Yes, of course. They would need an army to do that, and the ability to command it.

Dear Joe:

There are many flaws in the article that Banagor is critiquing. One of the most fundamental is that like it or not nuclear weapons are the key to the executive suite: they confer world power status on any nation that possesses them (and the ability to deliver them).

The United States would be a super power even without nuclear weapons. We have economic, military, and social influence that is unparalleled. We have major ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific that are clear twelve months of the year. We have eight Nimitz-class aircraft carriers currently in operation. No other nation even has one comparable warship. And so on.

Russia's size and (believe it or not) wealth guarantee that she would be an influential regional power without nuclear weapons. But it is nuclear weapons that makes Russia a world power.

Similar arguments can be made for the other major powers. And that's the reason that nations will continue to try to secure nuclear weapons even in the absence of a U. S. nuclear threat: attention must be paid! And that's a compelling reason for us not abandoning our nuclear arsenal.

I think its pushing it a little to call some of today's nuclear powers world powers. States like Pakistan, or India, or (possibly) North Korea are regional powers, but certainly not world powers.

Nuclear weaponry gives them a certain extra leverage, but this only goes so far. Nuclear power is such a blunt weapon that the threat of its use can only be effective in (God forbid) a crisis.

Dave,

Nuclear weapons are useless except for terrorists and as a deterrent. If no other government had them, we wouldn't need them as a deterrent.

If terrorists get them and use them how will we respond?

So why not get rid of them if we can? I have advanced the idea before and I think it makes a lot of sense. But I sure wouldn't let the defence of the US depend on the UN. That way lies slavery.

Nukes may be serving as indirect deterence by reducing terrorist funding and recruitment of volunteers. The possibility (small, but greater than zero) of a retaliatory strike against Riyadh, Qom, Medina or Mecca after a nuke strike on a US city should/may have an impact on the above activities. How much of an impact? Good question, but I submit that the impact is increasing as a result of the removal of Iraq from the picture.

Richard,

Terrorists and terrorism are big buzzwords among the armchair generals these days, but they are not the only potential threats to American security. We would like to see a world in which nuclear weapons are no longer necessary, but it would be a self-deception of Baghdad Bob proportions to believe that we've already achieved such a utopia.

Also, a basic understanding of game theory is all that's needed to show that American disarmament would not decrease and could actually increase the incentive for rogue states (who generally cannot compete with the US on conventional warfare terms because their industrial capacity is crippled by mismangement and corruption) to research and develop nuclear weapons. Acquisition of nuclear weapons is a classic prisoner's dilemma: it doesn't matter what action the other side takes, the incentive structure pushes one to get nukes if at all possible.

Let's also not forget that an all-conventional world would hardly be a paradise. It's people, not weapons, that make wars, and the most deadly conflicts in human history predate the dawn of the nuclear age. The most deadly conflicts since then have been third-world civil wars and domestic genocide campaigns in which nuclear weapons were never an issue.