With NR leading the way after 1955, the conservative movement worked to turn Republicans into cheerleaders for the Democrats nuclear arms and to debunk those who feared them. Both Nixon and Reagan were sensible enough to reject their warmongering for the path of disarmament and peace. They may have done so too little and too late, but at least they forged ahead. Think about what it meant for the Right that it became the pro-nuke party. A movement ostensibly wedded to the ideals of limiting government and expanding freedom came to celebrate a weapon that, by its very nature, threatens mass destruction on a scale unimaginable in any previous century.
Nuclear war is the ultimate big government program.
A foreign policy that prepares for one ensures that the government will always have more power than its citizens. Indeed, the citizenry living under nuclear weapons must live in fear, and trust the government not to annihilate the world. A government that has the power to blow up whole nations cannot be expected to mind its own business otherwise. Inevitably, too, that power rests with the executive branch, which means that the people need not be consulted. In the US, the president can order nuclear war on his own initiative.