Nuclear weapons have been much talked about recently. The interest comes in waves, often sparked off by individual incidents in the war in Ukraine, and now the conflict with Iran as well. I really can’t remember how many times in the last few years we have been told by excitable pundits that “nuclear war is now inevitable!” only for the excitement to die down again shortly after. As I write, the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran is still being canvased by people who should know better. In this essay I want to try to calm things down a little, by explaining not only just how difficult and complicated it would be to use such terrifying weapons for anything useful, but also something about the deep and unacknowledged politics of their development and continued existence. In one of my earliest essays I tried to put some of these fears of imminent nuclear holocausts into context, and this essay is, in part, an update and an extension of the earlier one, with the added conclusion that recent technological developments may soon make nuclear weapons obsolete.
