The New Nuclear Threat

In 2003 President of USA decided it was time to start work on the strategic missile defense system. On the surface this sounds like a good idea; we would have a space-based system that could destroy another countries missiles before they hit the United States. Everyone is in agreement that this would be a good idea, but let us look at this great idea from another perspective.

The nuclear weapons we have today are far more deadly than the ones detonated in 1945. We have seen the destruction that those weapons caused and many Japanese are still feeling the effects of those 2 explosions. In 1945 only the United States had these weapons. Now 8 nations that we know of have these weapons and a few others are trying or may have them already.

In 1968, the United States and the other 4 nuclear nations signed the Non-proliferation Treaty, along with another 100 or so nations. In this treaty, we and the other nations decided not to proliferate any more weapons and to reduce the number until they were eliminated. After almost 35 years, we have 3 more nations with these weapons and only one nation that has built and then destroyed their nuclear weapons. That nation is South Africa. One of the reasons we went to war in Iraq was to keep this nation from acquiring nuclear weapons.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1987, more weapons and technology became available to other nations if the price was right. Pakistan has just recently been linked to selling nuclear technology to 3 or more countries. Now we in the United States want to build this nuclear defense shield. The cost would be prohibitive and the technology has not been proven. This defense shield would escalate the arms race again and we would be right back to the "cold war" of the 1960's. This is a bad idea.

We need to get back to the Non-proliferation Treaty of 1968 and honor the promises made then, and we need to rid the world of this danger. We now have 20,000 nuclear warheads more powerful then the ones dropped in 1945. We also have people in the world that would like nothing better than to drop a "nuke" on the United States. Look what happened on 9/11. Can you imagine the destruction that would occur if a nuclear bomb were set off in a major American city? The space based missile shield would cause all other nuclear nations to develop missiles to defeat the shield and then we would have to develop a better shield and it would go on and on until someone decided that maybe we should test this theory.

Where does it stop? We are living in very precarious times and it is up to us as leaders of the free world to put an end to this madness, and to once and for all rid the Earth of this very dangerous threat.