Thomas Schelling s MAD MAD World | RealClearPolitics
This may seem like crazy talk, but this is where Putin s aggression and accompanying threats have brought us, back to having to think about how to confront an enemy armed with nukes. It is arguable that over the long, tense decades of the Cold War, it was the credibility of our threat to use nuclear weapons if necessary that kept us from having to use them.
Now that a Russian strongman has revived the threat of nuclear war, today s strategists need to rethink what parts of our Cold War strategy worked, and what elements of it are most likely to be useful in our newly dangerous world. They may want to take a lesson from Thomas Schelling. That means being clear-eyed, unsentimental, and ruthlessly rational. And don t forget, any new strategy should fit on two pages.