Abstract
Nuclear deterrence and US nuclear strategy entered some time ago what is at once an intellectual stagnation and a political crisis. Until recently there has been little prospect that new ideas would emerge to help resolve what had become telling faults in the edifice of traditional deterrence theory and practice. While public concern with nuclear weapons remained significant, the threat of war had receded enough so that popularly forced radical change seemed unlikely.
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Notes
Andrew Goldberg, project director, Securing Strategic Stability (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 1988), p. 3.
Richard K. Betts, Cruise Missiles and U.S. Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1982), p. 11.
Edward L. Warner III and David Ochmanek, Next Moves: An Arms Control Agenda for the 1990s (New York: Council on Foreign Relations. 1989). p.24n.
Max M. Kampelman, ‘START: Completing the Task’, The Washington Quarterly 1 (Summer 1989), 7
See, for example, Peter DeLeon, The Altered Strategic Environment Toward the Year 2000 (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co., 1987), pp. 59–66, and Michael Howard, ‘The Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy’, Foreign Affairs 57 (Summer 1979).
Philip Bobbitt, Democracy and Deterrence: The History and Future of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988), pp. 110, 284.
Market Opinion Research, Marttila and Kiley Inc., et al., Americans Talk Security, Full Survey Report. No publication location, various dates. The figures come from No. 9, October 1988; the quotation is from No. 6, June 1988, p. 41. Emphasis mine.
For good summaries of the issue, see DeLeon, The Altered Strategic Environment, pp. 7–25; and Thomas Powers, ‘Nuclear Winter and Nuclear Strategy’, The Atlantic 254 (November 1984).
Herbert A. Simon, ‘Mutual Deterrence and Nuclear Suicide’, Science 23 (4 February 1984), 775.
Klaus Knorr, On The Uses of Military Power in the Nuclear Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 23.
John Mueller, Retreat From Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989), pp. 59–60.
Robert Jervis, ‘The Nuclear Revolution and the Common Defense’, Political Science Quarterly 101 (1986), 689, 694.
Edward L. Warner and David Ochmanek, Next Moves: An Arms Control Agenda for the 1990s (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1989), p. 19.
Robert Jervis, ‘Strategic Theory: What’s New and What’s True’, Journal of Strategic Studies 9 (December 1986), 158–9.
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© 1991 Michael J. Mazarr
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Mazarr, M.J. (1991). The Status of Deterrence: Start and other Factors. In: Start and the Future of Deterrence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11524-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11524-2_1
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