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Thinking Strategically



Do you recall what Clemenceau once said about War? He said, 'war was too important to be left to the generals.' When he said the 50 years ago, he might of been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought.
General Jack D. Ripper, Dr. Strangelove.

Overview


Many people have asked me what the utility is in writing, reading, and compiling bibliographies about a subject, Nuclear Deterrence that for all intensive purposes has become a non-issue. I usually respond in two different ways.

First, primarily for the very reason people argue deterrence should not be studied, its obscurity and irrelevance. Although critiqued by individuals in the peace movement and within critical wings of academia, Nuclear Deterrence during the Cold War remained an overanalyzed yet relatively insulated hermetic theory and institution. The fact that nuclear deterrence was assumed by many to be just a brute reality of bipolarity, the core concepts that informed deterrence theory were never subjected to a thorough critique or investigation. Issues such as the role of technology, sexuality, and identity in the construction and maintanence of deterrence institutions were rarely addressed.

Secondly, while many speak of the 'irrelevance' of nuclear deterrence in the post-cold war world, many of the 'analytical structures' and assumptions that underlyed deterrence theory remain. If deterrence was one of the most pervasive and expansive institutions developed during the cold war, it is not surprising that these legacies remain. Deterrence is interesting, therefore, as a historical icon, an emerging security 'myth', and as a system that despite international fluctuations remains somewhat institutionalized.

Image Library: Nuclear Deterrence and the Cold War

Click on the thumbnail for a description of the image.

Nuclear Deterrence / Nuclear Technology Bibliography

This bibliography is primarily built upon secondary sources, reflections upon the Cold War and the development of deterrence theory. The bibliography includes works that view deterrence as the product of well-tempered and thoughtful policymaking during the tense years of the Cold War, works who see deterrence as a system designed to order the world in the name of the United States, works who see deterrence as a linguistic system or a rhetorical strategy, those who see deterrence as a regime which developed over time due to superpower competition and learning, and those who see deterrence as a requirement of a system of anarchical states and zero-sum competition over power. I will be including short summaries after each source to help differentiate between the multitude of perspectives each source brings to the table. Although far from comprehensive, I hope the variety and clarity of sources will still provide an useful selection of resources..

Allen, Thomas B. War Games: the secret world of the creators, players, and policy makers rehearsing world war III. New York: McGraw Hill, 1987.

Alperovitz, Gar (et al.), 'Buy the nukes: deterrence is dead, but we can kill the nuclear threat.' Nation. V262 N3, Jan 22, 1996, p11-13.

Alperovitz, Gar and Kai Bird. 'The centrality of the bomb.' Foreign Policy. V94, Spring 1994, p3-20.

Bernstein,Barton. 'The Quest for Security: American Foreign Policy and International Control of Atomic Energy, 1942-1946.' Journal of American History, V.LX. No 4, March 1974, p1003.

Booth: Ken, 'The Evolution of Strategic Thinking.' J. Baylis (et.al), Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Concepts, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1987.

Booth, Ken; 'The Evolution of Strategic Thinking,' in J. Baylis (et al.), Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Concepts. New York: Holmes and Meier. 1987.

Bracken, Paul. The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces. Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1983.

Burrows, William E. Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security. New York: Random House, 1986.

Campbell, David. Writing Security. Minneapolis: Univ. Of Minnesota, 1992.

Chace, James. 'Sharing the atom bomb: after Hiroshima.' Foreign Affairs. V74 N1, Jan 1996, p129-144.

Chilton, Paul, Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common House, New York: Peter Lang 1996.

Chilton, Paul (ed.), Language and the Nuclear Arms Debate: Nukespeak Today. London: Frances Pinter 1985.

Cohn, Carol. 'Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.' Signs: journal of women in culture and society. V12 N4, Summer 1987, p687-718.

Dauber, Cori Elizabeth. Cold War Analytical Structures and the Post Post-War World: a Critique of Deterrence Theory. Westport Conn?: Praeger 1993.

De Kerckhove, Derrick. 'On Nuclear Communication,' Diacritics, Summer 1984 v14 n2.

De Landa, Manuel. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. Cambridge: MIT Press 1994.

Doctorow, E.L. 'Mythologizing the Bomb.' Nation, V261 N5, Aug. 1995, p149-154.

Drew, Nelson, NSC-68: Forging the Strategy of Containment. Washington: National Defense University 1994.

Edwards, Paul. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge: MIT Press 1996.

Ferguson, Francis 'The Nucelar Sublime', Diacritics, Summer 1984 v14 n2.

Freedman, Lawrence. The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.

Gaddis, John; Paul Nitze, 'NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat Reconsidered,' International Security, Spring 1980 v4 n4.

Gaffney Frank., 'Abandoning deterrence will be nuclear nightmare come true.' Insight on the News, V13 N46, Dec. 15 1997, p30.

George, Alexander and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press 1974.

Gray, Colin. Strategic Studies and Public Policy: the American Experience. University of Kentucky, 1982.

Gray, Colin; Stephen Cambone. 'The role of nuclear forces in U.S. national security strategy: implications of the B-2 bomber.' Comparative Strategy, V15 N3, July-Sep 1996, p207-32.

Halperin, Morton H. Nuclear Fallacy: dispelling the myth of nuclear strategy. Cambridge: Ballinger, 1987.

Hinds, Lynn and Theodore Windt, The Cold War as Rhetoric. New York: Praeger 1991.

Johnston, Alastair Iain . 'Thinking about strategic culture.' International Security. V19 N4, Spring 1995, p32-64.

Kaplan, Fred. The Wizzards of Armageddon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

Kier, Elizabeth. Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Klein. Bradley. Strategic studies and world order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994.

Lifton,Robert Jay; Greg Mitchell. 'The atomic curtain.' Nation, V260 N19, May 1995, p668-669.

Lowen, Rebecca. Creating the Cold War University: the Transformation of Stanford. Berkeley: University California Press, 1997.

Luke, Timothy. 'On Post-War: the Significance of Symbolic Action in Deterrence.' Alternatives, XIV 1989 p343-362.

MacCannell, Dean. 'Baltimore in the morning...After: on the Forms of Post-Nuclear Leadership.' Diacritics, Summer 1984 v14 n2.

Maddox, Robert James. 'The biggest decision: why we had to drop the atomic bomb.' American Heritage. V46 N3, May-June 1995, p70-76.

Mandelbaum, Michael. 'U.S. Foreign Policy and Nuclear weapons today.' SAIS Review, V17 N1, Winter-Spring 1997, abstract.

Mandelbaum, Michael.. The Nuclear Question: the United States and Nuclear Weapons, 1946-1976. Cambridge University Press, 1979.

McCanles, Michael, 'Machiavelli and the Paradoxes of Deterrence.' Diacritics, Summer 1984 v14 n2.

Messer, Robert. 'Paths not Taken: The United States Department of State and Alternatives to Containment, 1945-1946,' Diplomatic History, v1 n4 Fall 1977.

Myln, Eric. The State, Society, and Limited Nuclear War. New York: State University Press 1995.

Nathanson, Charles E. 'The Social Construction of the Soviet Threat: A Study in the Politics of Representation.' Alternatives XIII 1988, p443-483.

Nitze, Paul. 'NSC-68'. T. Etzold and J. Gaddis (eds.), Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy. New York: Columbia Univ Press 1978.

Ringmar, Eric, 'Alexander Wendt: a social scientist struggling with history,' in I. Neumann and O. Waever (eds.), The Future of International Relations, London: Routledge 1997.

Rochlin, Gene I., Trapped in the Net: the unanticipated consequences of computerization. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Rosenberg, Emily. 'The Cold War and the Discourse of National Security.' Diplomatic History. 1992.

Unger, Sheldon. The Rise and Fall of Nuclearism: fear and faith as Determinants of the Arms race. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University press, 1992.

Wattenberg, Albert (et al.), 'Remembering Bernie: Bernard Feld, who witnessed the beginning of the nuclear age, became an ardent indefatigable champion of peace.' Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. V49 N4, May 1993, p13-17.

Wells, Samuel F. 'Sounding the Tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat,' International Security, Fall 1979 v4 n2.

Wheeler, Nicholas, and Ken Booth. 'The Security Dilemma.' in Dilemmas of World Politics: International Issues in a Changing World. Baylis, John (ed. et al.), Oxford: Clarndon Press, 1997.

Williams, Phil. 'Nuclear Deterrence.' in J. Baylis (et al.), Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Concepts. New York: Holmes and Meier. 1987.