Why does America believe it's entitled to Nuclear Weapons & that certain other countries aren't?

Because we got em and we don’t want anyone else to have em. And if you don’t like it, we’ll nuke you’re sorry little ass country.

I don’t think that’s an accurate description of the American people, let alone the American government. Yes there are some nut jobs making the news, but I’m sure there are plenty of British, French, German, etc. nut jobs. For example, when people in France riot and burn cities, overturn cars, etc. we Americans think “what the hell is wrong with the French that they can’t disagree without rioting?” We’re as wrong as your description of us is. And that’s not even getting into the real nut jobs like say, North Korea or the Taliban. As far as being trusted or responsible enough to have them, all we can say is that we have more than anyone else has and have had them longer than anyone else, and except for two bombs dropped during the mother of all wars when nukes were very new, we haven’t used them, even during very tense situations involving a similarly armed neighbor.

But ultimately the reason we get to have them and no one else does is that a whole lot of countries like us having them and count on us as a deterrent to China, Russia (yes, still), Pakistan, North Korea, or whoever else you can think of. They liked this arrangement so much that the vast majority of countries decided to sign a treaty basically saying that they would not seek nuclear weapons if we promised to punish the holy hell out of anyone who uses them on them and to help them with peaceful nuclear technology.

@davidbetterman Hah, love to see you try :)
Although, this is England & you guys do seem to like blowing our soldiers up!

@Snarp Excellent answer…. & in all honesty I don’t think Americans are like that. It just seems the only one’s who get shown on TV are bonkers, gun touting, Christian extremists. & I’ve never met any of those in person…. well, I did meet a Texan once, but he seemed pretty chilled.

Nuking the english would put a smile on many of our soldiers’ otherwise implacable faces…

It’s not only America, not by a long shot.

countries with nuclear weapons:

USA
Russia
Great Britan
France
India
China
Pakistan
Isreal

countries which formerly possessed nuclear weapons (comfort level 90–99%)

South Africa
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
Belarus

countries that have attempted to develop nuclear weapons programs: (comfort level 60–99%)

Iran
Syria
Argentina
Brazil
Sweden

Other:

Japan and Canada both posses the technology and uranium supplies to have functioning nuclear weapons built within one year. Cuba is one of the only nations to not have signed the non-nuclear proliferation treaty.

@davidbetterman really, get the British soldiers out the way, they just aren’t trigger happy enough.

None of it’s right, but we think it’s right because of our feelings of superiority regarding our country.

Reminds me of a phrase most moms are familiar with. “Cause I said so.” Just because they say so don’t make it true.

We developed them and Russia developed them and other countries began trying to develop them, and suddenly we got scared about the consequences of every country having them.

So we went into do as I say not as I do mode. There was no way to put the genie back in the bottle so this is the bad second choice.

Because it is America. They are better than everyone.

Cause we have used them. Twice. They aren’t burning a hole in our pocket.
Now, North Korea… They can’t wait for someone to fuck with them…

I think I’ve been waiting for someone to ask this for a very long time.
I think that the US got lots of nukes almost by accident (cold war) and now it’s trying to get rid of them and also try to get everyone else to get rid of them as well (look at recent nuclear talks with Russia). For the most part the US dosnt care if a contry has nukes (like india and pakastan) unless that contry could be a threat to it or it’s allies (Iran and North Korea).
So the US acctully is trying to get rid of it’s nukes and for the most part is simply asking contries to reduce nuclear aresonals.

If the GOP pulls itself together America remains a successful democracy.

Scary thing to think about.

With how advanced the nukes we have are today (and they are by far the most advanced in the world), we could essentially eliminate or fatally incapacitate EVERY major nation on the planet, and leave large swathes of land uninhabitable (see Grenoble and multiply by 10 or 20, PER nuke), thrusting the planet and its survivors into a post-apocalyptic world of chaos…. with somewhere between 20 and 30 bombs. Jump that number up to 50–70 bombs, and we could destroy all live on planet Earth.

The US currently has 2626 active nuclear weapons (around 9000 if you count the inactive)... Doing the math, that means we could wipe out all live on the planet…. 37.5 times.