ABSTRACT
The slight slowing observed recently seems to reflect Soviet anticipation of a strategic arms reduction treaty. The rapidity of recent changes should humble the reader as the people make sweeping predictions, although, if experience is any guide, it will spur more people to rashness than it will temper with caution. The period of the Cold War was marked by a most extraordinary inversion of moral argument applied to complex questions of military strategy. In retrospect, it is clear that had Israel not acted to destroy the Iraqi reactor—and had Iraq obtained a nuclear weapon—it would almost certainly have been used during Iraq’s war with Iran. The dilemmas posed by the role of power in an amoral world will continue to animate moralists even as the Cold War winds down. Maybe a calmness will now descend where urgency and anxiety once plagued careful judgments about morality and power.
