A world without nuclear weapons: Is it possible?

President Reagan thought that it was, and today, George P. Shultz, who served as Reagan's Secretary of State for six and a half years, is helping to keep the dream of a nuclear-free world alive. In a five-part interview with Peter Robinson on NRO's Uncommon Knowledge, Shultz discusses how we might get there from here.

Watch the Shultz interview here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Like Reagan, Shultz is no naive idealist when it comes to the issue of nukes. He dismisses the possibility of unilateral disarmament and he takes the threat posed by nuclear-armed rogue states like North Korea and (potentially) Iran very seriously. Still, he believes that our ultimate objective should be to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether, while acknowledging - at least implicitly - that the realization of that goal may lie generations in the future.

As for me, I'm skeptical that the complete elimination of nuclear weapons will ever be possible, and even if it is, it almost certainly won't be accomplished in our lifetimes. But, it's OK to dream. Idealism isn't a vice; to the contrary, it can be a virtue, as long as it's tempered by a realistic understanding of human nature. It was just this sort of keen ability to maintain a proper balance between idealism and realism that made the Reagan-Shultz foreign policy so successful.