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Justin Trudeau attended the Nuclear Security Summit last week, held to address the threat of nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands. But is it possible for nuclear weapons to ever be in the right hands? This was essentially a group of people sitting around deciding how to prevent terrorists from accessing their own weapons of terrorism.

That’s what nuclear bombs have always been. Before the first one was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, President Truman’s advisors said “We should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible.” That’s the definition of terrorism. You don’t need the Enola Gay to have been called the Allah Akbar to understand that.

Massacring civilians is what nuclear bombs are designed to do. The whole point of nuclear deterrence is to send the message that if your country is attacked, you will retaliate by killing millions of people. It’s genocidal vengeance. It’s Kill Bill as public policy. It’s Kill Mill… ions of civilians.

But the countries at last week’s summit weren’t focused on getting rid of all nuclear weapons, just the ones they don’t control. It’s consistent with the war on terror strategy: the West doesn’t want to get rid of all terrorism, just the terrorism it doesn’t control.

So Canada could self-righteously throw up our hands and say, “Not my problem man, we don’t even have these things.” Or we could take a leadership role in questioning the morality and practicality of nuclear deterrence itself. Which would also be self-righteous…but…we can be cool about it.

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Scott Vrooman

Scott has written and performed comedy for TV (Conan, Picnicface, This Hour Has 22 Minutes), radio (This is That), and the web (Vice, Funny or Die, College Humor, The Toronto Star, The Huffington Post,...