We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile, new levels
of destructiveness upon old ones. We have done this helplessly, almost
involuntarily: like the victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream,
like lemmings heading for the sea, like the children of Hamelin marching
blindly along behind their Pied Piper. And the result is that today we have
achieved, we and the Russians together, in the creation of these devices and
their means of delivery, levels of redundancy of such grotesque dimensions as
to defy rational understanding.
-- George Kennan (May 19, 1981)
