I just read this article from Waltz where he sort of argues that the US should promote the (slow and steady) proliferation of nuclear arms, because this will make the world more safe. He argues that countries that possess these arms, have something that comes close to an ideal deterrent system. This will make other countries less likely to start a war against them. Also, the nuclear countries will behave more cautiously since they don't want to provoke any aggression.

This article really made me think about it, since Obama is now striving for a nuclear free world.

What do you think, will more nuclear weapons make the world more or less safe?

I think that more nuclear weapons could never be the most safe situation for the world. I don't think that without these weapons, suddenly incentives would arise to start wars.
However, since the chance that the whole world would be free of nuclear weapons in a short time is very small, maybe we should strive for a number of countries to have some nuclear weapons so that they have some measures in the case that an other country wants to use theirs.

What is your opinion on this?

We don't need more of them for sure. I don't know the article of Waltz but his reasoning wouldn't really apply for atleast the USA and Russia (and probably north korea, india, china, great-brittain, France Germany). But USA and Russia have enough nuclear bombs to destroy this world more then once. So what is the need of more bombs?

Second there is the question if you would want to live in such society. World wide peace is a good thing but at what cost? You create peace by fear. One wrong move or one move that could be explained wrong will cause a nuclear attack. Since we have alliances all over the world is't safe to assume that another country will strike back with a nuclear bomb as well for revenge and it will be a sort of chain reaction around the world.

Even if you prevent this you will get police states. First the world peace is created by fear, next thing is to get this fear into society and prevent crime with it. Untill the point you probably get some lifelong prison sentence for stealing an apple from a supermarket.

www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/waltz1.htm

This is the article of Waltz.
You're correct that Russia and the US don't need any more weapons, and Waltz will agree with you on that. He is arguing for more countries with nuclear weapons. He believes countries will not actually use them, because the risks are too high (losing all) and the potential benefits not. And it's clear that you can lose everything, with conventional weapons, governments can think: the damage will not be that bad, we will stop ones it get worse, we will probably win, etc. Estimates are harder to make, and that's why it's easier to justify.

I've also read some of this book:
NUCLEAR MYTHS AND POLITICAL REALITIES. KENNETH N. WALTZ.
But I can't find it on the Internet.

This article is also nice: www.irchina.org/xueren/foreign/view.asp?id=119

If anyone can provide me with good articles on why we should strive for a nuclear free world (like Obama wants), please post them here, I'd love to read it!

I haven't read the article yet, I'll probably get to that tomorrow and then I'll write a proper reaction Stef. I do think there might be some truth to the theory that proliferation of nuclear weapons might create an increased deterence of war because no country wants to attack someone with nuclear weapons. That is a common school of thought on disarmament and probably what Waltz says as well, right? I would go so far as to say that nuclear weapons prevented World War III from happening. The problem with that however lies in the idea that no one has an incentive to use nuclear weapons. That might be true for states like the US and even the Soviet Union, but is not neccisarily true for someone like Kim Yong-il, let alone Osama Bin Laden getting his hands on a dirty bom of some missing Soviet warhead. That is why proliferation, and even just the existence of nuclear weapons is a threat. There is however not a chance in the world that we'd get rid of the nuclear weapons, even if Obama gets his armed pet-project Prompt Global Strike up and running, nor should we want it to. I'll get to that tomorrow hopefully.

I still haven't read the article but I can't resist to react. I do not think it did prevent WWIII, since (and I assume you are talking about the cold war, USA vs USSR) the USSR had no plans for an invasion and neither had the USA.

The thing is with an air strike is that you do not know if it's a nuclear bomb. If certain states would get such a bomb and launch a missile on their opponent, that opponent might think it's a nuclear bomb and react with their own.

Also the more countries have such a bomb (especially if they are corrupt) the easier it is for certain groups to get one as well and do some terrorist attack with it. 'Normal' terrorist attacks are already horrible but if those people would get their hands on a nuclear weapon it would be devastating.

Furthermore where people are mistakes are made. The more bombs in more countries the more likely someone makes a mistake.

If a war would happen in the end (and history tends to repeat itselves) it would be a nuclear war, if every country had their bomb, and this would mean the end of the world (atleast for us human beings as we are now). How awful it is a WWIII is not the end of the world. WWI and WWII already did prove that.

And last, would you want to live in a society based on fear? Conflicts between countries would be solved based on the nuclear bombs. In the end that would give only a few results. Countries would, out of fear, stop diplomacy and become isolated. Or conflicts would never change since others can't exert influence since the other has a bomb anyway. Or they start throwing bombs on eachother. Or the the only positive result would come forward: 1 country for the whole world. All people under one government. But then again nuclear bombs wouldn't be needed anymore since there is only one country. And this goes against the idea of each country their own bombs...

ok that good to teacher the world, nice to see uyou in person.. God bless

I do think nuclear weapons are good to deter and to prevent war, since not only you deter other countries, the country self will also be very cautious in handling, since it doesn't want to provoke other countries (that might then be threatened and strike preventative).

However, I think we all agree -and I surely agree on that point too-, proliferation is scary since the chance nuclear material (whether it are truly nuclear weapons -which I'm less afraid of since they are highly protected and difficult to use- or nuclear material to make dirty bombs) will be fall into the wrong hands. I believe countries will not be tempted to use nuclear bombs because their leaders like to have a county to rule, but with certain fundamental religious groups I'm not so sure in predicting their reasons of thought. So in those cases, I guess it's very hard to know whether they will use nuclear material or not. And I'm afraid they might be tempted to do so...