As long as nuclear weapons exist, it is absolutely certain and inevitable that we will destroy ourselves and all that is unfortunate enough to live on the planet with us, sooner or later. This should be obvious to all concerned. But the pressure has been trimmed back a little lately, thanks largely to the initiative of one fellow from the tiny village of Privolnoye in the Soviet Northern Caucasus. Even the Union of Atomic Scientists have turned back the hands on their famous doomsday clock a few minutes--it now stands at a comfortable 15 minutes to midnight. Ah, breathing room at last!

And all of this is well and good. I thank the gods. I thank Mr. Gorbachev. I thank the pixies and the fairies and whoever else has had anything to do with it. We need a break. A little pressure trimmed back helps very much thank you.

But we shouldn't allow a moment of relief to blind us to some hard truths about ourselves. Although we have a remarkable ability to pretend otherwise (as in the lulls between wars, say) it is simply apparent that we are a war-mongering species of life. Rare is the generation of human being which can get through its three score and ten without knowing the frenzy of war.

My own God-fearing, peace-loving nation has already tasted war three times in my sweet short life (counting Grenada), and more than half a dozen times if we count Panama, the Dominican Republic, a couple of visits to Lebanon, and other such little excursions.

We are not in any sense unique. Even those few contemporary cultures who have enjoyed more placid recent histories has done so rather more from lack of good opportunities than for want of trying. Example: Argentina had not, until 1982, been to war in more than 100 years. It would however have been a mistake for the English to take this as evidence that the Argentineans are an usually placid people. Other the other hand, the British have been to war about half-a-dozen times in the last 100 years. It would also have been a mistake for the Argentineans to suppose this meant the British might have learned something.

Any modestly broad chunk of human history suggests that on the whole warring against ourselves is the way of the species. In fact, in the sliver of history since the end of World War II this tired earth has played battlefield to 188 wars, the last time I counted a few years ago. In these 188 wars, in excess of 10 million human beings have lost their lives. That is a rough and gruesome measure of just what sort of critter we are. Indeed, the United Nations declared 1986 the International Year of Peace. That year 43 countries were at war--I guess the word hadn't gotten out. So when we talk about a military build-up as a strategy to deter us from war, I don't know who we might be trying to kid.

None of this is new. In fact the record suggests that nothing much has changed in this regard in the history of humankind. What has changed is that in the last few decades we have stumbled upon a technology which guarantees that our next really extravagant indulgence in our passion for making war will be our last. And knowing us as I do, I am confident we will not be able to resist the temptation for long. As I said, sooner or later.

One of the curious notions adduced to make a nuclear arsenal seem sensible is that no rational being would ever use it, and so it is, by this high-tech twist of logic, a reasonable thing to have. And maybe that's true for rational beings. Were but that we were such.

A way to talk about our fondness for the toys of war, a way to make this fascination sound very adult and responsible, is to allude to the role of weapons in providing the warm cocoon of deterrence. The idea is simple and familiar: if I am the meanest son-a-bitch in the valley, nobody will mess with me. Its an interesting thing about the meanest son-of-bitch in the valley, he always gets challenged, sooner or later.

And it's an interesting thing about the role of the toys of war in the provision of deterrence. When the machine gun was invented, we should remember, it was advertised as the ultimate deterrent, because it was clearly a weapon so horrible that nobody would ever fight a war again. The same thing happened with the tank, and the airplane, and the atomic bomb, and no doubt, with the slingshot and the sharp stick. But surprise, surprise, war continues. Its a good thing that a hearty theological principle like deterrence is immune from considerations of mere evidence.

But perhaps I am wrong, perhaps, given what I have pointed out about human nature, the fact that we haven't had a war with the Russians is proof positive that deterrence works. Perhaps. Perhaps deterrence has worked for this frightfully brief little stretch of human history, but I suspect it won't work for long. We just cant resist the temptations. As I said, sooner or later.

But, I may be wrong. Maybe the Doctrine of Deterrence is the foundation of Real Wisdom. (I wonder: would the logic of these matters then dictate we arm every country in the world with nuclear weapons thereby promoting perfect peace?) However, even if deterrence works, the presence of nuclear weaponry would only protect us from a deliberate holocaust. The unpleasant likelihood of an accidental nuclear exchange renders all our debates about deterrence and strategic parity and counter valence of forces,and all the rest of it, as moot as the ashes of a burned-out world.

Some sobering thoughts about the best laid plans of mice and men are in order.

We are protected by an elaborate radar and computer network known as the early warning system. The main function and reason for existence of this early warning system is to give us enough lead-time (currently about 30 minutes) in the event of a Russian nuclear attack to get our planes and missiles airborne, so that as we go up in a blaze of thermonuclear glory, we can enjoy the smug satisfaction of knowing that 30 minutes later the Russians will be going up in their own blaze of thermonuclear glory. This is the essence of deterrence--the unwillingness to let the other side enjoy that smug satisfaction.

In the 18-month period from 1/79 to 6/80 (the last time the government released the statistics) our computer system malfunctioned 3,703 times--generating false alerts of incoming Russian missiles. Four of these times our nation went to an increased stage of readiness, setting in motion the machinery preparatory to unleashing our own (actual) counter-attack. Thankfully, on each of these 3,703 occasions our computer whiz-kids were quick and clever enough to diagnose the error within the 30 minutes they had to decide whether or not we should blow-up the rest of the world. Bully for them I say. And the Russians of course have their own computers, and their own quick-witted whiz-kids let us hope.

Not content with dancing on the edge of a 30-minute abyss, we decided in the early 1980s to deploy a new generation of missiles in Europe, which have the marvelous capacity to reach targets on Soviet soil in six minutes! (We have recently agreed to remove these missiles from western Europe, and bravo for us I say, but alas, they aren't all gone yet and may never be.)

Which means that we are upping the demands on those quick-witted Russian whiz-kids. Let us hope they are up to the challenge; and let us, while we are at it, wish them all due success and godspeed in their industrial espionage efforts, so we can rest assured they have the very best computer technology the world has to offer (you know the technology I mean, the one that serves up 3,703 false alerts every 18 months!). And then imagine, if you will, those Russian computers clicking, whirring, blinking away, and issuing their thousands of false attack warnings; and picture some whiz-kid, say some medal-laden Russian general, some crusty old Bolshevik Red Army veteran of the 1917 Revolution, having six minutes! to decide whether to destroy humanity, in self-defense.

Now it is true that the Soviets already had such missiles trained on Western Europe (and still do). The Europeans were already dancing on the edge of the 6-minute abyss. The Russians, in a gesture of profound stupidity, had already put themselves in grave peril vis-`a-vis the Europeans. So we wanted to put the Russians on a comparable 6-minute notice. To match them stupidity for stupidity. Balance of peril.

All of which points up one of the fundamental paradoxes of nuclear weaponry: The deployment of a nuclear arsenal makes the country who deploys it less secure, owing to the exponential increase it triggers in the probability of an accidental nuclear response from the other side. So our NATO deployment in Europe threatened us more than the Russians. But of course we are all in this together, so what threatens them threatens us, and what threatens us threatens them. It is an illusion to believe we can somehow mount a threat against anyone which does not simultaneously place us in at least equal jeopardy.

There are refinements and subtleties to it all of course. Even with all our recent arms control agreements we are still insisting on the right to modernize our arsenals. And after all the reductions of the era of glasnost, after the dramatic television footage of Russians blowing up their own missiles in central Siberia, at the beginning of 1990 both sides still possessed a total of over 23,000 strategic nuclear weapons. And even if all the missiles currently on the table for discussion were eliminated, the total strategic arsenals for the two sides would remain in excess of 8,000 weapons. A Princeton physicist has even made the cheery calculation that after all the reductions, both sides are likely to retain strategic nuclear arsenals with 60,000 times more destructive power than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima. So while the Cold War may be over, the machinery for a hot war is certain to remain with us.

All of which, all our faith in deterrence and in bargaining chips and military strength second to none, may be wildly, extravagantly, dangerously beside the point. All such considerations presume wishful strategies for coping with the possibilities of a deliberate nuclear exchange. But the potential for accidental thermonuclear war may be even more pressing than our determined tendency toward a deliberate one. Which may render all our reasoning and debating and posturing as just so much cacophonous fiddle-noise from so many mad Neros, as all the world burns.

We will always chase our tail if we seek some technological fix, some new and shining toy, to shield us from the slings and arrows of our fellows. For our fellows have their own toys, and if perchance, for a moment, theirs shine more brightly than ours, well, we know the cure for that don't we?

Star Wars is just the latest and shiniest toy in a long, long line. And perhaps poor simple Ronald Reagan really believed it would be a shield and not a weapon. We can just imagine some steely-eyed Pentagon sharpie telling him: Yes Mr. President, we will build this giant dome over America, you know, like the Astrodome, and all the missiles from those nasty Russians will just bounce off.

Well, Star Wars is not a shield of any kind, it is a collection of weapons stuck up in space. Particle beam weapons. And weapons which shoot laser light, and weapons which hurtle small lumps of metal at high velocity through space to pierce, well, to pierce whatever gets in their way. The toys of Star Wars are not shields, but arrows--arrows to shoot at the other guy's arrows as they come sailing in. The problem with arrows, of course, is that they don't just shoot other arrows, they shoot people, who bleed and die.

Some day we need to get the point, we need to figure out that peace is not about finding the maximal games-strategy solution, the ultimate technological fix, the perfect apogee of weaponry and threat, and then, oh then, we will be secure. Star Wars, and all other shiny toys, lull us into the comforting illusion that if we could just get the right toy we would be safe. But we will never be safe no matter how many toys we acquire, because, my friends, we cant be trusted with such dangerous toys. And I mean we can't be trusted. I don't mean the Russians can't be trusted. Or Qaddafi or some other madman. I mean us. Us humans.

Now I suppose I should acknowledge at this point that I don't mean we should just unilaterally disarm. I doubt if that would work. I want to be practical about all this; I am not just interested in sticking my head out the window and shouting I'm madder than hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!

We need to actually disarm, to actually dismantle our nuclear arsenals, and the actual process will no doubt require practical mechanics. We will have to trade this missile system for that one, not deploy here in exchange for not deploying there, or whatever.

But, this is only a question of technique; it should not be the focus of our attitudes and intentions, as it is now. We focus on these questions of how much and when and for what in return and how will I know, insisting they be resolved before we will adopt the attitude and intention to disarm. It doesn't work that way. You adopt the attitude and intention first, the mechanics follow.

So, either human beings are so resolutely war-like that deterrence is a false hope, founded on a refusal to look at the evidence. In which case we have no future, it being only a matter of time. Or, deterrence is true but irrelevant because the probabilities of accidental war increase exponentially with each new shiny toy we acquire. In which case we are likewise doomed, maybe even sooner. As long as we live in a world of nuclear arsenals those are the two horns of the only dilemma we've got. Either way, we ain't gonna make it kids.

In all candor however we ought to admit one thing about the specter of nuclear megadeath. One final baneful point about human beings and their fondness for violent mayhem, for worshiping at the altars of the gods of war.

Death by atomic chain reaction is in a sense no more hideous than any other form of one human being violently destroying another. The poor slob who first had his brain cleaved in two by the heavy fall of a dull broad sword knew the terrors of violent death in their full nitty-gritty glory. We tend, you see, to hype the grisliness of nuclear holocaust as if this were the reason to refrain from war as in: war has now become too ghastly to contemplate. But the scale of terror in a nuclear age is not an indicator of a change in the nature of warfare, only a measure of our insensitivity. If we weren't so crudely unconscious about it we would have been able to get the message when the first Neanderthal warrior bludgeoned his neighbor to death. But we didn't, so we have had to shout it a little louder.

The thing about nuclear war is not that is is unbearably ugly, but rather that it is so resolutely final. It promises to put an end to the human adventure: not only to our war making, but to our peacemaking and our lovemaking, to our joy and our sorrow, to our foolishness and our glory, and even to our mad mutterings about deterrence and strategic advantages and my toys are bigger than your toys.

So where does that leave us? I think we should straightaway admit we made a dreadful mistake. We inadvertently manufactured a weapons technology which threatens the whole game. In fact the evolution of the technologies of warfare have not even been intelligent. If we were at all smart, we would recognize the seemingly inevitable propensity of humans to make war, and we would plan a devolution of technology. Making increasingly less and less effective weapons, with less and less destructive power, until, someday, we would have only our fists to pound on one another with. That would likely be the closest thing to world peace anyone will ever witness.

Einstein is reported to have said that if the next war is fought with nuclear weapons the one after that will be fought with stones. Although the sentiment is on the mark, I suspect Einstein of being too kind. For if we are able to continue the fight with stones the survivors would I fear be all too content. The actual situation may well be that in relatively short order there would be no one left to fight with anyone about anything. And that, unless I miss my guess, may well be the ultimate horror of nuclear weapons.