What would be the point of having a nuclear bomb if other countries didn't know about it?

I agree with Alexander Cockburn that the world would be a safer place if every country had at least one nuclear bomb.

My town has at least 25(maybe as many as 80, depending on who ya talk to) I feel VERY safe and protected.

Yeah, Mike, you can take comfort in knowing that in the event that things go wrong, your molecules will be safely recondensing into water droplets and dust particles up in the stratosphere, so you won't have to contend with a bunch of wild Australian biker gangs.

An interesting article by Prof Walt....
"All the nukes that you can use"
here

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/05/24/all_the_nukes_that_you_can_use

Donald Johnson: The Ayatolla of Rock and Rolla, The Great Humungus WILL be around to empty your gas tank for that.

The last of the V8 Interceptors - a piece of history! Would've been a shame to blow it up.

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Incidentally - didn't that attempt to smear Goldstone work like a charm? Apparently the hasbaroids weren't up to speed on that motto about glass houses.

seth

You and Cockburn have a really great idea there. But why stop with nukes, or for that matter with countries? We could give every household every weapon we can think of and let the fun begin.

It gets especially fun when everybody becomes convinced, perhaps with justification, that their enemies plan to annihilate them at their first opportunity.

A new highly praised book on this sort of fun has been published, but I haven't seen it yet so all I can do is link the GW National Security Archive:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB315/index.htm

http://thedeadhandbook.com/about.html

Incidentally, Israel never did supply us with either bombs or plans for bombs. The South African bomb was completely different from the Israeli (and a whole lot cruder).

And, of course, Israel doesn't actually need nukes to wreck the Middle East; their conventional armed forces are quite big enough. The whole point about getting nukes was to be able to touch off World War III. Why do you think they are doing little gleeful jigs around the prospect of nuking Tehran?

The Creator: You wrote that "the whole point about getting nukes was to be able to touch off World War III." Maybe in the sense that a few Israelis thought/think that if there is going to be another Holocaust, it shouldn't just involve Jews next time. But there's a more general benefit to having nukes: It make it riskier for others to attack you. Personally, I never attack anyone who has nuclear arms. (ergo seth and Cockburn wanting to give some to everyone).

"And, of course, Israel doesn't actually need nukes to wreck the Middle East; their conventional armed forces are quite big enough."
That may be true at the moment, with the US so firmly entrenched in the region, the Saudis and Egyptians craven, Iraq occupied and divided, and Iran on the outs with the "West"(there's a little hypocrisy in five nuclear powers telling Iran it can't have any nukes). But times change. There were supposedly a few days at the start of the 73 war when Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir considered using nukes because those Syrian tanks in the Golan really scared them. I think that's actually what led Hersh to write his book and give it that title.

All the nukes in the world are derived from the US bomb. We were first and the rest are copies.

par4: That's right.