Since the period of industrialization and imperialism, militarism was the key to dominance and power. As Jessica expressed her concern in her entry, there are massive, massive amounts of TNTs – more than enough to make the earth into a powder – being developed around the world; even though there are only about ten countries that signed a Nuclear Pact, declaring their possession of nuclear weapons.
We endlessly emphasize to discard and disable these weapons. The two world wars have clearly shown us the horror of mass destruction; especially the nuclear attack in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In Hiroshima, about 140,000 people died within the year the nuclear bomb was launched. It was thought that such weapon was never to be used again, after the world saw the terror of it.
However, I don’t think that our world has changed much since 1945. Many of MEDCs still develop weapons, although they claim that they are built only for the purpose of self-defense. When other countries, such as North Korea and Iran are thought to be developing such weapons, however, they become terrified, and start condemning those countries.
When that is the case, the MEDCs have no choice but to listen to the country which has recently developed the weapons. I was quite surprised at how USA changed their policy towards North Korea when they succeeded with the nuclear experiment last year. North Korea is getting what they want by presenting their military technology, because the last thing that MEDCs want is North Korea selling their TNTs to terrorist organizations.
This means that any country can develop weapons of mass destruction in order to get other nations to listen to what they have to say : they are able to use what they fear as a tool for gaining power.
Countries are actually building masses of what they are so afraid to use. Yet, they know how effective they are, which makes them continue with the process.
If the power of weapons of mass destruction is so massive, then every nation in the world could develop them, because nationalism and patriotism can cause endless desires to bring up a country into #1 position of the world.
And if the power of weapon technology is still so great, our world still is in control of militarism.
Did we really understand something from the Hiroshima incident?
But why didn’t we change?
By Jiyeon Han
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April 23rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Nice post, J. (Don’t leave a blank line AND indent new paragraphs; it’s one or the other. And define acronyms like MEDC for readers (like me) who don’t know their meanings.
Nice picture, but think of your reader. A brief explanation is good, like in any newspaper and magazine.
It’s a very good question you raise. We really do seem like Yahoos quite often, don’t we?