Responding to Ronald Dore's post on nuclear
proliferation:

Seems to me you EITHER just let everyone have them and then hope that mutually assured destruction (MAD) really works OR you make sure that there is strict enforcement of non-proliferation. It's the in-between that may be the worst which may be where we are heading or already have arrived at.

Of course, with MAD the problem is that you don't know when some nation will go off the deep end and its leaders believe that their only alternative was striking first or abject surrender. Recall that Pearl Harbor may not seem a rational strategic decision in retrospect, but as some political scientists have argued, it was a tactically rational decision once the Japanese government and military decided that there were only two alternatives: withdraw from China and essentially give in to the American demands, or not but then face not having enough oil for their fleet in 6 month (because of the U.S. freezing of Japanese assets and oil embargo) and have to surrender to the U.S.
demands anyway. A country whose leaders perceive only those kind of alternatives might we prefer taking the risk of using the nuclear weapons against a perceived "enemy" state and starting a nuclear war which (like WWI's alliance structures) could spread more globally.
Maybe. Maybe not. But just saying you have to consider this possibility too.
Best regards,
Ellis
Ellis S. Krauss