Do you think every country in the world could be mature enough to be the only country in the world to possess nuclear weapons? ie: If the United States was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons or if china was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons. Etc.
Nuclear weapons have certainly changed the character of war and how nations interact with each other. I don't think that any country could remain in sole possession of nuclear weapons. The U.S. got the bomb first, but scientists from other nations also contributed to the project. It was because they believed the Germans were working on an atomic bomb, although the Germans didn't seem to get very far.
But, all in all, I suppose one could say that the world is better off that the U.S. got the atomic bomb instead of Germany in WW2.
For four years, the U.S. had a sole monopoly on nuclear weapons, at least until the Soviets detonated their first bomb in 1949.
en.wikipedia.org
I recall that Reagan used to make that point in his rhetoric about the Soviet Union, saying that the U.S. was more trustworthy since we could have used our nuclear monopoly to our advantage and destroyed the Soviet Union. I suppose we could have even conquered the whole world with our military might at that time. Patton and MacArthur wanted to go head to head with the Soviets. They loved war a little too much, and ultimately had to be removed from their posts. But there are still a few people out there who think that Patton war right.
I can't help but wonder what the world would be like today if they had let Patton and MacArthur loose against the USSR and China. I'm not saying they should have done that (though it's a moot question anyway), but if they had been able to take out those two major adversaries early on, then there would have been no Cold War, no Iron Curtain, no divided Korea or Vietnam, and no real need to stop the international communist conspiracy, because its ringleaders would have been put out of business. No McCarthyism, no red scare, no Vietnam War (and no anti-war movement either). There wouldn't be much need for a large permanent military establishment. There'd be no reason to install or support right-wing dictators in places like Iran or Chile.
The entire basis for our national security posture during the Cold War would no longer exist. There probably wouldn't be much of an arms race either. We wouldn't really need to spend near as much on defense.
