For the record: three obvious things regarding world affairs

The following points are obvious, but they are important, and like some other obvious things, they tend to go unmentioned, possibly due their unpleasant implications.

1. The UN is an oligarchical institution. With the security council making all the binding UN resolutions, and with the security council being controlled by the veto-wielding nations, the UN is plainly nondemocratic.  This indisputable fact alone, the rest of the damning historical record aside, makes it quite absurd for the Western powers, and specifically the US, to be claiming to be promoting democracy in the world.

2. Nuclear terrorism will undoubtedly be used as an excuse for unprecedented violence worldwide and repression domestically. The actual probability of nuclear terrorism is not clear. Despite the fact that nuclear technology is spreading worldwide, it may still hold that any organization powerful enough to obtain a nuclear weapon would have more to lose than to gain by launching a nuclear attack, even when using some kind of a proxy covert agent. Even if is the case, however, incompetence and insanity can never be ruled out as influencing actions.

Be that as it may, if a nuclear attack does occur, its more destructive effects will not be its immediate effects. There is every reason to think that such an attack, whatever its circumstances would be, will be used as a justification for unleashing extreme violence across the globe and instituting harsh civil repression measures within the Western countries.

3. Nuclear disarmament serves to empower those with strong conventional power. Nuclear weapons serve as the weapon of the weak in being a relatively cheap way to counter an overwhelming conventional force. Therefore, nuclear disarmament that leaves conventional power relationships unaffected effectively favors the strong by eliminating a tool that serves the weak. This has to be kept in mind when considering proposals by interested parties (1, 2).