When Israel was working on a secret nuclear program in the 1960s, satirist Tom Lehrer captured the rationale succinctly: "'The Lord's our shepherd,' says the psalm, but just in case, we better get a bomb." Israel was following the U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union, France and China. India joined the club too, followed eventually by Pakistan. And today North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya are knocking at the door.
Some see these moves as steps toward a world full of nukes. But in retrospect what is striking is less the number of countries that have gone nuclear than the number that...
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