Glory and Terror

the long version

"Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, writes that America "has an unprecedented opportunity to begin to escape from the risk of nuclear annihilation." But, he warns, President Bush is not only letting this opportunity slip away, he is, in some respects, moving in the wrong direction." "Bush's abrogation of the 1972 treaty limiting anti-ballistic missile systems is one example. Another, equally worrying, is the "revival of the idea of developing nuclear weapons for use, rather than solely for deterrence." The proposed development of low-yield, earth-penetrating nuclear weapons for attacking underground bunkers "would be foolishness on a scale that even medieval knights might find implausible," Weinberg writes." "Such a weapon would be "one sort of folly to which war is especially well suited: the lust for glory." The temptation to prize military glamour over sensible strategy has always been with us, as Weinberg shows in examples from the Middle Ages onward, but may have especially dangerous consequences in an age of high-tech arms."--BOOK JACKET.