[Graeme]

Smoking Guns and Mushroom Clouds

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is a reasonable assumption that three nuclear powers, the United States, India and Israel, have prepared a variety of more or less robust contingency plans to neutralize Ptakistan’s nuclear arsenal of some 40 or so warheads, should Islamist militants appear to threaten the regime of President Pervez Musharraf. There have been ominous signs that other Middle Eastern states, including Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, are considering their own nuclear options as they contemplate a future that may feature a nuclear-armed Iran.

Schell argues that with the threat of nuclear terrorism, the Bush administration has made a deliberate shift from a strategy based broadly on consent and law to one based on force and pre-emption.

There is little in Schell’s book that is new, but his careful assembly of the available evidence will scare the pants off most readers. And so it should. Nuclear war is back in vogue among planners at the Pentagon, which helps to explain why Russia under Vladimir Putin is building new missiles and deploying its nuclear bombers again.

Now a new one is taking its place. But as one looks at the current leadership in Washington, Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran, it’s hard to avoid the queasy feeling that this time we may not be so lucky.