There is a peculiar comfort in thinking that the most dangerous moments in human history are safely behind us. The Cuban Missile Crisis, we are told, was the closest we ever came to nuclear annihilation. It has the narrative neatness of a near-miss: two superpowers, a clearly defined standoff, and a resolution that allows us all to breathe a sigh of retrospective relief.
But history does not move in neat arcs. It drifts, it frays, and occasionally it accelerates without warning. The uncomfortable truth is that we may now be living through a period that, in its own diffuse and disordered way, is more dangerous than anything the Cold War produced.
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