Why do some countries feel they’re entitled to hold nuclear weapons and others can’t?

[Changingplace]

Considering the USA is the only country ever to have used a nuclear weapon on war, why do some countries consider themselves entitled to them and others not?

Especially considering the more recent instability of the US, much as I might not agree with the politics of countries who don’t hold them/are stopped from developing them, surely they’re within their rights to be able to defend themselves in the same way as anyone else?

It’s believed that Israel has nukes yet they have been attacked by houthis, hamas and hezbollah and no-one has worried about them firing those nukes precisely because whatever else you may believe about Israel they aren’t completely batshit. Would I trust Iran not to fire a nuke of it thought it was losing a war, not really.

Would a country attack another country it that country had nuclear weapons and people were uncertain how that country would react to an attack?

Why would you let your enemies have access to weapons they don't already have?

What about say Chile, Indonesia, Thailand,,,,for example

Is there a list of countries who should and shouldn't have them?

Who gets to decide?

It's up to those countries to decide if they want them. But if there's an enemy country that doesn't want them to have them then they may have to fight for it (as Iran is having to do now).

Most countries in the world (including those you've listed) are signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty though so have made a commitment not to acquire nuclear weapons.

Yawn. This is like Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction bullshit all over again. Really it's just "oh look, more nasty Muslims, let's make up some (more) bullshit excuses to kill a few (more) of them!"
Israel started the war with the Nakba. Only the naive or racist pretend they are the innocent victims in all this. Darvo at its finest.

I mean ask Central American, SE Asia and Africa who spent decades destabilising them. That’s right, the Americans. Funding, supplying and training dictators and contra-revolutionaries. Funding war, torture, extra-judicial killings, propaganda, killing people and adopting their children out to allies, murdering priests and all sorts of repulsive things.

And now the children and grandchildren of those people in El Salvador are staffing the USA’s illegal prisons there.

Ironically, you only have to have a little read of the Iran-Contra affair to realise the US just does whatever is expedient at the time. Illegally run arms to Iran to fund anti-democratic right-wing violence in Nicaragua? Why not? What’s the worst that could happen. Oh, we’re currently experiencing that.

I couldn’t agree more!! Religious fanatics that don’t care about dying as they think they’ll be rewarded in paradise - Womens rights are atrocious and they don’t care about their own people never mind western democracies.

What could possibly go wrong with them having nuclear weapons, I wonder? That regime makes Putin look reasonable and that’s a scary prospect

But that’s my whole point, it’s not up to them if they want them, whether or not countries have them is controlled by others who have decided unilaterally they’re in charge.

What gives the US the moral high ground when they’re the ones who’ve used nuclear weapons in the past? it’s a contradiction in terms.

If I was the ‘enemy’ state in this situation I’d argue I needed them to protect my country from the other side who have more powerful weapons and classes me as an enemy.

Look at the difference in the Iran/Israel example alone: Israel has used precision strikes to take out individual leaders of an Islamist regime (whose explicit aim is to develop nuclear weapons to destroy jews/the west, as well as the horrific oppression of its own people) whereas Iran is reigning hell on civilians in telaviv in response.

Do you SERIOUSLY want to allow Iran nuclear capability? Do you think it’s only Israel they’d destroy?

Why didn’t you care about the people of Iran before yesterday?

My question is broader than focussing just on the current situation with Iran/Israel.

Taking out whether or not anyone agrees with the politics of any particular country.

If I was in a country that didn’t have the same capabilities to defend my land as others who I saw as a threat, I wouldn’t be happy for that right to be controlled by the only state to ever have used those weapons in the past.

How can the western world and the USA in particular think they hold the moral high ground here?

How can the western world and the USA in particular think they hold the moral high ground here?

Might versus right. It's always been that way and we're not the good guys. The US has been in more conflicts than any other country since WW2 and partaken in several genocides. It has a horrific human rights record. The ME including Iran, is a mess because of them. (Although we've played our part).

Because the western world and the USA has not explicitly and repeatedly said its foreign policy objective is to destroy another nation. Those countries that are threatening this should not have nuclear weapons IMO.

Also, I’m all for Iran becoming its wonderful secular, cultural self again and a force for good, freed from the current women oppressors.

This.

what the Op is arguing for is absurd.

US foreign policy has been to destroy other nations. In fact, they're the only lunatics to have nuked a country.

The US dropped a bomb on the Japanese because of the abhorrent way they treated POW soldiers. Starving them to death, brutal disfigurement, skinning them alive etc and to end the war. I do not agree they should have dropped a bomb but it is a completely different situation.

What do you think the OP is arguing about?

Who gets to decide if another country can develop a nuclear weapon?

It's a broad question - and not specifically about Iran.

At the end of WW2, the USA had the atomic bomb. A very powerful weapon. Imagine if they had tried to stop other countries like the UK from developing one?

Because some countries are fucking lunatics with open declarations that their mission in life is to destroy other countries.

If you have them you can dictate who else gets them to a fair extent, you have the ultimate deterrent. They are also expensive, the materials required fairly scarce and expensive to process into nuclear weapons. Of course no one could stop North Korea, unless you wanted another Korean war, and that went so well first time around!

It would be a bit terrifying if every small country with an unstable government had access to nuclear weapons. The more countries that have them the more chance of them being used and the more chance of terrorists getting hold of them, so I am in favour of non-proliferation as far as possible.

I thought they dropped the bomb to prevent further loss of US soldiers by attacking mainland Japan.

It also had the effect of showing to the world, especially the USSR, that the USA had a very destructive weapon.

Pretty much what I said...

Not really. It wasn't about POWs but the fanaticism of how the Japanese fought to the death and how that cost the US militarily

Who do you think should have one but doesn’t?

Do you want the situation to be different?

ie anyone who wants the capability gets it?