Einstein's Monsters

[1] Endorsing America's recently tightened embrace of the nuclear destiny, Margaret Thatcher has echoed this line, claiming that "nuclear weapons can't be uninvented" -an "unimpeachable point," according to The Times. (The Times, like The Economist, like The Sun, is incidentally pro-SDI.) With the assistance of Jonathan Schell's The Abolition, may I put this argument out of its misery? It is true that nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented (or better say undiscovered, since they uti!ize an eternal force of nature); but they can be dismantled. If nuclear weapons are used, they will be used by a lunatic or by a sane man in a crisis. Any appreciable extension of the second-thoughts period would be of epochal significance: it would make a new world. Currently the second-thoughts period is the time that elapses between deciding to press a button and actually pressing it. President Reagan himself seemed to feel the need for greater respite when, after some years in power, he announced his belief that the missiles, once launched, could be recalled. Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.