This essay offers a clear, nontechnical framework for introducing students to the strategic and moral dilemmas surrounding nuclear weapons technology. The acute importance of these issues appears selfevident, and the disheartening confidence exhibited by both presidential candidates in the relative ignorance of the public in these matters amply illustrates the urgent need for more accessible information.

A strict rule has governed the elaboration of this framework: avoid both the dominant modes of discourse on the nuclear question —the new scholasticism of technological complexity and the new millenialism of technological doom. Both perplexity and panic paralyze. Accordingly, no claim whatsoever is made to offer new information or new prophecies: addressing political scientists merely seems the best way to reach students. It is the latter's frightening lack of understanding of this crucial issue, which I have personally experienced, that prompted this effort.