As the Obama administration considers a way forward in Afghanistan and Iran, history may provide some important lessons. Both Vietnam and the nuclear standoff of the cold war era are instructive as we try to understand how we got to where we are and what kind of strategies will and won’t work as we face different threats of a new generation.

Professor and author Jonathan Stevenson joins us today to talk about his new book Thinking Beyond The Unthinkable: Harnessing Doom From the Cold War to the Age of Terror. We’ll talk about the strategies that kept us from mutual annihilation during the 1950’s and the failures of thought that have led to our current predicament.

How should we address the non-traditional threats we face in The Taliban and Al-Queda—as well as the perhaps-burgeoning nuclear power in Iran? Is Afghanistan indeed a war of necessity?

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