Risk of nuclear catastrophe might be greater now than during Cold War
Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War, warns William Perry, and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.
A former U.S. defense secretary from 1994 to 1997, Perry has been an inside player in the business of nuclear weapons for over 60 years. And his book, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, is a sober read. Its also a powerful counterpoint to NATOs current European strategy, which envisions nuclear weapons as a deterrent to war: The purpose of nukes is to prevent major war, not to wage wars, argues the Alliances magazine, NATO Review.
But as Perry points out, its only by chance that the world has avoided a nuclear war sometimes by nothing more than dumb luck and, rather than enhancing our security, nukes now endanger it.
The 1962 Cuban missile crisis is generally represented as a dangerous standoff resolved by sober diplomacy. In fact, it was a single man Russian submarine commander Vasili Arkhipov who countermanded orders to launch a nuclear torpedo at an American destroyer that could have set off a full-scale nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States.
MORE HERE: http://yonside.com/risk-nuclear-catastrophe-might-greater-now-cold-war/