the cost in their minds of continuing on nuclear weapons programs. host: we believe, a research -- north korea has less than 10. guest: very small number of nuclear weapons. gnorth korea was a party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty until 2003, and then chose to withdraw from the treaty. they have developed nuclear weapons not in compliance with the rules of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. .

host: everett, republican line. caller: i have to disagree with the guest today. i think that the nuclear weapons are a vital part of america's national security armaments. i think that if the united states were subject to a dirty bomb attack, we should reserve the right to use nuclear weapons to protect the country. secondly, if israel were attacked, we should reserve the

right as well. we have a longstanding policy of not giving up the right to use nuclear weapons. obama's policy is a radical departure. i disagree with your attitude about the cold war. the cold war was a legitimate defense against a tyrannical power and i do not understand why you do not have a belief that the united states was doing the right thing. guest: on the first question, but i do not think that there is any reason to retain a role for nuclear weapons to potentially respond to chemical or biological weapons threats. they are not nearly on the order of magnitude of the threat posed by nuclear weapons. what does this say to the rest of the world that the united

states, the most dominant conventional power the world has ever seen, will use a new killer weapons to protect national security against biological weapons them up i think that reserving the right to use nuclear weapons against chemical or biological weapons could in many senses be counterproductive. as i mentioned earlier, it reduces the credibility of conventional threats if we have to rely on conventional weapons to respond. at the same time it of it -- potentially gives other states the desire to have nuclear weapons to protect themselves against the u.s. first strike. i do not want to suggest that the only reason they are pursuing nuclear weapons is because the u.s. has nuclear weapons, but we should be working to try to make it more

difficult and we do not need to be giving them additional excuses. on the issue of the cold war, i agree that the soviet union was a totalitarian state. i do not remember suggesting otherwise. at the same time, the measures that the united states and soviet union pursued towards the end of the cold war not only made the united states safer, but made the world safer as well. host: ill., democratic line. caller: good morning. host: you are armed. go ahead. caller: i do not think that we need to destroy the world more than three or four times. i agree that we could get rid of a few nuclear arms.

the world has enough. i also want to apologize before i say anything, but it bothers me, someone in your position that presence is the word nuclear as nucular. guest: i have been told that this will of the areas where i do agree with former president george w. bush. point taken, i will try to work on the pronunciation. host: what does this mean for the international atomic energy

agency? guest: one of the key parts of the review is the elevation of the threat posed by nuclear weapons and terrorism, with the weapons agenda at the top. a key part of the vision is to strengthen the global non- proliferation regime. there are many things that the u.s. and the world can do to not only increase their budget and give them the resources they need to make sure that nuclear programs throughout the world are for civilian purposes only, but there are a number of measures that the u.s. in other countries can do -- and other countries can do. such as agreeing to additional

protocols that would give the iaea additional investigative powers to look upon prospective nuclear information and making it difficult to hide a clandestine program. host: virginia, good morning. you are on with kingston reif. caller: good morning, c-span. i know that someone just said this, but the word is nuclear. host: alright. go ahead. guest: it is -- caller: it is not a regional thing, it is a stupidity thing. host: we apologize. next caller. caller: there was a book published two years ago called the germs, the detailed of the

efforts that have been a worldwide to come up with designer viruses and the diseases. the effect that a true biological attack would have run this country would dwarf anything in terms of the carnage in devastation of a nuclear attack. i urge you to get your hand on the publication. what mr. obama has done, the life of your family, all of our lives, germ weapon is in programs, they will be jumped on in terms of green lights to attack. they're making the assumption that no one is crazy enough to use germs, but you are wrong. many people of their believed in being a martyr and they are happy to see 300 million americans watching their children die from the world's

most horrible diseases. read that book. it will invite new. it will scare the daylights out of view when you realize what they can be -- what they can do and what they have been doing. right now we are risking the farm on this night even assumption that nuclear weapons are the worst thing that could possibly happen and that we are the threat. guest: the caller's point, there are potentially very dangerous threats from biological weapons. i still believe that the threat posed by nuclear weapons is qualitatively different. if a particular terrorist group was believed in mortar bomb, believes it is their duty to god to attack the united states with such weapons, i do not see how our arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons would prevent them from doing that.

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