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Evidently, however, America may not be alone in this game of issuing nuclear threats. America's new posture is forcing the world to respond in kind. The response may well be similar to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but on a wider playing field and in a less open fashion.
Since 1945, more than 128,000 nuclear warheads have been manufactured around the world. The global stockpile of 'active' warheads, fortunately, has been reduced from the 65,000 level at height of the Cold War, to a little over 20,000 now held by nine nations, the USA, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. The status of the over 90,000 warheads that had been manufactured, but which are no longer active, is officially unknown.
No reporting is required for warheads that are no longer classified as 'active. A larger portion, obviously, has been simply decommissioned and put into storage. A large portion, obviously, has also been dismantled with the materials having been recycled. The destruction of inactive warheads is not required under current arms control agreements. The 2002 Moscow Treaty (the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty), for example, contains no verification provisions. The treaty also completely ignores all "non-strategic warheads," whatever that means. The world's nuclear weapons stockpiles have thereby become gradually opaque and been moved underground. The result is that they are more difficult to estimate now, and even more difficult to track with precision.
Some portions of the no longer 'counted' inventories may have already been stolen off the shelf, for all that anybody knows. In today's world where theft, threats, lies, desperation, and insanity reign, and conspiracies in high places abound to the point that the principle of truth no longer means anything, it must be deemed naive to assume that none of the 90,000 deactivated 'treasures' (to some) are completely accounted for and are under complete control of the governments that created them. Does anybody know, for instance, where Israel got its arsenal from that is estimated to contain over two hundred warheads, which officially too, doesn't exist?
We have entered an age in which more and more security services and government tasks become privatized all over the world and the military morale is being drowned with atrocities and maltreatment, with as of late, increasing financial hardships added. In this kind of environment the once most impossible scenarios, that a fiction writer might never have considered as credible, might become increasingly possible. When people become pushed against the wall, even the most powerful internal restraints tend to fall by the wayside. With that, the little that has remained of the world's security in the age of nuclear weapons is fast being thrown out of the window, including the security of the USA, which has become the prime moving force for the degenerating conditions. At one point, evidently, the gloves will likely come off, in some way, by someone or some group, or agency, or nation. What form this may take is open to anyone's guess.
The scenario that had been chosen for the novel had been considered as extremely unlikely at the time. It may not be that anymore. The mere possibility should both, heighten our vigilance and our concern over the direction into which our world is being pushed, to the point that a positive change begins. So far, the opposite seems to be happening.
While the same physical vulnerability still exists that existed in the 1980s when this novel was written, the counteracting psychological deterrent that had made the described scenario extremely unlikely, has been rapidly reduced. The growing wave of terrorism indicates that countless 'fires' are now burning under the surface in the psychological realm. It has been said in Britain, that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, depending on one's perspective. In addition, the growing rage for terrorism has been utilized and organized by powerful groups engaged in deadly games, who also welcome the growing hatred against America and artificially increase it, while America's physical vulnerability remains or may have even become worse.
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