Given the recent post on a "post non-proliferation era" I thought this book review on a work looking at the history of the RAND Corporation was interesting.  For it is within RAND that much of our nuclear doctrine was first promulgated.  Clearly, the reviewer (and I suspect the author of the book) take a dim view of RAND and the theories it espoused (Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD).  What they fail to realize is that in a world where "trust" is next to impossible to have, what choices did we have?  Could there have been a "peaceful" alternative or is there something about human nature that made the world of MAD inescapable once nuclear weapons were finally created?  That is the fundamental question that still must be asked today.  This is not a technical question, rather, it is both existential and oh so very human.