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Friday, September 27, 2013

Churchill on MAD



Sitting by the surprisingly empty BGU swimming pool and reading the concluding pages of The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965, on page 1025 I came across this Churchill quote taken from  Parliamentary debate concerning the hydrogen bomb (Nov 3,  1953):

It may be that this rule may have a novel application and that when the advance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everybody else nobody will want to kill anyone at all. At any rate, it seems pretty safe to say that a war which begins by both sides suffering what they dread most—and that is undoubtedly the case at present—is less likely to occur than one which dangles the lurid prizes of former ages before ambitious eyes.


The times have changed and Churchill may well be wrong on this one.