Thaw in the Cold War

Two months ago the largest atomic bomb yet tested in the Nevada desert brought sudden sunrise to cities 300 miles away. Only two miles from the center of the explosion a small town had been built with no purpose other than to test the bomb’s destructive effects. Its street sign, instead of reading Main Street, read Doomsday Drive.

Till very recently one might have taken this product of the macabre whimsicality of the military mind as an adequate symbol of the main drift in world affairs. With the increasing polarization of the world into two overwhelmingly powerful superblocs and with the development of means of destruction capable of annihilating a large part of the race, it seemed as if all mankind was engaged in ...