Peace, Nuke Is Thy True Name

David Von Drehle wastes little time in getting to the money line: "As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we'll be all right."

The persuasive arguement is that industrial-age warfighting has wrought industrial-sized death and destruction on mankind.  But we haven't had many world wars lately?  What keeps many of today's conflicts from tipping into massive chaos?

Brace yourself: nuclear weapons.

So far, nuclear weapons have been possessed by rationale nation-state actors and held with sufficient survivability and in sufficient numbers (to prevent the benefits traditionally reaped from suprise).  As such, history correlates decreased death and destruction with the advent of nuclear weapons.

It seems many are more enamored by the idea of a nuclear free world than they are by the observations of history before their existence.

Of course the effects of deterrence are limited.  "Leaders" like Stalin and Mao were still going create death and destruction of an industrial scale, but they did it with their own peoples.