Nuclear Weapons: Useless Military Tool?

By Jeffrey Rubin, PhD

Welcome To From Insults To Respect. 

As I write this post, the United States, having provoked a destructive war with Iran, is currently engaged in seeking a lasting peace agreement. A primary U.S. goal in this negotiation process is to arrange for a process that will assure that Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. Many billions of dollars have been spent toward achieving this goal, along with lives lost, including school children, and widespread building and infrastructure destruction. Given these losses, it is time to ask, how important is it to spend even more effort and resources to get an agreement with Iran to give up its nuclear bomb ambitions?

Asking this question leads me to think about how effective these types of weapons are for achieving military goals.

Consider these facts. The U.S. engaged in a lengthy, deadly war with Vietnam, the military goal of which was to prevent Vietnam from becoming a communist country. Despite the U.S. having many nuclear bombs, they were never used, ended up serving no military purpose, and the U.S. lost the war.

The U.S. has since engaged in several other wars, one with Iraq, one with Afghanistan, and most recently, with Iran. Its goal for fighting them was regime changes that would be cooperative with the U.S. Throughout these wars, the U.S. has had plenty of nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, they ended up serving absolutely no military purpose, and the U.S. failed to accomplish its military goal.

Russia has plenty of nuclear weapons. It engaged in a war with Afghanistan and is currently engaged in one with Ukraine. Its nuclear arsenal has been absolutely zero in helping achieve its military goals. Meanwhile, China has long desired to take over the government of Taiwan. Despite having numerous nuclear bombs, it has not achieved its goal.

Now, let’s consider what would happen if Iran did obtain nuclear bombs. It has the goal of getting people living in Israel to leave so the Palestinians can return to lands now inhabited by the Israelis. If Iran was to use a nuclear bomb on Israel, the radiation fallout would drift over to where the Palestinians are currently residing, killing and sickening tens of thousands, and the very land that the Palestinians want to return to would become poisonous.

Since nuclear bombs have become available to numerous countries, I fail to see any way they helped any to achieve a single military purpose. Though some may argue that since the two atomic bombs used on Japan did manage to quickly end World War II eighty years ago, they may yet serve a military purpose in the future. But let’s think about why such bombs have not been used since then?

First of all, when the U.S. used the atomic bombs they were the only country to have them. Therefore, there was no chance of an atomic bomb being used to retaliate. This is no longer the case. Moreover, because of the incredible loss of life of civilians, including numerous children when those bombs were used, the morality of again using such weapons has been viewed as unforgivable. And since the creation of atomic bombs, there have been new developments to these weapons, moving them from fission explosions to fusion explosions which is several hundred times more deadly. Radiation spread from such explosions would not just kill and sicken the perceived enemies, it would also kill and sicken millions of people in countries that are friends with the country using the bomb, thus making their use unthinkable.

In light of the uselessness of these types of bombs for achieving military objectives, is it not ridiculous that the U.S. has already spent several hundred billions of dollars to prevent Iran from gaining these types of weapons? Would Iran really benefit from laying out the cost to develop them? Is it not completely a waste of time for the U.S. to be continuing to offer enormous concessions to Iran as it negotiates a treaty that is hoped to reduce the chances of Iran to ever acquire such weapons, despite the likelihood Iran is very likely to secretly get around any such agreements?

From the arguments that I provided above, my guess is the U.S. is wasting an enormous amount of resources to try to prevent such weapon development. I invite readers to express their thoughts on this hot topic.

Iran WarIsraeli--Palestinian ConflictNuclear WeaponsUselessness of Nuclear Weapons