Limited Nuclear War; Political Theory and War Conventions
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. vi, 266 pages. Bibliography. Index. Embossed stamp on DJ and front endpaper, ink date on title page. The author is now a Fellow of the British Academy. Ian Clark was educated at the University of Glasgow and the Australian National University. He joined the University of Queensland as Professor of International Relations in 2014. Previously, he taught at Cambridge University and was E. H. Carr Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. He has published many books in nuclear history, the ethics of war, and the combination of international history and international relations theory. This work has recently focussed on problems of international legitimacy. He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and an Honorary Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. Dr. Clark considers a variety of just war doctrines, as well as the writings of others. He discussion the post-1945 theories of limits to nuclear war, including the first reactions to the possibility of total war; the theories of limited war of the 1950s associated with names like Brodie, Kaufmann, Kissinger, and Osgood; the McNamara 'no cities' proposals of 1962; and the counterforce and limited nuclear options polices of the 1870 and early 1980s. This work rejects theoretical efforts to introduce the ideal of limits to nuclear war, not because such limits are intrinsically undesirable (even though they might make nuclear wear more thinkable), but because the concept of these limits, unsupported by an convincing theory of war itself, or of the means of its termination, exists in a political void. Bernard Brodie had insisted that the sole purpose of strategic nuclear forces was to avert war and a lingering consensus had endured into the 1970s that this was so. With the prevalence of nuclear war-fighting scenarios in the latter 1970s this consensus began to disintegrate. The arguments, both official and non-official, in favor of a trend towards limited nuclear options or a countervailing strategy, are many and various. The United States has had a nuclear policy, in the sense of a set of activities, ever since 1945. Whether one concludes that limited-nuclear war theories make the outbreak of nuclear war more or less likely depends on whether one chooses to emphasize the enhanced deterrent effect or the augmented credibility of the threat. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Nuclear Weapons, Arms Control, Conflict Management, Escalation, Limited Nuclear War, Bernard Brodie, Harold Brown, Counterforce, Deterrence, War-limitation, Schelling, Tactical Nuclear
ISBN: 0691076448
[Book #53779]
Price: $50.00