lace_agate

Did anyone else think that Pain's plan for world peace is kind of similar to the "Mutually Assured Destruction" stuff that used to be bandied around by those in favour of nuclear weapons? The idea that if both sides of a conflict have a terrible enough weapon the result will be peace?

Basically, Pain's plan is to (correct me if I'm wrong) create a terrible weapon and give it to the people on both sides of a war so that they will totally wipe out each other's countries. All other countries will then see the resulting devastation, millions of people killed, etc. and say "Well, since we have this terrible new weapon, let's not fight any more." This sounds a lot like views expressed by some of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project in World War 2 - that once the world had seen the devastation caused by the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there would be an end to war because no one would dare start a conflict for fear that nukes would become involved.

Of course, wars kept on happening.

I'm not being terribly coherent here, am I? And I can't be bothered typing up my entire speech on nuclear weapons and the morality of them, but if you're interested, here are some links:

Nuclear Weapons are Morally Indefensible - speech by David Lange, 1986
Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists - J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1945

Those pretty much cover both sides of the debate. While I'm not comparing Pain to Oppenheimer or vice-versa, it's interesting to look at the parallels between their arguments, I think.

I wonder if Kishimoto-sensei is deliberately drawing parallels between Pain's weapon and nuclear weapons, or whether it's just me making random connections between things that interest me.