



The return of Dr Strangelove: How MAD logic may be staging a grand comeback in nuclear strategy
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Like a nonagenarian on a ventilator, the most significant arms-control treaty of the last half century quietly expired last week. Those who were responsible for keeping it alive—septuagenarians and octogenarians all—shrugged: ‘What’s to be done, it’s time had come.’ In the salacious excitement of the Epstein revelations of naughty A-lister names, the death of the most meaningful collective security agreement of our lifetime and what it implies barely merited headlines.
Let’s remind ourselves of the importance of this moment. After the US developed the hydrogen bomb in 1952, the world’s two superpowers—the US and Soviet Union—engaged in a stupefying nuclear arms race. From under 400 total nuclear warheads in 1950, by 1960 the world had over 22,000 (dominated by the US at the time).
By the late 1960s, this arsenal had grown even more ominously. This was a time when American children practised nuclear drills in school and suburban houses were built with bomb shelters and stacked with provisions to outlast a nuclear attack. A survivalist ethos and culture took root.
John Lennon sang Give Peace a Chance. Stanley Kubrick made the film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
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