While Others Build: A Commonsense Approach to the Strategic Defense Initiative by AngeloCodevillaReview by: Gregory F. TrevertonForeign Affairs, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Winter, 1988), pp. 175-176Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20043790 .

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RECENT BOOKS 175

benefits are largely illusive, Rabkin argues that the U.S. should continue to

participate in these programs, but only on the same basis as such cooperation is conducted with non-totalitarian countries.

General: Military, Technological and Scientific

Gregory F. Treverton

MINDS AT WAR: NUCLEAR REALITY AND THE INNER CON FLICTS OF DEFENSE POLICYMAKERS. By Steven Kull. New York: Basic Books, 1988, 352 pp. $19.95.

The difficulty of getting strategists and psychologists to communicate is

frustrating, since they would seem to have so much to learn from each other. Steven Kull, a psychotherapist, is to be commended for trying. His

premise is that several persistent American policies?seeking equal numbers of weapons or pursuing strategic defenses, for instance?are inconsistent with the reality of the nuclear age. He interviewed defense policymakers to determine how they rationalized these policies. His conclusions are thought provoking even as they testify to the gap between strategists and psycholo gists, a gap that cries for investigation. Most mainstream strategists assume that the nuclear balance is stable and nuclear war all but unthinkable, and so the U.S. can pursue other objectives even if they slightly increase the risk of nuclear war. By contrast, most psychologists who become interested in nuclear issues, including Kull, seem to assume that war is much more

likely, and hence its prevention overrides all else.

CRISIS STABILITY AND NUCLEAR WAR. Edited by Kurt Gottfried and Bruce G. Blair. New York: Oxford, 1988, 300 pp. $19.95 (paper, $9.95).

The authors of this volume, more than usually integrated by the editors, are a who's who of strategy, especially command and control. Their premise is sobering: the world has not seen a serious Soviet-American confrontation since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, and so today's lessons from that too

much-studied episode

are suspect. The superpowers' command and control

systems should be thought of as "a single interacting system composed of men and machines," which a crisis would place under mounting strain. Their analysis is detailed and their recommendations sensible if not entirely new.

WHILE OTHERS BUILD: A COMMONSENSE APPROACH TO THE STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE. By Angelo Codevilla. New York: Free Press, 1988, 256 pp. $22.50.

This is a last gasp of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, written in sorrow by an enthusiast. His dissection of why SDI has faded is

perceptive: there never was a commitment, as there was in the space

program of the 1960s, to do something. Both the Administration and its

opponents could agree to conduct missile defense research and to move to

deployment only when?or more accurately, if?exotic technologies be came available. Early deployment of existing ground-based interceptors looked like a live prospect but never really was, for the Reagan Administra tion was not disposed to take on the military services, none of which favored

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176 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

defense, at least not funded out of its own budget. For the author these conclusions are sad ones; others will regard them as prudent.

EUROPE IN THE WESTERN ALLIANCE: TOWARDS A EUROPEAN DEFENCE ENTITY. Edited by Jonathan Alford and Kenneth Hunt. New York: St. Martin's, 1988, 246 pp. $45.00. RETHINKING THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS DILEMMA IN EUROPE. Edited by P. Terrence Hopmann and Frank Barnaby. New York: St.

Martin's, 1988, 374 pp. $55.00. ATBMS AND WESTERN SECURITY: MISSILE DEFENSES FOR EU ROPE. Edited by Donald L. Hafner and John Roper. Cambridge: Ballinger, 1988,325 pp.

These three volumes, each with a distinguished set of contributors, examine different aspects of European security. As SDI has faded, so have its European kin, anti-tactical ballistic missile (ATBM) systems, but there is an argument for better air defense in Europe quite independent of SDI, and the Hafner-Roper volume assesses an issue that will return in some

form. The Hopmann-Barnaby book was completed before the INF treaty but is still a valuable brainstorming for alternatives to the current nuclear status quo in Europe. Perhaps the most interesting of the three, the Alford

Hunt volume looks at an old issue given new life by a combination of self assertion by Europe and the continent's lack of confidence in the United States: greater European defense cooperation. The prospects remain mod

est?Pierre Lellouche is at his provocative best in outlining a bold program for integration by France, Britain and the Federal Republic?but the book is a fitting tribute to my friend and former colleague, the late Jonathan

Alford.

TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN. By Steve Fetter. Cam

bridge: Ballinger, 1988, 224 pp. $29.95.

Fetter assesses this most elusive of arms control objectives in the matter

of-fact manner of a scientist. His conclusion about the effect of a ban is that "the connection between testing and the missions that forces could perform is weaker than both proponents and opponents [have maintain

ed]." In particular, testing is not crucial to deterrence, only

to "war

fighting" strategies, and so he favors a complete?as opposed to a thresh

old?ban, perhaps done in phases as verification techniques permit.

WITHOUT THE BOMB: THE POLITICS OF NUCLEAR PROLIFER ATION. By Mitchell Reiss. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, 336 pp.

Nonproliferation has dropped sharply on the policy agenda, but it will

return, spurred by the knowledge that missile technology is proliferating faster than nuclear capability. Reiss's careful study of six dogs who did not

bark?technologically capable nations that chose not to go overtly nuclear?

is valuable background. They were deterred partly by international sanc

tions but more by domestic politics and bilateral relations, and by their sense that their security would not be enhanced by openly joining the

nuclear club.

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