The two menacing gray cruisers wallowed in a wind-scoured sea, radar disks alive, sullen missile launchers lining their decks. They were the instruments of a half-century of a calculated war that never happened, a war constrained by the brutish power of just such ships.
Ironically, they were shepherds of peace last week, anchored in Marsaxlokk Bay. Malta is a scarred limestone fortress fought over for centuries, the gashes of German and Italian bombs still visible from the battering it took in World War II. George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev searched for a way to dismantle their huge arsenals even while transported...