The lasting peace provided by nuclear weapons Recently on a remote Australian island, I had the privilege of spending time "on the beach"--so to speak--with Nobel economics laureate Thomas Schelling, whose thinking on nuclear deterrence shaped the international security environment we enjoy today. Expecting to find the wizened strategist downcast on the subject of nuclear proliferation, I instead found an outlook as optimistic as my own. Speaking to a World Economic Forum retreat, Schelling admonished everyone to remember just how effectively nuclear deterrence has worked over the past six decades. No state, he noted, that has developed nuclear weapons has ever been attacked by another state. Moreover, no state armed with nuclear weapons has ever attacked another state similarly armed. Think about that.