19th
This is a pretty good read. I came across it while snooping around the Googles for an argument that nuclear mutual assured destruction (MAD) does indeed still work against suicidal, non-state actors (e.g. Al Qaeda). Of course, it does not.
Garfinkle spends almost no time at all on that question (because the answer is so obvious), but instead offers a refreshingly straight-forward, serious investigation of, among other things, the likelihood of nuclear terrorism (spoiler: pretty low), and our prospects for thwarting such an attempt (pretty good).
In a time when our dominant political/media narrative is full of sensationalist, “ticking-time-bomb” scenarios based more in action movies than in facts about the real world, this essay from the Foreign Policy Research Institute was (from my rather ignorant perspective) a welcome reality-check.
Read it - it will probably make you less afraid. And that is, I think, Garfinkle’s intent.
