Why? The answer appears to be two-fold.

First of all, seventy-seven percent (rightly) believe that nuclear weapons are essential to America’s national security strategy. They’re not buying the far-leftist argument that disarming the United States military would make us all safer.

Second, fifty-five percent aren’t gullible enough to believe that the United States disarming would lead other nations to disarm. They don’t believe that North Korea or China would disarm because the United States would do so.

So not only are nuclear weapons critical to the national security strategy of the United States, but we would reap no major security benefit whatsoever by giving up our nuclear weapons stockpile.

One more point: Forty-seven percent believe (again, rightly) that the United States should continue to develop new nuclear weapons in pursuit of keeping our stockpile modern and functioning. Just thirty-one percent believe the United States should halt development while twenty-four percent haven’t been convinced either way.

Defense conservatives (and libertarians) should go about convincing that twenty-four percent. Even if you believe the United States has engaged in an interventionist foreign policy and should mind its own business globally, you can believe that nuclear weapons should be kept up-to-date as a deterrence force.