Senior American military officers insist that current nuclear policy prevents them shrinking the US nuclear arsenal to fewer than 2,000 to 2,500 strategic weapons - and that going lower would threaten national security. Their calculations are buried in the nation's strategic war plan and ultimately linked to presidential guidance. 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. Aids now kills two million a year in Africa alone In Africa as a whole, Aids now kills 2m people a year - 10 times more than war. But 4m were newly infected with HIV last year alone and, without treatment, are expected to die within 10 to 15 years. Aids experts fear that what is happening in Africa may be only a rehearsal for what could follow in Asia.