Nuclear Deterrence Has Prevented Wars

Nuclear weapons protesters point out that current tensions between Pakistan and India, and the possibility of a nuclear war, prove that they have been right all along--that nuclear weapons must be abolished. These protesters could not be more wrong. The existence of nuclear weapons is the one thing that has prevented major wars for the last 57 years. One only needs to look at the millions killed in two world wars to realize that that pattern would have continued, with ever more lethal conventional weapons, except for the deterrence of nuclear weapons.

The threat of nuclear warfare kept the Soviet Union from conquering Western Europe in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Nuclear deterrence is what will keep the Pakistan and India conflict from expanding into total war. Each side knows full well that putting its opponent in such a position that nuclear weapons are the only option left means that millions of their own people will die, and their own country will be ruined in a nuclear exchange. The leaders will do whatever they must to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Nuclear deterrence works and has probably saved millions of people over the last half century from dying in conventional wars.

Larry Mazur Jr.

West Hills