For better or for worse, strategic nuclear weapons are back on the docket.

Given that the Cold War ended 35 years ago, most Americans have little understanding of or interest in these weapons that could literally obliterate much if not all of our society. The marvelous Stanley Kubrick movie “Dr. Strangelove” satirized the notion of mutual assured destruction and the Soviet Union’s “doomsday device” that, once triggered, would destroy the world.

During the Cold War, the image of two scorpions in a bottle, representing the U.S. and Soviet Union, was popularized, meaning both could sting the other to death. Decades later, at least three scorpions inhabit that bottle, with the addition of China pursuing a serious strategic nuclear arsenal rivaling that of the other two military superpowers.

If not in the same bottle, certainly in the same room are the other nuclear states: Britain, France, North Korea, Israel, India and Pakistan. Iran and Saudi Arabia are in the anteroom.

Now, these strategic nuclear matters have been brought to a head by the expiration of the New START Treaty in January and President Trump’s confusing........

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