Listening to Schelling

He’s pretty old and fragile. Yesterday on stage he cited stuff I had said on stage Friday night but he couldn’t remember my name (he kept calling me “that young man,” which--at age 45--I simply love hearing!). But that seems indicative of where he is: guy doesn’t sweat the meaningless details, but still has a stunningly sharp mind and a deep memory of what matters (in this speech, he gives a great mini-history of the Korea War).

The basics that stuck with me:

We forget how amazingly successful we’ve been over the decades to stop nuclear proliferation (although yesterday Schelling said that Iran’s nuclear achievement is basically a fait accompli).

Hard for young people to remember how scary nukes where (strong expectations of nuclear war in the early 1960s, with full-page newspaper ads for fall-out shelters), because it took us so long to figure them out.

To him, the big uncertainty on North Korea and Iran is not whether they have/get nukes, but whether their leaders realize how effectively they deter American attacks (the history of the last 60 years--get nukes, and direct attack by America is basically ruled out). In short, the history of the last six decades says nukes are highly effective for deterring and basically ineffective in military terms (militaries, the world over, when asked, prefer not to use them, even when confronted with the possibility that the other side might--a Schelling observation made directly on numerous occasions across his vast career, and something I’ve found to be true through my entire 18 years as well).

Cool speech, even cooler to finally see him talk live. Something to remember when I’m the old guy who can’t remember names but still have the crucial narratives still deeply engraved in my memory.