As we bid a bittersweet farewell to all the unfulfilled promise of the year now gone, I find myself getting a little nostalgic for the good old days of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Those were the good old days, were they not? We had the big nuke hardware, they had the big nuke hardware, everybody knew that nobody was going to do anything stupid. Mutually Assured Destruction.
Even in the darkest days of Nixon's downfall, when Tricky Dick was stumbling around the White House in an alcoholic stupor, nothing bad happened.
Same with the last days of Brezhnev. Senility and cirrhosis may have had him firmly in hand, but somehow, that threat of mutual destruction prevented anyone from taking advantage.
One of the biggest stories of the year gone by and the year ahead is the story of the mythical Iranian nuke.
Do they have one?
Are they working on one?
If so, how far are they from having one?
You know the rest of it. It's the number one foreign policy obsession with every GOP candidate. Talking tough on Iran is the caucus cajone test. They're tripping over each other to make the most bellicose statements about the imaginary Iranian nuke.
I personally have taken the worst-case scenario to heart. Let's assume they have a nuclear weapons program. Lets assume they actually build a bomb.
Then what?
Then nothing. There is only one country that has ever used an atomic weapon. Everybody else holds them for their deterrent value.
That deterrent value has worked. It'll work for Iran too.
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