ABSTRACT
Most people do not believe that any objective would justify the loss of half a billion lives or the end of life itself. The beginning of wisdom is the recognition that in this realm there are specialists but not experts. Fortunately, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have had no experience with nuclear wars. Thinking about the risks of nuclear war quickly leads to the question: What is to be done? The current policy debate clusters answers to this question under two dominant caricatures: the Hawk and Dove. As Paul Bracken shows, it is when accidents coincide with other factors that they might lead to nuclear war. The Soviets might then take great risks of starting a nuclear war in a crisis, believing that the situation would become intolerable in a few years in any case. Strategic air command reported that dramatic improvements in nuclear crisis control were needed on the part of both the United States and Soviet Union.
