Having recently read an article in the news about reaffirming a pact with Russia which allows the US and Russia to monitor each others' nuclear weapons stockpile, I mentioned it to my friend Katrina, and we started to discuss deterrence.
I said the idea of deterrence was ridiculous; this was my original claim made. Katrina then asked why I thought so, and I said because the idea of simply stockpiling more nuclear weapons to avoid using nuclear weapons was not only ironic, but it could have terrible consequences. Katrina replied that it makes a lot of strategic sense, because it is all based on fear and not wanting to use the weapons; this was her claim given in response to my claim. Katrina also asked how it could lead to "terrible consequences," and I said because if one country decided to follow through with a bombing using nuclear weaponry, maybe one nuclear weapon, then the other country will in turn retaliate with all of the nuclear weapons they have stockpiled, in an effort to completely destroy the attackers, and therefore possibly destroying cities and killing millions of people, and essentially creating a nuclear wasteland out of that country. In retrospect, this could be seen as the use of a slippery slope fallacy, because I was saying that one thing (a nuclear attack) would lead to another (a nuclear annihilation).
Katrina understood what I meant by this and she said that we cannot simply get rid of our nuclear weapons though, because if either country knew that the other country did not have any weapons, they would have a one-up on their opposition, and be able to use that information to threaten their opposition into submission on whatever the issue may be.
In this discussion, I would say that even though both parties involved were understanding of the reasons from each angle, I think Katrina's argument was stronger. She proved why deterrence is not necessarily a choice, but a reaction to nuclear capabilities between two countries. My argument or claim was based mostly on personal opinion concerning the use of nuclear weapons and the stockpiling of them, where Katrina's responses and claims were concerned more with practicality and objectivity; and in the American style of argumentation, objectivity and practicality are usually the deciding factors in an argument.
