A few years ago, while visiting Air Force Global Strike Command in Louisiana, I crashed a B-52 bomber. I was attempting a low-level bombing run and fought the controls as the big plane went down. Covered with sweat from the effort, I climbed out of the pilot’s seat and exited the hyperrealistic training module to the instructors’ knowing smiles. My brief attempt to experience what it is like to be a part of the United States’ nuclear guardians bolstered my respect for their difficult effort—even as most of the country long ago forgot the mission that once defined the Cold War.
After a half-generation hiatus in the public mind, nuclear terror is back. In testimony redolent of the frightful 1950s, CIA Director William Burns warned Congress in April not to “take lightly” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s implicit threat to use nuclear weapons against the West should it continue to support Ukraine. Just days after Burns’s testimony, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that the risk of nuclear war was “considerable. … The danger is serious, real.” Longtime geopolitical analysts echo the warning that Putin might employ tactical nuclear arms in Ukraine if Ukrainian forces continue to bog down his invaders. If these assessments are accurate, is not inconceivable that the world is edging toward the most serious nuclear confrontation since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
