Finally, as for nuclear disarmament, that’s just nonsense. Nukes are good. They killed great-power war. Going to zero is plain stupid. It’d make the first idiot dictator with a bomb the equivalent of the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. I see no reason whatsoever to go down that naïve and utopian path. That stuff is just peddled by old men who feel guilty about the past. Let them pass on in peace, but please, don’t endanger this world and its future by placating such foolishness.

Interesting contrast with a very different view:

This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.

Barack Obama, Berlin, July 24, 2008.

That’s pretty far from “nukes are good”. Let’s hope this is one of the many occasions where Obama was saying something he did not really mean, for political reasons.

Because Tom is absolutely right: Nukes are good.