‘I Have Spent Most of My Life Worrying About Nuclear War’

We Have No Nuclear Strategy

The U.S. can’t keep ignoring the threat these weapons pose, Tom Nichols wrote in the July/August issue.

Tom Nichols provides a sobering reminder that the threat of nuclear catastrophe did not recede with the fall of the Soviet Union, but actually grew—even as public engagement diminished. And yet, Nichols’s article is itself partially trapped in cobwebbed Cold War thinking. Focusing solely on the threat of nuclear confrontation with Russia, Nichols devotes not even one word to the possibility of cataclysmic Indian-Pakistani nuclear war, or to the terrifying prospect of extremists in Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

Benjamin Shinewald
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba, Canada

Tom Nichols is right to remind us that the Cold War years were characterized by widespread engagement