being worked out should be more important than arms control itself, assuming, of course, that Gorbachev survives (420).
Newhouse therefore details the history of the Cold War but just misses its end. He certainly does not foresee the sorts of changes that were coming within a year. Newhouse wrote at a time when the nuclear threat was being talked about as if it were greater than ever before, and this may have been a consequence of the Reagan era, when the Soviet Union was described as the Evil Empire and when nuclear proliferation was also taking place so that more countries had the capability to make a nuclear device. This was also the era when terrorism was rising around the world, with the added threat that a terrorism group might be able to acquire a nuclear device and use it for its own purposes. Americans were especially fearful of potential nuclear power additions such as Libya and Iran.
For all the concern nuclear capability has raised as to the potential for world disaster, it is also true, as Newhouse notes, that nuclear weapons affected the behavior of nations and actually inhibited the onset of large-scale war:
Since the end of World War II, well over a half million Americans have been killed or wounded in battle. During this time, no American President ever seriously considered using nuclear weapons to shorten a war or settle a political crisis in which the interests of the United
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