Little Green Footballs is wrong

I enjoy visiting LGF several times a week. I think that in general Charles does great work. Today, though, he is wrong. In a post entitled "NYT: No Big Deal if Iran Gets Nukes," he writes:

The big push from the left is starting, to thwart any action to stop Iran’s Manhattan Project. In the New York Times, MIT political science professor Barry R. Posen argues that Iran is a rational actor, on the way to his conclusion that We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran.

I am not going to comment on the substance of Prof. Posen's editorial for the moment, but let me say this: I know Barry, and he is not a leftie. He is a hard-headed Realist, a lifelong student of security and conflict. He loves tanks the way other people love cars. I often disagree with Barry, but he is an old Cold Warrior-- not a peacenik.

Barry has argued for many years that nuclear proliferation is not necessarily harmful to US security. This is not a new position, or an anti-Bush position. Barry said the same thing when Clinton was president. Many other political scientists of the Realist school believe that nuclear weapons cause stability and peace, not instability and war. Why did the Cold War never get hot? Why have India and Pakistan been getting along better lately? Lots of people think nuclear weapons are the answer.

Barry is not a dippy hippie. He just is not particularly worried about nuclear bombs, because he believes that deterrence works.

Just, you know, FYI...

--SUNSHINE DAVE RAHIMI