Video Alert: What Happens if Washington, D.C. Is Attacked with Nuclear Weapons

Harry J. Kazianis

Security,

World War III?

What could be the next “failure of imagination”? 

The present national security environment America faces today is loaded with challenges as far as the eye can see—but it might just be the dangers we don’t see coming or fail to see, those that are so difficult to imagine, so gut wrenching and horrific to even contemplate, that a future calamity someday might take us by surprise and do the most harm of all.

(This first appeared in 2016.) 

Consider the threats Washington faces today—anyone who casually reads the news can list them off with relative ease.

The rise of ISIS, now armed not with just lethal arms but ever more potent social media savvy, inspiring sinister plots the world over is an asymmetric threat not easy to counter.

(Recommended: How America Could Go to War with Iran)

Then there is Russia. Moscow continues to press NATO from the Baltics to the Black Sea and beyond, while its influence is on the rise in the Middle East with its unending military involvement in Syria. And the war in Ukraine continues to drag on.  

Asia most closely resembles a giant powder keg, ready to explode at any moment--thanks to North Korea.