Right now, we can only hope that the number of weapons we have has been determined by some really smart, well educated fellows with no personal or political agenda…

well, of course one would have a backup sub or two in place…I think the operative term during the cold war was Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD.

About these two Submarines: Basically you are right, but what if there would be somebody out there who would think “two submarines, hah, it will be easy to wipe them out quickly and then bomb the shit out of the rest”? Or he would simply calculate: ” hm, one of these days one of them will be in repair and from the other one at least 5% will fail (cause this is an usual number) and about the rest I don’t care cause I will be anyway in my nice comfortable bunker”?
I do believe that the only thing that spared us an all out war with the Soviet Union was the knowledge of both sides that it would have been nothing left for the “winner”.

Iran is after Nukes because it wants to be a world power and play in the same league as Pakistan, India and Israel.

You asked earlier about how many nukes America needs to serve as an effective deterrent. I gave it some thought, and figuring that one nuclear submarine carries 18 warheads, then two submarines would be enough to wipe out all the capitols of Europe (and a few more major cities as well), two more for the Middle East, One for China and two more for the rest of of Asia and one for Africa (which is currently not a nuclear threat, but you never know).

How much more does America really need?

What would Iran (and others) have learned if the US would not have finally invaded Irak? Maybe: Don’t give a shit what the UN is requesting from you because no consequence would follow if you don’t? Or: Don’t worry about anything you do because some bribing can solve any problem?
Do you really think that North Korea or Iran would not have tried to obtain nukes if Irak never happened? I don’t think so.

Welcome to the german way of argumentation/thinking ralphie. Don’t expect any improves there and never forget: Es kann nicht sein, was nicht sein darf!

there were political and military leaders in both Russia and the USA who did not want to see their personal importance diminished by having their nukes taken away from them, and they prevented both countries from making the world a safer and more civilized place.

If we want “deterrence”, it seems that one big fat nuke pointed at each capital of the world would do , perhaps with a few backups. We are still sitting on an arsenal equipped to fight World War III as it was envisioned in the mid 20th century.

Iran learned an important lesson from the US: Saddam had no nukes, and he got stomped on. They are certainly going to undertake all efforts to obtain nukes. And they know that the world is too dependent on their oil supplies to be able to do much to stop them.

I agree with you that a lot of teachers in Germany are real boneheaded idologues when it comes to discussing the USA. As the father of four kids, I sat down and read through the results of the PISA study (of comparative academic achievement) and ran across a passage that discussed the correlation between academic success and that social background.

The study pointed out that social background has a greater influence on academic success in Germany than in America “where such a thing is to expected”. I threw up my hands in disgust and realized that these Adornofied idealists have no idea of what America is about and how it works.

The USA still has enough nukes to destroy most of the civilized world, and I do not believe in the “we had to destroy it in order to save it” school of thought regarding deterrence.

I think we have too many, probably three times too many, and I think that we missed a great opportunity to sit down with Russia and overcome the Cold War status quo to reduce the numbers of nukes we have pointed at each other.

And as long as we have so many, it is hard to make any credible argument against other nations acquiring them. And as long as we let nations like India acquire more nukes without joining the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, we also cannot make any credible arguments for getting other nations to join it.

btw: I usually don’t respond to personal digs, but you needn’t worry about me corrupting schoolchildren. I teach English one day a week at a “Fachschule”, which is more like a college of education specializing in pre-school education. Most of the kids there are aged 18-22.

And when I do tell them about America, it is positive things, like the recent Maryland court ruling that a fellow who mooned nis neighbor over a domestic argument was not necessarily engaging in lewd and obscene behavior, he was just excercising his right to free speech.

I told them how proud I was that in America (or at least Maryland) we still have the right to bear butt. And they can take my bare butt away from me as soon as they pry my cold, dead thumb out of it!!!