Missile defenses in a “deuces wild” context: Proliferation, terror and deterrent disorder

Optimists hoped that the end of the Cold War and the dawn of the twenty-first century would see the marginalization of nuclear weapons as instruments of mass destruction and political coercion. After the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the American homeland, visions of terrorist attacks with nuclear weapons, and the likely destruction attendant to such attacks, haunted Bush administration officials and preoccupied prominent scholars and analysts. In particular, some hoped that after 9–11 the danger of nuclear weapons spreading to terrorists and “states of concern” would mobilize governments in favor of nuclear containment and disarmament.