Word: kremlins
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...idea once seemed terrifying: tens of thousands of nuclear weapons of every size and range, all under the control of a dictator in Moscow who could order them launched at will. Now that seems like the good old days. The world gradually came to trust whoever ruled in the Kremlin to exercise caution lest a nuclear war annihilate the Soviet Union along with the rest of the planet. But suppose the arsenal was so split up that no one would even know who might be able to order the detonation of how much of it. It could happen soon...
...tactical weapons. The republics talk , of dismantling many of these arms; Ukraine and Belorussia insist they eventually want no nukes whatsoever on their soil. But it is by no means certain that the republics can agree, among themselves and with what remains of Mikhail Gorbachev's Kremlin government, on any program for actually achieving those aims before the momentum of dissolution leads to far different results: bitter squabbles over who controls the strategic weapons and a possible leakage of tactical warheads into irresponsible hands...
...Weather stands as a monument to a potential nightmare. Few in the U.S. government will speak of it, though it is assumed that all along the Soviets have known both its precise location and its mission; defense experts take it as a given that the site is on the Kremlin's targeting maps. Yet Mount Weather remains an integral part of the U.S.'s "Continuity of Government" plan, under which senior officials are to be whisked away in case of an imminent nuclear strike so that they can set up a kind of Administration-in-exile, directing every order...
...instead of concentrating on one man in the Kremlin, the outside world must open channels to a multiplicity of actors, not all of them rational...
...long Cold War years. Before Gorbachev came to power in 1985, even the most celebrated periodicals on international relations frequently published articles praising how well the Soviets were doing economically. The world knew nothing about the truth since nobody could penetrate into the closed society controlled by the Kremlin's fear-based authority...