This will be my last article for the Oregon Daily Emerald. Some of you might be clapping. Some of you may have never read an article by me before.
I hope you read this one.
For my last article I am going to talk about two issues that are important subjects for the United States: advances in technology and nuclear weapons.
Technological advances are changing the way we live every day. Human progress is not surprising, but the rapid rate with which it is occurring in today’s world is startling. I hate to sound like a Luddite, but we as a people have to be extremely cautious. Technology can often lead to unforeseen consequences.
Perhaps no other field of technology has changed as much and continues to evolve as rapidly as communications. Cell phones have gone from a novelty to an indispensable item across all economic classes, throughout every nation in the world. The promulgation of computers and subsequently the Internet has made communication more simple, possible, and accessible than ever before.
On the one hand this is a miraculous achievement. Theoretically, it opens doors to modes of communication and information that no one could have dreamed were possible just 20 years ago. Benefits are tangible in the democratic movements in the Middle East and to oppressed peoples abroad, where autocratic regimes find it impossible to completely censor the wealth of available information, to silence the voices of the oppressed.
With this comes a certain responsibility, however. We cannot fool ourselves into believing that posting comments or Tweeting or text messaging is as constructive as face-to-face discourse. The true danger of technology is not when it supplements physical communication, but when it seeks to usurp it. Being separated from an individual makes us more callous in communication; it makes it easier to shirk the hardest but most important aspect of discourse: listening to what another is saying. This stifles communication and serves to exacerbate polarization.
In a government such as our own, where communication is so essential, this could be disastrous. When we shut ourselves off from others is when our system of government will fail.
Terrorism may well be the last potential adversary to democratic governments. So long as inflicting terror remains a viable military tactic (i.e., forever), terrorists will remain. That being said, terrorists as we have known them do not pose an existential threat to our country. While their attacks can be tragic, we as a nation can absorb and move on from even their grandest, conventional schemes.
Terrorists in possession of nuclear weapons change this equation substantially.
Nuclear weapons have a harsh sobering effect on states. Deterrence has shown to be viable in preventing nuclear war between nations. Some may claim that Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would be disastrous. They said the same thing about North Korea, and yet North Korea has acquired them and nothing disastrous has happened. This is because nuclear weapons do not make good offensive weapons for states, so long as other nations possess them. The only time nuclear weapons have been used offensively was by the United States in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only reason the U.S. was able to do this was because no other nation had nuclear weapons at the time. As soon as other nations obtained them, deterrence made offensive nuclear attacks impossible.@@http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/hiroshima.htm@@
Iran, even with nuclear weapons, would pose no more of a threat to global security than if Switzerland suddenly obtained nukes. The threat of retaliation from not just the U.S., but England, France, Israel, and possibly any of the other members of the nuclear club would keep a state such as Iran from using nuclear weapons offensively.
Terrorists would not adhere to the same deterrence philosophy as they are a constantly shifting target. But they also cannot construct nuclear weapons from scratch. The process is too expensive and complicated for any group but a state to accomplish. They can, however, steal a bomb, or even materials integral to creating a bomb, and then construct one. The clearest goal of U.S. foreign policy for the immediate future must therefore be to lock up all nuclear material in safe and secure locations, and to continue working with other nations to disarm nuclear stockpiles. The only way to prompt other nations to disarm is to disarm ourselves. The only way to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons is to destroy all of them. The beautiful thing about deterrence between states is that it can never now be removed. We will always have the technological know-how and ability to rapidly construct them. Thus, we can have deterrence without having these dangerous weapons lying around.
By disarming ourselves we can prevent terrorists from carrying out the unthinkable.
On a final, personal note, I want to thank everyone at the Emerald. For a little over a year, I was able to watch some of the hardest-working people on campus produce an incredible newspaper. I have greatly enjoyed my time working with such driven, kind individuals. I know that the paper will carry on this tradition in the years to come.