From the outset, the paradox of nuclear strategy has been how to
turn weapons capable of unthinkable destruction into effective
instruments of war. Kaplan wants to capitalize on that paradox and
its human implications - but he quickly dissipates its intrinsic
interest by his limp account of the scientists, mathematicians, and
social scientists who developed US nuclear strategy. Naval-strategy
specialist Bernard Brodie, then at Yale, picks up the New York
Times at a drug store in August 1945, sees the headlines announcing
the dropping of the first atomic bomb, and says to his wife:
"Everything that I have written is obsolete." Yale is described as
a great nesting place for the new nuclear strategists; then, with
the founding of the RAND corporation in Santa Monica, the
"brilliant" thinkers (as they're invariably described) congregate
there. Brodie comes up with the first theory of nuclear deterrence.
Edward Teller fathers the hydrogen bomb. John von Neumann devises
game theory - employing a model of economic rationality to figure
out possible actions based on rational choice (i.e., maximazation
of self-interest). Herman Kahn makes his contributions; Curtis
LeMay, the first SAC commander, is an ally. Tied to the Air Force
and Air Force contractors, RAND becomes a bastion of counterforce
theory: the idea that nuclear warheads should be targeted on
military sites rather than on dries ("mutual assured destruction").
Counterforce is attractive to the Air Force because only land-based
missiles or bombers are accurate enough for "city busting." It also
means that nuclear war can be considered "winnable." Insofar as
counterforce seems to have won out in Washington (the MX is a
counterforce weapon), RAND has prevailed. Kaplan, however, never
brings the economic motivations of this strategy to the fore: he
treats the whole issue as one of logic and lobbying - adding, at
the close, an unconvincing criticism of the pristine nature of it
all. Laurence Freedman's The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy is a
vastly superior account, without the inept dramatization. (Kirkus
Reviews)
This is the untold story of the small group of men who have devised
the plans and shaped the policies on how to use the Bomb. The book
(first published in 1983) explores the secret world of these
strategists and the nuclear age and brings to light a chapter in
American political and military history never before revealed.
This is the third volume in the "Stanford Nuclear Age
Series."
General
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