The Big Thaw: Will We Miss Cold War? : Magazines: Continued nuclear proliferation is the most probable scenario for lasting geopolitical peace, says Atlantic Monthly’s pessimistic cover story.

John Mearsheimer did not predict the invasion of Kuwait. But his cover story in the August Atlantic Monthly--”Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War”--does resonate with the rumbling of tanks.

And although his fairly intricate thesis focuses exclusively on Europe, readers who were already beginning to luxuriate in the soothing calm of a relatively stress-free Western world will probably give his ideas a more sober reading after being so rudely awakened by the Iraqis.

The years between 1648 and 1945, Mearsheimer points out, were racked by one war after another. The Cold War caused the bellicose Europeans to chill out. Now it’s only a matter of time before tempers once again flare and bullets--if not larger and more dangerous projectiles--fly, Mearsheimer predicts.

The “bipolar” standoff between the equally matched Soviets and Yanks, along with worldwide horror at the thought of using nuclear weapons, is what kept the nations of Europe from engaging in the sort of behavior that resulted in the killing of about 50 million Europeans between 1900 and 1945, he writes. Now those deterrents are evaporating, and “Europe is reverting to a state system that created powerful incentives for aggression in the past.”

Mearsheimer, chairman of the political science department at the University of Chicago, sees three possible scenarios for post-Cold War Europe.

First is the “Europe without nuclear weapons” scenario. But because of the potential for nations like Germany to return to “hypernationalism,” Mearsheimer is relieved that this “most dangerous among the envisionable post-Cold War orders . . . does not appear to be in the cards.”

Second is “The Current Ownership” scenario, in which the nuclear powers in Europe maintain their weaponry but no new nuclear powers emerge. But this isn’t going to happen either, he believes.

Third, and most probable, is the “Nuclear Proliferation” scenario. This is the one in which he sees the most hope for stability, arguing, “Mismanaged proliferation could produce disaster (but) well-managed proliferation could produce an order nearly as stable as that of the Long Peace” (John Lewis Gaddis’ term for the Cold War).

Even here, though, he doesn’t see much hope that proliferation will be anything less than pell-mell.

So, without a trace of irony, he contends that the West has “an interest in continuing the Cold War confrontation.”

Alas, not even that seems likely to Mearsheimer. So, according to his gloomy world view, there’s little to do but watch the bodies begin piling up in some corner of illusorily peaceful Europe.

With luck, a chorus of informed political soothsayers will soon begin to shout out logical and well-supported analyses explaining that Mearsheimer’s pessimistic world view is cockeyed. Meanwhile, it seems likely that Francis Fukuyama, author of last year’s much-discussed “End of History” (Remember? The one that predicts a quick end to international squabbling) is probably reading the August Atlantic--and the headlines--and scratching his head.

REQUIRED READING

What does the issue of gun control have to do with the black community? Plenty, according to a powerful article in the September issue of the African-American publication Emerge--”Our Voice in the World.” “Every year more than 85,000 African-Americans know the terrifying sensation of a bullet entering their bodies,” write authors Roberto Santiago and Walter Lowe Jr. Nearly 10,000 of those victims die. “Yet, in the African-American community, there has never been the degree of support for stricter gun control laws that might be expected.” This passionate but balanced essay argues that it’s time for black America to confront the gun issue.

* Assemblyman Richard Katz’s plan to turn the Los Angeles River into a freeway receives yet another setback in the August Los Angeles Magazine. In a piece titled “Mark Twain!,” author Neil Cohen takes a long look at the river and finds that the infamous concrete ditch is--at least in places-- beautiful.

Los Angeles Magazine accents its appreciation of the river with color photography, and hard though it may be to believe, some of the pictures portray scenes so bucolic and tranquil they would fit in on a Sierra Club nature calendar.

* “. . . Above all, our society needs to stop thinking of drug abuse as a moral and legal question and begin to treat it instead as a public health problem,” Abdelmonem A. Afifi, dean of UCLA’s School of Public Health, writes in the summer issue of UCLA Magazine, the school’s alumni publication. What follows his introduction is a rounded and well-written, if too basic, primer by students and faculty members on “Drugs in America.”

* The 1939 New York World’s Fair was a $155-million fanfare to the future, a celebration to announce the coming “Age of Consumerism.” General Motor’s Futurama showed 28,000 people a day what the ‘60s would hold, including $200 cars that would move by radio control on seven-lane highways. “In the future,” the narrator promised, “cars will be air conditioned.” Featured in the September issue of Joe Franklin’s Nostalgia, the World’s Fair story offers an enlightening look back at the future, complete with dozens of great photos, including a heroic sculpture dedicated to “Asbestos--the magic mineral.”