Are nuclear weapons really a deterrent?

This has been a recurring question over the last few weeks as the UK is in a debate about whether to renew the country’s nuclear ‘deterrent’ or scrap it and spend the money on something more important.

The answer to the question I posed is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.  Well thank you for clearing that up I hear you say but give me a moment to explain.

Yes, nuclear weapons are a deterrent but only for those people who are intelligent and restrained enough not to use them.  They provide no deterrence to those who are foolish enough to be the first one to push the big red button and launch nuclear death just for the Hell of it.

In fact, having nuclear weapons poses a hazard to the human race merely by their presence because they provide madmen with a readily useable source of death on a scale the human species is unlikely to ever see again as those who are unlucky to survive will have had their eyes turned to coal by the blast.

All the human race needs is one overly paranoid world leader or a sufficiently ambitious terrorist and we’re looking at the end of the species in a scenario aptly named MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).

All the nuclear ‘deterrent’ truly is, is a means to exact revenge on an aggressor for having the stupidity to launch a nuclear strike first and it worries me that there are so many leaders who are willing to push the button at all.

The UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron is one of those morons who would press the button but he is a very vindictive man who probably thinks that he and his colleagues will survive a nuclear exchange.  He isn’t so confident because he will be in a fallout shelter but because, according to accepted wisdom, cockroaches will be the only species to survive, nay, thrive in a post-apocalyptic world and he and his colleagues are most certainly cockroaches.