Wednesday, September 19, 2007
(9:47 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Further Thoughts on the Nuclear Question
In the abstract, the fewer nuclear weapons exist, the better. Following on Voyou's comment to my previous post, however, in the concrete situation, it's hard for me to get worked up about proliferation among Third World countries when the country that has the most nuclear weapons is (a) the only country to have ever actually used them and (b) the only country whose mainstream political discourse includes people who think that an unprovoked nuclear strike would be a good idea.In such a situation, getting a nuclear deterrent is the only reasonable choice for a country that finds itself in the US's crosshairs -- to the extent that Iran actually is pursuing a nuclear program, that's just further evidence that we are dealing with a fundamentally rational actor, rather than an "insane terrorist state." The problem in the post-Cold War era is not that the US is now faced with asymmetrical warfare from undeterrable "irrational" rogue states, but rather that the US itself has gone insane.
