Why Is The United States Responsible For Pursuing Nuclear Proliferation?

The United States motive for pursuing nuclear proliferation is one of the cornerstones of American history and American foreign policy. The initial interest in building a nuclear weapon was in response to Nazi Germany scientists successfully developing fission in 1939 in Berlin1. After successful experiments by American scientists, and the possibility of uranium being transferable to a bomb, Albert Einstein, through Alexander Sachs delivered a note to President Roosevelt2 . In his letter Einstein outlined that Germany had halted the sale of Uranium outside of Czechoslovakia, clearly signaling that Germany had at least a general understanding of the fact that a series of American scientists had been repeating German fission experiments. This makes it clear that the initial decision for the US to develop nuclear weapons was exclusively within the parameters of the security motive. Yet, as years have gone since the US first developed a functioning nuclear weapon, the reasons for stockpiling nuclear warheads have begun to contain more of a domestic factor, and a normative factor to go with the clear initial security
From a realism standpoint, it is clear that this was a security decision, and falls under the first category of the psychological decision to pursue nuclear proliferation. Yet, at the time President Roosevelt really did not know what the projects would lead to. Even Einstein was uncertain as to the catastrophic effect of utilizing a nuclear bomb could have, also citing that “such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air”2 . Nonetheless, Roosevelt made the decision for the American people, and just a few years later President Truman would use that technology on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in