Nuclear weapons: they served their purpose in World War II because only one side had them. The more there are, the more useless they are except to terrorists—and the more likely it is that terrorists will get them.
President Obama's unexpected Nobel Prize, awarded partly for his plans to downsize the world's nuclear stockpile and rein in liberal policies for the use of nuclear weapons instituted by the Bush administration, puts the global nuclear arsenal back in the news.
Today the number of deployed and non-deployed weapons in the world is estimated at around 23,000. Who has them? Russia (13,000), the U.S. (9,400), France (300), China (240), the U.K. (185), Israel (80), Pakistan (70-90), India (60-80) and North Korea (10 or more). To put this in perspective, we should note that these stockpiles have been reduced before, and reduced a lot. At the peak of the Cold War the Soviet Union had 45,000 warheads, the U.S. 33,000.
The prospect that by the end of the year the U.S. and Russia may agree to cut their stockpiles to 1,500 each is very good news—good news in itself and because of the example it sets, which in a world of political posturing and military bluff is very important. Good news, too, for a reason not often mentioned: our atomic artillery—the weapons and the systems that would deliver them—costs us over $52 billion a year to maintain. In 2008, that was $13 billion more than we spent on diplomacy and foreign aid. The nuclear program also drained $15.9 billion from the Department of Energy, or two-thirds of the DOE's budget, at a time when energy research and development is vital.
The Carnegie Foundation researchers who tallied the costs of the nuclear program wrote that on the safety side, the country could get more for the proverbial buck by investing in "programs that seek to secure and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, weapons materials and technical knowledge&" If that happens, our children's futures may have a sounder foundation than MAD (the Cold War theory of mutually assured nuclear destruction).
