I recently re-watched Philip Morris’ documentary “The Fog of War,” which includes a sustained interview with Robert S. McNamara, who served as Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. McNamara recalls opposition from conservatives in the military to Kennedy’s efforts to negotiate arms control treaties. McNamara recalls being told that the U.S. couldn’t trust the Soviet Union to abide by any test-ban treaty, and thought the Soviet Union would take advantage of any such treaty by testing nuclear weapons in secret. McNamara asked them how, and they said the Soviets would test the weapons “behind the moon.” McNamara thought that was ridiculous, and I (in my very humble opinion) agree. Now the Bush administration is stoking fears in the U.S.S.R. with talk of a missile defense system. In my opinion, every time we launch a war without broad international support (and freak everybody out all over the world with our cavalier attitude) we seriously damage the likelihood that we’ll be able to entice these nations into working with us on nuclear arms reductions. If these other countries think we’re a bunch of cowboys, they’ll cling to their nuclear weapons tight. But if they think we can be trusted to work toward peace, they’ll be more likely to join us — because they don’t like the prevalence of nuclear weapons any more than we do.