Research Catalog

Title

From nuclear military strategy to a world without war : a history and a proposal / Roger Hilsman.

Author

Hilsman, Roger.

Publication

Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xvi, 312 pages; 25 cm

Summary

• Sooner or later, if the world keeps following its current course, there will be a nuclear war. Roger Hilsman, who played a significant role during the Cuban Missile Crisis, is convinced that the only way to prevent an eventual nuclear conflict is to abolish war itself. This study examines and critiques all of the various proposals to date for incorporating nuclear weapons into strategic doctrine and concludes that these efforts have failed.
• Plans for abolishing only nuclear weapons are, according to Hilsman, good intentioned but ill-advised attempts to rehabilitate war. Instead, he proposes a gradual transition to world government, which will perform the traditional social and political functions that were in the past served only by war.

Subject

• Nuclear warfare
• International organization
• United States > Military policy

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• Pt. I. The First Attempts at Nuclear Strategy. 1. The Manhattan Project and Early Strategic Thinking. 2. Nuclear Strategy and the Attack on Korea. 3. New Look, Massive Retaliation, and Flexible Response. 4. The H-Bomb and the Balance of Terror. 5. The Debate on Nuclear Strategy -- Pt. II. The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Case Study of Nuclear Strategy. 6. The Crisis. 7. The Significance -- Pt. III. Post-Crisis Attempts at a Nuclear Strategy. 8. McNamara II, the Schlesinger Doctrine, and Star Wars. 9. No First Use, Counterforce, and MAD as a Strategy. 10. The Breakup of the Soviet Union and the Bush - Yeltsin Agreement -- Pt. IV. The World Turned Upside Down. 11. Developments in Weapons. 12. The Members of the Nuclear Club and Their Arms. 13. Soviet, Chinese, and European Nuclear Strategy. 14. Armageddon: Six Scenarios of Nuclear War -- Pt. V. Arms Control and Disarmament. 15. The History of Arms Control. 16. The Prospects for Arms Control -- Pt. VI. Why War?
• 17. The Social and Political Functions of War. 18. Nationalism. 19. A World Political Process without World Government? 20. A Curious Creature -- Pt. VII. Conclusions. 21. The Long-Term Solution, a Medium-Term Compromise, and a Short-Term Stopgap. 22. The Lessons of the "Small Wars" since World War II. 23. Humanitarian and Peacekeeping Forces. 24. Conventional Forces for the Medium-Term Compromise. 25. Nuclear Forces for the Short-Term Stopgap.

ISBN

0275962423 (alk. paper)

LCCN

98046801

OCLC

ocm40218736

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries