The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospects of Armageddon byRobert JervisReview by: Gregory F. TrevertonForeign Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 5 (Winter, 1989), pp. 207-208Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20044214 .

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RECENT BOOKS 207

which states are coequal actors, and the "vertical" approach, which is

dependent upon the relationship between the state and the individual. The

latter, she argues, raises the question of legitimacy. Hence, a state's actions outside its borders must be evaluated in terms of the justification that

grants the state the right to operate domestically. The reader is forced to

think afresh. Were this reinterpretation of international law ever to be

widely accepted, it would transform concepts such as the right of interven tion and just war.

THE LIBERAL CONSPIRACY: THE CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE MIND OF POSTWAR EUROPE. By Peter Coleman. New York: Free Press, 1989, 333 pp. $22.95.

The activities of the Congress for Cultural Freedom constitute an

important and controversial chapter in the intellectual and political history of Western Europe after World War II. Founded in 1950 in the aftermath of a series of Soviet-sponsored international "peace" conferences, the

congress sought to combat the appeal of communist propaganda to

intellectual and student circles. By the mid-1960s, with the Vietnam War, d?tente and the transformation of the liberal-conservative debate, it had lost some of its support; the final death knell was sounded with the revelations of CIA funding. Except for the CIA role, this is a thorough and balanced account by an Australian editor and barrister who found himself involved at a late stage in the congress's existence and had pertinent

questions to ask but no special ax to grind.

RETHINKING HUMAN RIGHTS: CHALLENGES FOR THEORY AND ACTION. Edited by Smitu Kothari and Harsh Sethi. New York: New Horizons Press, 1989, 187 pp. $24.50 (paper, $12.50).

While dealing solely and in depth with the question of human rights in

India, this book has relevance to the entire Third World. The emphasis on the individual in Western human rights movements, the book suggests, is not altogether apropos in Third World societies where man's "social" self, his group or community, is far more crucial than in the West. The concept of rights must be extended to groups and communities and their relation

ships with each other; how, for instance, is communal oppression to be handled in a human rights context? Human rights organizations in India need to concentrate less on legal norms and to connect more with social activism. This is an important book that should be read carefully by human

rights practitioners in the West. Lucy Despard

General: Military, Technological and Scientific

Gregory F. Treverton

THE MEANING OF THE NUCLEAR REVOLUTION: STATECRAFT AND THE PROSPECTS OF ARMAGEDDON. By Robert Jervis. Ithaca

(NY): Cornell University Press, 1989, 266 pp. $21.95. "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." So Ronald

Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev affirmed, and so most people believe. The

starting point of this masterful book by one of America's preeminent strategists, however, is that while the proposition is accepted, its deeper implications are not grasped. What the nuclear revolution has done is

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208 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

magnify in force and compress in time imperatives that were present in the

pre-nuclear era; even then the pursuit of unlimited victory was unrealistic. The superpowers seem to have understood the implications of the revolu tion better in their actions, especially during crises, than in their declared

policies. Jervis takes us through those implications in prose so lucid we feel we have known them all along.

CONVENTIONAL ARMS CONTROL AND EAST-WEST SECURITY. Edited by Robert D. Blackwill and F. Stephen Larrabee. Durham (NC): Duke University Press, 1989, 491 pp. $67.50 (paper, $19.95). A Research Volume from the Institute for East-West Security Studies.

This big, important book is a genuine East-West joint venture with its clutch of authors including two who subsequently joined President Bush's

National Security Council staff and four who came to form part of the Soviet arms control negotiating teams. The book concentrates on military aspects of arms control, ranging from doctrine to verification, but it sets them in their broader context: conventional arms control cannot be

separated from nuclear issues. More important, its ultimate subject is

intensely political, nothing less than the future of the two Germanies and the shape of Europe.

FROM HIROSHIMA TO GLASNOST: A MEMOIR OF FIVE PERIL OUS DECADES. By Paul H. Nitze. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,

1989, 476 pp. $25.00. An important contribution to postwar history, by one of the major

figures in American foreign policy. His account of the famous "walk in the woods" clears up some of the mystery surrounding this episode.

William G. Hyland

THE GREAT UNIVERSAL EMBRACE: ARMS SUMMITRY?A SKEP TIC'S ACCOUNT. By Kenneth L. Adelman. New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1989, 366 pp. $19.95. Adelman's prose is caustic, and his subject is something of a moving

target. The book is strongest as an account of President Reagan's summits

by one who was sufficiently "inside" to feel part of the team but "outside" and honest enough to register surprise at: some of the proceedings. His theme?that arms control seldom reduces arms?should come as no

surprise to any earthling. His argument for strategic defense is passionate but terse and disconnected from the rest of the book; by the same token, his

advocacy of tacit or nonnegotiated restraints is as apt a reminder of a good old idea as it was when Adelman made it some years ago in Foreign Affairs.

NUCLEAR ARGUMENTS: THE MAJOR DEBATES ON STRATEGIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND ARMS CONTROL. Edited by Lynn Eden and Steven E. Miller. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press, 1989, 338 pp. $49.95 (paper, $19.95). DEFENDING DETERRENCE: MANAGING THE ABM TREATY RE GIME INTO THE 21st CENTURY. Edited by Antonia Handler Chayes and Paul Doty. Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1989, 286 pp. $32.00.

These two Cambridge-based books both show Paul Doty's fine sensibil

ity. Eden and Miller seek to explicate the underlying issues in the nuclear

debate, complete with a model on a computer disk; the effort comes

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