In principle I am against nuclear weapons. In practice I believe a deterrent state (at least two adversarial countries maintaining an active nuclear stockpile) is probably better than just one country maintaining an active stockpile.

I always wonder what would have happened if it had taken the Soviets longer to develop atomic weapons (or never did). Would a hawkish US president be more likely to use nuclear weapons to assert foreign policy than they are now?

Eventually some idiot in some small country with nukes gets pissed and fires, and we have this generations Franz Ferdinand - except none of us live long enough to pick up a rifle.

How about no.

Roll a six-sided die. If it lands on a one everyone dies. Now give everyone in the room a six sided die. If anyone rolls a one everyone dies.

Well, as that number goes up at a certain point it cannot invrease anymore without including:

- Iran

- Lebanon (ubstable)

- North Korea (they already have the tech even if they don't have proper ICBMs yet)

q.e.d?

You can be proven wrong distressingly easily. Hopefully nobody does.

The US has had quite a few proxy wars with nuclear armed countries. I think it prevents an all our war like WWI and WWII, but not war in general. Less war? Perhaps. We seem to be doing our damndest to have at least one going on at all times though.

If Assad had had a nuclear weapon most probably it would have fallen in the hands os Islamists (ISIS, more likely) during the recent civil war in Syria, not a very bright perspective.

It's easy to prove you wrong, but doing so requires accepting that MAD is a fool's errand.

Except when the crazies arrive. Then you get all the wars at once.