In the days of radio, when a batter crushed a basebal that was headed for a home run, the famous sports announcer Mel Allen described the ball’s trajectory as “going, going, gone.” The same descriptor applies to the post-World War II concept of deterrence.

Why? With the use of fission weapons in 1945, deterrence acquired a first name: nuclear. Nuclear deterrence and the double-edged acronym of MAD for "mutual assured destruction" were based on what an old friend of mine cynically noted: “Nuclear war is bad for business.”

As the USSR and then China developed their own nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, deterrence meant retaining sufficient nuclear firepower to destroy the aggressor after absorbing an enemy's first strike. And a thermonuclear weapon had 1,000 times more destructive power than a nuclear one.

As the Cold War evolved and both tactical nuclear and conventional weapons grew in lethality, nuclear deterrence conceptually and strategically was “extended” to cover lesser forms of war, even to counterinsurgency. The notion was that a preponderance of force could deter all or most levels of conflict. That worked with the........

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