John Mueller has often gone against conventional wisdom. As the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at The Ohio State University, he has published an array of articles and books on The declining significance of war as he explains in his book Remnants of War; The incredible overreaction to national security threats, especially the threat of terrorism and how it has harmed the country is addressed in his most recent book, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We believe Them; and his current work, how the U.S.’s attempts to prevent nuclear proliferation have been counterproductive, will be published as a book next year.

Mueller’s argument in his current work, as outlined in an article in The National Interest last year, is as follows:

The “obsessive quest to Control nuclear proliferation — particularly since the end of the Cold War — has been substantially counterproductive and has often inflicted dire costs.” Examples include the Iraq War, which was sold by the Bush Administration as the only preventative act to keep nuclear and other WMDs from Saddam Hussein’s weakened state of Iraq. The sanctions in the 1990s which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children could also be included, as well as a potential conflict with Iran.
While the fear that terrorists themselves would obtain atomic weapons and/or other WMD has taken root in the national security community, it is “highly improbable” that either a rogue nation would give these terrorist groups these weapons, nor that the groups themselves could develop them. If a nation gave these weapons to a terrorist group, and the source was discovered, “international retribution could be unfathomably fierce.” It is also incredibly unlikely that a rogue group could obtain all the necessary materials to create such a weapon, or gain access to the facilities to put it together, and then control it thereafter. Even when examining the supposed evidence that Al-Qaeda is seeking out the bomb, it is clear that they haven’t even come close to the first steps.
Countries that do obtain nuclear weapons do so either for prestige (France) or deterrence (Israel, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea). While Mueller emphasizes that he does not like nuclear proliferation, and is clear the he considers “dissuading more countries from obtaining nuclear weapons to be quite a good idea and preventing terrorists from getting them to be an even better one,” many of the actions performed in the name f nuclear proliferation have caused more harm than good. While we would rather Iran did not have such weapons, there is no reason to believe that if they got them, they would actually use them.

Continue reading here