What's The Reason a Country Would Want a Deliverable Nuclear Device???

Yep that's what I;m saying.
Why you going to shot a nuke off at me.

Because they are political weapons. Despite all the niceties of international diplomacy, it all ultimately comes down to who has the biggest stick. And nuclear weapons are the biggest stick of all (even though their actual capabilities fall far short of what the general public believes them to be).

Once you have nuclear weapons (and the means to deliver them against an enemy, which is nearly as important as the weapons themselves), the likelihood of you being subjected to the whims of other nations, even much more powerful ones, drops quite close to zero.

To take a recent example, had Iraq been a proven nuclear power prior to 2003, it's unlikely the U.S. would have invaded it, despite it's overwhealming conventional military advantage.

In fact, neither the U.S., nor any other country is ever likely to invade a nuclear-armed nation, or even a de-facto nuclear nation (like Germany, Japan, or Australia; nations that have the ability, technology, and money to develop nuclear weapons in a little as a few weeks, if they so wish).

In fact, I'd go further and say that even a non-nuclear-armed nation that is closly allied to, or even just in close proximity to, a nuclear power is unlikely to ever suffer invasion by another state either (unless, of course, the invader is that nuclear power! )

Wrong and wrong.

The U.S., in fact, refused to share nuclear technology with France. They (the French) developed their own independent weapons programme entirely from scratch because they believed that, in spite of assurances, the U.S. would not actually help it's European allies in the event of a Soviet invasion (of Europe) for fear of retaliation against the U.S. itself. It was accelerated to completion by American intervention in the the Suez Crisis against French interests, something that wouldn't have happened had France been a nuclear power at the time.

For similar reasons, they withdrew from the NATO alliance. And, since NATO doesn't generally station troops in non-member countries in peacetime, they (NATO) simply moved out of France.

They weren't "kicked" out.

And it wasn't done "promptly".

And they weren't all "your" military forces (NATO is an military alliance of about 28 countries).

The only non-French involvement in their nuclear programme was when they purchased plutonium from the British who, incidentally, also independently developed their weapons programme because, despite being as close an ally as is possible, and despite the integral involvement of British scientists in the Manhatten Project, once "the bomb" had been fully developed, tested, and used, the U.S. also shut them (the British) out of the loop too (which was a situation that didn't change until after the British had developed their own fusion bombs)! It (the U.S.) even shut out the Canadians (who were as involved as the British).

Simply put: the power represented by nuclear weapons is such that, once the U.S. had acquired the technology, it didn't want anyone else to have it... not even it's two closest allies who helped them develop it in the first place!

He very nearly did but it wouldn't have ended the war in Germany's favour unless they had the means to deliver it against the British AND the Americans AND the Soviets all at the same time. Because of this, developing the means to do so would probably have been an even greater problem for the Germans than developing the weapons in the first place.

I think, on this topic, we are on the same side. Hitler did a LOT of crazy things, so I have NO idea what he would have done. I certainly wouldn't have wanted him to have the bomb though. BTW Attacking GB could have hurt germany. If they were smart, they would NOT have attacked the brits with nuclear devices. The US attack was different, because the japanese were SO far away from everything. I doubt VERY much that the bomb would have been used against germany. Too many allies were there.

If hostile aliens from another planet arrived, do you think we would work together??


TL