From his bed in a hospital near Peshawar, Pakistan, Chulam Hussein recalled the incident that robbed him of his thumb and the first two fingers of his right hand. As thirty-one-year-old Ghulam was nearing the Afghanistan- Pakistan border with a mini-caravan consisting of his own and four other Afghan refugee families, he spotted a metallic object a few paces from the wellworn path. A closer look revealed it to be a wristwatch. Chulam remembers a blinding flash and deafening explosion. Only after regaining his sight did Chulam realize that fingers were missing from his numbed hand. He had become the latest casualty of the Soviet antipersonnel devices sown along the paths used by refugees fleeing Afghanistan for Pakistan.

Within days after Presidential Directive No. 59 was leaked to the New York Times (August 6, 1980) and reported as "a new strategy for nuclear war," it was under attack by dedicated arms controllers. Among these were Jeremy J. Stone of the Federation of American Scientists, Herbert Scoville of the Arms Control Association, and Bernard T. Feld of MIT. All three lamented the apparent shift away from making population centers the primary targets of nuclear weapons on both sides—the dogma of mutual assured destruction (MAD)—that had appeared to ensure stability by making nuclear war unthinkable.

My task is to comment on the political, strategic, and moral implications of P.D. 59, the presidential directive on U.S. nuclear strategy and targeting policy revealed in the media in August. The commentary is of necessity preliminary and tentative, since no document or position paper has been made available to the public to spell out the contents of P.D. 59. The most authoritative text we have is a major speech by Secretary of Defense Harold Brown on August 20 explaining the rationale of the new directive.

For there to be a day like July 17, 1980, a nation's citizens have to fail completely in their duty to their country. It was, in fact, the only possible end for Bolivia after fourteen years of military dictatorship and three years of childish civilians' games that were so grandly called "the road back to democracy." It may look as if the military, who returned to power in a two-day battle that claimed three thousand lives, should bear all the blame. But I believe that civilian politicians hold greatest responsibility for the tragedy.

International politics is looking increasingly like what Alice found when she stepped through the lookingglass, a chessboard of oddly assorted flamingos and dodo birds being moved about as pawns; of Red Bishops shouting "Off with his head!",- of walruses who weep false tears as they gobble up oysters; of Cheshire Cats with all-knowing smiles and nothing to say.

For a full generation the world, like Gaul, has been divided into three parts, the rich, the poor, and the Communists. Scholars and bureaucrats have devised these economic categories, calling them the developed world, the Communist countries, and the less developed countries (LDCs). In the last few years, however, these classifications have been bursting at the seams of their logic. Even the man in the street is beginning to wonder why such nations as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil are still "poor" LDCs and thus eligible for various aid programs. Visual evidence of their burgeoning wealth is available on TV and in the popular press. Yet the list of developed countries remains the same. It seems no one ever gets promoted.