Nukes

Heard yesterday that the U.S. and the Russians signed an understanding that we would each reduce our nuclear stock piles by about 1/3. Iran continues to enrich or try to enrich Uranium. North Korea has nukes and is test firing missiles. Pakistan has nukes and a leaky history about them. China and India have nukes. Great Britain has nukes as do the French.

In 1921, the great powers of that day met in Washington, D.C. for the Washington Naval Conference. That conference led to the Washington Naval Treaty which decided that Great Britain, the U.S., and Japan would build battleships in a 5-5-3 ratio respectively. It also limited the number of ships and the armaments of each ship, which, in turn, caused the scrapping of older ships and reduction in the size of a number of navies. It was designed to prevent antagonism between the two naval super powers of that day, Great Britain and the U.S. In a way, it was the START treaty of its day.

In as much as Great Britain and the U.S. had their fleets divided all over the oceans of the world whereas the Japanese only had a fleet in the Pacific, it lead directly to Japanese naval superiority in that ocean. Many historians believe that this fact was a key fact in the aggressive Japanese policy which ultimately led to Pearl Harbor and Japan's involvement in World War Two.

In 1921 we were reducing the number of battleships and, in so doing, created the greatest naval conflict the world has ever seen. Now we are playing with nuclear weapons, the least of which dwarfs any battleship in destructive power. I've read quite a bit on the monstrous effects of nuclear weapons and I'll be the first to admit, I hate the things. However, I would hate more a situation where we don't have any, but our enemies do. I am not against a reduction in the inventory, but I wish I thought our policy makers had paid a bit more attention in their history classes.