OKAY, as I read this story, and this story, and somehow, especially, this story, my nuclear-war optimism began to wane.

I still find it hard to believe that anyone could be stupid enough, or crazy enough, to risk a nuclear war, especially when neither country is in such great shape that it can afford even a medium-sized conventional war, really. Such a conventional war would be a disaster. A nuclear war would be a calamity more-or-less unprecedented in history.

The good thing about the U.S. / Soviet rivalry was that neither side really wanted a full-scale war. The U.S. didn’t because we never do unless we’re attacked, and the Russians didn’t because they’d already been through the wringer in World War Two.

I hope that there’s a lot of U.S. contingency planning so that we won’t be caught flatfooted if it happens. In particular, the NSC needs to be thinking up what (if anything) Bush could do to stop such a war if it started. And I hope we’re doing what we can to stop it before it starts. I’m not entirely comforted that Jack Straw (see first link) has been dispatched to the scene.