Let’s Review The Leaders Who Have The Bomb

The list as of January will be: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, François Hollande, Theresa May, Narendra Modi, Mamnoon Hussain, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, and maybe Kim Jong-Un.^[1]Federation Of American Scientists: Status Of World Nuclear Forces

I don’t really completely trust any of those people not to use it, and several of them I really don’t trust, including Trump. The lesson I take from this is that no nation should have a nuclear weapon.

In the last year or so, whenever the end of the Obama presidency came up, my Mom would say “I just feel so safe with him as the President.” She said that a couple of times, in different conversations at different times. Usually it was in contrast to Hillary or Bernie. I don’t think she meant it as a criticism of the Democratic candidates, as much as she meant it as praise for Obama. Like everyone else, she didn’t believe Trump could actually win, and like most of us she definitely feels a lot less safe now.

I think we’ve all gotten a little complacent about nuclear weapons safety, maybe because Obama was so good and projecting  an overall sense of safety, and by repeatedly assuring us that his goal was a nuclear-weapon-free world.^[2]Personally the drone strike wars in particular make me feel a lot less safe, but that’s kind of an aside here While he made a good show of it, the actual progress was moderate, at best.^[3]Reduction of Nuclear Arsenal Has Slowed Under Obama, Report Finds

There is no safety while there are nation-states that have the bomb. Humans are subject to failure in how we organize ourselves. Any state, including our own, can be taken over by a megalomaniac. Megalomaniacs are bad, but megalomaniacs with nuclear weapons should be intolerable.