Alex WellersteinVerified account

My essential read of history is that, on the whole, as in statistics, things trend towards "the mediocre," the mean.

Things are never as good as they have the potential to be, and usually not as bad as they have the potential to be.

Occasionally, however, we see momentary deviations in one direction or the other.

On the positive side, that can mean moments of tremendous strength, kindness, acceptance, honesty.

On the negative side, that can mean cruelty, mass targeting of civilians, genocide. To name a few examples.

The general theory of history I subscribe to is basically: most of the time, existing systems of power keep things on a constant track.

Economic and political systems tend to change slowly. Even when things seem to change fast, they often do so only subtly.

The few times that things do change fast are usually interesting, historically. Not so nice for people living through them.

It is simultaneously frustrating (because injustices persist) and heartening (because the worst rarely occurs).

Science and technology are interesting because they offer up one of the genuinely new sources power in such a world.

(A Latour quote: "In our modern societies most of the really fresh power comes from sciences… not from the classical political process.")

So nuclear weapons are interesting, in part, because they are an immense source of potential power. Literally and figuratively.

When they were created in 1945, they seemed to offer the promise of remaking the entire international order. Changing the nature of war.

They allow for the potential of BIG swings in history, in blindingly short amounts of time. Big changes, in minutes.

They concentrate the power to do that in the hands of a VERY small number of people and systems. All of which are fallible.

This makes them unusual. Anomalous. Scary. Hard to predict. Historically fascinating.

People who know me well know: I am not really much of an activist. I have boring, moderate political opinions, relative to most academics.

I have no real heart for radical activism. I don't really trust people enough to remake everything a once. You can like that, or not.

I am not a nuclear abolitionist. I have an easy time seeing both sides of the argument. I would be OK with fewer nukes. Not sure about zero.

(I accept that rational, reasonable, well-informed people can disagree on this topic. I take all serious positions seriously.)

I was worried when Trump came to power. For many reasons. Nukes were one of them.

But I told a lot of people that it wasn't my #1 reason to be worried. Economics, social issues, attacks on the press — these looked worse.

I didn't think he, and his advisors, would be quite so obtuse about North Korea. I thought they'd see through the bluster.

I thought they'd see that it's relatively easy to seem tough, without starting an all-out war. Plenty of Presidents have managed it.

But I'm actually fairly worried. And my friends know, I am not a worrier in general. If anything, I think I err on the side of blasé.

I'm worried that the people at the top are not asking the right questions. I worry that they are going along with very risky notions.

I worry about groupthink. I worry about impulsiveness. I worry about pride.

I worry that bad ideas will rule the day, because no one will stand up and take responsibility. I worry that the buck will be passed.

I worry that they will come up with a "compromise" solution that will be far too risky for what is warranted,

because the only "other" voices in the conversation will be extreme and foolish.