Hitch could write about plumbing and it would be interesting.

In studying the remaining cases, it's impossible not to notice the continuing connection between the weapons programs and the character of the regime. North Korea's nukes are the perfect symbol of its own stunted, starved, isolated character and of its continued willingness to risk an apocalyptic outcome on the peninsula. The Iranian program is clearly designed to forward the mullahs' policy of regional military blackmail (and probably also to gratify some of their less rational impulses of Messianism and anti-Semitism). But North Korea is already in a position to destroy much of South Korea with conventional weapons alone, and Tehran can, and does, easily threaten smaller Gulf states with its existing forces. Pakistan can continue to menace India with its own arsenal, but it is vulnerable to an annihilating second strike from New Delhi that would obliterate it as a state. Thus, the course of future confrontation and potential blackmail has already been determined, but by the dictatorships themselves.

Nuclear proliferation: Disarmament and democracy are natural allies. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine