You're not being patronizing?

Uh, nope. After reading it it seems that nukes are something that saved humanity. The irony is ridiculous though.

That's really unnecessary.

I concur, and I have removed it.

But I have been saying the same thing for several pages of this topic now. You're saying that just now you suddenly agree with me? Does this mean that I should only make short posts that don't cite so much historical evidence?

Well, not exactly. I have been thinking about the deterrance theory for months now. It really made a lot of sense. Then there's you. A guy that seems to know more about things than i do. Reading about deterrance is what convinced me though, not you.

But you didn't know what deterrence theory was until I told you about it. I mean, no offense, dude, but you actually went so far as to suggest that the U.S. should give up its nukes while the DPRK and Iran have them. I fail to see how you could possibly understand what deterrence theory is if you believed that.

Also, if you're even able to read any of that literature at 14, I envy you. I first got exposed to this stuff as a undergraduate, and a lot of it was Greek when I first tried to read it. I didn't think they assigned that kind of stuff in high school.

Nobody told me to read those books. Not even teachers. Hell, in History classes we are still reading about Napoleon, the French Revolution and the American Revolution.

And i knew about the deterrance theory. I knew about the theory but i didn't think it was a good theory. Reading about it again, it seems that it worked. Both sides in the Cold War were trying to fight eachother without actually going to war. Both NATO and the Soviet Union knew they couldn't fight eachother directly. Why is that? Because of nukes. Nobody wanted to fight eachother. Because if one side attacked, the attacking side would get oblitoreted by the Attacked side. It would be suicide.

See? I get it now. It just finally entered my head that deterrence works.

And because the Soviets knew that even if they managed to sweep aside the armed forces without being nuked into oblivion, there were still thousands of police departments and millions of private gun owners ready and willing to fight the good fight. Our Second Amendment was one of the things that scared them the most.

I kind of doubt that. During the Cold War, the USSR clamped down upon a number of armed uprisings in Eastern Europe without too much difficulty. Afghanistan was another matter, but even then, the Mujahideen didn't start to make serious headway until we gave them Chinese-made weaponry and Stinger missiles in huge numbers (which is something we still regret to this day). And Americans, much like Eastern Europeans, aren't nearly as tough as the Pashtun in Afghanistan. I don't think a bunch of McDonalds-eating hillbillies living in trailers with their guns presents much of an insurgency challenge.

Then there's the geographic matter. The United States is hard to invade by virtue of the fact that it's in North America (this, we often forget, is the biggest reason why America has almost never faced invaders on its shores). A "Red Dawn" situation involving the Soviets' Latin American allies would be possible, but only if it were done through Mexico, and that wasn't going to happen.

I think you've been watching way too much Red Dawn, Spartan. I don't think civilian guns would to anything to Soviet vehicles and soldiers. The police departments could probably fight but the civilians? No. Like MT2008 said, American civilians won't be able to endure all the horrible shit a guerrilla sees and has to do in a daily basis. And the way guerrillas have to live would probably kill a huge number of those "freedom fighters". American civilians just wouln't be able to take it.