The Nuclear Threat Essay, Research Paper

The United States, once a defender of world peace and an international police power, seems today to be loosening the grip that has in the past prevented so much violence through out the world. At a time when “renegade” nations are arming with nuclear weapons, the Senate has voted not to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a document that in the President’s words “is critical to protecting the American people from the dangers of nuclear war”.

This is a gravely erroneous decision by the United States government, especially at a time when the nation of Pakistan has again strayed from a democratic rule and fallen into the hands of a military also in possession of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The situation is made worse yet by the fact that tension between Pakistan and India is building to the point of armed confrontation and both nations have recently flexed their military muscle by testing missiles capable of wreaking havoc on those so unfortunate as to be their targets. Of course, the fact that Iran, a nation that is notoriously anti-American, supports Pakistan doesn’t do much to diffuse the situation.

Opponents of the treaty have, as Mr. Clinton put it, offered no way out, no other means of keeping countries around the world from developing nuclear arsenals and threatening our security. Perhaps the scariest concept about the circumstances of the treaty’s veto is that the decision was driven not by concern for a better future, not by good morals, but by some seemingly anachronistic belief in sticking with their party. The senators who voted against the treaty, it seems, were worried more about keeping the GOP strong than about protecting their children from possible nuclear devastation.

What does this say about our ability to deal with crises on a grand scale if the government won’t even consider the best interests of the governed? The senators who voted against this treaty are dangerously out of touch. Perhaps we need another fifty years on the brink of annihilation to bring them back to reality.