...and Gandalf suddenly had a brilliant idea of how to win the war.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by the phantom

You can't make a blanket statement like that about nukes or almost anything unless the thing is in and of itself evil. You must always consider circumstance and consequences.

If Montreal dropped a nuke on Toronto because they were jealous, that'd be wrong.

But if Toronto was Mordor and Sauron was about to release a virus that would end all life on Earth, I think most sane people would excuse Montreal for dropping a nuke.

Yet some things are 'of themselves evil', and that would include, amongst many other things, weapons of mass destruction (and weapons of mass distraction, which is what 'non-aggressive' countries use, but that's another can of worms). The reason they are evil is that they catch up people who are not involved, and the very possession of such things bestows a level of power on a state which can unbalance the world.

In the case of such a thing as the Ring, we can clearly see this in action. The very existence of such a thing puts the whole of Middle Earth on the knife edge of disaster. The fact that so many of the great and the good refuse the Ring shows just how wise they are, in that they not only know how dangerous such an item is, but they can see that to have such an item would put them in the same position as Sauron, in that they would hold a level of power that is not right or good.