“A country that wants to live in security should not lower it’s guard in a very uncertain world.” That was French President Jacques Chirac’s response to opposition to Tuesday’s nuclear weapons test at the Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific.

That statement is absolutely correct, and in light of the current world security situation, the test shot was justified.

Keeping a reliable and powerful deterrent force is the single best guarantee that a nation can remain at peace in these uncertain times and into the future.

France developed it’s nuclear force beginning in the late 1950s. After the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons, both the British and French met the United States’ promise of nuclear protection with a big “Yeah, right.”

Neither believed that the United States would sacrifice itself to save them in event of a nuclear attack against NATO in Europe. Britain developed a nominal deterrent force with major U.S. assistance.

But France made a surprising amount of independent progress and fielded a smaller version of the U.S. air-sea-land Triad, with bombers, land-based and submarine-based missiles.

The majority of France’s nuclear forces were aimed squarely at western Soviet cities up through the 1980’s; the strategy which led to those weapons being deployed is long obsolete with the massive changes of the last six years.

Today, a more flexible force is needed; the threats which may develop in the future cannot, of course, be accurately determined, so any new systems must be able to respond to a variety of situations.

Tuesday’s test apparently was necessary to validate a new weapon design. Computer simulation, while valuable, can only go so far. Any complex system – and nuclear weapons are indeed complex – require a physical test to determine how well they work.

No one would say that detonating a nuclear weapon is healthy for the environment, but the precautions taken during these underground tests are quite extensive.

Taking a hike through Mururoa or the Nevada Test Center or Novaya Zemlya is not advisable, but believe it or not, those running the tests do take as many precautions as possible to ensure that the damage is contained.

Nuclear weapons actually serve purposes beyond that of weapons of mass destruction. As offensive weapons, they are practically obsolete.

Any nation shooting first with a nuke would almost certainly become an international pariah. During the Cold War, nuclear weapons served to keep the peace.

As uncomfortable as it was to live under the threat of a U.S.-Soviet exchange, no one was willing to start a direct conflict because both nations were capable of totally obliterating one another. The consequences of such an exchange would have been disastrous for both nations and for most of the globe. Nukes emerged as last-ditch weapons — ones which serve only to deter aggression.

They can also provide a nation with an instant voice in world, or at least regional affairs. Automatic power and recognition come with the ownership of nuclear arms, and that fact has not been lost on the world’s developing powers.

These are the primary reasons that nations continue to pursue the development of nuclear weapons today. Nuclear proliferation is also cyclical; once one nation develops nukes, it’s neighbors and enemies will also develop them to achieve a balance. That can easily be seen in the history of the nuclear arms race since World War Two.

Nuclear proliferation will not end anytime soon, and nuclear weapons will not disappear no matter what steps are taken.

The technology is here, there is no going back, and we must now do our best to live with that fact.

The only realistic way to prevent proliferation is to keep very tight controls on the export of technology related to weapons production. Treaties such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Test Ban Treaty, to be signed in 1996, will only limit proliferation somewhat.

They are, in effect, gentlemen’s agreements not to engage in development of nukes or export technology related to them. If a nation wishes to become a part of either regime, then they will probably not “go nuclear.”

But no nation can be forced to sign or comply with those treaties, and if a nation wants a nuclear arsenal, it will get one no matter what obstacles stand in it’s way.

Failing the prevention of proliferation, the only way to ensure security is to have an effective deterrent force. France, and every other nuclear power, will never completely give up their deterrent forces with nuclear weapons still spreading through the world, and they should not.

Nor should they stop limited testing; new designs require at least one test shot. The simple fact is that nuclear weapons are here, and we just have to deal with it.

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Kevin S. Kirby is a senior in journalism mass communication from Louisville, Kentucky. He has a B.A. in political science from the University of Wyoming.