A MAD World

Middle East expert and Princeton professor emeritus Bernard Lewis points out the danger that should be (but apparently isn't) obvious to all: That the longstanding American nuclear deterrence strategy of MAD (mutual assured destruction) isn't worth much when dealing with a regime like Iran, which not only is willing to accept the massive number of casualties a nuclear strike would entail -- but may positively welcome them.

With such a regime, there's no deterrent to a first-strike use of nuclear weapons against either the United States or Israel. That's why it's particularly concerning, as the Claremont Institute's Brian Kennedy points out, that the U.S. has done very little in terms of ballistic missile defense.

It's true that installing some sort of missle defense would likely upset both Russia (which has much more significant defenses than we) and China, as their nuclear arsenals are one of their preeminent claims to influence in the world. Even so, as Kennedy has pointed out, one of the greatest dangers to an American city comes not from a nuclear missile emanating from Russia or China, but from missiles fired from ships that are then sunk by the terrorists that have used them. There's no return address, so the US can't deter such attacks by promising an overwhelming response (and the efficacy of that strategy, as noted above, depends on making sure that such a response is feared by a terrorist rather than welcomed).