Nuclear danger and nuclear history

This article makes a review of the books Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years written by McGeorge Bundy, and War and Peace in the Nuclear Age written by John Newhouse. A history of political decisions on weapon development is given, along with a what if analysis of other options. The lesson of these two books is that it has proved considerably easier to live with nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union than anyone expected forty years ago. It is all the easier if arms control issues, based on worst case analyses, are kept in their place, which is firmly in the background of the overall conduct of foreign policy