Who Will Use a Nuclear Weapon Next?

May 13, 2013
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Has a weapon ever been invented, no matter how terrible, and not used?  The crossbow, the dreadnought, poison gas, the tank, the landmine, chemical weapons, napalm, the B-29, the drone: all had their day and for some that day remains now.  Even the most terrible weapon of all, the atomic bomb, that city-buster, that potential civilization-destroyer, was used as soon as it was available.  Depending on your historical interpretation, it was either responsible for ending World War II in the Pacific or rushed into action before that war could end.  In either case, it launched the atomic age.

During the Cold War, the two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, relied on a strategy that used to be termed, without irony, “ mutual assured destruction” or MAD.  Its intent was simple enough: to hold off a planetary holocaust by threatening to commit one.  With their

This article originally appeared on : AlterNet