Posted by
EWRoss on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:00:00 AM
Arnoud de Borchgrave, writing in the June 1 edition of the Washington Times, asks the question “Is the world more dangerous today than it was at the height of the cold War?” Citing North Korea’s recent misbehavior, Iran’s nuclear program, the insecurity of Pakistan’s growing nuclear weapons stockpile, and nuclear proliferation, he gives the obvious answer that it is. For those of us who once thought of ourselves as cold warriors, that’s a frightening thought. Like most Americans we worried about nuclear annihilation during times like the Cuban missile crisis. But we always had the comfort of knowing that our Soviet adversaries had no more desire to go up in a mushroom cloud than we did. Good old mutually assured destruction (MAD) kept both sides’ fingers off the trigger. Today, however, countries and groups that don’t mind going up in the mushroom cloud with us are on the verge of possessing nuclear weapons. Any good oddsmaker will tell you that sooner or later one of them is going to use one. It’d be nice if, like in the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, a wise man from another planet landed in a flying saucer and put the fear of God in everyone so we’d do something about it. Unfortunately, since that won’t happen, we have to figure out how to do it ourselves.