Iran with nukes is not the end of the world

Mark Safranski discusses ten questions with Thomas P.M. Barnett about America and the world after Bush, and Barnett notes that Iran with nukes is not the end of the world:

We know how to deal with revolutionary powers who talk big; we did it before with the USSR and the PRC. The Shia bomb isn’t a new animal, so please, let’s avoid having our entire foreign policy held hostage to its threat. Instead, simply extend our nuclear umbrella to Israel and let Tehran know in no uncertain terms that if they make the slightest move in that direction — either directly or through proxies — that we will liquidate them completely and there’ll be no Iran on the far side of that stupid move, meaning we will strike pre-emptively on the side of caution. We should be very clear here: America can and will do this. We’ve done in the past and we got away with it and we can do it all over again and get away with it in the same manner. Iran wants to be in the “big boy” club? Well . . . that’s the rule-set they’ll encounter.

Finally, as for nuclear disarmament, that’s just nonsense. Nukes are good. They killed great-power war. Going to zero is plain stupid. It’d make the first idiot dictator with a bomb the equivalent of the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. I see no reason whatsoever to go down that naïve and utopian path. That stuff is just peddled by old men who feel guilty about the past. Let them pass on in peace, but please, don’t endanger this world and its future by placating such foolishness.