Preventing World War III: A Realistic Grand Strategy by David M. AbshireReview by: Gregory F. TrevertonForeign Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Spring, 1989), p. 186Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20043919 .

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186 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

PREVENTING WORLD WAR III: A REALISTIC GRAND STRAT EGY. By David M. Abshire. New York: Harper & Row, 1988, 331 pp. $19.95.

This readable memoir by an experienced Washingtonian, most recently U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a defense of NATO with side glances at issues elsewhere. The book is neither venturesome nor long on specifics? it calls for more-of-the-same-only-better, stronger conventional defense plus

a more coherent arms control strategy?but it is distinguished by Abshire's

career-long preoccupation with the public politics of defense. He is opti mistic and charitable to almost everyone, even Europeans: "Aggressive Americans like myself typically want to fix things. Europeans often prefer to live with them."

THE SILENT PARTNER: WEST GERMANY AND ARMS CONTROL. By Barry M. Blechman and Cathleen Fisher. Cambridge: Ballinger, 1988, 266 pp.

This book attempts a kind of "mapping" of another government that is rare in foreign policy analysis. It brings public opinion and political party data down to fine-grain analysis of individuals and bureaucratic process in

seeking to identify the critical determinants of West German arms control

policy.

SURPRISE ATTACK: THE VICTIM'S PERSPECTIVE. By Ephraim Kam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988, 266 pp. $25.00.

Surprise attacks often succeed: so concludes Kam, echoing Roberta Wohlstetter's classic work on Pearl Harbor. His book is also reminiscent of hers in emphasizing that victims of surprise collude, albeit unwittingly, in their deception. Kam's 11 case studies since 1940 provide rich detail; he

usefully summarizes existing literature on surprise, and his experience inside government?as an Israeli defense analyst?gives his account the texture of reality.

EXTENDED DETERRENCE AND THE PREVENTION OF WAR. By Paul K. Huth. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, 227 pp. $25.00.

This is not another book about Europe, a region where Soviet attack is

(barely) conceivable but not imminent. Rather its subject is what Huth calls "extended-immediate deterrence" when a

protector seeks to deter an

imminent attack on an ally. The book's blending of case studies and

quantitative analysis is shrewd, and its conclusions are commonsensically

provocative for future American policy toward regional conflicts: successful deterrence has combined firm but flexible diplomacy with tit-for-tat military escalation.

THE PENTAGONISTS: AN INSIDER'S VIEW OF WASTE, MISMAN AGEMENT AND FRAUD IN DEFENSE SPENDING. By A. Ernest Fitz

gerald. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989, 344 pp. $19.95. This is a bitter broadside by a man with plenty to be bitter about:

Fitzgerald was fired by Richard Nixon for blowing the whistle on the C-5A

transport and has been isolated within the Pentagon ever since. This surely is the season for fresh thought about what is wrong with the Pentagon, but

Fitzgerald's salvo is too broad to provide either diagnosis or prescription; his targets range from simple greed to the alleged crisis in America's industrial system.

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