PLN 30

What matters in the world today is that the Obama administration has disclosed the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The article on Yahoo! News says that the Pentagon has admitted to having 5,113 nuclear missiles along with several thousand decommissioned nukes waiting for dismantling. This is easily enough to wipe out a large portion of world. The escalation of nuclear production during the cold war, put the initial number in the tens of thousands, but SALT 1, reduced that number to its current point. The new treaty with the Russian government has set a limit of 1,550 active nukes. Even though this is still enough to wipe most of the population, the idea is that it will reduce efforts by countries like Iran from trying to achieve nuclear power. The number of atomic weapons held by the United States was previously top secret information, but now that the treaty has been signed, there is no longer a point in hiding it from the world. The impact this is going to have cannot be predicted. It could just fuel Iran into making more bombs with the goal of becoming more powerful then the U.S. Or it could be perceived as peace, and tensions will relax, and no one else will try to create more nukes. This could also lead to a more open research of nuclear weapons. Kids could learn more about what nukes are capable of and how they can be dismantled. Personally though, it raises several questions. One, why did we not know this before? Who really cares if the world knows how many nukes we have? To me it seems like this number is shocking to some people, and in my eyes, it is good to know that other threatening countries are scared of our power. Two, what is the plan of action if Iran or North Korea decides that they have had enough and launch nukes at us? If we are busy destroying our nukes, we will not be ready to protect our selves from attack, or retaliate with our own strike. This issue will have to be watched very closely in the future, because nuclear weapons are extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.