"President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize has been justified by some because it draws attention to the goal he endorses of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. I share that goal, but not because nuclear weapons are uniquely horrible – if you’re a victim, it makes little difference whether you’re killed or maimed by nuclear weapons or conventional weapons, which sometimes can create lingering illnesses and poison the landscape, too. I support the abolition of nuclear weapons because, if it were successful, it would lock in the advantages of the small number of great powers like the U.S. that are capable of building and maintaining first-class conventional militaries."