It seems the more conservative you are, the more aggressive you want America to be with our nukes. If we’re angry loose cannons with an itchy finger on the button, the thinking seems to go, rogue countries will think long and hard about crossing us. Personally, I think it would be a good thing if the planet believes the United States would consider the nuclear option to truly be a the last, worst option. Mary Slosson provides in her OtherWords op-ed an insightful examination of latter-day nukes pointing out the United States and Russia still have that market cornered. Together, we’ve got 95% of the world’s nuclear weapons in our possession. But what if conventional wisdom dictated that we didn’t want to use them? Nobody thinks our great vulnerability is a dearth of devastating conventional arms.
