This is John Batchelor. Nukes in the news. Conversation with my colleague Henry Sikolsky about

Turkey announcing it as achieved an intercontinental ballistic missile. Why? Henry reasons from that

and other remarks by the foreign minister to say that even though Turkey is a member of NATO, it wants its own nukes.

Proliferation is the language of the 21st century. Here's Henry. More or later.

Good question. Looking at it in context with Erdogan's complaints of a few years ago that if Israel has a weapon,

everyone should be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

And the foreign minister's comment of only about a month or so ago that, well, you know,

we've got to be worried that we're in a neighborhood with a country like Iran.

Turkey may need to get

nuclear weapons, that the ICBM is a prelude to a bomb. Going intercontinental, after all,

doesn't make a whole lot of sense for most countries unless you have a very large explosive on top of it, because it's very

expensive to deliver something intercontinental range.

Now, there are exceptions.

I mean, the Chinese now have gotten so adept at making missiles.

They're very good at it that they have a conventional ICBM.

And, of course, the Turks will argue that's all they have.

But the fact of the matter is it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck,

and that duck would be they're moving towards a nuclear weapons option.

And boy, this is a loud signal that that's highly probable.