The Upside of Nuclear Proliferation

There are two important qualifications you need to know before you read this piece of writing. The first is I have no qualifications. I'm just a midwestern mom who thinks too much. I claim no expertise on this topic. The second is that if I ruled the world unilateral disarmament would be the only way to go with nukes. I'm not defying conventional wisdom, but I've found that if you look for the positive perspective on difficult situations you can often find positive solutions to the problems. I see three potential positives coming out of the terror of this growing threat.

We have to listen. Once a nation develops nuclear power we have no choice but to listen to their grievances and take them seriously. Many times problems that are festering solve themselves once they've been said out loud. Allowing a group of Islamic researchers to prove that the holocaust did indeed happen shouldn't be hard to arrange. We should draft a commitee of serious Muslim scholars with worldwide reputations for academic honesty, and let them make some of the easiest money of their lives researching the validity of the holocaust. Then we need to explain, why did we settle the Jews in Palestine instead of Montana? This won't change the position of the Iranian government, but it might change the hearts of the Iranian people. It may soften the hard attitudes of your average citizen in the Islamic world. What's-his-face wouldn't say such outrageous things so boldly if they weren't already in the hearts and minds of his citizens. We need to undercut his credibility by answering the questions even though the answers seem so obvious to us.

We have to help the underdog. For far too long, we've sat back and let the good, ordinary citizen of these nations suffer under the leadership of dogs. Now that they will have red buttons to push we have to get serious about who we let have the power to push them. We have to start making sure the guys getting run over by tanks somehow get the upper hand. We have to start fostering world-wide democracy.

We have to let go of our superiority. Pascal said that we authorize whatever is as right. Currently we've ordained our position as the most powerful nation in the world as right. As the develpment of nuclear power in underdeveloped nations progresses new relationships and power structures will have to be sanctioned. Inherent disadvantage will be levelled, and development in the world will become more even as the power distribution becomes more equal. We can't continue to allow immoral dictators to subvert their countries progress now that it threatens our own survival. In order to survive this growing threat we will have to allow these nations to mature and develop mature forms of government. We will have to stop paying lip service to world-wide democracy and start fighting for it.

I may be entirely wrong about everything, but I think this horror has a little seed of hope. We have to find the hope and we have to nurture it. We need to approach this deadly threat with vision and determination and courage. This problem may be the beginning of solving hundreds of other problems whose dire nature we have ignored in pursuit of pleasure in this time of false peace. As the mask falls off the false peace perhaps we will be motivated to develop the real thing. That's what this mother hopes for.