The Nuclear Seduction: Why the Arms Race Doesn't Matter; And What Does by William A.Schwartz; Charles DerberReview by: Gregory F. TrevertonForeign Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Spring, 1990), pp. 169-170Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20044321 .

Accessed: 10/06/2014 16:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Council on Foreign Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ForeignAffairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.157 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:21:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

RECENT BOOKS 169

many difficulties: the powers of the office were not established and he

sought a broad conception of them, the East-West confrontation was at its

height and this Norwegian had the confidence of neither camp. Barros

approaches the man and his times in a thoroughly balanced and scholarly manner in this most impressive book. While sympathetic to his aims he faults Lie for being too political and incautious. Despite Lie's total commit

ment to the United Nations he is seen as having been "the wrong man, in the wrong job, at the wrong time."

General: Military, Technological and Scientific

Gregory F. Treverton

MEETING GORBACHEV'S CHALLENGE: HOW TO BUILD DOWN THE NATO-WARSAW PACT CONFRONTATION. By Jonathan Dean. New York: St. Martin's, 1990, 360 pp. $45.00 (paper, $16.95).

Dean, a former U.S. conventional arms control negotiator, knows his

subject better than anyone; his historical chapters and appendices provide a wealth of useful background. His call for a sharp conventional arms

build-down, cast against the rush of events since his writing, raises sharply the question of whether the bloc-to-bloc arms control format that seemed

promising when the Russian bear was strong still makes sense when the bear is weak, the Warsaw Pact crumbling and East European states eager to be rid of Soviet forces.

SOVIET MILITARY DOCTRINE AND WESTERN POLICY. Edited by Gregory Flynn. New York: Routledge, 1989, 418 pp.

This thoughtful book takes up the question of why Western policy, in

particular American nuclear policy, has seemed so disconnected from

understandings of Soviet doctrine?first expecting Soviet doctrine to

converge with American, then reacting sharply when it didn't. It is food for

thought as military relations change again, perhaps more than ever before in the postwar

era.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TABLE: THE SOVIET APPROACH TO ARMS CONTROL. Edited by Michael Mandelbaum. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1990, 209 pp. $16.95 (paper).

While Flynn's authors look at American images of Soviet doctrine, Mandelbaum's review American assessments of Soviet arms control prac tice. They do so in careful case studies, ranging from the test ban in the 1950s to intermediate nuclear forces in the 1980s, each case having been

discussed with actual participants. Their conclusions also contain intriguing pointers for the future; some reinforce conventional wisdom (political considerations loom larger in Soviet calculations than in American), some cut across it (Soviet negotiators have tended to make more concessions in

pursuit of agreement).

THE NUCLEAR SEDUCTION: WHY THE ARMS RACE DOESN'T MATTER?AND WHAT DOES. By William A. Schwartz and Charles Derber. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, 294 pp. $25.00.

The authors, part of a Boston antinuclear group, set out to answer the establishment across town, Harvard's project on Living With Nuclear Weap

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.157 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:21:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

170 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

ons. They discovered that Bernard Brodie was right all along?the domi nant fact about nuclear weapons is how awesome they are?and so both the nuclear enthusiasts and disarmers make the mistake of concentrating on

changes in weaponry that are marginal, not on the political conflicts behind the weapons. Their conclusion is fodder for debate: nuclear horror does not make the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable even once conflict

begins; rather, "the political conflict and violence raging around the world . . . could one day spin out of control and set off a nuclear cataclysm."

NATO AT FORTY. Edited by James R. Golden and others. Boulder (CO): Westview Press, 1989, 318 pp. $35.00.

IN DEFENSE OF NATO: THE ALLIANCE'S ENDURING VALUE. By Keith A. Dunn. Boulder (CO): Westview Press, 1989, 114 pp. $23.95.

The Golden volume, a product of West Point's social science depart ment, brings together a distinguished group of contributors to look forward and backward. Their speculations now look timid, but their

background remains valuable. The same can be said of Keith Dunn's brief for the primacy of Europe in American national security planning.

THE TWO GERMAN STATES AND EUROPEAN SECURITY. Edited

by F. Stephen Larrabee. New York: St. Martin's (with the Institute for East-West Security Studies), 1989, 330 pp. $39.95 (paper, $15.95).

The year 1989 embarrassed many students and analysts of Europe, and the authors of this volume are especially vulnerable. Yet if their answers

were often wrong, the authors did pose the right questions before other

people did?relocating the center of Europe's future in Germany and

asking what reform in the Eastern bloc meant for the G.D.R.

WALL: THE INSIDE STORY OF DIVIDED BERLIN. By Peter Wyden. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989, 762 pp. $27.50.

The opening of the Berlin Wall, which came just as his book was

published, surprised Wyden as much as the rest of us, but his book is little the less absorbing for its lack of foresight. For those interested in policy, his

insights about the building of the wall itself, especially actions within the East German regime, are fresh. For others it is a gripping human account of a city split in half, written by a native Berliner and only slightly marred

by some casual prose and loose editing.

PUBLIC OPINION AND NATIONAL SECURITY IN WESTERN EU ROPE. By Richard C. Eichenberg. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press, 1989, 293 pp. $29.95.

Pollsters find paradoxes in public opinion that would not surprise security specialists?for instance, publics have liked NATO but not its

strategy?but these same specialists often fall prey to casual uses of public opinion data. This meticulous book seeks to bridge those gaps, looking at

opinion in Britain, Holland, France and West Germany; it produces conclusions about how attitudes have changed?and how they haven't? that are subtle.

THE UNKNOWN CIA: MY THREE DECADES WITH THE AGENCY. By Russell Jack Smith. Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1989, 221 pp. $18.95.

This is an amiable memoir of a career in what, as Richard Helms put it,

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.157 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:21:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions