Nuclear energy—a fortiori nuclear weapons—has occasioned the U.S. ruling class, with exceptions few and brief, to jettison reason about ends and means in favor of emotional reactions that abstract from interests, friends, and enemies.
The ur-text of this mindset, Bernard Brodie’s The Absolute Weapon (1946), fostered the notion that the atom bomb had rendered war meaningless and had reduced mankind’s options to peace or annihilation. Three quarters of a century without either have not dented that ideology. So powerful was that mindset as to lead otherwise serious people seriously to propose sharing America’s then-monopoly of nukes with the Soviet Union, expecting that the United Nations would wield the Absolute sword in the interest universal peace.
In the subsequent decades, the U.S. government continued to show more faith in deals with the Soviet Union concerning nuclear weapons than in the power of America’s allies. U.S. opposition to France’s development of nuclear weapons, and its insistence that Britain’s (which had partnered in the Manhattan Project) be subordinated to Washington’s did much to alienate Europe from America. It discredited pro-American elements, and contributed to the rise of anti America elites.
The U.S. policy of non-proliferation has deprived America of allies while failing to stem the nuclearization of enemies.
The U.S. policy of “non-proliferation” is as willfully blind strategically as it is un-realistic about human motivation, and technically ignorant. The fundamental questions answer themselves: 1) if it is proper for the U.S. to possess nuclear weapons, why should the citizens of country X, Y, or Z consider it improper for themselves to possess them? Considering that any number of peoples now produce more highly qualified technical personnel than does the U.S., what might keep them from developing nuclear weapons if they want them? 3) Does the character of a people and the orientation of its government make a difference regarding whether its possession of nuclear weapons adds or subtracts from the interests of the United States?
