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numerical inferiority to Soviet conventional forces in Europe, in 1953 the Eisenhower administration issued National Security Council document 162/2, which stated in part that “in the event of hostilities the United States will consider nuclear weapons to be as available for use as any other munitions” (22). In other words, the U.S. was willing to counter any type of Soviet attack in Europe, whether conventional or nuclear, strategic or tactical, with nuclear weapons. As J. P. D. Dunbabin notes, “Deployment of [U.S.] tactical nuclear weapons began in 1954, and seemed admirably suited to remedy NATO’s shortfall in conventional troops” (33). However, while Peacekeeper High Command may be hoping to create a similar deterrent in order to prevent war with the Scarrans, Scorpius—and later Commandant Grayza—hopes to achieve something greater: a super-weapon with which to eradicate the Scarran Imperium once and for all.
    The wormhole weapon is Scorpius’ ultimate fantasy, something so new and so powerful that the Scarrans stand no chance against it: a superweapon. Nor is Scorpius original or even particularly unusual in imagining a weapon so terribly powerful that its very existence will end war and guarantee its possessor the power to dictate the terms of eternal peace. Such ultimate weapons have been a staple of Western fiction since the early 19th century. The Industrial Revolution brought with it dreams of technological advancement which would put an end to war, even if only by making it too horrific to contemplate. Looking into the future in 1835, Tennyson
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;
...
Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world
[“Locksley Hall” 123–24, 127–28].
    One hundred ten years later, in July of 1945, American president Harry S. Truman would pull a piece of paper from his wallet upon which he had written these lines as a boy, and read them to a reporter as they traveled to the Potsdam Conference in occupied Germany (Franklin 18). A few days later, on 16 July 1945, the first atomic weapon was detonated near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
    Instead of world peace Truman’s wonder weapon ushered in almost fifty years of Cold War stalemate and never-ending arms manufacture. In the end, “overkill arsenals and bloated military-industrial complexes finally crippled the Soviet economy and blighted America’s national infrastructure, stunted its social progress and militarized its culture” (Maiolo 404). Despite this, nation-states are still lining up to join the so-called Nuclear Club today. The same kind of strategic thinking that is reflected in the goals of Peacekeeper High Command and Emperor Staleek has lead to a growing proliferation of nuclear weapons on Earth in the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, largely based upon the Cold War strategic theory that nuclear weapons provide an effective deterrent to attack. However, as Jacek Kugler writes, the view that deterrence actually works is questionable:
First, nuclear nations do not have an obvious and direct advantage over other nuclear or nonnuclear nations in extreme crises... Second, nuclear preponderance, which, logically, should enhance the likelihood of war, does not lead to demonstrably different or less stable behavior than nuclear parity... Finally, the most consistent reason for the absence of major war in the nuclear era seems to be the relative congruence of policy objectives among the nuclear powers, and this congruence cannot be directly traced to the buildup of nuclear arsenals [501].
    When dealing with these issues in terms of the wormhole weapon and all of the schemes and counter schemes surrounding it, Farscape is at its most frustratingly