What are your opinions on Nuclear Weapons?

So I’m sort of watching a debate go down on Facebook, basically about if the world would be a better place without nuclear weapons. However the people discussing are young school kids and I must say I’d never really thought too hard about the topic before so would really like to get some of you wiser jelly’s inputs who will probably discuss it in a much better way.

So I’m cutting/pasting out of order and paraphrasing here but basically the first person said that nuclear weapons are evil and unnecessary and no one should have the kind of power that the threat of nuclear weapons hold against everyone and they should never be possessed let alone used by any country ever. He says that they give a country the right to invade whoever without being invaded themselves, and create a fundamentally unfair distribution of power.

The counter argument is that they actually have a pacifying effect because nobody wants to invade a country with nukes, and there hasn’t been any wars since WWII when they were invented and it was potentially the existence of mutually assured destruction that prevented a war that would have inflicted considerable suffering on many people. Nuclear weapons may increase the potential destructiveness of war should it break out, but it may also create almost insurmountable constraints upon such war occurring, effectively making the world a safer place than without nuclear weapons.

Someone did say that “if there weren’t nuclear weapons there’d just be something else” but I personally think that’s a bit of a fallacy. Do you expect people to stop fighting against racism/sexism/discrimination just because if it isn’t some kind of oppression it’s going to be another kind? We cannot possibly know if there would have been something just as bad as nukes if there hadn’t been nukes themselves, right?

Anyway, that’s about the long and short of it so far, what I’m wondering, dear jellies, is how you feel about the matter, presented with the argument so far? Do you side with either of these people, or neither? Do you have anything to add to the debate? I’m up in the air on this, can you convince me to take a side?