Yearning for those cold war days? On the one hand this guy well lays out the problem. On the other hand he's hoping moderate politics will save us. Hmm, Moderate politics? I don't think the Imans will be reading his blog. JB

M.A.D. conditioned us to have our cake and eat it too. But today's WMD perils are unlike the days of M.A.D. In the Cold War, we could depend on the rationality of our adversaries, the Soviets. We could mutually agree on something, heinous as it was. M.A.D. created a sense of certainty out of nucler parity. That certainty was: if it happens, everyone dies. That's it. No debate necessary. If you were alive, it meant everything was normal. If you were dead, well...

Weapons of mass destruction in the 9/11 era no longer represent the end of everything. The threshold to this brave new terror-nuke world is far lower than the threshold to M.A.D. Parity is no longer apparent. That makes catastrophe with a small "c" far more likely to happen. The forces that might unleash such destructive power appear to be gathering.
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