Former British Ambassador to the Soviet Union and author of the definitive account of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Sir Rodric Braithwaite offers here a tour d'horizon of nuclear policy from the end of World War II and start of the Cold War to the present day. emArmageddon and Paranoiaem unfolds the full history of nuclear weapons that began with the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union and now extends worldwide. For decades, an apocalypse seemed imminent, staved off only by the certainty that if one side launched these missiles the other would launch an equally catastrophic counterstrike. This method of avoiding all-out nuclear warfare was called Deterrence, a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction MAD. Still, though neither side actively wanted to plunge the world into nuclear wasteland, the possibility of war by misjudgment or mistake meant fears could never be entirely assuaged. pBoth an exploration of Deterrence and the long history of supe