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The Cold War: Article Analysis

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Although, the Cold War has been over for decades the threat of imminent nuclear destruction still looms over America; not from terrorist groups such as ISIS or Russia the country with the largest stockpile of nuclear weaponry, but rather, a persistent threat that many Americans do not even perceive as one. North Korea is not shy about demonstrating their nuclear weapons, with the most recent of their tests being fired into the Japanese ocean. Both the articles I’ll be addressing today give a clear statement of how America has addressed nuclear conflict in the past and how Americans still fear the same kinds of attacks without thinking of new ways their country could be compromised by nuclear weaponry.
The first article by Simon Reich gives …show more content…

Jorgensen discusses how America is not prepared for new age nuclear war as new ways to facilitate a nuclear explosion are not in always in the form of a war head. He begins his argument by stating how ineffective fallout shelters would be today as nuclear bombs have increased in destructive capabilities since the cold war (Jorgensen 2016,2). Fallout shelter being outdated is a valid point as in the past 25 years, technological advancement has exponentially increased, giving nations the means to construct bombs far more destructive than the “Little Boy” or “Fat Man”. He then discusses MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and how it is not a safe defense strategy anymore as “a single weapon by a rogue nation or a terrorist group now poses a more likely scenario for a nuclear confrontation than a nuclear war” (Jorgensen 2016, 4). I think this is a far speculation on Jorgensen`s part as MAD only works when a countries leader has thought for their own populous. Groups like ISIS do not care about who dies in their conflict and Kim Jong Un has let half his citizens fall into extreme poverty, so he probably does not care enough about his citizens to worry about MAD. Jorgensen`s next insight into how nations or terrorist groups do not need to be able to develop long range missiles, as they could just but a bomb on a cargo ship and produce the same results. Again, this argument as there are multiple ways other than missiles to deliver a bomb, even if we protect against the last way a bomb was smuggled in, it does not stop new ways of the bomb being brought in. This article also articulates its points very well but, has the same Americanised bias as the other

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