However, I have to bring this part of the article to your attention:
For Jocelyn Rochat, this little international policy professional secret raises a vast question: our lack of religious education, our ignorance of Scriptures at a time when religious foundations are far more crucial than we'd like to believe in political and military decisions. Religion is not confined to the private sphere, Jocelyn Rochat concludes. A parameter to take into account "at the risk of no longer understanding the way the world works today."
Having said that: The importance of the story for me is the underlying, but often forgotten realisation by people discussing with "crazed" religious folk: They are here to stay, and no level of atheistic thinking, or arguing is going to change that.
Using it as a metaphor isn't necessarily an indication of removal from reality, just a different language. Any literal belief in it as a prediction is another matter.
Considering he was speaking to President Chirac, and not to an American Bible-belt audience, make the hope unlikely.
More likely this is a sample of his actual thinking.
Non-American readers need to be aware--not merely that this is a religious delusion--but what the delusion is: That at the End of Time the world will be consumed by a great war between Good and Evil, and essentially destroyed. The few survivors (obviously all Christians--in fact Baptists) who have not been already raptured up (that's a sub-delusion not relevant here) will live for a thousand years in the kingdom of Jesus, and then all those Christians who have died but are saved will be resurrected to live forever.
The key point you should be aware of is that the believers in this delusion believe that God needs (their) help in bringing this World-destroying war about.
The implications for US strategic (nuclear) policy should be obvious. The Fates are kind.
