“The most important points are often the simplest ones,” Robert Jervis avers. “No one can win an all-out nuclear war. While this statement is open to dispute, I maintain that it is correct and that its implications have not been fully appreciated.”1 In this statement lie both the glory and the shame of the theory of the nuclear revolution. On the one hand, it encapsulates the bold simplicity of MAD’s stark and compelling logic. On the other hand, it admits that for all its simplicity, the theory has yet to shape the actions of states wholly as it expects.