The world is supposed to be safer than it was. Bestriding the globe unchallenged, the United States can surely be trusted with its peace. It should be so.
Many people perhaps think it is so.
But two glimpses of reality show us it isn't so. These exposures seem important to register. The first snapshot comes from the old world. The nuclear threat, it turns out, has not changed. You might think that, with the end of the cold war, the US would have reduced its nuclear plans.