If you kill our helpless civilians, we will kill yours. Defense was no longer protection of one’s own society, but the threat of senseless violence against another. Misha grimaced. No tribe of savages had ever formulated such an idea—even the most uncivilized barbarians were too advanced for such a thing, but that was precisely what the world’s most advanced peoples had decided—or stumbled—upon. Although deterrence could be said to work, it meant that the Soviet Union—and the West—lived under a threat with more than one trigger.
