Abstract
Behind the whole argument about first-strike strategies was a crisis of identity for the military, and particularly for the Air Force. Such strategies offered the last best hope of fighting a nuclear war according to established military concepts. The idea of counter-force attacks could be traced to the early doctrines of strategic air bombardment and this provided a sense of continuity with former days. Apart from the problems created for the Western Alliance, if no feasible method could be found of executing a first strike successfully, the Air Force would be left without a means of engaging in a war that could bring victory in any plausible or tolerable way.
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Notes
Charles Hitch and Roland N. McKean, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960).
P. M. S. Blackett, Studies of War — Nuclear and Conventional, p. 201. For a brief history see Chapter 3 of Andrew Wilson, War Gaming (London: Pelican, 1970).
Sir Solly Zuckerman, ‘Judgement and control in modern warfare’, Foreign Affairs, xxxx:2 (January 1962), p. 208.
Dr. Samuel Glasstone, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (US Atomic Energy Commission, 1957) is the most authoritative compilation.
Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Strategy and the natural scientists’, in Robert Gilpin and Christopher Wright (ed.), Scientists and National Policy Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 189, 193, 195.
Sir Solly Zuckerman, Scientists and War, The Impact of Science on Military and Civil Affairs (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956), p. 63.
John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944).
The most thorough critique of the methods adopted by the new strategists is to be found in Philip Green, Deadly Logic: The Theory of Nuclear Deterrence (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1966). See also Rapaport’s Strategy and Conscience. For critiques of the critics see D. G. Brennan’s review of Rapaport’s book, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, xxi:12 (December 1965), and Hedley Bull, ‘Strategic studies and its critics’, World Politics (July 1968).
Hedley Bull, The Control of the Arms Race (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961), p. 48.
See Glenn Snyder, ‘“Prisoner’s Dilemma” and “Chicken” models in international polities’, International Studies Quarterly, xv:1 (March 1971).
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© 2003 Lawrence Freedman
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Freedman, L. (2003). The Formal Strategists. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379435_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379435_12
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