdom? The Effect Of Nuclear Proliferation On Armed Conflict, 1945-2001." International Studies Quarterly 56.1 (2012): 149-162. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Oct. 2013.
What Nuclear power has the ability to do is get a lot of power in a little amount of space. “Roughly 1.6 billion people live without access to electricity, and 2.4 billion rely on traditional biomass because they have no access to modern fuel.” (General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei) With nuclear power put into these countries that are without power we can have it to where electricity will be accessibility to everyone. By having power accessible to everyone we can accomplish so much more and unlock more possibilities in our world today.
Seventy-one years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear power is rarely recognized as a solution to the energy crisis. Instead, it is associated with the most violent pits of Hell: warfare. The demands of warfare exhaust the scientific community and deplete its resources, as well as decimating the human population.
Barnes, Michael. "Arguments Against the Atomic Bomb." 13 January 2013. Authentic History. 20 November 2013 . (For picture and information)
Vasquez, John A. "The Probability of War, 1816-1992. Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, March 25, 2002, New Orleans." International Studies Quarterly 48.1 (2004): 1-27. Print.
Scott D. Sagan, the author of chapter two of “More Will Be Worse”, looks back on the deep political hostilities, numerous crises, and a prolonged arms race in of the cold war, and questions “Why should we expect that the experience of future nuclear powers will be any different?” The author talks about counter arguments among scholars on the subject that the world is better off without nuclear weapons. In this chapter a scholar named Kenneth Waltz argues that “The further spread of nuclear weapons may well be a stabilizing factor in international relations.” He believes that the spread of nuclear weapons will have a positive implications in which the likely-hood of war decreases and deterrent and defensive capabilities increase. Although there
We are told, "To love thy neighbour" and "To treat." our enemies, as we would want to be treated. " If you were to look at these commandments you would see that nuclear warfare could never be justified, and if you do provoke a nuclear war, you should be punished. That brings me into the second reason why countries retain nuclear weapons and that is a threat. It is a way of protecting your country, but you will protect yourself and retaliate if provoked.
Nuclear Arms, as opposed to conventional arms, generate their destructive force from nuclear reactions. The issues that are related to the use of nuclear weapons is also far different than the issues generated by conventional bombs. The long term
The Cold War is famous not only for its long engagement between the two super powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but also because of the heightened physical tension that nuclear power brought to the global stage. Winning the war at the cost of human annihilation was not abnormal political conversation, and from the 1940s onward, fear of global destruction became a daily concern (Granieri, 2011). The circumstances of the Cold War made it different than previous international conflicts because it was the first conflict that could potentially lead to massive, worldwide destruction. Without the dangers of nuclear power, the Cold War wouldn't have differed much from previous historical conflicts between powerful states.
The main parties who is associated with the debate are governments, experts, and the country people. These people have given out their opinions regarding the effects of nuclear ene...
The development and usage of the first atomic bombs has caused a change in military, political, and public functionality of the world today. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki revolutionized warfare by killing large masses of civilian population with a single strike. The bombs’ effects from the blast, extreme heat, and radiation left an estimated 140,000 people dead. The bombs created a temporary resolution that lead to another conflict. The Cold War was a political standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States that again created a new worldwide nuclear threat. The destructive potential of nuclear weapons had created a global sweep of fear as to what might happen if these terrible forces where unleashed again. The technology involved in building the first atomic bombs has grown into the creation of nuclear weapons that are potentially 40 times more powerful than the original bombs used. However, a military change in strategy has came to promote nuclear disarmament and prevent the usage of nuclear weapons. The technology of building the atomic bomb has spurred some useful innovations that can be applied through the use of nuclear power. The fear of a potential nuclear attack had been heightened by the media and its release of movies impacting on public opinion and fear of nuclear devastation. The lives lost after the detonation of the atomic bombs have become warning signs that changed global thinking and caused preventative actions.
Ronald E. Powaski, March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present, (Oxford: OUP, 1987), 106.
From the creation of nuclear weapons at the start of the Cold War to today, the world has experienced struggles fueled by the want of nuclear power. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran’s nuclear weapon program are some of the most important conflicts over nuclear weapons. Thanks to the use of nuclear weapons in 1945 to end World War II, the world has come extremely close to a nuclear war, and more countries have began developing nuclear power. Unmistakably, many conflicts since the start of the Cold War have been caused by nuclear weapons, and there are many more to come.
Governments from other countries should be able to work things out and settle business without fearing that someone will be threatened with a nuclear war. These weapons have a very high percent of total destruction, other countries do not think about when they use these fatal weapons as an excuse, of what they will really do when sending the bombs off. They are only thinking of defending themselves no matter what the consequences are, little do they know that it could come back and bite them in the butt. Nuclear weapons will not only cause destruction to one country but all of them. Banning these dangerous weapons will make sure that these excuses will no longer be a problem to the world, countries and nations will not have to fear if they are putting the entire world in
Nuclear power, the use of exothermic nuclear processes to produce an enormous amount of electricity and heat for domestic, medical, military and industrial purposes i.e. “By the end of 2012 2346.3 kilowatt hours (KWh) of electricity was generated by nuclear reactors around the world” (International atomic energy agency Vienna, 2013, p.13). However, with that been said it is evident that the process of generating electricity from a nuclear reactor has numerous health and environmental safety issues.
Deterrence is a theory of International relations based in Realism. Essentially, it tries to explain the situation of when two or more states threaten retaliation if attacked, in order to deter the attack. It is therefore possible to very simply state deterrence as "You hit me, I hit you." For this essay, two main questions have to be addressed, ‘Has it worked?’ and ‘Does it make sense?’ To answer these questions, I will firstly define what deterrence is, I will then examine some of the main arguments for and against it, in theory and in reality; finally, I will show some of the consequences of states following such a policy. Deterrence, as already stated, can concern itself with any form of threatened counter-attack, however, for this essay, I shall be concentrating on Nuclear deterrence, using examples from the cold war, therefore, when the word ‘deterrence’ is used, it should be taken as ‘nuclear deterrence’. Hedley Bull describes deterrence as follows: "To say that country A deters country B from doing something is to imply the following: (i) That Country A conveys to Country B a threat to inflict punishment or deprivation of values if it embarks on a certain course of action; (ii) That Country B might otherwise embark on that course of action; (iii) That Country B believes that Country A has the capacity and the will to carry out the threat, and decides for this reason that the course of action is not worthwhile." Therefore, for deterrence to occur, a state must convey a message to another state, usually "these will be the public an authoritative utterances of government officials." Secondly, to use Hedley Bulls’ language, country B would consider following a course of action which Country A does not wish and does not because of the threat - not because it has no interest to. Thirdly, Country A must be able to convince Country B that it is capable of carrying out its deterrence threat and is prepared to use it. Mutual deterrence is where two or more states deter each other from following a set of actions - effectively a stand off or a stalemate between the actors. The concept of deterrence can be seen easily in public statements, for example, Churchill told Parliament on Britains hydrogen bomb was, "the deterrent upon the Soviet union by putting her....on an equality or near equality of vulnerability," a soviet ...