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As we contemplate the multitude of possible future calamities for our world, very few would seem quite as dreadful as another use of nuclear weapons in an attack on a city, or in an attack anywhere else. Because this prospect is indeed so horrible, however, one finds relatively few people ready to focus on it, ready to consider what would happen next.
This article is therefore intended to open the question of the probable consequences if nuclear weapons were to be used again in anger, for the first time since the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945-that is, to begin a speculative analysis of what the world's likely reactions would be and of what the policy responses of the United States (and the other democracies) then perhaps should be, if there were indeed to be such an awful event.
The very worst breaking of the "nuclear taboo" would of course be a thermonuclear World War III, from which human life might never recover. The end of the Cold War has led most of us to conclude thatthe risks of such a nuclear holocaust are much reduced. Thus speculation here would mostly be directed to the many other ways in which nuclear weapons could again come into use, even while a thermonuclear exchange between the United States and Russia still cannot be rated as totally impossible.
Rather than an attempt at analysis of the details of the physical damage that would be inflicted in various kinds of nuclear attack (the sort of analysis that has been done many times since the onset of the Cold War), this will be a speculative exploration of the political, psychological, and social aftermath if such weapons were to be used again.1
PESSIMISM OR OPTIMISM?
To begin, such an exploration is not premised on a pessimistic assumption that such a use of nuclear weapons is so very likely to occur. Instead, the analysis is based on the prudential assumption that it is useful to have considered the consequences if such a nuclear weapon were to be used, on the premise that a total surprise and lack of advance speculation would indeed lead to less optimal policy responses.
Anyone embarking on this kind of speculation thus runs the risk of being accused of...