Going Nuclear

We've just posted a story on a new interim report by the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. The panel is led by former Defense Secretary William Perry, an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama.

The report is the latest to discuss the possibility of a world without nuclear weapons. Notably, however, it acknowledges such a world is rather unlikely to show up any time soon. The Wall Street Journal took up that theme in an opinion piece published yesterday.

The commission's chairman is William Perry, a former Clinton Defense Secretary and a close Obama adviser. Mr. Perry is also one of the 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,' the nickname given to him, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn for an op-ed published in these pages last year offering a blueprint for ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

The commission's interim report is due out any day now, and the advance word is that Mr. Perry has come back to Earth. We're told the report's central finding is that the U.S. will need a nuclear deterrent for the indefinite future. A deterrent is credible, the report further notes, only if enemies believe it will work. That means modernization.