Some clear headed thinking in place of the dangerous rhetoric we have been hearing on this issue is long overdue, especially in the case of Iran. Ideally Iran would remain nuclear weapon free but it would hardly be the end of the world if it were to aquire them. Indeed, if I was Iran I would be trying to aquire weapons and for very sane reasons. Iran lives in a very dangerous neighborhood that includes several nuclear powers, Russia, China, India and Pakistan. Of course there are also the several hundred nuclear weapons that officially don't exist but really do in Israel, the country that pioneered preemptive strikes in that region. Would we have pushed so quickly into Iraq if we knew Saddam had some nuclear weapons ready to use? I'm sure Iran notices that we don't make threats against Pakistan, a country that supported the Taliban for years and was actively trading nuclear materials.

While the current government of Iran is nasty at best, all information I've seen indicates the general population is more western oriented and Pro-American than the majority of our so called "allies" in the region. I doubt that would be the case if either we or Israel launched a major military strike against their country. Look how quickly our opinion of the entire Islamic world changed when a few Saudi Arabians flew some airliners into our buildings.

Hope people think about what you wrote and that sanity continues to prevail!

A great article. I loved this: if world has already been taking the 'burden' (happily?) of nuclear China, America, Britain etc, why can't it go fine with just two nuclear N Korea and Iran added in coming years? No one could say no.

I loved M Wilk's too.

You have included some good points, but some of your statements are quite far-fetched.

1. "But for more than 60 years now all they've done is gather dust while propagandists and alarmists exaggerate their likelihood of exploding"

It is like saying 'I have always followed the traffic rules and have had no accident. It proves that they are bogus' and starting to ignore all red lights. Good luck.

2. "...the Soviet Union from instituting Hitler-style military aggression, a chimera considering that historical evidence shows the Soviets never had genuine interest in doing anything of the sort."

Soviets definitely had this aim. The only real difference between the Soviet communism and the Nazi fascism is that the Nazis based their ideology on racist assumptions. I spent 20 years of my life in a Soviet-dominated country, and, believe me, it was really close to a Nazi regime. The Soviets only failed because the U.S.-led Western coalition surprisingly resisted the threat.

The author of this article makes all of his claims with one huge advantage-- he can make any claims that he wants about the dangers (or lack thereof) of nuclear weapons, because current reality (you know, actually taking nuclear threats seriously) thankfully does not match his preferred fantasy world. The real reason why nuclear weapons have not (up to this point) been used (outside of their first usage) is exactly because of all of our worrying and our extensive efforts to halt their spread and to warn about the consequences of their deployment.

His arguments are akin to looking at the laws against kidnapping in this country (i.e., no negotiating with kidnappers, no paying of ransoms, incredibly stiff prosecution of perpetrators), and looking at the corresponding very low rates of kidnapping in this country, and therefore concluding that laws against kidnapping must be stupid and worrying about kidnapping must just be unrealistic-- after all, kidnapping rates are low, so therefore the laws against kidnapping must be pointless, and kidnapping must not be a threat! The much more obvious and reasonable and correct position is, of course, that these laws and our efforts are exactly what are effective in preventing such crimes.

The same goes for nuclear weapons-- we have made their acquisition difficult, we have put in place incredible security measures, and we have made it abundantly clear that their usage would have devastating consequences (and, I might add, we have gotten lucky)-- and they have, up to this point, not been used since the end of the second world war (although contrary to what the author would have us think, they have been on the brink of being used a number of times, including in a few different Cold War scenarios like the Cuban Missile Crisis, during escalations between India and Pakistan, etc). Now, we could conclude that, since nukes haven't been used recently, then they must not be a threat; but, since we aren't totally insane, we understand that nukes are indeed a threat and it is only our constant vigilance that has stopped them from being used, and that their non-usage in the future is by no means guaranteed.

Our author should thank God that he can make his armchair pontifications about nuclear weapons 'not being dangerous' while under the umbrella of American nuclear deterrence and under a global nuclear non-profileration regime that has done its utmost to limit the spread of these weapons. Things would be bad indeed if we took the author's advice and pretended like these weapons weren't frighteningly dangerous.

I think this made some very sensible points. Though, I wouldn't be so blase about the effect of a Nuclear blast both politically and economically.

The author claims that the nuclear weapons race created a loss of scientists, who, I suppose we are to assume from this article, would have been making contributions elsewhere if not tied up in weapons research. But the scientific gains from weapons programs have infiltrated into the private sector. Specifically, Weapons researchers have developed computer technology and computer codes to model radiation (useful in nuclear energy, medical radiation therapy), and satellite technology (ICBM technology), just to name a few. So one could make a case that weapons research caused technological advances.

Forgive me for saying this as it is to soon to make such comparisons but for the fools who think that a nation could handle one single large scale nuclear detonation in a major urban area the earthquake in Haiti should be forever noted. I make this point hesitantly since I fear it is not appropriate at this time, but it is noteworthy. I can only hope that survivors are able to get aid in time - with 3 million displaced this is going to take an humanitarian effort unseen in modern world history. No nation would be able come to the aid of a radioactive zone where upward of 500,000, 1,000,000 or more were killed. This is the most foolish article I have ever read on the nuclear threat. In fact I will go as far to say it is a SIN to try to convince people that the points in this article are at all accurate.