We should be hesitant to accept too many lessons from the American realist school of thought. Their great legacy is to narrowly steer clear of a nuclear holocaust, on several instances out of sheer luck, while repeatedly fucking up huge parts of the world beyond recognition.

Somehow we celebrate this clown parade for the one disaster they nearly brought upon us, but we narrowly escaped. There's no lessons to be learned from the Americans, except as a cautionary tale.

Sure, MAD worked; we only came closer to our own extinction than we ever have in the process.