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President Barack Obama's Nobel peace surprise was given "primarily for his work on and commitment to nuclear disarmament," according to Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician who served on the award committee. Valle told the Wall Street Journal that the stewards of the prize wanted to "support" Obama's goal, as expressed recently at the United Nations, "of a world without nuclear weapons."

It's tough to think of a goal more widely espoused than the dream of an H-bomb-free planet. Ronald Reagan and Jane Fonda, political opposites, came together on this one — in his second term, Reagan stunned his own advisers and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev by suggesting a treaty that would take nuclear arsenals down to "zero."

As long as a nukeless world remains...