Essencially i see no problem with continued research and upgrading of the current supply of nukes aka not making more bombs. I for one i suppose am jaded and all, but i dont think that certain world leaders concern themselves with building nukes, just because the US, or any other country has them, merely just to add to there own power. I certainly dont think Kim Jong Il, a man that is starving the majority of his own people, cares if anyone else has the nukes or not. But again maybe i am just jaded...

On a different note, a few years back while in school i remeber my US history prof sliding a grid on the overhead projector that illustrated the last "major" disarmerment treaty. Basically imagine a 8 1/2 by 11 piece of graphing paper filled up with dots, the dots representing 10 kilitons a pieace. Now image a circle with a 3/4" circumfrance surrounding some dots, this represents the disarmerment. Now if you are still with me imagine a 1/2" square, this repressents that amount of nuclear power to distroy earth population. Sad when you think about it, there are enough bombs on this earth to distroy the world 10 + times. I dont know anyone who likes this, but i know a lot of people who are thankful that we (US) have them, many of the people chatting on the board may not be here if we didnt...

WWII

I have never heard any convincing evidence that Japan was about to throw in the towel, though many of the civilians might have, but the military showed no signs, and seemed ready to pull a stalen and throw every avaliable person into harms way. Add this to the horrific battles of island hopping and you have a problem. Estimates of 5 million men needed for the first wave of an invasion. Another thing to remember is that this was a country that was behaving as brutal to the people around them, if not more so, than the germans. IIRC death estimates on the US side alone ranged from 1-5 mill. I have never seen stats on the Japanese side of the coin. Either way that is disturbing. Disturbing, but not as disturbing as the idea of Hitler having his own, which was under developement.

Something even scarrier is that there are things in developement across the world that are far worse than run of the mill nukes...

here is just a slice article...

also i think, and this is coming out of the very hazzy section of grey matter toward the back of my brain, that there are non-nuclear bombs that exist that are stronger/more effective than the bombs dropped during WWII.

Ok thats enough random incoherent babbling for me tonight...

Edit: Well maybe a little more babbling...

Shim: I think you are drastically over simplifing things there. If the US, went to war with China, it would be horrific on all side. Also who is to say that in the near future that other countries will not rise to the might of the US, or that the US shall fall. To simply throw away your trump card cause you currently hold the baddest hand doesnt make sense. Thing often change...