Tomgram: Michael Klare, The New "Long War" | TomDispatch

If the last really big, conventional global war (WW2) happened today, it would be nuclear. So, that's pretty much cataclysmic.

In the world of movie scripts and alternate history novels, writers consider various takes on "what if we had killed Hitler." (My favorite example is the Australian "Danger 5" series (google it), but I digress.) If killing the next Hitler or Tojo and those around them prevents the next really big, global war, then it prevents a nuclear cataclysm. Therefore, I think there is a real, urgent need to develop the ability to destroy the leadership of a hostile autocracy with strategic and tactical surprise even if that nation has nuclear weapons. In the meantime, there will be smaller conflicts in which we can use the existing capabilities to dissuade or defeat aggressors (effectively an analogy to the "Sit-Down Gun" of Danger 5, but again, I digress). But avoiding that nuclear cataclysm that refuses to go back into the science-fiction closet and stay there is the most important thing to work on.