Power and Madness: The Logic of Nuclear Coercion by Edward RhodesReview by: Gregory F. TrevertonForeign Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Fall, 1989), p. 200Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20044129 .

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200 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

THE MASKS OF WAR: AMERICAN MILITARY STYLES IN STRAT EGY AND ANALYSIS. By Carl H. Builder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1989, 256 pp. $28.00 (paper, $10.95). A RAND Study.

Along with congressional committees and defense industries, the third

leg of the iron triangle that makes reform so hard is the military services themselves. Builder's provocative book is institutional profile at its best,

probing far beyond the flip phrases that usually describe the essence of each service, e.g., that the air force likes things it can fly. His conclusion is not optimistic: political reform from the top "will only succeed in prodding the American military institutions into rallying their many supporters in

Congress and throughout American society."

MOVING TARGETS: NUCLEAR STRATEGY AND NATIONAL SE CURITY. By Scott D. Sagan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, 237 pp. $19.95. A Council on Foreign Relations Book.

Sagan wrestles with the paradox of deterrence: nuclear weapons must

be usable enough to deter but not so usable as to risk war by accident or to

terrify the citizens they are meant to protect. He makes a thoughtful argument for his preference?second-strike counterforce capabilities to

threaten Soviet leaders, and reserve nuclear forces without the destabilizing risks of a first-strike threat. At the same time, his own rendition of how far the details of American nuclear targeting have diverged in the past from

the announced American strategies makes one skeptical about how plain any distinction can be in the eyes of the beholders who matter most?the leaders of the Soviet Union.

POWER AND MADNESS: THE LOGIC OF NUCLEAR COERCION.

By Edward Rhodes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, 269 pp. Rhodes takes the insight, taught by Thomas Schelling a quarter-century

ago, that nuclear threats made to deter would be irrational to carry out if deterrence failed, and pushes it to argue that the United States should

abandon the search for rational nuclear options, exploiting irrationality by relying instead on a version of Herman Kahn's probabilistic Doomsday

Machine. The argument takes Rhodes where he wants to go?to much

smaller nuclear forces that pose no war-fighting threat. It may not take the

reader to the same place, but the ride is a good one.

U.S. NUCLEAR STRATEGY: A READER. Edited by Philip Bobbitt, Lawrence Freedman and Gregory F. Treverton. New York: New York

University Press, 525 pp. (New York: Columbia University Press, distribu

tor, $35.00; paper, $15.00). This excellent selection of important essays and speeches spanning more

than four decades is a good companion volume to the histories of the

nuclear age that are now appearing. The editors have provided brief but

useful introductions to each of the six sections into which they have divided

the book. Michael Mandelbaum

ABOUT FACE: THE ODYSSEY OF AN AMERICAN WARRIOR. By Col. David H. Hackworth, USA (Ret.) and Julie Sherman. New York:

Simon & Schuster, 1989, 875 pp. $24.95. The memoir of a soldier's soldier who never expected to "check out of

the Army any way but feet first," this is passionate testimony not only to

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