Pope Francis visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki this weekend. In both locations, he lamented the horrors and immorality of nuclear weapons. He got the horror right, not much else.

Matthew Kroenig’s The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy provides an immensely important and forceful rebuttal to those nuclear scholars who have gained influence among average American citizens as well as within the walls of the Pentagon where nuclear strategy is conceived and carried out. In doing so, the central theme in Logic also exposes the vacuity of the moral “arguments” mainline Christian “thought leaders” have pushed in the name of US disarmament advocacy.

But what struck me about reading The Most Controversial Decision is how we now superimpose our judgments on Truman’s decision post hoc, and we do this with great zeal, certainty, and righteous superiority.

When we see those striking images of President Trump standing beside Kim Jong-un, we are not looking at a great American achievement. We are looking at a concession.

Dmitry Adamsky’s outstanding Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy explains the religious imagination that has swept not only through the Russian nuclear arsenal since 1991, but also into all levels of the country’s nuclear tirade, military forces, and even Russian foreign policy more broadly.

Westminster Abbey recently held a commemorative service to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Royal Navy submariners’ continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, carrying the Trident nuclear missile system. Some Christian anti-nuclear activists were unhappy.

Three years after Obama finalized the Iran deal, President Trump withdrew the US, and today Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a new and very ambitious path forward.

The core problem with the Iran deal is not in its details, but rather in the nature of Iran.

Trump could have chosen the deal. He could have chosen retrenchment. But he could not choose both.