Great op-ed by Bret Stephens in The New York Times:

Walter Lippmann, nobody’s idea of a right-wing reactionary, put his finger on the problem in the tragic wake of another supposedly golden era of arms control. “The disarmament movement,” he wrote in 1943, proved “tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament.” In the name of peace, the good left themselves increasingly defenseless, their allies and dependents increasingly anxious, their rivals and enemies increasingly ambitious and, in time, violent.