LASTING PEACE: THE CONDITIONAL NUCLEAR UMBRELLA DOCTRINE

The Middle East has long been the world's most concentrated arena of unresolved fear: notmerely political or strategic fear, but a deep and ancestral fear wherein the question of a givennation's continued existence has never been fully separated from the daily calculations of itsleadership. This fear is not a symptom of irrationality. It is the engine of everything that follows.The proposals contained herein do not ask any nation to stop being afraid. They offer, instead, astructured system of contracted security wherein the fear is made manageable, the offensiveresponse to that fear is made contractually prohibitive, and the rewards of restraint are madeperpetually valuable. This is not an idealistic proposal, it is a mechanical one, wherein theincentives of sovereign self-interest are reoriented so that restraint becomes the most rationalcalculation a state can make.