Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Erwin Dreessen's avatar

Thank you for this, Justin. Two comments, though. One, the conversation does not dig into the causes of the breakdown of the nuclear arms limitation treaties. Jessica T. Mathews, in the New York Review of Books of October 17 ("The Race That Can’t Be Won"), notes that the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and that the US Senate never ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, even though Russia ratified it in 2000 as did 177 other countries. Is it indeed behaviour on the part of the US that has led to this breakdown? (I seem to recall that it was claimed that the Russians were violating the Treaty but that may well have been Western propaganda.)

Two, I'm not keen on reading "fiction based on facts." That type of literature can change minds alright (perhaps more persuasively than a straight-facts book) but what part is one to believe? The danger is that the reader may conclude that nothing is real or descends into relativism.

Expand full comment
1 more comment...