I recommend on reading up on the history of South America. It might be eye opening, pretty much every country had at some point a military dictatorship/junta killing their people, established with the help of the CIA. The USA has the clear "good guys" is by far not so straight forward. That is not to say that Russia or China are.

And then we could argue the whole premise of "we have to do it because the others are doing it" which can be used to justify everything.

It's ethical to do unethical things because other "worse" people do unethical things?

No, it is ethical to have weapons because it's a bulwark and disincentive against countries with even more tyrannical objectives. This is not to defend the extent to which weapons systems are being invested in. But they need to be invested in. The race is not optional.

It's a bit more nuanced than that. From a practical perspective, China and Russia's possession of nuclear weapons has been a sufficient deterrent to US or NATO action for nearly a century. By contrast, The advent of smarter bombs, stealth technology, and drones has largely freed the US from the negative consequences of large scale bombing campaigns and ground invasions.

The result has been 3 decades of near continuous warfare in countries of little strategic threat to US interests. As a peer competitor to the US, do you fear a smarter drone or an ICBM?

It is unethical because the US is the only country to have used the atomic bomb and by far the largest missile threat all over the planet today.

In contrast, Iran, China and Russia do not on a daily basis assassinate civilians with missiles.

If the US had not used the atomic bomb Japan would have been split with the Russians just like Germany. It was arguably, speaking realpolitik, the lesser of two evils.

If the US disarmed and Iran, China and Russia were in charge, do you think the world would be better or worse?

> Iran, China and Russia

Those countries do, however, do a whole bunch of other pretty bad things.

And I definitely do not want them having more power an influence to enact their agenda on other parts of the world.

If you can find me a single, real person who genuinely thinks "maybe missiles are bad" doesn't apply universally, I'll eat my hat.

>How is the US having accurate weapons unethical?

Because we sell them to despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia who use them to do things like kill innocent people in places like Yemen?

What does "rogue states" mean, in your view?

(Also, what does "hypocrite" mean, in your view? I'm used to it meaning "one who denounces behavior in others while engaging in the same behavior themselves," which doesn't seem to apply here, I think, since the person in question ceased engaging the behavior he denounces, and as you point out, we have no record of him denouncing anyone else doing it.)