Why not? We’ll need a project to focus on once he eliminates poverty and disease. CJ calls it a campaign “promise” but I think it falls under the heading of feelgood utopian nonsense to which everyone aspires and which no one is expected to take seriously. He mentioned it in his big warmed-over Iraq speech yesterday too. Hope + change = crazy delicious nukeless world:

Beyond taking these immediate, urgent steps, it’s time to send a clear message: America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we must retain a strong deterrent. But instead of threatening to kick them out of the G-8, we need to work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert; to dramatically reduce the stockpiles of our nuclear weapons and material; to seek a global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons; and to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global. By keeping our commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we’ll be in a better position to press nations like North Korea and Iran to keep theirs. In particular, it will give us more credibility and leverage in dealing with Iran.

We’ll be in a “better position” morally, not practically. As long as we retain that strong deterrent he talks about, Iran and North Korea will whine that it’s unfair that some states are allowed to have weapons when others aren’t. Iran makes that point about Israel all the time. As such, it’d be more accurate to say that abiding by our nonproliferation commitments will keep us from being in a worse position than we are. Which is super, but it’s not going to help solve the Iranian problem. Free advice to Team Barry: Quit wasting time on empty rhetorical gestures to prove your diplomatic virtue and talk more about nuclear terror countermeasures like you have the past few days. Some of us conservatives are very much in the mood for hope and change on that front.