In recent months I have been reading extensively on Thermonuclear War Strategy after Bernard Brodie and Herman Kahn who worked for RAND in the late fifties to mid 60s. I am struck at the detail of response and attack plans as well as civil defence after a nuclear strike. So much detail that it's quite confusing because it's information noverkill on the subnject of Deterrence as policy. In other words, they designed these strategies knowing full well that they were never be used - and that's the whole idea! a no-use policy for nuclear weapons actually being used. Such a waste of creativity. Callous, cruel rationalism to disguise their moral ambiguity? I believe so. We only need to remember 'Big Ivan' the 50megaton bomb tested in Russia, on 30 October 1961. 49 years later, I wonder if it is possible for a zero treaty banning the design, production of nuclear weapons-the total abolition of nuclear weapons. If William Wilberforce was able to spearhead the campaign to abolish racial slavery, then I am more than convinced we can rally to abolish nuclear weapons forever. Because if we don't, then the inheritors of The Bomb, that is, biological and chemical weapons will be in to replace a thinking that is out of tune with world opinion that these weapons are an unacceptable risk to mankind.
Non-proliferation is a start but does not address abolition.
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