Most of us forget nearly everything we learned in university within months of graduating. I doubt if I am an exception. But there's one particular Politics tutorial that comes back to haunt me again and again each time Pakistan is discussed.
I was at university during the Cold War so all dons were slightly obsessed with the way in which the rivalry between Nato and the Soviet bloc would play out. One of them told us that he was an admirer of Henry Kissinger's strategic thinking.
In those days, we were taught the doctrine of MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction. The US and the Soviets both had so many nuclear weapons that each could easily destroy the other. Any Russian leader or American president who ordered a nuclear strike knew that he was, in effect, ordering the destruction of his own country. The other side would retaliate with so much force that the original attacker's country would be destroyed. |