LOS ANGELES -- The policy of the United States, at the moment the world's only superpower, lacks an overall sense of urgency about the spread and possible use of nuclear weapons. In all probability, this lapse will someday lead to immense tragedy.
The world has been sitting on a ticking time bomb for six decades. It is an inexplicable miracle rather than superior national-security policy or international-control management that a nuclear weapon hasn't exploded on one or more population centers.
Don't, of course, run this superficial observation by the Japanese, who still have the painful memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not for nothing that this technologically brilliant but overpopulated nation remains, despite recent militant uptick emotions, on the whole antinuclear and pacifist.