"Similarly its good that a decent number of law abiding citizens are armed, because many criminals are armed."
That's why we have police......
When seconds count, police are only minutes away.
Then you are saying that all nuclear nations have nukes for deterrence not defense?
Primarily for deterrence, secondarily for intimidation of others, and defense against non-nuclear attack that's strong enough to conquer them. Also sometimes to feel powerful or important, to be taken more seriously by other countries, and to distract the people with the feeling of progress to be powerful and important. Possibly in some cases to actually attack and destroy others.
If so why are we concerned about NK and Iran building nukes for deterrence?
They are concerned about deterrence, but that isn't there only motivation. Also deterrence itself, at least deterrence broadly defined, isn't always a good thing. Iran or North Korea might want to deter intervention by outside powers in to wars that they themselves start. They would attack conventionally, and threaten anyone who intervened with nuclear attack.
Then there is also the risk that with more proliferation, its more likely for terrorists and/or non-rational actor to get there hands on nuclear weapons (either a country currently ruled by non-rational actors, a country with a non-rational actor that takes over, or a country that falls in to chaos and terrorists gain control of some nukes, or a country gives some to terrorists. Terrorists and non-rational actors would care less about deterrence and more about initiating attacks. |
