Cold War so old, so why the nukes?

This is a response to “Nuclear-weapons treaty signed, but trickier challenges loom” [News, April 9].

President Obama and Russian President Medvedev have signed a nuclear-arms reduction treaty in Prague. They claim that this treaty would reduce the number of weapons the two countries are pointing at each other by a third.

Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists has said that new counting rules are in effect and that the actual reduction of weapons would only be about 12 percent.

An important question is: Why do these two countries still need 1,550 nuclear weapons pointed at each other when the Cold War is over?

President Obama has stated that the only possible use of nuclear weapons by the United States now would be to deter a nuclear attack from a nuclear power. Iran must be worried about attacks from Israel and the United States —Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that nothing is taken off the table in trying to confront Iran’s nuclear development.

Pakistan and India are both nuclear powers in Iran’s neighborhood. Iran could argue that it needs nuclear weapons for the same reason that the United States does, namely to prevent nuclear attacks from nuclear powers.

The only course of action that makes sense is an all-out effort to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. Small incremental reductions of these weapons are good and they should be applauded, but the only way to assure the survival of this wonderful world is the complete elimination of these awful weapons.

— Philip Heft, Kent