The political requirement for national leaders to appear tough, the pressures of defense contractors that draw billions of dollars from this status quo, the callowness of politicians who refuse to cut weapons budgets because of constituents’ jobs and industry campaign contributions, the turf protection of military services – such are the broad factors than have kept the demonic structures of the Cold War in place across the two decades since the Cold War ended. But the narrow reality is that the strategic nuclear strike personnel, whether tending warheads in missile silos, bomb bays, or the launch tubes of submarines, are a match for the left-behind Japanese soldiers who emerged from Pacific island caves and jungles years after World War II was over. Bedraggled, dazed, and still convinced of a duty to protect a regime that was long gone, such men were figures of amusement and pity.