From Give nukes a chance:
”The only thing a country can do with nuclear weapons is use them for a deterrent,” Waltz told me. ”And that makes for internal stability, that makes for peace, and that makes for cautious behavior.”Especially in a unipolar world, argues Waltz, the possession of nuclear deterrents by smaller nations can check the disruptive ambitions of a reckless superpower. As a result, in words Waltz wrote 10 years ago and has been reiterating ever since, ”The gradual spread of nuclear weapons is more to be welcomed than feared.”
Waltz is not a crank. He is not a member of an apocalyptic death cult. He is perhaps the leading living theorist of the foreign policy realists, a school that sees world politics as an unending, amoral contest between states driven by the will to power. His 1959 book, ”Man, the State, and War,” remains one of the most influential 20th-century works on international relations.