The Most Dangerous Game

Confrontation is fundamentally a form of communication--even after the first blows fall. Some in government see it as a language and revel in its complexity. This has been so ever since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 and the Soviet Union responded by testing its o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The New York times magazine 2024-12, p.24-24
Main Author: Langewiesche, William
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
Armed forces
Atomic bomb
Atomic bombs
Climate change
Cold War
Global warming
History
Military aspects
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear weapons
Terrorism
United States history
Warning systems
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Summary:Confrontation is fundamentally a form of communication--even after the first blows fall. Some in government see it as a language and revel in its complexity. This has been so ever since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 and the Soviet Union responded by testing its own device four years later. After the Cold War, the two great powers paid less attention to the matter. Surprise attacks were their main concern, but they assumed that the existing warning systems and retaliatory capabilities were sufficient to ward off such events. At the Pentagon, ambitious officers chose some other track to advance their careers. Terrorism, cyber warfare, even global warming--that's where the action lay. No one knows exactly how a war would unfold, only that the sort of "bolt from the blue" surprise attack around which all three great nuclear powers have built their deterrent structures is unlikely because of the strength of those very structures.
ISSN:0028-7822