Total War at Sea

Abstract

In the last quarter of the twentieth century total war means nuclear war. This is a difficult subject to address. The literature devoted to it is naturally copious. Every aspect of the problem has been tackled and from most points of view. Henry Kissinger’s impressive record as a major actor in international politics adds to the significance of the book that launched his career in 1957: Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. He has had few rivals, but many successors and imitators. Scientists have always had much to contribute to the debate. In 1950 Einstein warned his American television audience of the risk of ‘general annihilation’. In 1983 a conference of scientists at Cambridge, Massachusets was told that war might well be followed by an almost equally catastrophic ‘nuclear winter’. Crudely summarised, the theory was that enough nuclear explosions would produce smoke and dust in sufficient quantities to obscure the light of the sun, sharply lower the temperature and, when combined with other effects, jeopardise the survival of the species in at least the northern hemisphere.²

The sides, having discussed key security issues, and conscious of the special responsibility of the USSR and the US for maintaining peace, have agreed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought — gorbachev-reagan, 1985¹