The use of nuclear weapons – even by accident – could end all life on this planet. How is it possible that otherwise sane and rational people could think that ending all life on earth is a price worth paying for anything? And yet we, as a nation, accept this possibility as a price worth paying in order to sleep easy in our beds at night without the fear of being attacked or overrun by barbarians of some kind…

There are many strong and forceful arguments that refute the theory that nuclear weapons provide any kind of ‘protection’ or ‘defense’ against our ‘enemies’. Even the theory of ‘deterrence’, which claims that the mere existence of nuclear weapons is sufficient to prevent being attacked or overrun, is highly suspect. For a more thorough examination of these arguments and counter-arguments, go to: www.disarmingarguments.com

But the real issue is not about what nuclear weapons can or cannot do. The real issue is about what the United States, or any other country, can or cannot do in the modern inter-dependent world of the 21st century.

The idea that the United States is responsible, all by itself, for its own security and that the United States must defend itself against all enemies, real or imagined, leads ultimately to the thinking that any price is worth paying to be secure – not only the total destruction of entire countries, but even the total destruction of the United States itself.

“No man is an island, entire of itself,” said John Donne, many, many years ago. And yet, how many Americans think of the USA as an island, a nation, a continent, “entire of itself”?

How many Americans are even aware that the US makes up less than 5% of the world’s population and about 7% of the world’s land mass (if you include Alaska) – meaning that 95% of the world’s population is not American and they cover 93% of the world’s continents?

How many Americans are familiar with the Charter of the United Nations, and the legal commitments with the United States and the other nearly 200 countries of the world have made to each other in that Charter and in all the subsequent body of international law which has been built since 1945?