Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb(s)

| Tue Jul. 17, 2007 1:43 PM GMT

Matt Yglesias points his readers in the direction of a truly frightening article in the July/August issue of the Atlantic. We would be remiss if we didn't do the same. The article, by Keir Leiber and Daryl Press, argues that the gap between Chinese and American nuclear capability has grown so much since the end of the Cold War that there would only be a very slim chance of China being able to respond to an American first strike. (The authors' original study, which they discussed extensively in Foreign Affairs over a year ago, argued that even the Russian nuclear arsenal would almost certainly be destroyed by an American first strike.)

If the authors are right, this means the end of "Mutually-Assured Destruction," or MAD. They remind us why that matters:


We're still fighting a conventional "pre-emptive war" that began over four years ago. If the hawks want to turn their pre-emptive wars nuclear, they can do so without fear of retaliation.

— Nick Baumann
