Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance
Washington, D.C. The Brookings Institution, 1987. First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. xi, [1], 240, [2] pages. Footnotes. Cover has some wear and a corner is creased. Minor page soiling noted. Includes Foreword, Contains chapters on Risks, Threats, and Rationales; Lower-Risk Cases; Higher-Risk Cases; Brinks and Balances: Interests, Vulnerability, Resolve; Parity: Change, Continuity, Confusion; and Is There a Future for Nuclear Coercion?. Also contains an Index. The author suggests that U.S. presidents were neither consciously bluffing when they made nuclear threats, not prepared to face the consequences if their threats failed. The author also challenges the myth that the 1950's was a golden age of low vulnerability for the United States, and details how nuclear parity has, and has not, altered conditions that gave rise to nuclear blackmail in the past. Richard Kevin Betts (born August 15, 1947) is the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, the director of the International Security Policy Program in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and former director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies,. He is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution until 1990. A former staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the National Security Council. Betts has been an occasional consultant to the National Intelligence Council and Central Intelligence Agency. His writings have earned five prizes, including the Woodrow Wilson Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book in political science. In numerous crises after World War II—Berlin, Korea, the Taiwan Straits, and the Middle East—the United States resorted to vague threats to use nuclear weapons in order to deter Soviet or Chinese military action. On a few occasions the Soviet Union also engaged in nuclear saber-ratling. Using declassified documents and other sources, this volume examines those crises and compares the decisionmaking processes of leaders who considered nuclear threats with the commonly accepted logic of nuclear deterrence and coercion. Condition: Good.
Keywords: World Politics, Modern Military History, Nuclear Warfare, Nuclear Blackmail, Nuclear Balance, Berlin Blockade, Korean War, Suez Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis, Nuclear First Use, Nuclear Coercion
ISBN: 0815709358
[Book #81897]
Price: $45.00