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There are several reasons. First, weapons are made to kill. Even if they're not used, if they're finally used, the result is someone's death. Second, the USA i

There are several reasons. First, weapons are made to kill. Even if they're not used, if they're finally used, the result is someone's death. Second, the USA is not only stabilizing peace, but from time to time disrupts it. Sometimes a war is waged without proper consideration. I think Iraq is the best example, but the intervention in Afghanistan wasn't necessary either. Third, even if you say the above were just mistakes, and the leaders of the USA had good intentions, weapons are a product just like everything else, and so they're sold. The USA has a list of "good" and "bad" states, but circumstances change very quickly nowadays. Also, once you sell a weapon, even to a "good" state, you lose control. On the other hand, there are some military applications that are actually meant to save lives rather than taking them. One good example is clearing land mines - I guess no engineer would have any problems helping in constructing a robot that would disarm mines and other explosives.

darawk 9y ago
In a moral vacuum, I agree. If I could flip a switch and permanently erase nuclear weapons from the world, I think i'd probably flip that switch. However, we don't exist in a world with switches like that. Any weapon the US doesn't develop out of some moral sensibility, another state like Russian or China will. Ceding military strength is not virtuous, it's naive. The choice isn't between "should these weapons exist or not", it's "who should have them?". And the answer to that choice is: the entity you distrust least. For me that's the USG. I distrust them, just less than I do the other candidates. And this is an extremely critical moral choice, because it's the only real one. Any other choice is just burying your head in the sand and saying the world doesn't exist.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  Well, with WMDs we're past that point already. We have enough nukes to transform this world into hell in a few hours. Any advances in that area are of the nature that Putin mentioned recently, ones that no civilized nation would ever develop. There is an enormous conventional arms market though. These are guns, pistols etc. Their sole aim is to kill people, plain and simple. You could justify it by saying some of those people deserve being killed, but as a creator of the weapon you can't know that, you have no control on how it's used. That's why many people would have moral objections against the production of conventional weapons.
  - darawk 9y ago
    > but as a creator of the weapon you can't know that, you have no control on how it's used That's not entirely true, especially if you are working for a military. You don't have total control over how it's used, but you can decide which government you work for.

darawk 9y ago

In a moral vacuum, I agree. If I could flip a switch and permanently erase nuclear weapons from the world, I think i'd probably flip that switch. However, we don't exist in a world with switches like that. Any weapon the US doesn't develop out of some moral sensibility, another state like Russian or China will. Ceding military strength is not virtuous, it's naive. The choice isn't between "should these weapons exist or not", it's "who should have them?". And the answer to that choice is: the entity you distrust least. For me that's the USG. I distrust them, just less than I do the other candidates. And this is an extremely critical moral choice, because it's the only real one. Any other choice is just burying your head in the sand and saying the world doesn't exist.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
Well, with WMDs we're past that point already. We have enough nukes to transform this world into hell in a few hours. Any advances in that area are of the nature that Putin mentioned recently, ones that no civilized nation would ever develop. There is an enormous conventional arms market though. These are guns, pistols etc. Their sole aim is to kill people, plain and simple. You could justify it by saying some of those people deserve being killed, but as a creator of the weapon you can't know that, you have no control on how it's used. That's why many people would have moral objections against the production of conventional weapons.
- darawk 9y ago
  > but as a creator of the weapon you can't know that, you have no control on how it's used That's not entirely true, especially if you are working for a military. You don't have total control over how it's used, but you can decide which government you work for.